The curtain stretched across blinding white and jagged crags, a sail of frost over a rugged sea.

With all eight runners in place, the view snapped back to the first leg, like an eagle’s eye fixing on prey.

The first leg’s referee mage raised a small yellow flag toward the beast‑eye vulture—the camera’s gaze perched in the cold sky.

A lifted yellow flag meant ready, like a lantern held steady in a snowstorm.

The moment that flag fell, the first runner would launch, an arrow trembling on the string.

Even through the curtain, that taut wire of tension hummed into the stands, like winter wind threading pine needles.

Chatter about current affairs fell silent; nerves tightened like drums; eyes pinned the curtain and whispered which girl had the edge in the opening clash.

Unusual as a snow lotus in rock, both sides put a female apprentice on the first leg.

Blue side—Battle‑Mage Class One—sent Jasmine, the discipline prefect, a straight blade sheathed in calm.

White side—Elemental Class One—sent their campus‑famous Wendy, a spark in a storm.

She carried a gift for elemental spells; in less than a year she’d bloomed—Wendy had mastered Level‑4 Elemental: Windriding.

Windriding bent the air like reeds in a stream; in practice, it was a low‑tier flying art, a swallow riding an updraft.

“Ready—run!” As expected, the yellow flag dropped, and Wendy shot out like a loosed arrow, leaving Jasmine a snow‑ghost in her wake.

The afro‑haired commentator popped up, voice crackling like fire on ice. “Elemental Class One just threw down their trump card from the start?! That’s dominant!”

He whipped to Blue’s side with a drumbeat of doubt. “Battle‑Mage Class One? Why’s Miss Jasmine still at the line? What’s she playing at?!”

White had already flown five hundred meters, yet Jasmine still stood at the first‑leg start, a solitary pine in gale and drift.

Through the curtain, Jasmine held her breath, her mind sinking like a pebble in a deep pond, pale‑blue ripples of mana spreading from her like rings on still water.

She was casting. Clear as frost tracing a window.

“So she’s casting—but will it help?! They’re nearly a kilometer apart. How’s Miss Jasmine going to catch up?!” The commentator voiced the crowd’s tight‑throated doubt.

They assumed Blue needed a faster movement spell than White’s, or a pre‑takeoff disruption. Blue did neither, and confusion piled like fresh snow—yet no one dared judge too fast. The Blazing Fire Knight never played by the book, a spark jumping the pattern.

Sure enough, at around 1.7 kilometers of flight, the picture shifted like clouds parting.

First, Wendy. Continuous Windriding had drained her mind like a winter river; to avoid mana collapse, she had to land and rest.

She trudged a steep, broken snow road, taking small steps, breath fogging like a weary horse.

Jasmine’s path ran different.

In that span, she’d layered four spells on herself—Fortitude to harden the body, Restraint to curb mana burn, Featherweight to shed burden, and Haste to quicken stride—four staples in a battle‑mage’s kit, stitched like talismans to flesh.

Under fourfold light, Jasmine broke into a run, a blue comet skimming a white ridge.

“Unbelievable!! Is she running on flat ground?!” the commentator cried, as if the mountain bowed its back for her.

The gap shrank before the naked eye, distance reeling in like a kite string.

Seeing the tide turn, Wendy kicked Windriding again, but the first leg climbed the mountain in tighter switchbacks, the slope steepening like a blade.

Windriding wasn’t built for ascent; even airborne, she couldn’t stop the reel‑in, a leaf fighting the updraft.

The distance kept melting, one breath after another.

Jasmine finally closed, and both hit the first exchange together, two silhouettes cutting the same line.

From trailing to dead even, the flip drew a wave of awe. The commentator rode it like a gust. “Battle‑Mage Class One! They folded the mountain into their spellwork—that reversal was beautiful!”

Both first runners handed off cleanly to their second legs, hands steady despite the snow’s bite.

Baton passed, both sides broke forward at once, footprints stitching into the white like two parallel threads.

