Enchanter-D were still in first place, and they were the closest to the Boss’s lair. Now, they were in a battle against a screeching pack of Acid-Spit Macaques.

At the rear of their formation, Amira was chanting with her hands stretched forward. Hex symbols shone in the center of her hands, while their magic washed over the Macaques, weakening their beast cores and leaving them sluggish and disoriented.

"They’re weakened!" Soren shouted. "Let’s finish them!"

Stacey Blue, the Mind Mage, and two other Enchanters stepped forward to strike the final blow, but the surrounding foliage suddenly exploded outward.

"Now!" Kallan Kallahan’s voice ripped through the clearing.

A blinding torrent of fire poured through, instantly incinerating three of the weakened Macaques. Frieda leaped out of the fire, embers sparkling around her hands.

The Enchanters stumbled back, throwing up their arms to shield their faces from the sudden elemental backdraft.

Suddenly, vines wrapped around them, constricting their movements and spell chanting.

Lightning tore through the air, piercing and striking three more beasts, while ice daggers finished off the rest.

"Hey!" Stacey yelled, her eyes flashing with fury as the Elementalists dropped gracefully from the trees. "Those were our kills! You scavengers!"

"Finders, keepers," Kallan smirked.

"You can’t just leave us tied up here!" Stacey snarled, struggling against the thorns. She glared daggers at Kallan. "We’re supposed to be allies out there, Kallan!"

Kallan walked over, stopping just out of her reach. He offered a condescending, infuriatingly casual shrug. "Don’t take it personally, Stacey. It’s a competition. And we’ve got to win." He turned to his squad, waving them forward. "Let’s move! Leave them to the weeds!"

[ 1. Elementalist-D : 695 ]

[ 2. Specialist-D : 670 ]

[ 3. Enchanter-D : 635 ]

[ 4. Summoner-D : 605 ]

"After another sabotage, Elementalist-D is pressing forward at an extremely fast pace," the announcer declared. "But Specialist-D is not far behind! This is shaping up to be a very close race indeed!"

But the deeper the Elementalists went, the more the jungle changed.

The route opened into a harsher stretch of terrain that felt more like the edge of a monster nest than a forest path. The trees thinned in some places only to rise again in wide, twisted columns of bark and vine.

The ground became uneven with pits of mud, broken stone, and exposed roots. Strange gut noises carried through the branches from all directions at once, and the air had that heavy, dangerous stillness that came right before an ambush.

"If we are here it means we’re close to the Boss Chamber," Kallan pointed out.

That was true.

The place had a name in the route files: Gorilla Crown Hollow.

It sat just before the next great push toward the boss’s lair, one of the hardest sections in the route. The beasts here were faster, more territorial, and much more aggressive than the monkeys and macaques they had already encountered.

The ones visible now were already enough to make the students tighten their grips.

Some were thick-armed, scarred monkey beasts with rocks stuck in their fur like crude armor. Others were long-limbed spider monkeys with webbed fingers and twitching limbs, dropping from branches and swinging low enough to force a hasty reaction.

A few macaques darted between the stone pillars with sharp, territorial shrieks, while farther back, the larger silhouettes of gorilla-type beasts moved through the trees with slow, deliberate heaviness.

The first signs of real danger hit the moment the beasts noticed them.

The group had already been fighting for a while. They were tired. Not collapsing yet, but feeling the strain. Their cuts were getting a little slower. Their timing a little less perfect.

Because they had mostly stolen the kills and loot of others, their Grace reserves were still intact for the most part. But stamina was quickly running out. The endless sequence of skirmishes had started to chip at everyone’s rhythm.

And that was where the problem began.

Elementalist-D had power.Plenty of it.

But their Class Group depended heavily on Support Classes to stay efficient over long stretches. Healers to heal, Mind Mages to stabilize focus, Arcanists to buff their Grace control.

Without those extra layers, the Elementalists were forced to spend more of their own reserves, and even they were beginning to look the strain in the face.

Frieda reacted fast when the ambush hit.

"Left side!" she shouted.

"No! Fall back, guys!" Kallan commanded. "Everyone!"

A swarm of macaques erupted from the trees in a blur of limbs and teeth.

Cecil swore, heating up the space in front of him until the beast melted in a blast of monkey slime. Kallan flicked lightning into the nearest branches and forced two of the beasts to fall screaming into the mud.

Leslie moved to cover the center with an ice shield, but there were too many angles. Spider monkeys started dropping from above, and the larger gorillas in the rear let out a low, bone-deep bellow that made the ground feel smaller.

Frieda braced and began to fight in earnest, using cyclones of fire to hold back the monsters. But the rest of the group had fallen back like Kallan had said.

"Shouldn’t we help her?" Cecil asked.

"We’re still tired from the previous fights," Kallan said. "There’s no reason to fight this. The Specialists will show up soon so we’ll let them handle it and sneak away to the leader when everyone’s distracted. Then, we can unleash all of our powers to kill the boss."

Leslie smiled. "Great plan, Kallan. With our loot and kills, taking down the Boss will certainly give us the most points."

Frieda yelled, tumbling backward and raising a large wall of fire to protect herself. "What are you guys doing?" she growled, turning to her team.

"I told you to stand down!" Kallan snapped at her. "The Summoners are coming. Let them handle it. We’ll kill the Boss before they’re even done!"

And he was right.

Just right then, Renan’s team broke through from an adjacent route segment, weapons in hand.

"Hehehe!" Kallan grinned with glee.

The Specialists did not waste a second. Renan led with a clean, focused strike that opened the closest beast’s defense, while the rest of his team spread out, handling any that came their way.

The beasts began to fall.

Kallan watched from the shadows. ’Perfect,’ he thought. ’They’ll clear the path, and we’ll slip right past.’

"Now this is what the competition is about!" he cried. "Elementalist-D and Specialist-D are in the thick of it, and the crowd is loving every second!"

The students in the stands roared in response.

"Let’s go!" Kallan commanded. The Enchanters began to sneak through the battle, following behind a line of trees. Frieda felt ashamed doing this, but she was more ashamed of what she did to Renan and couldn’t bear to face him now.

But Kallan made a mistake.

Or perhaps he made a move he thought would help and underestimated just how much trouble it would trigger.

He drove a lightning strike into the roots of a nearby beast nest, expecting to finish off a lurking threat before it interrupted their escape.

What happened instead was a universal call. His lightning reverberated through the earth in a way that disturbed something deeper in the forest.

A hidden call was triggered. A territorial signal.

First, one beast roar answered from the canopy, then another, then another.

And suddenly the jungle began to vibrate madly.

Everyone turned to Kallan. "What is going onnnnn?"

Boooom!!!

Gorilla Crown Hollow awakened at once. Every single beast in the entire jungle was coming there.