The terrain east of the entry point had grown denser.
Not structurally different. It consisted of the same compressed earth, the same constructed timber treelines, and the same grey ceiling holding its flat unchanging light.
However, the artificial design had layered moisture into this sector with the deliberate intention of someone who had studied that a sustained humidity induces discomfort.
The air carried the specific thickness of an environment that had been processing water vapor since before the cohort arrived. Each breath held more weight than it should have.
Group 13 moved through it in single file.
Cassiopeia was walking frontmost. "Ignore the humidity," she said, without looking back. "It's environmental. They want you to use relevant skills and waste mana. Don't."
"The air is sticking," Seren said. Her fingers traced the faint blue outline of [Barrier]'s idle hum—the instinctive low-level activation of her skill. Contrary to her compliant behavior, she didn't listen to Cassiopeia's words, simply because she, as a lesser noble, has never come across an environment that generated this extent of discomfort.
Noticing this, Cassiopeia said once more, "I said ignore it."
Seren paused. Grimacing, she finally complied, shutting off the operation of her skill. She let out a light sigh.
Behind them, Tomlin moved with the mild confidence of someone who believed in the competence of his skill. He then slowed, having located a weapon crate half-buried in the earth between two root clusters. "Leader, look. A long sword. If I channel [Reinforcement] through this
"Dead weight. Move."
"…Huh? But—"
"There is no sheath. It will be hindrance to our movement. I handle the ranged attacks. Your role in our group is to be a frontline defender," spoke Cassiopeia, coldly.
Tomlin looked at the crate. Then suddenly looked back at Isaac, who was trailing several paces behind with his hands in his pockets. "Well," Tomlin muttered, loud enough to carry. "Someone of my calibre doesn't need to rely on a tool like this. Unlike some others."
Isaac didn't respond. He was busy thinking.
[The Prism] was already running, taking in the details of the moisture content of the humid air. High humidity was an ideal environment for the operation of [Condensation].
Then, the group stopped as a mechanical growl abruptly came from the treeline.
"Be on guard," called Cassiopeia.
What appeared wasn't a beast. It was a wolf-form of hardened mana, which suddenly lunged at them.
[Mana Mimicry]... Andrias is doing a lot in here. Isaac noted its structural similarity to the delivery bird from the day prior.
"[Barrier]!" Seren's hand swept up. [Barrier] snapped to full luminosity—right before the wolf construct struck at it.
The [Barrier] persisted as the wolf construct's attack landed.
Tomlin caught it at the tail. [Reinforcement] flared—his skin took on the matte-iron density of the skill at full expression. He drove his closed fist into the construct's chest.
The collision rang metallic. The construct destabilized, its mana coherence breaking. It evaporated into a dispersing cloud of blue vapor.
"What was that?" Seren asked, her breath catching.
"A mimic," Cassiopeia said, watching the vapor disperse. "I would assume that Master Andrias is receiving mana through D-rank: [Mana Transfer] to fuel them on top of these wristbands that we wear. Now, keep moving."
They broke through a dense cluster of trees into a wide clearing.
"Leader… look," whispered Seren.
At the clearing's center, a crate with single carved mark sat, which indicated that it is a food crate.
However, the clearing was already occupied.
There were three separate clusters of students—twelve in total—locked in an uncoordinated skirmish that had the quality of exhaustion turning into desperation.
"Step back! This is Group 724's mark!" A boy with a panicked face thrust his hands forward. A weak, flickering spark of fire was fired, which indicated that his pool of mana was running low.
Behind him, two others were trying to build a mud wall that kept sagging under its own weight, for the humidity was too high for the earth to hold the geometry.
To their left, an opposing group launched a jagged ice shard toward the fire-user. It wobbled through the thick air, momentum bleeding off before it managed to reach its target.
Then, they noticed group 13's entry. They froze.
Seren was the one to act, stepping to the clearing's edge, "Numbers?"
Twelve pairs of bloodshot, exhausted eyes landed on group 13.
"Cassiopeia Terra," someone muttered. "Group 13." Fear and exhausted spite in equal measure. "Don't let them take it! If we don't eat, we're out by the next cycle!"
"What exactly is it that makes you try this hard?" Cassiopeia asked flatly. "We don't even know what the point of this assessment is."
"S-Shut up!" The fire-spark boy thrust his hands forward. A spray of orange embers hissed through the humid air as they flew toward group 13.
"Tomlin," Cassiopeia said, without raising her hands. "Clear the path."
