Moon’s sword pressed harder against the assassin’s guard.

The blade beneath his own began to buckle. Micro cracks slowly becoming visible along the length of the sword.

Moon’s strength made assassin’s arms shake.

His teeth ground against each other as his feet sunk deeper into the crater beneath him. His knees bending at an angle that threatened to break it soon enough.

Rather than doing the obvious and driving the strike deeper, Moon pivoted, his sword slid off the guard sideways and swept low across the assassin’s ribs.

’How is he so fast!’ The assassin cried out internally, his blade dropping in a panicked block.

Moon avoided the block narrowly, cutting a shallow line across the assassin’s side. Before he could adjust, Moon’s sword carved a deeper one. Then another across his hip, each slash riding on the phantom strikes of Tempest Symphony.

The assassin’s eyes couldn’t tell them apart. He blocked the ones that weren’t there and took the ones that were.

By the seventh cut he was bleeding from three separate wounds.

By the tenth he was staggering backward, blood pouring down his side.

The first assassin came back into the fight from Moon’s blind spot.

He aimed his attack from the angle of the stump of Moon’s left shoulder, betting on the missing arm to force Moon into a defensive posture he couldn’t recover from. His dagger came in low, angled up under Moon’s guard and fast approaching.

Moon read the attack, dropping his weight before dipping his remaining shoulder forward. The dagger passed over the top of him in a clean miss.

After dodging his attack, Moon turned sharply to deal with the first assassin who managed to recover from his missed attack, swinging his dagger towards Moon once more.

Moon met him mid-motion. Their blades locked together.

Moon activated Tempest Symphony once more, phantom strikes layering across the exchange. The assassin blocked some of the correct ones, and the wrong ones which cost him wounds on his shoulder, forearm and cheek which missed his eye by two fingers’ width.

Their mana was draining fast, the pressure Moon was putting on them, forced them to use their strongest skills.

Moon’s was also losing mana at an alarming rate, but Life Burn was still burning bright inside him, his cuts coming faster than his opponent could parry.

Baaron’s eyes widened as he took quick glances at Moon’s battle in between his own.

He had ordered the two Surpassers to retreat because he had calculated Moon’s transformation as a short-burst last resort.

Something that would gutter out in thirty seconds and leave the boy broken on the arena floor. His estimation had been wrong. Whatever Moon had activated wasn’t fading yet. It was intensifying with every exchange, and his Surpasser assassin was losing, despite having a teammate to help him.

’Two Surpassers losing to an Evolver...’ Baaron didn’t hesitate any longer.

"Support them!" His voice cracked across the battlefield through his communication channel. "Those within range, converge on the target’s position. Now!"

Ten of the dark organization’s remaining reinforcements broke off from their engagements and sprinted toward Moon. Eight of them were peak Four-Stars. Two were Five-Stars.

Moon saw them coming. His remaining hand tightened on his sword. The two assassins were still within his reach, both bleeding but still very much in the fight.

’I will have to use that...’

The temperature suddenly dropped, cold, freezing air rushing out of Moon’s body in a quick burst that formed frost crystals across the rubble in a wide ring.

The second assassin’s breath caught white in front of his mouth. His skin prickled with the sudden chill that Moon radiated.

Across the battlefield, aura-sensitive fighters turned their heads.

Ace’s smile faltered by the smallest fraction.

Alaric’s eyes narrowed.

’He has another advanced element?’

Moon had shown lightning during yesterday’s broadcasts. Everyone had assumed that was his primary source of power.

Everyone’s expression changed drastically. When they thought Moon no longer had any trump cards left to reveal, he shocked them with another revelation that made them more convinced of his genius and talent.

Moon did not control one, but two advanced elements. The four basic elements were the cherry on top.

The reinforcements charging toward him didn’t have time to experience the temperature drop before Moon activated his skill.

’Frost Pillar.’

The Cryomancy skill activated.

Ten pillars of ice erupted from the arena floor, cutting off the path between the reinforcements and Moon. Each pillar stood three meters tall, dense in ice.

The lead runner tried to skid to a stop, but the pillar had appeared to quickly and he didn’t have time.

His momentum carried him into the nearest pillar, and the pillar’s autonomous attack activated on contact.

Icy spears erupted from the pillar’s surface in every direction, driving into his chest, his shoulders, his neck.

He fell to the floor a moment later. Dead.

The runners behind him tried to break around the line. But every pillar was already firing towards them.

Ice spears launched from all ten simultaneously, tracking the movements of the enemies attempting to brute force their way in, or taking a detour around.

The pillars weren’t just defensive walls. They were self-operating ice turrets, consuming their own mass with every shot but pumping out volleys at a rate akin to a powerful human archer.

Two more of the reinforcements were injured in the first three seconds. A third taking a spear through his thigh before collapsing.

The Freezing Cold effect from Moon’s Cryomancy entered every wound, slowing them down.

Their attempts to break the pillar line lost speed with every passing moment. One of the Five-Stars raised his weapon and channeled a powerful fire attack to melt through. The pillars were consuming themselves faster, fighting against his fire.

Moon turned back to the second assassin after having bought himself enough time away from the other Evolvers.

The man’s eyes were wide. He had watched his backup fall in a handful of seconds. He had realized what Moon was capable of at the exact moment he understood that the backup wasn’t going to reach him.

He tried to smile.

"Well." He muttered, his voice rough, his face bloody. "This is a bad day."

Moon sword rose again.