The assistant didn't stop running until he slammed into an invisible, transparent wall.

  He was gasping heavily, his lungs burning as if he had inhaled powdered glass, and his mind refusing to process what his eyes were seeing.

  It wasn't a normal barrier. It was a thick energy field isolating the "Platform" from the inferno raging outside.

  In front of the transparent wall sat a man wearing a gilded Venetian mask, holding a slender glass containing a sparkling orange drink. He was laughing—not hysterically, but with pure enjoyment—as he pointed to the sky with a ring-adorned finger. Beside him, a woman wearing a silver mask clapped enthusiastically, as if watching an opera, not a massacre.

  "Look! He just moved his hand! Did you see that? His left wing evaporated!" the man shouted with a distorted, childish excitement, spilling some of his drink on the luxurious floor without caring. "That's what I call precision!"

  The assistant, eyes wide with terror, looked where the man was pointing.

  In the sky, above the volcanic craters of industry spewing toxic fumes, the "Boy with Black Wings" was hovering. But he wasn't intact. One of his wings, composed of "strange black matter," was fading like smoke in a gale.

  Opposite him was "The Opponent."

  A boy... or something resembling a boy. There were no wings, no visible energy auras, nothing to suggest he was non-human. He simply stood in the air, as if gravity were merely a suggestion he had decided to ignore. The distance and altitude, combined with the static of the giant screens blocking the view, made it impossible to discern his features.

  "ROAAAAR!"

  The winged boy roared. It wasn't a human sound, but the sound of reality tearing apart. The black matter around him rippled with rage, as if it were a living entity separate from him. In a split second, he reconstructed his missing wing and transformed his right hand into a bus-sized claw, charging toward his opponent at the speed of sound.

  "YES! GO!" the masked man beside the assistant screamed, pounding the glass with his fist in excitement, making the assistant jump in fright. "This is worth it! I bet 5 million units on him! Crush him!"

  The assistant stepped back, then took another step, looking at the man, then at the sky, then at the surrounding audience.

  (Betting...?) The thought spun in his mind painfully slow. (On his life? On death?... But who am I to speak? I'm a scientist... We do the same thing in labs, but we just call it an 'experiment' instead of a 'bet'.)

  The scientist shook his head trying to banish the thoughts, but he saw something that made his blood run cold.

  The masked man suddenly stopped screaming. The glass fell from his hand and shattered. He began to back away slowly, his body trembling.

  The assistant looked at the sky.

  The boy who had been attacked by the giant claw... was standing there, completely unharmed. He hadn't moved. He hadn't blocked. The black claw had evaporated centimeters before touching him. And now, that boy was looking down. Not at his opponent... but at the masked man behind the glass.

  While the winged boy also began to glare angrily at the same spot.

  The winged boy extended his hand toward the stands.

  Pitch-black matter began to rise into the air from the ground, gathering and solidifying into a giant hammer the size of a residential tower.

  "A bug dares to raise its voice!.."

  The voice came like thunder, shaking the assistant's bones.

  The nearby audience began to run in panic, pushing each other, leaving the masked man alone, frozen in front of the glass.

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  "No... Wait! I'm a fan! I..." the man screamed.

  CRASH!

  The black hammer struck the energy field, shattering it like a soap bubble, then continued its path to crush the glass, and crush the man beneath it. There was no scream. Even the sound of a wet thud and crushing metal and flesh was unheard.

  "Now... any other bug that disturbs me won't live to see the sun!.."

  Darkness exploded from the winged boy's body. It didn't form a wing this time, nor a claw.

  It formed a mouth.

  A giant mouth, the size of a building, made of black void containing long white teeth that resembled shards of broken glass. The mouth appeared behind the winged boy, opening with terrifying slowness, heading toward the other boy to swallow him.

  But the opponent boy raised his hands. Not toward his opponent, but extending them to his sides.

  Two lines of glowing air emerged, so thin they were barely visible, moving in opposite directions, like the blades of scissors.

  Then... he moved them back toward each other.

  "SHWIIIK!"

  There was no explosion. There was no fireball. Only a sharp, pure cutting sound, like scissors cutting the silky fabric of the sky.

  The boy with black wings was in the middle.

  The giant mouth stopped. Time stopped for a moment.

  Then... the upper half of the winged boy's body slid off his lower half.

  The body separated into two halves in eerie silence. The halves began to fall from the sky, bleeding thick black shadow instead of blood, covering the light of the island's artificial moon.

  "WARNING! Combat has entered the Red Zone! Destruction Level: Catastrophic!" the announcer screamed over the arena speakers, his voice trembling for the first time. "Initiating Split Protocol! Every man for himself until things calm down! Bets are suspended!"

  The announcer jumped, fleeing his platform, dropping the microphone, as steel emergency barriers began to close the exits.

  "Rankeds?!" the assistant gasped, watching the fall.

  But the severed body didn't hit the ground.

