The morning of the semifinals arrived gray and heavy.
Ji-hu woke before dawn, his body aching but his mind clear. In the main dojo, Minjun was already bouncing around.
Minjun: TODAY'S THE BIG DAY! TODAY YOU BEAT THAT JERK DOHYUN!
Soojin: Oppa, you said the same thing yesterday.
Minjun: BECAUSE IT'S TRUE EVERY DAY UNTIL HE WINS!
Soojin: That's not how time works.
Minjun: TIME IS AN ILLUSION!
Soojin: You're an illusion.
Minjun: ...that doesn't even make sense.
Soojin: Exactly.
Ji-hu almost smiled.
---
Yuna checked her equipment silently. Ara stood apart near the doorway, more alert than usual, eyes scanning constantly.
Ji-hu: You okay?
Ara: No.
Ji-hu: Want to talk?
Ara: No.
He nodded and didn't push.
---
They walked to the arena through streets filling with spectators. Inside, the crowd was enormous. Every seat filled. Every guild watching.
Dohyun's team was already there, waiting with cold smiles. As Ji-hu's group walked to their corner, Dohyun approached.
Dohyun: I've been waiting for this. I know your steam techniques. Your patterns. Your friends. I know exactly how to break you.
Ara: You don't know anything.
Dohyun: I know enough.
He walked away.
---
The announcer boomed across the arena.
Announcer: The semifinals! Valiant Storm's second team versus the Nameless Guild!
The crowd cheered. Ji-hu, Yuna, and Ara stepped onto the sand. Across from them, Dohyun and his two A-rank partners took their positions.
Jiyoon had earth affinity, shaping the ground like clay. Sungmin had sensory powers, making him impossible to surprise. They moved like extensions of each other.
The bell rang.
---
Jiyoon slammed her foot down.
The arena split apart.
Three stone pillars shot up between Ji-hu's team, cutting them off from each other instantly. The ground rippled and reformed, creating walls and barriers that separated them completely.
Ara was isolated on the far side.
Sungmin raised the humming disk. It activated with a low thrum that vibrated through the air.
Ara flickered—
And dropped.
Her teleport died mid-step. Her spatial power vanished completely. She was just a woman with a blade now, trapped inside a ring of rising stone that was closing in fast.
Dohyun didn't hesitate. Lightning speared toward her.
Ara rolled. The bolt exploded behind her, blasting sand into the air. She came up running but Jiyoon's walls were already too high, too thick. Stone closed around her like a fist.
Inside the ring, the walls crept inward. Space shrank with each passing second. Ara pressed her back against one side, watching the others advance, calculating angles that kept shrinking.
She had seconds before she was crushed.
---
Ji-hu saw her disappear behind the stone. Heard the walls grinding together.
He slammed against Jiyoon's barrier but it was too thick, reinforced, meant to hold. His fists left dents but not breaks. His strength boost wasn't enough alone.
He stopped punching and started thinking.
Heat poured from his palms into the stone. Not attacking. Spreading. Warming the entire structure around him. The walls grew hot to the touch. Then hotter.
When they were glowing faintly, he switched.
Water exploded from his hands in a continuous jet, flooding the heated stone. The temperature shock cracked the surface. The moisture seeped into fractures. The walls became brittle, weakened, unstable.
Ji-hu: YUNA! NOW!
Yuna: I see you!
Lightning arced toward him from Dohyun's position. He dodged left, right, felt a bolt graze his shoulder. Kept moving.
Yuna grabbed him with telekinesis and launched him upward.
He soared above the arena, above the walls, above everything. For one moment he saw the whole battlefield spread beneath him. Ara trapped. Yuna dodging. Dohyun aiming another strike.
He aimed himself at the wall enclosing Ara and fell.
Steam exploded from his palms behind him, propelling him downward faster, harder, like a missile aimed at the heart of the stone. The wind screamed past his ears. The ground rushed up.
He hit the wall with everything he had.
Strength boost. Full power. Ice forming around his body at the moment of impact to add mass and hardness.
The shockwave shook the entire arena.
Sand blasted outward in a ring. The ground cracked beneath them. Spectators felt the tremor in their seats. For a few seconds, nothing could be seen through the dust and debris.
When it cleared, the wall was shattered.
Ara lay on the ground inside, gasping, barely conscious. The shrinking walls had stopped moving. She had been seconds away from being crushed.
Ji-hu stood over her, breathing hard, ice still forming and melting around his body.
Ji-hu: Ara. ARA!
She looked up at him. Coughed. Nodded.
Ara: ...showoff.
Something in him broke loose.
Not the mark this time. Something else. Fury. Fear. Love. All of it wrapped together.
He turned to face Dohyun.
---
Dohyun raised his hand. Lightning gathered.
Yuna raised debris to shield Ji-hu but Dohyun was already firing, bolt after bolt aimed to kill.
Ji-hu didn't move. He let the lightning come.
Ice formed in front of him, a curved shield that caught the first bolt and scattered it. The second struck and cracked it. The third shattered it completely.
But that was enough time.
He raised his hand. Water gathered, compressed, built pressure. He released it as a jet, narrow and deadly, aimed at Sungmin who was circling toward Yuna.
Sungmin sensed it coming. Dodged at the last second. The jet blasted past him and hit the wall behind.
Sungmin: You'll have to do better than—
Ji-hu was already moving toward Dohyun.
---
Dohyun closed the distance, lightning building around his fist for a close-range strike. He launched a shockwave of electricity that rippled through the air.
Ji-hu slammed his foot down. Ice spread across the ground in front of him, a sheet that rose into a wall. The lightning shockwave hit it and fractured but didn't penetrate.
They stood on opposite sides of the ice, staring at each other through the frost.
Dohyun: You're still a C-rank. Still nothing.
Ji-hu: Keep telling yourself that.
---
On the other side of the arena, Ara pushed herself to her feet.
Her body screamed. Her lungs burned. But she was alive and she had a blade and Jiyoon was right there throwing rocks and raising columns to crush her.
Ara moved.
Not with teleport. Not yet. Just with speed and instinct and years of surviving when she had nothing else. She dodged between stone pillars, slid under falling debris, rolled past crushing columns.
Jiyoon kept throwing. Kept missing. Kept getting frustrated.
Jiyoon: HOLD STILL!
Ara: Make me.
She couldn't attack yet. Couldn't get close. But she could keep the earth user busy, keep her focused, keep her from helping the others.
One against one. Woman against woman. Blade against stone.
She'd survived worse.
---
Ji-hu charged through the ice wall.
It shattered around him as he burst through, straight at Dohyun. Fire in one hand. Water in the other. Steam and ice both ready.
Dohyun met him with lightning.
They crashed together in the center of the arena.
---
END OF CHAPTER 27