I couldn’t afford to miss anything. Losing this challenge would put me at risk to lose the whole Gauntlet. And that meant my core was doomed. I had to figure this out.
Eric tried to step across the circular line to grab the ball, only to be stopped dead by an invisible barrier that left him rubbing his nose. He backed up half a step, and the circle at his feet flashed red.
The first row of constructs lined up in a tight arc on their side of the circle. They stretched their long arms out to their sides and bent their knees.
Eric mimicked their posture and glanced over his shoulder to shoot me a devil-may-care grin. He was a born competitor, and he was having the time of his life.
The ring of light turned yellow.
The four constructs in the second row spread out to cover more of the field. They shifted positions often, unsure of what Eric would do. They settled on plugging the gaps in the front arc and crouched down so they could spring in any direction.
The ring turned green.
Eric moved far faster than the constructs could react. In the blink of an eye, he’d darted across the central circle, snatched the red ball off the ground with one hand, and leaped over the first row of opponents with a single bound. Jinsei coursed through the channels in his legs, giving him the supernatural speed to dodge between the clumsy arms of the next rank of defenders. Eric raced for the nearest goal with the ball held tight against his body by his left arm and right hand.
“They certainly aren’t very fast,” Clem said. “Pretty organized, though.”
The constructs were too slow to catch Eric, and they knew it. Instead of chasing after him, the first two ranks of constructs had swept out to the sides to meet the goalies that rushed forward on the flanks. That maneuver effectively cut Eric off from the two outermost holes and clogged his path to the central goal with constructs.
If Eric had been any slower, that maneuver might have stopped him.
He dropped to the ground in mid-stride and slid across the clay, kicking up a cloud of dust that momentarily obscured him from enemies and allies alike. The maneuver let him slide through the wide stance of one of the goalies. Eric popped up behind the construct, sprinted ahead, and slammed the ball into the hole in the arena’s wall.
“He shoots!” Eric shouted. He performed a flashy backflip and jogged back toward the center of the arena. “He scores!”
“Point for the Blue Team,” a neutral voice announced.
The blue zero on our side of the scoreboard instantly changed to the number one, and the innermost white circle turned black. A loud bell rang, and an angry buzzer sounded at the exact same moment.
“What was that all about?” Hagar asked. “A buzzer and a bell for a goal?”
My thoughts raced. The voice had given us the victory conditions for the challenge in a very specific order.
Protect your goals.
Establish dominance.
Three points wins the game.
“Eric, don’t score anymore!” I shouted.
“What are you talking about?” He’d already lined up outside the circle, as had the constructs, and it had already flashed red.
Yellow.
Green.
Eric leaped into the circle and snatched the ball off the ground before our opponents could touch it.
“Keep the ball away from them while I figure this out,” I shouted.
“Whatever you say.” Eric laughed. “I can run circles around these losers all day.”
As if to demonstrate just how easy that would be, Eric performed a jinsei-fueled leap, bounced off the top of one of the defenders, and then backflipped away before the construct could react.
“Scoring a goal is the last thing the voice said.” I thought aloud. “And establish dominance was the first thing. What does that mean?”
“We already look pretty dominant to me,” Hagar shouted. “Eric’s running circles around the constructs. If the rest of us got involved, it’d be a slaughter.”
“There has to be more to the challenge,” Clem shouted. She chewed on the inside of her lip for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know, Jace. This doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Eric was quick on his feet and had easily avoided the defenders so far. Their coordination was starting to pay off, though. They used their superior numbers to form a double-walled defense. Eric could leap over one row, but that would put him right in the faces of the second rank of opponents. Meanwhile, the goalies had slid up the sides of the arena to flank Eric.
“What’s the plan?” Eric called out to me. “I can still get past these losers to dunk another goal.”
“Not yet,” I said. “We’re missing something.”
“I’m going to be missing the ball if I don’t do something soon,” Eric said. “They’re getting tricky.”
This whole challenge was tricky. I reviewed the instructions we’d been given, hoping for a clue.
Establish dominance. Scoring a goal without so much as a touch from the defenders hadn’t accomplished that. How else could we prove we were dominant over the constructs?
Then it hit me.
“It’s the challenge of swords!” I shouted. “Take them apart with your fusion blades!”
“That makes sense,” Clem said. “The answer was right there in front of us the whole time!”
It was, and that infuriated me. If any of the other competitors had been smarter than me, they could take the lead early and we’d spend the rest of the challenges trying to catch up. That was a horrible way to start the Gauntlet. I’d wanted to come out hard, grab the lead, and then hang onto it while the other teams chased us.
“I’ll hang onto the ball until you have your swords ready.” Eric leaped over one of our opponents, pivoted nimbly on one heel, and then darted around their flank to pull them back toward their own goal. The constructs, still focused on stopping the ball from reaching their goal, turned their backs on the rest
