The first blow did not come from a trap or from a rival. It was the impact of air against the bones, the abrupt awakening of muscles at their limit, the vibration of the will trying to remain intact within a circuit that promised neither glory nor redemption. The Ring was already active. And the twelve… ran.

There was no starting shot. Only movement. Movement as instinct. As animal reflex. As if the body, before reason, had understood that everything that did not advance would become broken flesh. The ground —a segmented surface of plates that expanded, rotated and trembled— was not an enemy, but neither an ally. It was judge. It was beast. It was mechanical hunger.

Sebastián advanced, but not like the others. His ARMEX, still functional, behaved like a borrowed skin. Each step had to be corrected, rebalanced, tamed from the inside. It was not lack of coordination. It was not error. It was containment.

The Core of the Inverted Origin was still there, beneath his flesh, latent, breathing with a pulse that did not match the one from the machine surrounding him. The ARMEX tried to channel energy toward his limbs, but each pulse was silently absorbed by what burned at the center of his chest. Like a hungry child that still had not learned to wait, the core tried to devour every drop. Sebastián, in response, closed his will around that hunger, as if his thoughts were bars. Not to extinguish it. But to keep it at bay.

That is why he did not use the exosuit's automatic reinforcement. That is why each stride was his alone. Calves tense, thighs like strained cables, feet striking the ground with a force that needed no auxiliary energy. He advanced like someone who does not run, but hurls himself forward. Like someone who does not measure, but endures.

And he endured.

The first section of the Ring opened like an abstract jaw: two lateral walls began to close with a slow but relentless turn. There was space… barely. Only for one at a time. The first to notice was Zigzag, who slid to the right with a twist of her hip and a short impulse that got her between the walls a second before they touched. Green Predator followed, and he did not dodge: he rammed. The impact against the left wall scattered sparks, but launched him to the other side without slowing. His ARMEX screeched, but did not give in.

Sebastián calculated. Not by reflex, but by sharpened instinct. The ARMEX sensors were in reactive mode, but he ignored them. He knew that if he let the suit choose, the core would absorb everything. So he did not wait. He shifted his weight to the left leg, rotated his hip slightly and hurled himself between the plates like a bullet without a perfect trajectory. His shoulder struck the metal edge. It hurt. Not from damage… but from reality.

Virka, beside him, was another story. She did not correct, did not resist. She slid. Her ARMEX breathed with her. Every step seemed foreseen, as if the structure of the circuit spoke to her in a secret language. She did not run. She drifted. And in that frictionless movement, she left three more figures behind.

One of them —Bone Cadence— stepped wrong.

The trap was not visible. Only a slight change in the texture of the ground. A triangular plate that descended half a centimeter when her heel touched it. No one saw it. Only heard it: a click, a muffled implosion, and then the sharp hum of an activation.

From the right side, a robotic arm emerged. Not a blade. Not a projectile. An extended finger, fast as a heartbeat, that touched the player's back with surgical precision. Barely a contact. But it was enough.

The Safeguard Core activated.

A translucent energy dome burst from the center of her chest. It surrounded her in a blink. It expelled her in a straight line toward the outer wall of the circuit, where a hatch opened violently to swallow the body before it touched the ground. Everything lasted less than three seconds.

The race continued. No one screamed. No one looked back.

Being broken was not tragedy. It was shame.

The next section narrowed even more. Two mobile columns descended from the ceiling, generating a random pattern of openings. Some passed crouching, others crawling. The young man with the high bun calculated each interval with metronome precision. His movements were exact, as if he danced between the teeth of a sleeping titan. Each of his impulses seemed contained, not out of fear, but out of efficiency.

Sebastián breathed through his nose. Three steps. Turn. Lowering of the torso. Elbow to the ground. The ARMEX did not cushion. He did. Every weight was his. Every pain was valid.

Adrenaline burned his eyelashes, but did not cloud. It only sharpened.

The young woman with red hair —the one who had not stopped looking at him— moved ahead with elegant ferocity. Her movements were almost too aggressive to be stable, but her body endured them. With each strike against the ground, the ARMEX responded as if it wanted to scream.

An inner voice said: it is not fury. It is hunger.

The field seemed to respond to that hunger.

The third trap was a slight slope, almost imperceptible, covered by an artificial fog with static charge. Most hesitated. It was not easy to run without seeing the ground. Not Virka. She pushed off with both legs and spun in the air. Touched the ground with the tip of one foot and pushed again. Her silhouette blurred in the mist, like a shadow that leaves no trace.

Sebastián went in head-on.

The suit tried to calculate. He stopped it. Not with words. With tension. Internal. Absolute.

The mist covered his eyes, but his body remembered the trajectory. His ankles knew the angle. His knees, the rebound. It was a language without letters, without grammar. Only the dull noise of his controlled breathing, of his body forcing itself to advance with every gram of strength the ARMEX did not give him.

