Rank Test Battle Royale (3)

Ren slowly reduced his pace after he felt confident that his pursuers could not caught up with him more. The presence of Gavin assisting Hani was something outside Ren's calculation. He believed he should took a step back and retread rather than fighting both of them in the same time could gave him huge disadvantages.

It was not he could not beat them when they fight but he needed to reserve his mana as much as he could. He was not blessed by huge amount of mana so he could not afforded to waste his mana arbitrarily.

[Dylan Rafferty has been eliminated. Remaining participants : 7 people]

Ren stopped when he heard an announcement had been made. It seems someone already beat Dylan from this competition. It was been 20 minutes from the started of the test and there was already elimination.

Dylan Rafferty by no means was a weak mage. His control over water magic was so refined, so his elimination this early made Ren thinking. There was a little few people could pulled this feat - it was either Marcus or Elena. But looking at the nature of Dylan's magic, Ren thought Elena could be the one that defeated Dylan because of her magic being superior.

Marcus's fire magic could be a bad matchup to Dylan's water magic. So it was nearly impossible for Marcus to win against Dylan, not to mention to beat him this quick.

Ren shifted his focus on the path in front of him and continued stride his way to the destination that he still not decided on.

***

Twenty minutes ago.

Elena observed the new scenery around her. Just a minute ago, she was at a small room that full of tangled wire. Right now she was in the middle of unknown forest that was filled with many kinds of tree with various shape. She could smelled the scent of fall pierced her nostril.

She heard an announcement been made shortly after. She heard the details from that announcement intently so that she didn't missed any information regarding the test.

After the signal to start sounded, Elena immediately casted a magic of hers. Gust of wind started gathering and compressed into an orb in front of Elena. She jumped and stepped into it before the orb burst and blasted Elena and help her launched herself to the sky.

In the sky, Elena pulled something out of the pocket of her school uniform and put on her right eye. It was a modern artifact called 'Lens of Sight' where its user can enhance his/her vision and see from far. It helped its user to see the view as far as five kilometres forward.

With the help of that artifact, Elena tried to scan her surroundings and traced other contestants from above. She found Luna Longbow, one of the contestant hiding between the branches of a tree which was quite far from Elena. But before she had a chance to approach and launched a surprise attack to her target, she was assaulted from behind.

Fortunately, before this, Elena already casted a protective spell on her body. So before the attack could hit her, a small ice shield had been automatically conjured to block the attack. However, the impact of the attack knocked her down from the sky and falling toward the ground.

A figure approached the spot where Elena had fallen with a quick step. Just before the figure could approach the spot, an Ice Bolt flew from front but the figure managed to duck, avoiding the Ice Bolt which now was stabbed deep into a tree behind.

"So it was you that attacked me just now... Dylan Rafferty."

Dylan stood back and stared at Elena, who was stood in front of him with two floating Ice Bolt beside her. Dylan just stared at Elena emotionlessly, neither denied nor confirmed that accusation from Elena.

"You are not from my target list, Dylan. But I cannot ignore it when you try to sneak an attack toward me. I will eliminate you right here, right now." After Elena finished declared her intention, he shot the remaining Ice Bolt towards Dylan, leaving a frosty air throughout its path.

Dylan responsed with his own spell, Aqua Blast. A stream of water shot up into the air and washing over those Ice Bolt. Followed by his second spell, Dylan conjured a stream of water that shaped like a dragon and directed it towards his opponent.

[Breath of Shira]

After she finished casting her spell, a flow of cold air started appearing around her and turned the approaching water dragon into an ice statue. Then, she casted Ice Spear, a high tiered version of Ice Bolt and shot it towards Dylan.

Dylan, flustered after seeing one of his current strongest magic had been nullified effortlessly by Elena, could not reacted and prepared a countermeasure for Elena's attack. The Ice Spear directly hit and penetrated his body.

Soon after he was penetrated, Dylan's body began to turn into particles of light before disappeared into thin air. Elena saw her foe disappeared without giving any emotion.

After that, an announcement blared out.

[Dylan Rafferty has been eliminated. Remaining participants : 7 people]

****

Ren concentrated on two figures in front of him. They were Hani and Gavin, the opponents he was escaped from before. They were already caught up with him not long ago. There was also a new foe that Ren had never seen before came with them.

It seems Hani summoned another beast to aid them traced and pursued Ren faster. The summoned beast was a black panther - a 3-star beast that was great in hunting. It was a little bit inferior compared to Eurasian Gray Wolf because it didn't have a keen smell like the latter, however its speed and agility was on par with the wolf.

Hani commanded her summoned beast, the Eurasian Gray Wolf to go behind Ren in attempt to prevent him for escaping again.

Ren realised that he couldn't escaped anymore and started to shift his body into offense stance, prepared to avoid, block or counter any attacks from his enemies.

