Dark Magus Returns

With what had happened during the last match, sbelieved the Light Faction was playing favorites with the contestant Mantis. During his match with Simyon, many thought that the Light Faction warriors on the ground should have intervened sooner, giving the win to Simyon.

Yet they had let the battle continue on. In the end, it was hard to say they had made the wrong decision considering that Mantis had clearly won the fight. After hearing that the Light Faction would allow fights to continue on further than they would have, to see who the real strongest student was, sthought that they wouldn't get involved so soon.

Yet they were wrong; their intervention in the match meant that now, since they held onto the sword belonging to Hannah, Mantis was out of the match. Sthought that maybe it was now their favoritism toward the Light Faction.

Coming in this early, maybe this was how they were going to make it so the Light Faction would be the overall winner in this event. After all, they had already lost the team event to the Dark Faction.

Others knew that would only be rumors; the sword had already pierced right through Mantis's muscles, and it had been stopped just short of reaching his heart thanks to them.

The words of the result rang through Mantis's mind again and again.

"I…lost?" Mantis mumbled, slowly lifting his hand and grabbing onto the blade.

"That's impossible; I am going to be the winner of this event."

Gripping onto the sword with his bare hand, it shattered in front of everyone.

Mantis lifted his head up, and both of the Middle-stage warriors could now see his fiery eyes. They were narrowed and had changed to a yellow hue. They felt like they were staring into the eyes of the beast.

"Stand dow-!"

A flash went right in front of Hannah's eyes. She didn't get to hear the last of the Middle-stage warrior's sentence. When turning her head, she could see that the middle-stage warrior's head was missing.

"Get out of here!" The other middle-stage warrior shouted as he went and pushed back Hannah with his other hand, fiercely pushing her with Qi as if hitting her.

Hannah was lifted up her feet and through the air. Landing on the ground, she had bounced a few times and rolled until she had ended up just shy of where Raze was standing.

When she looked in the direction she was in just moments ago, she could see the middle-stage warrior who had helped her, with a fist that had pierced right through his stomach, and a bloody hand along with it.

A middle-stage warrior's body, even if not specially trained like Simyon's, was still far stronger than that of a regular human or an initial stage warrior. The stages were separated for a reason.

With added Qi, one could fortify their bodies several times, and Mantis had now killed two of them just like that.

Mantis pulled his hand out, and the middle-stage warrior fell to the floor. The two that were there to protect the students were no longer alive.

There were still several middle-stage warriors on the edge of the stage to protect the crowd, but they were at a loss for what to do. This had never happened before in the history of the martial arts tournament.

"What is going on?" Hannah asked.

"A surge in strength, but not a surge in Qi, so then what is this?"

Hannah could hear Raze commenting on the situation; he still sounded calm despite what had just occurred, but she also made note of what he said. If this wasn't Qi, then what was it?

"ARGHHH!"

An almighty scream escaped from Mantis' mouth; it sounded like thunder had exploded in the center of the arena and reverberated out to those in the crowd. Many had to cover their ears due to the loud, screeching scream.

Hannah had to do the ssince she was even closer, but moments later, and she could no longer hear the screams. Looking into the crowd, she could see that the student 'Jake' was completely fine.

He wasn't being affected by the screech, and that's when she noticed she could hear no sound at all.

'Is this because of him.'

As soon as Mantis had closed his mouth, the sound had returned to her ears instantly. She felt like she had escaped from whatever sound barrier she was in.

She didn't have tto worry about why this was happening though because there were much bigger problems right in front of them.

Mantis was curled up into a ball, surrounded by the two dead on the ground; he fell to the floor on his knees, and with both of his hands, he was hugging himself as if trying to reach his back.

Mantis could feel his skin bulging from underneath; his sense of smell was growing as he could tell where the dead were without using his eyes, where the others were on the ground itself, and those in the crowd.

Then, a large tearing sound was heard, along with snaps and pops. Breaking out from the right of his back shoulder, piercing through his skin, another part was growing from his body.

All of those in the arena could see it; it looked like a large bat wing, with several holes in the flaps of its wing had grown from Mantis.

"I can't believe it," Kawak said from the organizer's viewing area.

The three of them had stood up from their seats and had moved closer to the glass to try and see directly what was happening. They then saw from the other side, erupting through Mantis's shoulder was the same; another wing of the ssize had grown out.

Finally, Mantis stood up from the ground; his yellow eyes were glowing, and his large wings flapped, blowing part of the dust in front of them a couple of times.

In the Dark Faction viewing area, the students had moved closer to the glass as well.

"That's, is that what I think it is?" Liam asked, even though his system had already confirmed his thoughts.

"Yeah, I think this might be what Amir warned us about. About how things weren't going to be normal during this event, but I doubt Raze had any clue that this was going to happen," Safa replied. She had somewhat managed to recover from using all of her energy from earlier.

And she was far too worried about her brother to just sit down and watch what was going to happen.

"What have the Demonic Faction done!" Cicle asked. "They have brought, of all things, that to the tournament. Was this their plan all along, to use this to get rid of us?"

"That may very well be the case. I never thought in this tournament, we would see a Hybrid here. Whatever the case or reason, we must eliminate it immediately, and we must eliminate those in the Demonic Faction for doing such a thing!"

Amir in the middle of the crowd, had a big smile on his face.

"The Bonum Society will do whatever it needs to protect this world."