Tomlin bumped his fists together as he stepped forward with his arms under the effect of [Reinforcement]. Crossing his arms, he blocked fire-sparks effortlessly.
Another student lunged with a staff aimed at Tomlin's knee. Tomlin caught it mid-swing. The wood groaned and shattered against his palm. A casual backhand sent the student into the earth.
"Are you even trying?" Tomlin laughed, walking through a flurry of ice shards that broke against his iron-sheened face. He reached the crate, grabbed the lead fire-user by the collar, and threw him five meters into the treeline's edge. Upon collision, the fire-user's wristband responded, before he vanished with white light—an indication of disqualification.
The remaining students' morale broke. They scattered into the timber with the dispersal of people who had completed a calculation and accepted its outcome.
Tomlin stood over the crate with the expectant attention of someone waiting for acknowledgment. "D-rank skills and nothing else. They should've surrendered at the start. What's the point of keeping false hope?"
Cassiopeia nodded, "Well done, Tomlin."
The three of them visibly relaxed. However, Isaac narrowed his eyes at the treelines where the students had fled.
Something was still here.
[Condensation].
He secretly generated a single, standard water droplet, fired into the treeline to their rear. The impact produced a quiet, deliberate noise—enough for the group to register it as intentional.
"Leader! Rear!" Seren tensed, thinking that the noise generated by Isaac's [Condensation] was made from an enemy.
This was the exact effect that he intended, for he suspected that enemies were hiding beyond.
Cassiopeia didn't wait for explanation. She drove her hands into the earth. A granite wall surged upward—the [Bedrock] expression of a Terra practitioner who had been conserving output and was now spending it. Clean, dense, committed.
It held for 0.8 seconds.
Then the mana was inhaled.
The wall de-materialized into dust without fracturing. It was absorbed, the coherence of its construct stripped away with the specific quality of something that had never needed to break what it could simply take.
"[Mana Siphon]." Cassiopeia's eyes widened. "Vane Abias."
Vane stepped through the dissipating dust with his hand outstretched. He moved without urgency—the particular unhurried quality of a practitioner who had been watching the group 13's pattern since before they reached the clearing .
"Good reaction," he said. He closed the distance to Tomlin in a blur.
Gritting his teeth, Tomlin activated [Reinforcement].
The skill manifested and crumbled in the same instant. [Reinforcement] was absorbed before it could completely manifest, as Vane's [Mana Siphon] converted the skill manifestation in an external mana that was automatically absorbed into him.
Seren moved, angling to put [Barrier] between Vane and Tomlin. However, she was interrupted by sharp needles from Vane's second teammate.
"C-rank: [Poisonous Sting]!" Seren whispered as she was forced to cover herself and Cassiopeia rather than Tomlin.
Cassiopeia stomped her foot. A metallic pole—[Ferrous Bind]—erupted from the earth ahead of Vane with lateral momentum.
Vane's eyes shifted. The pole crumbled before contact—absorbed by [Mana Siphon] at proximity. Cassiopeia's contribution was eliminated before it could complete its task.
Then, another voice resounded.
"[Gravity Field], successful."
Cassiopeia and Seren wobbled. Vane's third teammate had positioned himself at their rear—both hands clasped. There was a circle twenty meters in radius drawn around the two girls, and the gravity inside it was amplified to a degree that made standing feel like the beginning of a sustained effort.
Tomlin attempted [Reinforcement] again. Vane absorbed it again. The absorption wasn't requiring effort.
"Too late, Greave." Vane placed his palm in front of Tomlin. "[Mana Pressure]."
Pure mana—the raw output of a practitioner whose pool had been supplemented by everything it had absorbed in this clearing—slammed into Tomlin and sent him into the treeline. The kinetic force registered on the device. White light. Tomlin vanished.
Now, they were outnumbered.
B-rank: [Mana Siphon]. C-rank: [Mana Pressure]. Vane Abias—leading figure of Group 12. Isaac noted.
Currently, he was at a distance from the ongoing battle. Nearby him, there was Vane's fourth teammate—a boy who appeared relieved by the separation from the main engagement.
C-rank: [Poisonous Sting] is a skill that Seren's [Barrier] can hold under normal conditions. But Vane's [Mana Siphon] passive made Seren's skill unstable at proximity. The [Gravity Field] was limiting the girls' mobility to evade [Poisonous Sting].
Isaac needed to step into the fight to turn this situation around.
