Her armor gleamed.

Her warhammer rested in her grip like it had been born there, sizzling with thunderous energy. The battlefield seemed to dim around her for a beat, as though she was a goddess, but a presence like hers simply demanded every soul watching —near and far — to pay attention.

Gasps of shock and intrigue rippled through the stadium stands, followed by a wave of frantic murmurs from the competitors across the valley. To see Thor Stormchild standing here, fully manifested as a tangible asset, left everyone with a chill.

Up on the high spectator table, Headmistress Danistasia narrowed her cold eyes a fraction, watching the Heroine of Thunder.

Thor slowly pivoted and her gaze landed squarely on Lancet.

Her eyes narrowed.

"You moronic master!" she barked.

Lancet’s entire face broke into a grin. "Thor!" He spread his arms a little, genuinely delighted to see her. "Looking radiant and powerful as always."

"Do you have any idea how long I waited for in that dark expanse inside your chest!" she growled, pointing her hammer at him as static sparks hissed around the hammerhead.

"It’s a really long story, Thor," Lancet smiled apologetically, completely unfazed by her fury. "But I promise I’ll explain everything later. Right now, though, I need you to do something for me."

Kasto, Vera, and Patton were all staring, completely in shock by the sight of the great Valkyrie. So were the other competitors.

Thor scowled, clearly fighting between the instinct to bite his head off and the instinct to obey his command now that she accepted him as master.

She exhaled through her nose, shoulders relaxing. "Fine. What is it?"

High above, the announcer was on cloud nine. "WHOA-OH! Lancet Leogardt has just summoned the Captain of the Valkyries, Thor Stormchild! The legendary Battery of Brutality from three hundred years ago! With an Awakener of her power protecting them, the Summoner-D territory is definitely untouchable! As we all well know, the Summoners are a defensive-minded te—"

Thor did not let him finish.

She vanished in a crack of thunder. One heartbeat she was beside Lancet, and by the next, she had already launched herself across the battlefield with such speed that she looked like a bolt thrown by the sky itself.

The sonic boom of her departure shattered the surrounding rocks as she rocket-launched herself to the team that was at the direct left of Summoner-D.

Elementalist-D.

Kallan’s eyes widened with horror once he saw the Heroine blitzing towards them with that warhammer.

"Incoming!" Leslie shouted.

They didn’t even have a chance to properly form up their lines.

"Brace! Section defenses now!" Kallan screamed, his voice cracking with sudden panic.

Billard, the Earth Mage, dropped to his knees, slamming his palms desperately into the craggy earth. Grace flared wildly from his core as a massive, multi-layered wall of dense, reinforced granite tore out of the plateau, designed to absorb a high-tier siege impact.

Thor didn’t even slow down. Reaching the crest of the plateau, she brought her warhammer down in a brutal, sweeping horizontal arc. The impact was cataclysmic.

The dense granite wall rabidly exploded into a million flying shards of razor-sharp shrapnel, the concussive shockwave throwing Billard backward. Before his boots could even touch the dirt, Thor’s hammer trailed a backhand wake of lightning that caught him dead in the chest.

The academy’s automated safety matrix flashed instantly, recognizing a fatal strike, and enveloped Billard in a cocoon of white light, teleporting him out of the match before he could hit the rocks.

"Get away from her!" the Wind Mage roared, channeling a violent, localized hurricane directly onto Thor’s path to deflect her trajectory and tear her armor away.

Thor sheared straight through the center of the vortex. The gale-force winds simply washed off her heavy pauldrons as her own golden and blue Grace completely incinerated his spell like smoke.

She closed the distance in a single, terrifying stride, her bare gauntlet clamping onto the Wind Mage’s throat.

"All that wind," Thor mused. "Yet all you do is dry my sweat."

The Mage’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

With a brutal pivot, she slammed him directly into the ground, the impact fracturing the plateau and triggering another immediate system extraction.

Leslie, the Ice Mage, stood her ground, her face pale but her eyes burning with icy fire. She thrusted her staff forward, unleashing a dense, rapid-fire barrage of jagged permafrost spears aimed directly at Thor’s head.

Thor deflected the first three with lightning-fast swings of her hammer. The fourth spear struck her right on the shoulder armor, instantly spreading a thick layer of blue, biting frost across her chest piece. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Thor simply grunted, her ancient thunderous aura flaring outward as she literally melted the ice in a fraction of a second. She dropped her shoulder, driving a brutal, heavy-infantry tackle straight into Leslie’s torso.

The force of it shattered the Ice Mage’s active barriers like thin glass, sending her vanishing into motes of light as the system pulled her out.

Kallan Kallahan was left standing completely alone on the plateau, his face entirely drained of color, his expression a frantic, twisted mask of raw frustration and mounting terror.

"No! I am an elite of this academy!" he screamed, his hands sparking wildly as he pushed his Grace Channels to their absolute limit. He gathered every single ounce of his electricity magic, desperate to strike down the legend before him. He unleashed a concentrated, blinding bolt of high-tier lightning straight at her face.

Thor didn’t even bother to dodge or raise her hammer.

She caught the concentrated bolt with her bare left hand. The current swirled around her fingers, her eyes glowing with an ancient, primordial thunder that made Kallan’s magic look like a flickering candle.

"Your lightning lacks conviction, boy," Thor growled, her voice cutting through his panic.

She brought her warhammer down into the center of the plateau. The resulting thunderclap tore through the valley, a dome of blue electricity cratering the earth and blinding the spectators. When the light cleared, Kallan was gone, enveloped by the protective system matrix and sent straight to the stands.

The stadium went completely, utterly dead silent for one breathless second before absolute pandemonium erupted.

"HOLY HELL!" the announcer screamed, his voice completely cracking over the speakers. "Summoner-D went full offense! In what seems like a literal blink of an eye, the entirety of Elementalist-D has been completely eliminated from the war! The elemental powerhouse is out!"

Thor stood tall amidst the smoking, ruined craters of the plateau, casually resting the heavy head of her warhammer against her shoulder as she looked back across the flat rectangular valley, her armor still crackling with residual static.

Back on the forested ridge, Lancet watched the display with a satisfied smirk. He turned to his completely awestruck, frozen teammates.

"Kasto, Patton," Lancet said calmly. "Go hold that territory."