“Now then, Shall we begin?!”

Immediately, all the teams rush towards the huge mountain as they begin the race to capture the flag. The five colors in use are: Red, Blue, Gold, Silver and Ash. Each of these color classes have letters A to H assigned to them making forty teams altogether therefore forty flags also. Kiiara, May and Erraz belong to team Blue A; Dubnet, Kalium and Dia belong to team Red C; Serena, Tesla and Kevine belong to team Silver A and so on. While the teams rush, Kiiara’s team just stands and observes.

“So are we moving or what?” Erraz asks to break the silence between the team members.

“Of course, we are,” May answers.

“Everyone’s rushing to climb the mountain, however we don’t have time for that. We have to hurry, get our flag and capture another,” Kiiara says.

“We know already,” Erraz replies but is interrupted by Kiiara before he can complete his sentence.

“That’s why I’m going to fly us all to the top,” Kiiara continues.

“Huh? How?” May is surprised.

“Stay still and hold tight,” Kiiara instructs.

She raises her left foot and steps it forward, forcefully on the ground.

“Flame release: Dynamic style: Flame falcon.”

Instantly, fire emanates from beneath her feet, spreads to that of May and Erraz who are on opposite ends of Kiiara respectively and forms a huge falcon.

“Interesting skill you have here Kiiara,” Erraz comments.

“Why didn’t you use in the first stage?” he inquires.

“Well I can’t maintain it for long and it consumes a lot of elemental energy,” she answers.

“Let’s go,” she adds as the falcon took flight.

The flame falcon flying really fast, passes those at the bottom and mid-section of the mountain in an instant.

“Hoo, Kiiara isn’t slacking I see,” Serena says as she climbs the mountain with her teammates.

“And we shouldn’t too,” Tesla says.

“Gather round,” she says to her teammates.

Putting her hands on the ground, she says,

“Silver Storm: Cloud of Hermes.”

A silvery cloud having silver colored lightning sparking under it, forms below her feet and those of Serena and Kevine.

“Wow,” Kevine comments.

“Here we go,” Tesla says and they zoom off with high speed on the silvery cloud.

Some of the other participants also make use of their elements to enable faster and better movement while climbing the mountain.

“Everyone’s really going at it, huh,” Dubnet lazily says, observing the ‘battleground’.

“Yeah and we better hurry before our flag gets stolen,” Dia replies as they climb the mountain with speed.

“We won’t catch up to them at this rate,” Kalium complains lightly.

“Well, at least some are still below us,” Dubnet replies.

“We still have a chance,” he adds.

However, right there on the mountain, not too far off, is Dubnet’s team’s flag. Dubnet is quick to sight it.

“What? That’s out flag actually,” he alerts his teammates.

Another team already rushes to get the flag. One of the members is about to grab the flag when Dubnet suddenly appears in front of the member and lands a kick on his face. Another member comes rushing to attack but Dubnet dodges the punch thrown at him by the member and lands a knee jab on the second member’s stomach. He follows it with an elbow jab to his back and finishes the combo by throwing him to the side.

“Interesting, I took you for the lazy one,” the third member says. It is a girl. She has a plain hairstyle at the first half of her head however the other half downwards is packed in a curly afro style. Her hair and eyes are silver in color and she has a large silver headset round her neck.

When Kalium reaches Dubnet, he is surprised at the opponent.

“Princess?!” He exclaims.

“Argentum, been a while,” Dia says as she arrives where Dubnet is.

The girl, Princess Argentum is the princess of the Silver City which is also in Earthville Kingdom and that city is home to Kalium which makes Argentum his princess.

“Good grief, what a complicated situation,” Dubnet says as he takes hold of his team’s flag.

“There’s nothing complicated about this,” Dia replies and makes a rush for Argentum to attack her.

Argentum is holding the flag of her team. The other two members of Argentum’s team quickly dash to stop Dia. Dubnet quickly tosses their own flag at Kalium.

“I understand if you can’t fight at the moment but at least you can keep our flag safe,” he instructs and moves to defend Dia.

Each participant, in this second stage, is allowed to carry weapons specially made by the institution which are unable to make deep wounds on a person whether it is a sword, spear, glaive, and gun, whatever it is. Dubnet has a sword with him, so also Kalium, Argentum and her teammates.

