Set the stage, human to my right, injured on a tree, crawling away, alive.

  Foliage on the floor, can be used as compost for my innate magic.

  In front of me is a path of destruction from a wrecking ball, fallen trees, sticks sticking into the ground, dirt meeting the surface, and him.

  “Did you not hear the challenge? This is a waste of time.” He has a red number on his bracelet, an 8. He is going to be reckless to try and survive.

  “You tried to kill me first.” I crouch to the floor and touch some leaves, they are all fragile and flaky so I couldn't get much from dissolving them.

  “Yeah. You’re right, sorry.” He turns to leave, “you can take her, my bad.” he dissolves the chains into nothing, fizzing into the air. The poison from the bee earlier had done nothing as his movements are fluent.

  I didn't expect him to give up that easily.

  I'm not one to hit someone when they have their backs turned. But I'm going to hit this person with their back turned.

  I stand, reeling my arm back, stepping forward to add to the momentum of throwing the compressed gun, imploding it again as it leaves my hand, it makes the sound of scissors cutting air as it speeds up, heading directly towards my targets back.

  It hits him, directly, a cloud of dirt coloured dust fills the air around where a body should be.

  There is no way that killed him, that would be too easy, but it should give me an advantage.

  “OW.” The dust settles and it shows him with a broken nose, collecting teeth from the ground, “prick.”

  Chains begin to form around him, creating a sort of cocoon shell, I can't see him at all now.

  My innate magic is not strong enough to penetrate that shield of chains most likely.

  “You win, you can have the girl, my bad.” I try to desculate, speaking as elegantly as I can.

  The chains begin unwrapping, he walks out perfectly healed, even the teeth being back in his mouth, “okay.”

  I hold my hand out, “shake on it?”

  He jumps, “okay!” He repeats grinning widely, running over and grabbing my outstretched hand with both of his.

  Before I can try to use my innate magic like I did on the clones on him, I feel a wire going through my palm and up my arm.

  I jolt back as my arm flings up into the air, something coiling around the bone to control it, like a puppet with strings on the inside.

  “You don't know protection magic? I thought surely that wouldn't work... you’re as weak as humans.” He flicks his wrist, and my hand grabs my other forcefully, my fingers bending unnaturally while holding my other arm above my head

  I feel calm. I don't know why. Clearly, I need to kill him in one shot, but I also can't die by overexerting myself.

  He begins to look back and forth between me and the woman, who is now hiding behind the tree. “Oh. My. God. You want her alive... don't you?”

  He paces as he thinks, his hair begins to drip with sweat, “maybe... what do you know that I don't know, is this a test? Is that why my number is red? Is the real test not killing humans?”

  He falls to his knees, “FUCK. I knew I did something wrong I knew it I knew it I knew it.” His hands grab my legs and shake me, “I need your face... I'll take your face and bracelet.”

  I lift one of my legs and move back, in retaliation my hand slams itself into my face, knocking me over.

  “Face and brace... face and brace.” I feel him touching my bracelet with his fingers, “my teacher told me they try to fool us, to make us think things but they aren't true...”

  Urgh.

  I use the remaining innate magic below me to slice the arm he had put a spell under, cutting it halfway towards the elbow, surprising even me. I didn't consciously think to do that, it just happened. I jump backwards as he reaches for me again, hitting a tree as I move, rolling behind it.

  Everything slows down, I watch the arm on the floor, “why would you do that? You can't heal a wound like that.” He picks up the arm, intrigued.

  Slowly and peacefully, I place my remaining hand onto the open wound, converting the spilling blood into innate magic, my head grows light as I lose more and more.

  “Okay...” I step out from behind the tree, the white-haired boy seems confused, looking at the arm with fascination.

  I wrap some of the innate magic over my wound and harden it, then with the rest I use the heating spell, watching the liquid bubble and burst around my hand, leaving red spots whenever it hits my skin.

  I add more and more mass to the sphere of bubbling innate magic, he seems to notice and gives a small “oh!” while forming the same chained cocoon around him, trying to wait out whatever attack I have planned.

  Boil. Harden. Implode.

  I remember a while ago in class, my teacher taught me how nuclear bombs work, its practically just an infinite reaction to a reaction, a rock lets out energy, it hits something that increases that energy, it hits the rock again and that lets out more energy, so on and so forth.

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  Repeat those steps at high speeds and you have yourself an explosion, explosions are just reactions happening quickly after all.

  Boil. Harden. Implode. That explosion spell by itself is unoptimized, this I can do without straining myself.

  I have the boiling innate magic to the size of a pea now, barely holding itself together under the stress of itself. My hands muscles strain against the pressure of the bomb, the side of my skull is pulsating with pain, bleeding even as I feel a faint trickle out of my ear.

  I walk slowly towards the cocoon, the chains have small openings in them, I slip the pea sized bomb in between the seams, it makes a few clinking noises as it falls and bounces through the chains.

  I step towards the woman who was hiding behind the tree, I wave with my one good hand, “it's okay.”

  As I reach her tree, not trying to get any closer, I let go of the bomb, a conscious effort stopped.

  No sound comes out, a flash of light penetrates the few seams in the cocoon of chains, they seem to fluctuate in size and speed, expanding then condensing itself. It looks like when a submarine loses pressure and collapses in on itself.