"Bad luck, right?" Then, the boy spoke. Lifting a finger, he formed a water droplet—the exact same as ones that Isaac produced numerous times—which wobbled and fell to the earth. "Vane told me to keep you occupied. No point in people like us getting hurt, right?"
Isaac didn't agree. All that he saw was the boy's inefficient use of [Condensation].
"Isaac, Nameless. I know you. Everyone knows you. Guess what? I own the same F-rank: [Condensation]. This skill is absolutely useless!" The boy angrily growled as he pointed his finger upward. Another drop of water formed and fell. That was the extent of it. "Unless you want a fistfight, there's no point. This is team-based anyway. The best that we can do—"
Isaac raised his hand.
[Condensation].
The dense droplet—compressed to the density of lead—struck the boy's wristband threshold before the sentence finished.
The boy looked at him in disbelief.
Then, white light. Gone.
Isaac turned to the clearing.
"Seren, hold the left!" Cassiopeia had one knee to the earth under the [Gravity Field]'s amplification.
Seren's leg had taken a [Poisonous Sting] that had slipped through [Barrier]'s flicker during Vane's proximity neutralization. The barrier was shrinking, with Vane's passive absorbing its construct from ten meters out.
"I can't hold it, Leader!" Said Seren, with the tone of someone arriving at a fact they hadn't wanted to reach.
Isaac then moved with no announcement. Cassiopeia caught the movement—her eyes widened for one moment before returning to the immediate threat.
[Condensation].
A single standard droplet—deionized—fell to the earth, one second before the [Poisonous Sting] user stepped on the precise position where the surface friction had been altered.
She slipped. The [Poisonous Sting] volley missed Cassiopeia and Seren entirely, its trajectory broken by the loss of its user's footing.
Vane's attention was pulled for 0.4 seconds—the involuntary perception shift of someone whose formation had just deviated from its expected pattern.
"Now."
Cassiopeia drove her hands into the earth. She operated [Bedrock]—not defensively. The ground beneath the two girls surged upward as a rising platform, and this successfully carried them out of the [Gravity Field] circle's boundary.
[Condensation].
Then, Isaac's dense droplet struck the [Gravity Field] user. White light. Gone.
"What—"
Vane turned toward where his teammate had been. His eyes tracked to Isaac. "You."
Isaac gazed back in silence.
Although [Mana Siphon] is a passive skill, it has a limitation… it only absorbs what Vane perceives.
"Vane!"
A third round of [Poisonous Sting] was fired toward Cassiopeia and Seren. Vane refocused—[Mana Siphon] passive reorienting toward Cassiopeia's next output. Cassiopeia fired projectiles of iron. He absorbed them as he began dashing—
Then he slipped.
The film of deionized water was placed between his last position and the girls. Vane quickly stood back up, but a window of opportunity was generated.
"[Bedrock]."
Cassiopeia, not missing this opportunity, blasted an entire boulder by surging the earth that it sat on top of.
The boulder wasn't a mana construct. Vane quickly rolled to the side to evade. The boulder splattered into numerous pieces, and some scratched his body.
"[Ferrous Bind]."
Immediately after, metallic poles erupted from the earth around the [Poisonous Sting] girl. They bent and coiled, wrapping before she could redirect.
"[Poisonous Sting]—"
"[Barrier]!"
Seren's [Barrier] caught the final needle volley.
And then,
[Condensation].
The dense droplet found the girl's temple. Device registered. White light.
Vane—injured, wristband intact, calculation complete—realized that he was the only one left among his group. Stood back up and without a second thought, withdrew into the treeline.
His eyes held on Isaac for one moment as he went, with the specific quality of someone revising a filed entry at significant cost.
The clearing went quiet.
Seren was gasping, clutching her leg. "We won. Close, but we won."
Cassiopeia brushed the earth from her knees and walked to the clearing's rear. She stopped in front of Isaac, who was standing with his hands in his pockets looking at the moss on a nearby root cluster.
"The slip," she said, voice low. "That was your doing. Then, those waterdrops—they were impactful enough that wristbands registered the damage."
Isaac looked up. His eyes met hers.
"How?" She whispered, "How does [Condensation] achieve that kind of density?"
"The environment is unusually humid. [Gravity Field] amplified it further. All I needed was to provide a slight tip-over."
"Then, what about the precision?"
"Calculation. What else can it be?"
Cassiopeia looked at him for a long moment.
"Leader?" Seren called out, limping toward them. "The crate..."
"Take the rations," Cassiopeia said, without looking away from Isaac. "We move in five minutes."