As Dia makes a rush to Argentum, Argentum’s teammates pull out their swords, dashing to attack Dia from her two sides, one from her left and the other from her right. Dubnet quickly dashes to the one on the right and with his sword, blocks his attack. Dia dodges the swing from the one on the right, grabs him and tosses him over to Dubnet’s side. Before he can arrive, Dubnet kicks the one he is blocking and does a backflip, dodging the one coming from the right leaving the two teammates of Argentum to collide against each other.

Dia, on getting to Argentum, makes a fist to punch her however Argentum quickly counters.

“Silver release: Silver wall.”

Instantaneously, a thick wall made of silver forms in-between Dia and Argentum, separating them. Dia’s punch is going to hit the wall but diamond crystals from her fist covers her arm all the way to her elbow. This gives the punch a powerful effect and it breaks through the thick silver wall causing a large crack which ultimately shatters the entire wall to pieces. However, Argentum is quick to jump high in the air, with her team’s flag in one hand and using her other hand, she unsheathes her sword. With sparks of electrical current flowing around it, she quickly swings it down at Dia.

“Silver release: Lightning style: Electrifying crusher.”

Swiftly, huge amount of visible electrical current flows from her sword at Dia. Dia smiles and points her right palm in the direction of the attack.

“Diamond release: Static Style: Diamond shield.”

Instantly, out of thin air, diamond like dust appears and soon a thick shield of diamond covers Dia as the large amount of electrical current come pouring down. The dust created by the clash of the attack settles and Dia, with her diamond shield still intact and unscratched, is standing there unharmed. Argentum lands some steps back holding her flag behind her. She cannot see Dia since the shield is covering her. While behind the shield, Dia turns her palm sideways and immediately, a mini lance with a flat round head, made of diamond shoots from the shield and with full force hits Argentum’s left shoulder.

“Argh!!!” she cries out.

Another is released, which hits her right knee and brings her down. Another hits her right shoulder and another, her stomach all with full force.

“Argh!!!” she yells as she coughs out blood.

“Did you really think you could defeat me?” Dia asks as the shield splits equally into two, revealing her standing there.

As she stands, her long silky hair flowing with the wind and her beautiful eyes dazzling with the light, Argentum looks up at her with a fierce look from the distance, blood spewing from her mouth.

“Hand over your flag,” Dia commands, stretching her hand at Argentum to receive.

“Tch!!” Argentum hisses.

“You proud shi—,” she yells but before she can complete her sentence, a mini lance shoots from one of the shield’s halves, hits her forehead and knocks her out.

“Sorry Argen but you should know by now that against me, you can never win,” Dia says, calmly looking down at the now knocked out Argentum. She walks to where she lay and picks up the flag.

“That wraps it up,” Dubnet says placing his left foot on the other teammates of Argentum.

“Princess,” Kalium mutters with a sad look on his face.

“Hey you better choose which side you’re on. For the purpose of this event at least, you should know where your loyalty lies,” Dia says aloud to Kalium.

Kalium tightens his grip on their team’s flag.

“Not to worry, after this event you can go back to your lovely princess, Mr. Faithful knight,” she adds with a harsh tone.

“I know,” he responds with unhappiness.

Dubnet is silent as he stares at Dia for a bit then looks at Kalium.

“Alright, let’s go,” he says, breaking the silence and turns to leave.

“See Kalium I told you we still have a chance,” he adds as they leave.

“That’s right. We now have two flags in our possession,” Kalium replies.

“Remains at least a precious stone and we’re good to go except we want points,” Dia says.

“Oh yeah,” Dubnet says as he tosses an item at Dia.

“I found that after searching those two,” he adds, referring to Argentum’s teammates.

“Keep it safe, Dia,” he adds again as she catches it.

“That’s a precious stone!” Kalium exclaims with shock in his eyes.

Just by hearing her name from his mouth, Dia’s heart skips. Outside, she looks plain and unperturbed, however, inside she is already head over heels for Dubnet, dancing and rolling about.

“That means we already have all our items before even reaching the top of the mountain,” she says with a cough trying to keep it together.

“Sure,” Dubnet replies.

“However, it’s still not safe for now. This event, if you can observe, is not just about offence but also defence. Teams will surely be after us to capture our flags, the ones we have captured and invariably take whatever precious stones we have,” he adds.

“I see,” Kalium says while touching his chin.

“So we must be alert till we finish the event then,” he adds.

“That’s right,” Dubnet replies.

“Till the end, no one is safe and we don’t even know what type of obstacles await us,” he adds.