  Then after a few seconds, the chains dissolve into the grass, leaving charred remains of what used to be a breathing demon.

  The woman gets up and bows, saying something in a language I can't translate by ear, I assume it was a ‘thank you’.

  “No problem... go hide, okay?” I begin to get dizzy, I try to hold my head with my dominant hand but can't, it feels weird for it not to be there anymore.

  I should take her to the hiding hole I made for the other people, but that's too far away now, and any more magic to make another safe space might release my hold on the innate magic stopping my open wound from bleeding out.

  “Just... follow, okay? I'll find a safe place.”

  I walk and to my surprise she follows, even after I proved I was for all intents and purposes a ‘demon.’ I stumble a bit as I get used to my new weight distribution, my arm no longer being a part of my body feels disorienting.

  I hear a beep on my bracelet, the red bold text now saying ‘1.’ The woman follows closely behind, her eyes keep twitching around us to check for sudden movements.

  “Hey... where'd you get that gun?” I stop for a moment, looking her in the eyes. If they have been supplied guns, there's probably a place with ammunition and maybe even more supplies.

  She seems confused so I crouch on the floor, brushing some leaves off the ground and draw a childish pistol, along with a question mark. I fall slightly to the side and without an arm I land face first onto the grass.

  “Ow...” I try to get up with my knees and one arm, proving it more difficult than it should be, the woman grabs my arm and helps me up, balancing me with both hands.

  I turn to her. “Thanks... so...”

  Despite the language barrier she understood, nodding and then walking in the opposite direction we were going. Clearly having a path directly to wherever she came from.

  I wonder how these people got here, were they taken like I was? Or have they been here for years?

  The scenery changes from forest to open field with huge hills, the fake sky is painfully obvious without the trees blocking the view, pure blue, no clouds, just a deep blue as if there are LED screens replacing the sky.

  As we both reach the top of the first hill in the field I see a small army base at the bottom, the ground rough with dirt and craters around it, tanks misplaced and turrets on top of cement walls, clearly there to give the demons a harder time.

  It looks like a fight had just occurred because there are bodies littering the field, it must have been why the woman was hiding in the forest.

  It was hard to tell who won the fight until I saw some humans collecting some bodies and placing them into piles, whoever caused this damage either ran away or died.

  We slide down the hill towards the base, I hope this woman can vouch for me because I don't think I can tank... a tank...

  This woman is fairly stupid, if I was in her position I would not trust me at all, she saw me kill another demon, but the fight could have been for the rights to kill her, not to save her. We reach to the point where there is a gate, a few men walk back and forth with bodies, the walls are made of burnt concrete 10 meters high, people walking above watching us enter.

  The area inside is full of green tents and boxes, reminds me of the mud town with its gloomy atmosphere, the grey skies replaced by an emotionless blue doing very little to boost morale, a lot of the people are covered in dirt and sitting down tired and or crying.

  Theres a big tent made up of 4 smaller ones, all connected amateurly. I hear an engine running in the background supplying the electricity for the lights and machinery on top of the walls.

  We walk inside, there are 3 men standing around a table with paper, a map drawn out, not paying attention to me entering.

  My bracelet beeps, showing that we have 1 hour left, this makes the 3 men look at me with surprise and anger, the woman steps in front of me and speaks words, possibly encouraging them not to kill me despite not knowing me at all.

  They nod, one-man steps to the side, grabbing my shoulder and taking me to the corner of the tent, his breath smelt like cigarettes as he spoke, his voice deep and coarse, “is it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “You saved her.”

  I nod, he brushes his black hair, his nose dripping with sweat from being overworked, “we just gave it all we had and couldn't take out one of those things, at most we could push her back.” he takes a few steps with his hand digging into my skin, guiding me to a folding chair.

  He moves one chair to be in front of me, sitting down and meeting my line of sight. “Are you a part of the ranking thing?”

  So, they know? “I am...”

  “You are a devil?”

  I shake my head, “human... I'm pretending to be a demon.”

  He leans back with a smile, trusting me instantly, I guess bad times breed hopeful naivety, even though I'm not lying I can't understand why they believed me this quickly.

  “Hey... how long have you been here...? In this place I mean...”

  “3 years. Been through countless rankings, every few months we prepare for when they come, and we fight back.”

  3 years. This place is much like the mud town, except it has a different purpose, I bet they supply these people weapons too, along with food to keep them alive. Every few months even though they hold this ranking every 2 weeks is interesting, they probably randomize the challenges, so they don't overuse resources.

  We stare at each other, not really knowing what to say, “do you know how to use magic?”

  He chuckles, “yeah. None of us can use it without dying though.”

  “You can...” I think for a moment, “give me some paper.” I can do small healing spells on everyone, giving them the ability to use magic by giving them blood potency.

  “No. You think they’d keep us around if we could use magic? They’d just replace us.” He gets up, leaving the conversation to join the one between the two other men and the woman, who seem to be deep in thought.

  He brings up a good point. Sharing magic would just get them killed if they can't use it to protect themselves from the strongest demons.

  I look at my bracelet, the number still says 1 in red, 56 minutes left, I'll be dead soon if I don't find a way to pass.

  How did I even get 1 score? Was it because I killed another demon? That wouldn't make much sense.

  I'll be fine, I always am. Ill figure out a way.