The second leg ran a flat stretch; both sides wordlessly chose not to open a yawning gap, two wolves pacing without showing throat.

It was a tactic.

Run too far ahead, and you’d be an easy mark for spells from behind, a deer against a bare hillside.

So the focus shifted to spell interference. No more sprint and chase; they traded nonlethal spells like feints in fencing, a tight braid of cast and counter.

“Warmth!”

“Slick!”

They shouted their spells on instinct, words flaring like sparks in cold air.

White went first. A male apprentice cast Warmth ahead of Blue, snow melting to black mud, a quagmire yawning like a mouth.

Blue’s side—Class One’s captain—stepped wrong, skidding three awkward beats, almost eating snow. He steadied, then snapped a mirror cast back, pride flashing like steel.

White’s soles caught Slick; a thin oil sheen kissed the boots, a mirror‑shine that turned grip to glass. The boy morphed into a figure skater mid‑war zone, arms windmilling, then slammed face‑first into a pine. Snow dumped from the branches and buried him like a pillow fight gone cruel.

“So messy—ha!” The captain cackled, chest swelling, and missed the half‑buried trip‑stone under the snow, a shark’s fin in white water.

“Ahhh!!” Laughter flipped to a shriek, and the captain pitched like a felled sack, face‑down in powder.

The crowd belly‑laughed in bursts, while the commentator tossed in a jab. “They’re swinging hot!”

They kept yanking each other’s ankles; in the last kilometer of the five, both sides dropped spells entirely and grabbed snowballs, pelting like street kids in a storm.

By the finish, both faces were frost‑burned red, clothes streaked with slush grime like war paint.

Shivering hands, clumsy with cold, pressed batons into the third legs’ palms, dirt and ice smearing like seals.

The third leg climbed toward the summit, rougher than the first, the path a ribs‑and‑stone ladder. Heavy snow hung in the forest sea above, ready to spill like a poised wave.

Uphill, and the third leg besides—this was the grindstone. Stamina would bleed fast, and handoff order would carve the outcome like a chisel.

So neither side risked reckless spell skirmishes. They ran wary, one eye for incoming cast, one eye for any opening to shake the tail, like foxes ghosting through cedars.

Battle‑mage advantage rose again like heat through cold iron.

Over five kilometers, it looked unhurried, but Blue steadily eased White to the rear, distance opening like a seam.

In the stands, suspense thinned; the result seemed to settle like snow in a glass.

The fourth leg would be knights on both sides—

As long as Blue kept the momentum, the verdict felt carved into ice.

The commentator swung the gavel. “Looks like the Blazing Fire Knight has this in the bag!”

No sooner spoken than the sky changed. Above them—the summit of the Vaulted Range—the snow‑catching trees groaned, then crack—an entire row went down like snapped spears.

Without the trees’ dam, the slope’s snow became a roaring avalanche, a white river dropping straight at both runners.

“Danger!” The commentator slapped his head and yelled, voice a flare in stormlight.

White’s runner, lagging behind, saw it clean. The Elemental runner slipped behind a giant trunk, trusting the old pine’s height, and let the avalanche wash by like a broken wave.

Blue’s runner wasn’t so lucky. He ran ahead—meaning just beneath the fall line—and while he wouldn’t be buried, he was too close to sense it in time.

Like a rug yanked underfoot, the avalanche picked him up; helpless, he surfed the moving earth, sliding down in a white rush.

It looked hair‑raising; the crowd cried out, a flock scattering at thunder.

Once the Blue runner stood and showed no injury, the commentator measured the distance with a wince and barked, “Done for! One avalanche, and Blue’s way behind White!”

The third leg was already a treacherous mountain road, a staircase to the sky. Dragged downhill by avalanche, Blue slid back to the second‑leg stretch, footprints erased like chalk in rain.

By the rules, if you’re knocked off course by accident, you can request rescue from the referee mage, a rope tossed in a blizzard.

