The Rift was a masterpiece of unimaginative landscape gardening.

  It was a jagged plateau of black basalt, ancient and cold, suspended under a sky the colour of a fresh bruise. There was no wind, only a low, oscillating hum that vibrated through the soles of my boots. Outside the Rift, massive mana-glass screens projected our every movement to the gawking aristocrats in the garden, turning a Death Match into a high-stakes variety show.

  Commander Vorian stood twenty paces away. He didn't draw a weapon. He was busy picking a microscopic piece of lint off his tattered grey sleeve with trembling, gloved fingers.

  "You checked your gloves three times since we materialised," I said, my voice cutting through the silence.

  Vorian froze. He looked up, his milky eyes narrowing.

  "You wiped that table in the garden until the iron practically bled," I continued, keeping my hand on my hilt. "And even here, in a combat zone, you are fussing over dust. For a man who commands a swarm of flesh-eating parasites, you are remarkably... fastidious."

  Vorian slowly lowered his hand. A wet, bubbling sound erupted from his throat—a laugh that sounded like mud boiling in a swamp.

  "Sharp eyes, little bird," Vorian whispered. "You see the contradiction."

  He pulled back a sleeve. Under the grey wool, his skin rippled with the sickening, rhythmic movement of pale, segmented shapes.

  "My family... they spent years trying to scrub this 'plague' out of me," he rasped, genuine self-loathing bleeding into his voice. "Lye. Branding irons. Scouring pads. They wanted a clean son. They created this."

  He looked at his own hand with undisguised revulsion.

  "They failed to cure the body, but they succeeded with the mind. It is the great cosmic joke, Sunstrider. I have a weak stomach. I detest squalor. I find insects and rot absolutely revolting. I am a man obsessed with cleanliness trapped in a body made of filth."

  He tilted his head back, looking up at the invisible scrying orbs high above.

  "And that is where the irony truly lies," Vorian hissed, pointing a shaking finger at the sky. "They are up there. The High Lords. The Professors. They sit in pristine silks, drinking from crystal. But they take the bribes. They rig the grades. They betray their own blood for power."

  Vorian looked back at me, his stitched face twisting.

  "They rot from the inside out with moral decay, yet they have the audacity to call me the monster because my rot is on the skin."

  "It is an Academy of politics, Commander," I replied, my voice cool. "Moral decay is the mortar that holds these bricks together. Most just have the decency to hide it."

  "Decency," Vorian spat. "I am done with their definition of decency."

  "The hoarding," I deduced, the pieces falling into place. "The auction. The Merit Points. It isn't for status."

  "It is a ransom," Vorian corrected, his eyes burning with intensity. "Deep in the Academy Vault rests the Biomancer's Crucible. An Old World relic capable of rewriting a biological framework. It will burn this swarm out of me. It will leave me clean."

  He looked at me, his expression stark and desperate.

  "That is the goal. Not glory. Not grades. Salvation. I am going to buy my way out of this hell."

  "I respect the resolve, Commander," I said, bowing my head slightly. "Then let us see if my squad is worth your investment."

  "Let us see," Vorian wheezed.

  He began to unwrap a long, rusted chain from his waist. The heavy iron links grated harshly against one another, echoing in the silence.

  The violet light of the Rift flared. The heavy, suffocating pressure of his Orange Core churned the air. The parley was over.

  I focused my mana, tapping into my Green Core with the practised ease of a man who had been killing things for a millennium. Two figures coalesced in the violet haze beside me.

  POP. POP.

  Vorian tilted his head, staring at the fleshy, bored-looking clones. "Interesting. My information on you was incorrect. Are you not a water mage? Why do your constructs look like perfect clones?"

  I looked at the clones, then up at the scrying orbs broadcasting to Professor Vex. This wasn't a mistake; it was a deployment. To win this, I would need to use Phasing—not just for the clones, but for myself—and that required a lie comprehensive enough to fool the entire Academy.

  "A deliberate aesthetic evolution!" I announced, my voice cutting through the thrum of the Gate with absolute, cold-blooded confidence. "I have learned how to shape the surface tension of the water constructs to mimic my own appearance. It is a demonstration of High-Fidelity Hydro-Mimicry. It has no real combat advantage... yet."

  I drew my sword, the silver reflecting the bruised sky. The clones mirrored the movement perfectly.