  Before touching the ground, the falling halves turned into a thick black liquid, boiling and fizzing. The liquid shot from the ground back into the sky, as if a video tape were being rewound. The liquid fused, reforming the body. The wings returned, but this time they contained dozens of yellow eyes opening and closing madly.

  The "Winged Boy" grinned a wide, insane smile that appeared on every display screen in the arena.

  "Didn't I tell you?... A rusty machine like you could never kill me!"

  "He's going to cover the area!" the remaining audience cheered with terror mixed with excitement, fleeing toward the trains.

  The scientist (assistant) didn't understand what was happening, nor the laws of physics being violated in front of him. All he understood was one word: "Rankeds" The Ranked. And he knew only one.

  the reason he was here.

  He began running with the stream of the fleeing crowd, jumping over seats, ignoring a pool of blood from a lump of flesh that used to be a man in a gold mask. If he hadn't seen it crushed in front of him, he would have thought it was a prop for a cheap horror movie.

  As he ran, he couldn't help but notice another surreal scene.

  In the upper back rows, where the chaos was less intense, a teenage boy stood perfectly calm amidst the storm.

  He had short ash-blonde hair and wore an elegant three-piece suit (jacket, vest, trousers) of light gray-blue fabric, cut precisely, with a dark burgundy silk tie and shiny Oxford shoes. He looked like a waiter at a 5-star hotel waiting to take orders, not someone in a battlefield.

  The "Boy in the Suit" was smiling.

  He wasn't looking at the sky, but at one of the massive pillars supporting the stadium roof. He moved one step to the right, coldly and elegantly.

  In the very next moment, the massive pillar collapsed and fell exactly where the Boy in the Suit had been standing a second ago, causing massive destruction.

  The Boy in the Suit didn't even turn around. He continued smiling, watching the audience collapsing psychologically and physically, as if watching an enjoyable play he had written.

  The scientist didn't focus on him for long. He had had enough of madmen. He just wanted to follow the fleeing crowd, thinking they would escape the island.

  But as he ran, he saw a small group heading against the flow of the fleeing crowd. Toward the danger zone.

  "I told you he'd come early! Now there's no point in coming!" a man in a strange coat screamed at his colleague, while his colleague boredly stuck a finger in his ear.

  "The fight will repeat tomorrow or the day after. Anyway, you know the result. One wins, the island gets temporarily destroyed, and we either follow up with bets or manage to win on a Ranked fight bet," the other man replied wearily.

  "I hate this part! I hate voided bets!" the first man screamed.

  "Since when does this happen!?" the scientist complained loudly, dodging a young man who fell to the ground from the stampede.

  "You new?"

  The voice came from his side. It was a boy with blue hair running parallel to him, wearing a bright purple jacket with practical cargo pants. He looked comfortable, as if out for a morning jog.

  "You look like a scientist... that's weird. Are you from the new batch this year?.. Anyway, welcome to the Fourth Island. The place where two Curriculums died."

  "Two Curriculums?" the scientist asked panting, his lungs begging for mercy. "You mean like the Chaos Curriculum?"

  "You mean Elias?.. No, that's a man on the Third Island," the blue-haired boy laughed. "Previously, the 'Perfection Curriculum' and the 'Feral Curriculum' were here. Both ended here."

  The boy smiled and pointed a finger toward a fork in the road ahead of them.

  "There, on the left, if you want to check the 'CERF' facility. The place that caused the island to be named Sun and Moon."

  The scientist looked. There was a twisted metal sign pointing left. He didn't need to ask what the CERF facility was; only one thing stood out in that direction: a large building.

  "And there," the boy pointed right, toward the area where the scientist saw the villas, the station, and the scattered craters. "There you will find the eternal memorial... to 'Arcadia' Iris Bloodworth. Supervisor of the Feral Curriculum."

  The blue-haired boy overtook the scientist, leaping gracefully over a broken barrier.

  "In conclusion, my scientist friend... this island is no longer within your frameworks. It is the exclusive property of the Ranked. Everyone here is just a guest paying for tickets, or brave souls living here, or just idlers."

  The boy reached the station entrance and disappeared into the crowd.

  The scientist stopped for a moment, looking back. He could no longer see the fight clearly, but he saw the sky lighting up with black and blue flashes, and the ground shaking beneath his feet.

  He sped up running to the station, pushing people, trying to squeeze himself into any train leaving this hell.

  "Should I start taking cooking lessons?" he asked himself aloud amidst the noise, tears mixing with sweat on his face.

  "No... I should open a small restaurant. A restaurant serving coffee and pancakes. In a quiet place. No scientists. No monsters. No bets.".. He paused his thought for a moment, realizing that monsters were most of the city's population.

  "Scientists maybe, monsters are present, but no bets."

  He looked at the train where the crowding and stampede were happening, remembering Hengen's face, the winged boy's face, and the crushed man's face.

  "From a scientist aspiring for glory... to a fugitive deciding to open a restaurant... Is this a dream? Or a nightmare?"

  He rushed inside the crowded train, and the doors closed, isolating the roaring sound outside.

  "Doesn't matter... as long as I'm alive, I'll cook.”