The ultimate one of Gaia

In the vast observation chamber overlooking the artificial battleground through veils of suspended mana screens, the atmosphere was charged with outrage and fear.

The gathered nobles, adorned in ceremonial robes embroidered with family sigils, had risen from their obsidian seats. Their voices rose in a chorus of fury, echoing against rune-reinforced walls as if their collective rage could pierce the barriers between them and the carnage below.

Their children—heirs to ancient bloodlines, scions raised in polished marble halls and pampered by generations of wealth—had been reduced to sobbing, broken figures mere moments ago. Each one emerged from the teleport glyphs screaming, bloodied, their minds battered by visions of flickering blackish-red flame and clawing shadows that seemed to consume their sanity itself.

"This is barbarism, not training!" a noblewoman shrieked, clutching her gilded monocle so hard the glass cracked.

"How dare that wretch endanger my son like this!" another roared, veins pulsing across his balding scalp.

"We entrusted our children to this academy, not a slaughterhouse!" spat a man draped in fur-lined robes, his eyes blazing with primal wrath.

"He must be restrained!" came the final cry, a chorus of nobles echoing it with thundering approval, their outrage almost vibrating the walls with mana resonance.

At the front row, Belisarius folded his arms calmly, "They knew what the Wargames entail. They just didn't expect someone like Martin Kaiser."

Roen exhaled, scratching his temple, "Yeah… someone who treats life like an afterthought."

Bellarine, silent all this while, merely scribbled quick notations on her rune tablet, eyes narrowed as she tracked the flickering symbols projecting Martin's vitals.

On the field,

"This thing is made of some flexible metals, how did you even break this?" Martin asked curiously, standing up and flicking fractured shards of his rapier from his coat sleeve.

Diemo wiped blood off her lip, her regenerated jaw clicking back into place with a visceral crunch, "Shut up and fight," she snarled, charging forward.

Martin smirked faintly, summoning a black and silver scepter into his hand. It was engraved with layered sigils along its haft, dense with etched compression matrices. Without hesitation, he swung it sideways, smashing the reinforced edge into Diemo's cheek.

Her head jerked with the force, but her neck muscles tensed like steel cables, preventing whiplash. Her regenerated jaw opened slightly as she asked, voice slurred from the blow, "Waht clt i thaht fom?"

"Just an average one," Martin replied coolly, spinning the scepter to balance its weight, "Made of compressed metals from the debris recycling forge."

"And how much have you revealed?" Diemo asked, wiping fresh blood from her mouth as golden regenerative glyphs flickered across her skin.

"Well," Martin tilted his head, eyes narrowing with bored cruelty, "I still have some aces left."

He took the initiative, lunging forward in a blur. His rapier had been destroyed, but his scepter struck with such precision that each impact sounded like stone splitting under chisel. Diemo blocked his thrusts with her forearms, each collision detonating micro-shockwaves that kicked up moss and pulverized soil around them.

Their exchanges created ripples in the barrier's mana lattice, distorting the air as the surrounding flames flickered and died out under stabilizing Holy incantations.

In the observation chamber,

"Guys!! Not to interrupt," Roen said, tapping Belisarius' shoulder urgently, "But you might want to look at the main screen now."

Everyone turned, nobles momentarily silenced by the raw awe of what they saw.

On the field,

In the far distance beyond the collapsed tree line, the barrier parted ways as if opening the gates of a grand stage.

Emerging in disciplined formation were 120 students clad in assorted combat attire, interspersed with twelve scions of the Consortium of Lineage and Legacy. Each scion's presence bent the ambient mana around them in rippling distortions, their family crests gleaming with glyph-embedded brilliance.

At their center walked a tall boy with cobalt hair tied back in a ceremonial braid. He stepped forward with deliberate dignity, his every movement accentuating the flowing robes lined with reinforced mana threads. In his right hand, he carried a long staff crowned with a lattice of suspended blue mana crystals that spun in slow orbit above the focus gem.

Martin glanced at them, emotionless, as Diemo staggered upright beside him.

"Looks like your next audience has arrived," Diemo said softly, blood dripping from her fingertips onto the scorched moss.

"More like victims," Martin replied, his eyes sharpening as a faint grin curled across his lips, 'This will be worthwhile.'

"Martin Kaiser," the cobalt-haired scion called out, his voice carrying across the battlefield through layered amplification incantations, "Under the authority of the Consortium of Lineage and Legacy, you are hereby ordered to surrender and submit to capture."

"Not recognized," Martin replied instantly, flicking blood from his scepter onto the charred ground.

The scion's jaw tightened slightly, but he did not react outwardly. "Then you will be subdued."

He raised his staff in one swift motion. The floating crystals flared with condensed blue-white light, forming an array of sharpened spearheads directed at Martin.

"Before we begin this pointlessness," Martin said casually, rotating his shoulders as blackish-red mana flared faintly along his collarbone, "Where is Iven? He was the one who came to me after all."

From within the formation, Iven stepped forward. His pale silver armor gleamed with dense defensive inscriptions, each rune flickering in synchrony with his pulse. His eyes, once arrogant, now held a guarded edge.

"Do you want to beg?" Iven asked, his tone dripping with scorn as he rested his gauntleted hand on the hilt of his artifact longsword.

"No," Martin replied, pointing his scepter towards Iven as ripples of mana expanded outwards in concentric rings. The runes embedded in Iven's armor flared instantly in defense, absorbing the probing wave with flickering blue brilliance.

"So, you do have some brains," Martin said softly, his expression twisting into a smile devoid of humor, 'But intelligence doesn't save cattle from slaughter.'

Diemo stood silently beside Martin, her gaze flicking between the incoming scions and her battered opponent. She exhaled slowly, feeling the building bloodlust radiating from his core like heat from an open furnace.

'He's not even fighting seriously yet,' Diemo thought, an involuntary shiver coursing down her spine, 'The real battle… is just beginning.'