  "I have extended this control to my own physical framework," I added, projecting for the Jumbotrons. "By saturating my own tissue with mana-conditioned water, I can temporarily mimic the fluid properties of my clones. An evolution of the Art, Commander. Shall we begin?"

  Vorian’s horrific grin returned, stretching the wires in his cheeks. "Let us see if your 'evolution' can withstand a hunger that never ends."

  The clones didn't wait for a formal invitation. They raised their palms toward Vorian. I reached into the Bulk Storage of the Inventory and mentally shoved a torrent of river water mixed with abrasive volcanic sand through the palm-ports.

  WHOOSH.

  A twin jet of high-pressure sludge erupted from the clones’ hands. It was an industrial cutting tool, a slurry designed to strip the paint off a battleship. The water screamed as it tore across the gap, turning the air into a grey fog of grit.

  Vorian didn’t flinch. He raised his left arm.

  K-CHUNK.

  The iron bracer on his forearm groaned as it underwent a violent, mechanical expansion. Plates of pitted, black iron slid outward, locking into place with a series of heavy metallic SNAPS. In a heartbeat, the buckler had grown into a massive, rectangular wall of metal—the Bulwark of the Grave.

  CRRRRRRRR.

  The abrasive jet slammed into the iron, showering the basalt with sparks. Vorian braced his shoulder against the iron, his heavy boots carving deep furrows into the stone as he walked straight into the teeth of the spray.

  "The distance," Vorian rumbled from behind the wall, "is closed."

  ‘Switch to melee,’ I commanded.

  The clones didn't hesitate. They cut the water jets and drew their swords in a single, fluid motion. They didn't just attack; they manoeuvred with the lethal grace of a sword master. The first clone circled left, a blur of motion, while the second surged right.

  The lead clone executed a Sun-Step, an explosive burst of Aether propelling it past the edge of the iron Bulwark. Its sword was a silver streak.

  CHOP.

  Vorian’s bloated right arm was severed at the elbow, the doughy limb hitting the stone with a wet thud.

  The second clone followed up with a brutal, spinning low-strike. CHOP. Vorian’s left leg was carved through at the thigh. He collapsed, but before he could hit the ground, the clones were on him like starving wolves. Their blades moved with supernatural speed, turning the Commander into a heap of dismembered parts in seconds.

  We stood back, my sword ready, waiting for the Rift to register the kill.

  Instead, I watched a nightmare.

  From the severed neck and the open wounds of the butchered limbs, thousands of white maggots erupted. But these weren't the small scavengers I expected. These were the soldiers.

  Thick as a man's thigh and four feet long, they poured out of his torso like a living flood. They didn't flee. They reached out with tiny, hooked mandibles, grabbing the edges of the severed flesh.

  SQUELCH. SLURP.

  Like a horrific reverse-explosion, the larvae acted as living cables, dragging the pieces of the Commander back together. The leg slid back to the hip; the head rolled back onto the stump of the neck. The maggots stitched the doughy skin with writhing, white threads.

  Vorian rose, his body reassembled and whole, his jaw making a wet, popping sound as I realised the stitches weren’t stitches at all. They were… alive.

  "My children... are excellent... at repairs," he wheezed. "But all the commotion makes them very hungry..."

  Vorian slammed his hands onto the basalt floor.

  BOOM.

  The swarm didn't just stay inside him this time. His stitches relaxed just enough for a tidal wave of the four-foot larvae to surge outward, separating from the host.

  "I will kill the copies," Vorian commanded, pointing at the clones. "You feast on the original," he pointed a rotting finger directly at me.

  The swarm split. A much lighter Vorian engaged the clones with his heavy iron shield, but the carpet of giant maggots bypassed them entirely, undulating across the stone with terrifying speed, their mandibles clicking.

  I fell back, my boots skidding on the stone. I slashed the amalgamation of worms in half, green ichor splashing my boots, but thousands more lunged at my legs.

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  Vorian flicked his wrist towards me. SNAP.

  His chain didn't arch through the air; it skipped across the stone like a high-velocity hook, hidden behind the advancing wall of worms. It was moving faster than the magical cameras could track, aimed squarely at my left ankle to drag me into the feeding frenzy.

  There was no room to dodge.

  I took the risk.

  At the micro-second of contact, I triggered the Phase on my own body.

  SHLURP.