A sensor vibrated on his hip. Not from an alert activation. But from limit resistance.

He ignored everything.

A voice, distant, mechanical, said something about internal pressure.

It was not his. It was not external.

It was the core. It did not speak with words, but it pushed. It wanted. It desired.

Not this time.

Sebastián clenched his jaw. The wind cut his face. The mist opened. And on the other side, the ground became solid again.

First trap surpassed.

A line on the ground indicated the 200 meters. It was not real. Only a visual sensor.

But for the bodies… it was everything.

The first ones panted. Others did not. Some were already bleeding. Another was limping. The field had not wanted to kill them yet. Only measure them.

The race had not fully begun.

But the Rakzar already smelled the blood.

The corridor narrowed without warning, as if the world decided to strangle those who still believed that speed was enough. The walls of the Ring closed in asymmetrical sections, with openings that forced brushing, contact, the friction of bodies that were no longer just competitors, but obstacles. What had once been a race now became a ritual of collision. And the Rakzar knew it. It did not seek speed. It sought violence.

Zigzag was the first to understand it. Her slender silhouette did not slow down nor ask for permission. She slipped between two moving plates with a feint of her shoulders and a turn in the air that seemed more reflex than calculation. On the other side, Green Predator was already waiting. He had not read her movement. He had smelled it. His exosuit, with reinforcements on ankles and thighs, functioned as an extension of his ramming instinct. He lunged toward her with a force that did not seek to gain space, but to shatter bone. The impact was brutal. Zigzag was thrown toward the side. She did not fall. She used the wall as a boost, rebounded with a spinning kick that did not aim to injure, only to survive. Blood trailed down her leg, slow. A gash on the thigh. She did not scream. She did not look. She just kept going.

A few meters away, Sharp Gray tried to block the path of the young man with the high bun. The movement was direct, without warning. But the other did not stop. He did not dodge with agitation. He did not brake. He only turned his torso, moved his wrist, and let the other's shoulder brush against his side as if striking a shadow. Sharp Gray lost balance, stumbled, and fell onto a misaligned floor joint. Not broken, but already out of rhythm. Already out of the moment.

Virka, farther ahead, followed a line that did not exist for the others. Every step she took was a reading. She did not look. She felt. The Ring seemed to reveal itself to her in folds of intention. She did not fly. She did not run. She moved with the precision of someone who did not wish to avoid pain, but to honor it.

Sebastián did not float nor glide. His run was neither technical nor perfect. It was brutal. Every step was a push. Every meter, containment. The core in his chest did not sleep. It throbbed with mute hunger. The internal lines of the ARMEX vibrated with tension, attempting to calibrate while an older force emptied them from within. The auxiliary energy was sucked away without violence, but without negotiation. Sebastián was not using the suit. He was dragging it. Like someone running with a body on top of him. His own breathing was measured, harsh, as if every exhalation held shut the bars of an invisible beast. He clenched his teeth, not out of pain… but out of decision. He would not allow the Core of the Inverted Origin to choose for him. Not yet. Not here.

It was then that the lateral traps unfolded. Three robotic arms emerged from the left wall. They were not blades nor spears. They were precision fingers. Thin. Lethal. Each one sought a single target: the cores of the suits. Iron Blood responded before thinking. She twisted her torso and slammed her elbow against the base of the nearest arm. The sensor failed. The metal bent. The attempt was aborted. Not by luck. By brutality. Opalescent Reflex was not so fortunate. His attempt to dodge resulted in a graze on the shoulder. The core sensor emitted a faint alert. He was not expelled, but he was marked. Warned. His silhouette vibrated, as if his presence had begun to doubt itself.

One of the arms aimed straight at Sebastián. He heard it before seeing it. A dull, compressed hum. His body did not turn. His eyes did not search. He simply took one extra step. Jumped with both feet, pushing the ground with his whole sole. Landed in a crouch and kept moving without stopping. The arm did not fail. It arrived. But late. It found no flesh. No core. Only empty air.

The vibration in his chest was immediate. The inner core reacted, not to the danger… but to the stimulus. It wanted to devour that energy. Sebastián contained it. Without spiritual force. Without technique. Only will. Sweat slid down his neck like dense lava. His back did not tremble, but his bones were beginning to notice. It was not fatigue. It was accumulation.

The young woman with red hair kept pushing forward like a contained projectile. Her ARMEX seemed on the verge of collapse, but it wasn't. Every step was channeled fury. Every meter, an undeclared threat. The sensors along her path flickered as if they didn't know how to classify her. Her gaze was directed at no one. Only ahead. She was not running against the others. She was running against something without a face. And she did so with hunger.