Gavin leaped upward and conjured a steel axe from the thin air and hacked it towards Ren. Ren sidestepped and countered it with brief but powerful punch at Gavin's chest. Gavin knocked back quite a distance upon receiving the punch. The axe he held slipped from his hand and Ren quickly grabbed the axe before it reached the ground.

Ren quickly ran to Gavin and swung his axe horizontally at his foe. However, Gavin managed to create another similar axe and barely parried the attack. The impact of axes clashing with each other made a clang sound and the axes were flew away from each other.

Ren then took a step back after noticing the black panther approaching from right and tried to claw him.

"I don't know that your punch quite powerful. What tricks did you use?" spoke Gavin while trying to gasp for the air.

"I just using Aura. Nothing too difficult." Ren answered it nonchalantly.

Aura - another form of energy besides mana. Unlike mana, every living things could possessed an aura. However, it was harder to control and master aura than mana. People need to train their physical body into a certain degree to use aura properly. It's quite rare for a mage, especially the beginner to masterfully use aura.

Aura had been divided into three types. What Ren used before was known as 'Armed Aura', which the Ren coated his body with aura to break the physical limit of his body and enhance his strength.

Gavin could not believed his ears. Learning and mastering aura was not something trivial and he was also tried to learn aura but never succeeded even once. There's no way an inferior like Ren Milford could learn something that he couldn't.

With a cry of rage, Gavin started running towards Ren and swinging the axe on his hand furiously. At the same time, Hani commanded her black panther to attack Ren too.

Ren, looking at two foes tried to attack him at the same time, began to channel his aura and use the second type of aura he learned, Aura Sense. It was a technique to enhance any of his sense he wanted. In this case, he used the aura to enhance his vision so that he could read and predicted the attack of his opponents.

Ren exchanged attack with Gavin and the black panther without any difficulty. For every attacks Ren got from the duo, he blocked or parried them with ease.

Gavin realised he could lose on the battle when Ren started to increase the speed of his attack. When he saw Ren was busy blocking the black panther's attack, Gavin tossed aside his weapon and put both of his hands above his head.

[Weapon Creation]

Gavin shouted his magic spell. A giant axe suddenly appeared above him. He grabbed the giant axe with both of his hands and with a swift move, he swung the axe downwards to Ren. Ren already predicted Gavin action, thanks to his Aura Sense. A magic formula emerged in front of him.

[Wind Blast]

A sudden gust of wind blew Gavin and the black panther from Ren and failed his attempt to hack Ren with his new axe. But Gavin just smirked with it as Ren already hit the trap he set.

The Eurasian Gray Wolf, one of the summoned beast Hani Harrison put on standby before suddenly emerged behind Ren with its fangs. This was the reason why Gavin used barrage attacks and why he used such an exaggerated and obvious move for his last attack. It was for Ren to focus on him and when Ren hit him with his magic, Ren would let his guard down a little because there was nothing else would assaulted him.

Ren turned his attention to the creature behind him and saw the wolf was already very close to him. Ren sure that he didn't have time to dodge its attack so he put both of his hands on the level of his face attempting to brace the attack.

However, the impending attack never reached Ren. He looked at the direction of his attacker and noticed the wolf was disappeared from there. He turned to Hani, the summoner and saw her exhausted face.

It seems Hani already depleted all of her mana and couldn't maintained her magic anymore. It was no wonder for her to exhaust her mana because summoning 4-star beast consumed much more mana. On top of that, she also summoned another 3-star beast, which rapidly depleted her mana even more. That's why she couldn't maintained her summoning beast much longer.

Ren quickly grasped the sudden opportunity laid upon him and in a swift movement, he conjured another Wind Blast and blasted it to Hani. Hani couldn't avoided it and received the blast completely.

[Hani Harrison has been eliminated. Current participants : 6 people]

Listening to the announcement, Gavin became enraged. He rapidly created more weapon around him. He grabbed a spear that he created and ran to Ren with the spear pointing at him.

"Argggghhhh... Die, Milford!!!"

In the midst of running, Gavin was suddenly shot at the temple of his head and fell down helplessly. He vanished from there afterwards and left only the weapons he created before. Ren looked at the incident before him speechlessly.

Ren sensed a flow of magic power suddenly came from his northeast direction. He quickly ducked, as a bullet made by stone flew over his head. It was the same attack that hit Gavin just now.

[Gavin Cobalt has been eliminated. Current participants : 5 people]

Ren took a deep breath as a new announcement sounded out. He tried to figure out the hidden attacker. Ren took a peek at the direction the bullet came from. A woman with black hair was climbing down from a tree and hurriedly moved away from her previous spot.

'Luna Longbow, got you.' Ren found out the identity of his attacker.