  The rusted chain skipped across the stone like a high-velocity viper. My instincts flared white-hot, mapping the trajectory and offering me three different ways to dodge. I ignored all of them.

  I stood my ground, watching the iron hook scream toward my ankle. I needed to do more than just survive this; I needed to prove that my squad was the only logical choice for his ten-thousand-point gamble.

  If this doesn't impress him, nothing will.

  Phase.

  The heavy iron hook passed straight through my ankle as if I were made of nothing but graveyard mist. The moment the metal cleared the back of my leg, I solidified and mentally triggered a small, pressurised release of water from the Inventory directly over the impact site.

  The water splashed onto the basalt, creating a chaotic spray that masked the lack of a wound from the scrying orbs above.

  "Hydro-form Dispersion!" I roared, my voice projecting with calculated arrogance to the Jumbotrons. "I have moved beyond mere constructs, Commander! I have turned the flesh itself into fluid! Another recent evolution of my Water Art!"

  It was a bold, technical lie, but I sold it with the conviction of a master.

  Vorian’s milky eyes widened. He didn't look at the water on the floor; he looked at the lack of blood. He looked at the fact that I hadn't moved an inch.

  The autonomous swarm didn't wait for applause. A four-foot maggot, its maw a ring of serrated needle-teeth, lunged from my blind spot, aimed squarely at my waist. I didn't turn to face it. I didn't even draw my blade to block.

  Phase.

  The swarm of worms passed entirely through my torso. I felt the cold, ghostly sensation of its necrotic slime sliding through my gut—a hollow, sickening chill that made my skin crawl—but no teeth found purchase. I splashed another burst of water from my palms to sell the "fluidity" of the form.

  "You cannot bite the ocean!" I taunted, finally backing away with a rhythmic, measured grace.

  I caught Vorian’s gaze. I wanted him to see the efficiency. I wanted him to see a soldier who could walk through a swarm of monsters without breaking a sweat.

  But the cost was immediate and brutal.

  For the first time, I felt my stamina plummet. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird, frantic and suffocating. Though my Green Core remained a roaring furnace—fueled by the constant mana-stream of the clone meditating within the Inventory—my physical frame was hitting a wall. The Inventory didn't recognise the swarm as a single mass; it registered every individual worm as a separate object to phase through. The cumulative stamina tax was catastrophic.

  I was sprinting, slashing, and phasing every three seconds to avoid being touched by the relentless tide of white flesh. I was winning the mana war, but I was losing the physical war of attrition.

  Vorian saw it. He was blocking a strike from my clone, but his milky eyes were tracking my heaving chest.

  "You are heavy, little bird," Vorian taunted, seeing me stumble after a phase. "Water should flow... You look exhausted."

  Vorian arched his back. SQUELCH.

  From the crude wire stitches along his spine, a volley of smaller, faster maggots launched like buckshot, ignoring me and aiming for my lead clone.

  They hit the clone’s chest and vanished underneath the skin with a sickening squelch.

  The clone froze. It began to shiver violently.

  ‘The blood,’ I realized. The clone was about to bleed real red blood, and the cameras were zooming in.

  POP.

  The clone lost its form, collapsing into a massive splash of river water that washed the parasitic worms away.

  I was down to one clone. My stamina was in the red. And the swarm was closing in.

  Vorian watched my remaining clone with a predatory stillness. "One child left, Sunstrider. Your 'evolution' is leaking energy. You are spent."

  I wiped a smear of grit from my jaw and let out a short, cold laugh. It was time to give the Jumbotrons something to talk about and Vorian a reason to fear me.

  "Spent?" I straightened my back, ignoring the protesting scream of my muscles. "I was merely calibrating the surface tension. You think two was my limit? I’ll show you the full extent of my Hydro-Legion."

  I tapped deep into the Green Core, the mana furnace roaring as I drew from the meditating clone in the Inventory.

  POP-POP-POP-POP…

  The violet air of the Rift was saturated with the sound of rapid-fire expansion. In a heartbeat, nineteen more figures coalesced out of the mist. Twenty identical versions of me stood in a perfect, lethal semi-circle, swords levelled at the Commander.

  "Twenty," I wheezed, projecting my voice for the scrying orbs. "My absolute limit. Every drop of my mana is now poured into this 'full' manifestation. If you can survive all of them, Commander, then you have earned my resignation."