But it costs time—heaps of it. And when you return, you must resume from where you left the track, no shortcuts through fate.

Blue would fall a long way behind, like a lantern blown out in wind.

White reached the third handoff; Blue was still halfway up, slogging in misery, a lone figure against a white wall.

The Frost Knight took the baton at ease, casual as a winter lord, and called across to Lance at the nearby start, his tone either pity or mock. “I’ve waited for this moment a long time. You’re finished, Lance.”

He kicked off, hooves of ice on ice—a single rider vanishing like a blue streak.

The ground was snow, a trap for feet, but he froze it harder with his Battle Aura’s frost. The Frost Knight ran as if on polished floor, flying down the fourth‑leg descent like a wolf on a frozen river.

He vanished fast, a ghost in a white canyon. Blue’s third finally stumbled in, late and battered, a man spat out by the mountain.

Sighs rose from the stands, steam in cold air.

To them, the verdict felt sealed in wax.

The Frost Knight would win the third mock bout. He’d also claim the wager, like a coin already in hand.

But not every sigh was agreement.

Some in the crowd were pleased by that outcome, candles lit in shadow.

To them, two obstacles kept the Frost Knight from the Knight Corps: his reputation shackled by the Blazing Fire Knight, and his fiancée stolen. Both were gifts from the court jesters and the inner circle—ammunition for the pro‑crown faction to shoot at the nobles.

If the Frost Knight joined the Knight Corps, the noble bloc, led by two great houses, would ride the wind sharper.

They welcomed that. But Fulin would not allow it.

For a quiet life, and for the debt to be repaid in full—

Fulin, wearing Lance as a mask, had to win.

“Watch closely. I’m the one who wins in the end!” Lance shouted to the vulture—to the whole arena—his voice a bell through snow. “I’ll personally settle the sins they committed!”

It sounded like bravado with no anchor, wind shouting at the cliff. Yet somehow—

Through the curtain, that resolve leapt the distance and branded itself in their eyes, a seal pressed hot into cold hearts.

“So this is the Blazing Fire Knight…” The crowd exhaled, a breath between awe and dread.

“But how does he win?” Reality returned like a cold hand on the neck.

They knew Lance had a signature—Blazing Raid. Useless, they thought.

Blazing Raid only bursts a hundred meters. Even downhill, arcing in a parabola, it’s two hundred at best. Land in deep snow, and your legs sink like stakes. On ground, he’d be slower than the Frost Knight for sure. Worse, the Frost Knight had already streaked to the three‑kilometer mark, while Lance still stood at the start, a match in a gale—

So they decided the signature meant nothing.

Lance was fated to lose.

“Can’t win and still big‑talking—what a joke!” came the jeers from those who doubted the Blazing Fire Knight, a chorus of crows on a fence.

True enough—if Lance couldn’t reach the finish first, words were frost flowers on glass. Without proof, pretty talk becomes a punchline.

But.

Unlike Lance’s theatrical front, “Lance” was a mask. Everything was Fulin’s calculation for peace. Behind the mask stood a cautious, ordinary heart. Fulin had prepared for everything to come, a thread woven through winter.

“Change—Sirius Sword!” Lance drew in breath like a forge and lifted the Sirius Sword high.

While the crowd blinked at his swagger, the short blade’s shape shifted, steel flowing like mercury under moon.

Battle Aura gathered, and Sirius didn’t become his usual long saber. It became a giant kite‑shield instead, a wall born from a star.

“Of course!” The commentator and crowd snapped to the oddity with hawk eyes.

The kite‑shield wasn’t standard. It was a true concave quadrilateral, two sharp angles flaring like an angel’s wings, their edges hungry as frost.

Before that awe finished forming, Lance locked his grip on the soaring shield and fired Blazing Raid—leaping like a rocket leaving the pad, a tiger springing through fire.

Like a phoenix’s long cry, Lance pulled a brilliant trail of flame across white sky and declared, “I’ll end this farce with absolute victory—full stop.”