The magic sword snapped and fell to the ground. Yang Zhen was sent flying straight into a tree branch, and the tremendous force shook his internal organs hard enough to injure them.

“Cough, cough!” He spat out a mouthful of blood. Desperate, he tried to reach for the pistol at his waist, but he didn’t have the strength to move.

“Roar!” The giant bear roared in the distance, as if something was holding it back. It didn’t charge at Yang Zhen.

“Everyone, take cover!” Guanmengyao fired a submachine gun at the giant bear, drawing its attention.

“Why did you come back?” Zhang Mengyu asked Guanmengyao, confused. He seemed to think what she’d done was foolish, but then he remembered what kind of person she was and smiled with relief.

“It’s partly my fault that you’re in danger... Besides, I can’t get away either...” Guanmengyao forced a smile at Zhang Mengyu and gestured for him to look around.

Walls of earth, more than ten meters high, surrounded them, sealing off the entire battlefield. They had no choice but to stand and fight.

“Damn it.” Only then did Zhang Mengyu realize they were completely trapped. Despair crept into his heart.

“We can only keep dodging for now... We don’t stand a chance.” Guanmengyao and Zhang Mengyu spoke as they evaded the giant bear’s lunges. She’d already changed magazines twice, but the bear hadn’t suffered so much as a scratch. She was almost ready to give up on fighting it.

Bang! In the chaos, a gunshot from behind caught everyone completely off guard.

The bullet seemed to find its target on its own. It struck Guanmengyao in the back, knocking her down.

“Yang Zhen, you bastard!” Zhang Mengyu looked toward the source of the gunshot, only to find Yang Zhen’s body impaled by a massive icicle. His face was twisted, his eyes still fixed on Guanmengyao, and his finger remained on the trigger. He didn’t look quite dead yet...

“If I die, you won’t get off easy either...” Zhang Mengyu could make out the words on the other man’s lips. But no matter how furious he was, Yang Zhen was already dead. The real question was: what had killed him? Was there another unknown threat in this area?

“Roar!” The giant bear suddenly stopped moving, as if it had sensed something. It looked at the icicle impaling Yang Zhen, then turned its gaze in another direction.

“What’s going on?” Seeing the bear stop, the survivors also ceased their gunfire.

The giant bear glanced around, completely ignoring the people it had just savagely battered across the battlefield. It looked as if it were facing a powerful enemy.

Suddenly, a massive icicle crashed down from the sky. A violent gust of wind sent everyone in the arena flying, and all they could hear was the giant bear roaring. In that instant, a blizzard began to rage through the area enclosed by the earthen walls.

“Roar!” The giant bear roared toward the direction the icicle had come from. A girl-like creature slowly emerged from the forest...

“So they found me after all. I shouldn’t have been able to hold back. Letting you all perish on your own really would’ve been the right choice.” Yueye looked at the terrified contestants around her, regret written across her face. She’d seen what Yang Zhen was doing, and couldn’t stop herself from stepping in.

“I only wanted to play with you...” Yueye stared at the giant bear, excitement stirring in her slit-pupiled eyes.

“But honestly, the people around us are such a nuisance...” Yueye’s expression darkened. She swept her wings, and the blizzard grew even stronger. The temperature began to plummet.

“Whatever. You’ll be the first I take down!” After what seemed like a long inner struggle, Yueye charged straight at the giant bear. Her dragon claw slammed against its paw, and the battlefield between them was blasted clear.

After being hurled away by the shock waves of the fight, Guanmengyao struggled to her feet. In a daze, she watched the two powerful beings clash in the middle of the arena and couldn’t help feeling how insignificant she was.

“Is that thing human?” Through the blizzard, Guanmengyao could just make out a humanoid figure fighting the giant bear. The corner of her mouth twitched. She couldn’t believe a human could have that kind of strength.

“Roar...” The earth split apart with the giant bear’s roar. Two spikes thrust up from the ground, stabbing straight toward Yueye’s brow...

Yueye reacted quickly. She pulled back and darted away. Pale blue magic glimmered around her dragon claw, and as she retreated, she hurled a massive blade of ice at the giant bear.

The giant bear saw Yueye’s move, but it had no way to dodge the blade of ice hurtling toward it at high speed. It could only meet it head-on.

An ochre aura shimmered around the bear’s paw as it swung at the ice blade. A thunderous crash followed as earth and water elements collided, triggering an elemental explosion that blasted the giant bear’s massive body away.

“Roar!” The giant bear seemed to be completely enraged. It began drawing on all the earth element in its body to deal with the powerful foe before it.

“That hide’s thick.” Yueye saw that the giant bear’s paw was completely unharmed, and a hint of gravity crossed her face. She knew the elemental explosion that had just happened by chance was powerful enough to injure even her, yet the bear hadn’t been hurt at all.

The giant bear gave Yueye no chance to react. As it roared, the ground suddenly vanished beneath her feet. Hundreds of meters of earth disappeared in an instant, leaving a vast pit. Yueye could see that its floor wasn’t flat—it was covered in spikes. Falling in meant certain death.

Her back muscles instinctively tensed, and her wings began to beat lightly, lifting Yueye into the air... Honestly, this was the first time she’d ever felt what it was like to fly. She’d never truly gotten off the ground before—not even though her wings had finished growing a day earlier and were already covered in pale blue scales.

Feeling the lightness flight brought to her body and the air flowing beneath her wings, Yueye learned to fly in that moment, as if by instinct.

“These wings really are handy... You could say they’re good for more than one thing?” Yueye’s lips curled into a smile. Now that she’d instinctively learned to fly, she couldn’t help feeling excited. After all, she’d just used her wings to amplify the power of some of her magic—like the blizzard raging across the arena now.

“Then I’ll give you the spell I’ve been preparing for about an hour.” A triumphant glint flashed in Yueye’s blue-and-gold eyes. In an instant, the blizzard around her began gathering in front of her, its immense energy shaking everyone present to the core...

The temperature had already dropped to around minus thirty degrees. Quite a few people had frozen unconscious, while the blizzard ball in front of Yueye slowly took shape.....

.