  It was a calculated lie. I could actually make forty-eight, but by setting a fake ceiling at twenty, I gave the Academy a measurable threat to fear and a false sense of security.

  Vorian’s horrific grin faltered for the first time. The twenty clones surged forward in a synchronised tidal wave of silver steel, moving with a tactical precision that no student—and few masters—could ever hope to replicate. They didn't just attack; they flowed like a river through a breach.

  Vorian was forced into a desperate, grinding defence. The Bulwark of the Grave rang under a mechanical rhythm of strikes, silver blades shaving curls of black iron from his shield. Every time he tried to swing his chain, three clones were there to pin the links, while another four carved into his doughy flank.

  "Enough!" Vorian roared, his voice a wet explosion of sound.

  He slammed the butt of his shield into the basalt. At the command, the autonomous swarm—the thousands of four-foot larvae that had been chasing me—stopped their hunt instantly. They turned and surged back toward their master like a white, undulating tide.

  They didn't just crawl into him; they slammed into his wounds, acting as hyper-reactive external musculature.

  The speed of his recovery shifted from horrific to impossible. As a clone’s blade sheared through his shoulder, a dozen larvae leaped across the gap before the arm could even fall, stitching the meat back together mid-swing. Vorian’s movements changed. He was no longer a shambling, bloated giant; he was being jerked into motion by the collective strength of the swarm.

  He moved with a frantic, puppet-like twitching—speeds he hadn't shown before. He spun, his heavy shield becoming a blurred disk of black iron that shattered three of my clones into spray in a single rotation.

  "I told you, little bird!" Vorian wheezed, his body jerking as the worms pulled his limbs into a high-speed lunge. "My children do not recognize a pause!"

  I fell back, my heart hammering. My clone's stamina was a guttering candle trying to phase through his attacks while landing their own blows.

  Vorian saw the stumble. He didn't even use his weapon. He simply flicked his wrist, and the swarm stitched his fingers into a claw that moved faster than my eyes could follow.

  Then, the trap sprung, not from him, but from the green ichor that had coated me earlier.

  An itch.

  The itch became a scream.

  It started on my left hand, exactly where the green ichor from the autonomous larvae had splashed onto my glove earlier in the fight.

  It wasn't a surface sting. It was a deep, writhing heat that raced up my limbs like liquid fire. SQUELCH. My right glove didn't just tear; it erupted from the inside. A dozen white, segmented maggots burst through the fabric, their translucent bodies already engorged and pulsing with a sickly green light.

  The ichor had eggs, I realised, a cold wave of horror washing over me.

  The eggs had been microscopic, hatching in seconds before making their way to my skin. They were already under the dermis, chewing through my muscle and mana-veins at an impossible rate.

  I reached for the Inventory, trying to manifest a portal beneath the skin to suck the parasites out.

  The Inventory was a spatial tool for external objects. I couldn't create a rift inside my own biological framework.

  “Their size doubles every second they are inside of you.” Vorian wheezed. His body was a twitching mess of wire and worms, moving with a predatory, high-speed jitter.

  He was a heap of dismembered parts being dragged back together by his own swarm, but he was laughing. They will eat you from the inside out, little bird."

  The larvae weren't just eating flesh; they were severing the mana pathways.

  "You lose," Vorian rumbled, taking a slow, shambling step forward.

  I dropped to one knee. The parasitic drain was racing past my elbow, heading for my shoulder. I could feel inside of me, a thousand tiny teeth scraping against my bones.

  Vorian lowered his shield, walking toward me to claim his victory. He expected a teenager to scream, to yield, to beg.

  He had not expected a Paladin.

  The amputation wasn't an act of panic. It was a tactical excision. I brought the silver blade down on my own left arm in a single, flawless arc.

  SHING. THUD.

  My severed right arm, still encased in the glove and writhing with white maggots, hit the basalt floor.

  The pain was absolute. It was a blinding, white-hot supernova that threatened to tear my consciousness apart, but I locked my jaw so hard my teeth cracked. I didn't make a sound.

  Vorian froze, his milky eyes going wide in genuine, paralysing shock.

  I didn't give him time to recover.

  Burning the absolute last dregs of my physical stamina and tapping the deepest reserves of my Green Core, I lunged forward. Vorian frantically tried to raise the Bulwark of the Grave, but his hesitation had cost him the fraction of a second he needed.

  I slid under the massive iron shield, driving my blade upward. The steel punched straight through the soft, doughy flesh under his jaw and out the top of his skull, pinning his head in place.

  Before the maggots could surge from the wound to repair the brain trauma, I pressed my left hand directly against the centre of his chest plate. I opened a massive portal straight to the Inventory and released every drop of corrosive, high-pressure abrasive water I had stored in one localised, point-blank detonation.

  BOOOOOOM.

  The shockwave was absolute. Vorian’s upper torso didn't just break; it vaporised. His core structure was blasted into a fine, red mist, scattering his swarm across fifty yards of black basalt. He couldn't regenerate if there was nothing left to connect.

  Vorian's mangled remains collapsed. The silence of the Rift returned, heavy and absolute.

  I stood amidst the gore, my chest heaving, my stamina completely drained. I looked at the wet smear on the rocks that used to be the Commander.

  "You cannot stitch smoke, Commander," I rasped, my voice echoing in the dead air. "Biological redundancy has a limit. And you just found it."

  I sheathed my sword, waiting for the rift to teleport us out.

  Then, I felt it.

  Not pain. Movement.

  It came from my stomach. Then my lungs. Then the back of my throat. It was a wet, heavy shifting, like a sack of snakes waking up inside a warm burrow. My knees gave out, and I hit the basalt hard, gasping for air that wouldn't come.

  I would only understand the true horror of what happened next by watching the crystal replays hours later.

  On the screen, my chest didn't just collapse; it burst open from the inside.

  RRRR-RIP.

  My pristine white tunic tore apart, but it wasn't blood that poured out. It was white, writhing, segmented flesh. Thousands of them. The infection from the ichor hadn't just been eating my mana; it had been converting my biomass. They had eaten my organs, replaced my muscles, and waited for the moment of my 'victory' to finish the meal.

  In the footage, I tried to scream, but my jaw unhinged, dissolving into a stream of falling larvae.

  I watched, in a detached, sickly fascination, as my own body collapsed into a pile of writhing white worms. I was gone. Devoured in seconds.

  But the pile didn't scatter. It began to move with a terrifying, singular intelligence. The worms that had just been me began to climb over one another, knitting together with wet, snapping sounds. They formed legs. A torso. A bloated, stitched face.

  The worms that ate me became him.

  Vorian stood up from the pile of organic slush that used to be Murphy Sunstrider. He adjusted his jaw, the fresh worms settling into the shape of his face.

  "Delicious," he rumbled on the recording.

  VWOOM.

  The nightmare vanished in a flash of ozone.

  The Jumbotrons flared white. I was back on the High Terrace, standing on the pristine marble of the garden. My body was whole again—the Rift having reset the biological state—but I stumbled, clutching my chest, my breath coming in ragged, panicked gasps. The phantom sensation of being hollowed out lingered like ice in my veins.

  Across from me, Vorian stood in his dark corner. He wasn't gloating. He was meticulously dusting a speck of imaginary lint from his grey robes.

  "You looked for the pain," Vorian wheezed, breaking the silence.

  I looked up at him, sweat stinging my eyes. "What?"

  "The arm," Vorian rasped, pointing a gloved finger at my fully restored wrist. "You felt them biting there. You cut it off. You thought you solved the problem because it hurt."

  He tapped his own temple, a slow, horrific grin spreading across his face.

  "But the splash on your legs? The ichor on your chest? You felt nothing there, did you?"

  He was right. I hadn't felt a thing until my chest burst open. I had been fighting with zero organs for the last ten seconds of the match and hadn't even known it.

  "My children have different... talents," Vorian explained, his voice bubbling with a sick, clinical pride. "The ones in your arm were bred to cause agony. A distraction. Loud. Demanding. They made you look right while the rest of the swarm went left."

  He stepped closer, his milky eyes gleaming.

  "The ones in your gut? They secrete a heavy paralytic enzyme. They numb the nerves as they eat. They hollowed out your liver and lungs while you were busy playing hero with your wrist. You were a corpse before you even swung your sword."

  "Match concluded!" the Herald’s voice finally boomed, though it shook with audible nausea. "Winner Commander Vorian Grendell!"

  Vorian turned back to his table, dismissing me to scrub his hands.

  I stood there, the phantom taste of dirt in my mouth. I had lost.