Zigzag reappeared on the right flank. Her arm still bled, but the wound did not slow her. Violet Shadows tried to block her path. The contact was inevitable. It was not a fight. It was an eviction. Zigzag did not stop. She did not attack. She simply pushed with her shoulder. The other fell to the side. She did not scream. Nor did she try to continue after her.

The air was beginning to smell different. Denser. Hotter. Not because of the environment. Because of the bodies. Because of the constant friction. Because of the blood that already marked the ground with thin lines, not like stains… but like routes. Routes of those who could no longer hide the price of each step.

High above, the instructor's voice manifested without origin. It wasn't amplified. It wasn't recorded. It simply was. As if the Ring itself spoke through him.

—Ten remain.

It wasn't a threat. It was a chronicle. A reminder without emotion. A number. A sentence.

The final stretch of this phase offered no alternate routes. Only a corridor exactly two meters wide, bordered by columns that descended in an alternating pattern. They did not allow speed. They did not tolerate doubt. Every movement required calculation. And those who could not think while bleeding… fell behind.

The young man with the high bun adapted to the rhythm without losing harmony. Each stride fit between the columns with the naturalness of a choreography he knew by heart. He did not speak. He did not look. He only danced with the metal.

Iron Blood followed him with force more than technique. Her breathing was labored, but not desperate. Her body did not ask for permission. It demanded passage.

Virka observed everything from a different angle. Not because she sought advantage. But because it was natural for her not to run with the same logic. She did not evade the traps. She read them. As if she had already walked that path in another plane. As if the Rakzar were an old adversary that still did not know it had already been defeated.

Sebastián clenched his fists. His left arm hurt. Not from impact. But from prolonged muscular tension. His legs still responded. His chest burned. Not from lack of oxygen. But from excess containment. Every step was a declaration. He was not there to win. But he did not accept being defeated either.

The core pushed again. An internal pressure, soft but persistent. Like an ancient drum beating beneath the sternum. It wanted more. It desired it.

No.

Not yet.

Not here.

Sebastián crossed the four-hundred-meter line without knowing it. Not because he was blind. But because the pain had occupied all other senses. What mattered was not how much distance he had covered… but how much strength he had left to not let go of himself.

The corridor changed again. It was no longer narrow. It was uneven. The ground vibrated with intermittent impulses, signals that did not come from the outside, but from the guts of the Ring itself. Shapeless traps began to hint beneath the metal plates. With every misplaced step, danger could activate without announcing itself. There were no symbols. There were no warning lights. Only the certainty that something —down below— was preparing to strike upward.

It was Opalescent Reflex who stepped wrong. His run had already been irregular for minutes. The previous warning in his core had not stopped him. Maybe he thought he could compensate. Maybe he didn't think at all. The trap detected him at the exact instant his weight abandoned ideal balance. A dull click preceded the kinetic shot: a metallic stake launched upward from the subfloor with extreme violence, aimed at the abdomen. It did not pierce him. It did not destroy him. It had no time. The safeguard protocol responded first.

A dome of pure energy burst from the core of his chest. It expanded in a blink, enveloped his body, projected him upward like a soulless projectile. The electromagnetic roar shook the air. The body was swallowed by a lateral hatch before touching the ceiling. The silence that followed was heavier than the sound itself.

Ten.

The number remained floating, unspoken but known.

The ceiling columns descended without warning, striking in uneven rhythms, like hammers of a formless judgment. Some ducked by reflex. Others were forced to roll across the hot ground. Violet Shadows was not so fast. The descending plate grazed her shoulder with the precision of a blade-less guillotine. The core did not activate, but her arm hung useless.

In the distance, the mist began to form. It was not natural. It was field. A veil of ionized particles that altered perception. The next zone was covered in white density, barely visible but loaded with erratic electricity. The magnetism affected the ARMEX systems with reading errors: orientation spins, false movements, loss of rhythm.

The redhead entered without hesitation. Her body seemed a contained projectile. Her ARMEX vibrated at a frequency bordering on loss of control, but never crossing it. Inside the mist, a secondary figure tried to stop her. Maybe by mistake. Maybe in desperation. They had no chance.

She did not dodge him. She crushed him.

Her leg turned in a wide arc. The hip locked. The knee broke trajectory. The boot impacted with enough force to destabilize the opponent's center of mass. The other body swayed. She did not let it fall on its own. A second strike, sharp and descending, projected it toward one of the outer walls of the corridor. The energy of the core vibrated. The system did not hesitate.

A new dome. A new expulsion. One body fewer.

Nine.

But it did not end there.

In its trajectory, the expelled body collided with another secondary runner coming from behind, disoriented by the mist. The impact was enough to push him out of the circuit. The safety hatch did not even open. The body crashed against the outer limit and remained there, inert, until the system dragged it away with an automatic claw.

Eight.

Virka had chosen another angle. She was not running in a straight line. She had detected a secondary channel between the descending columns. Her body slid with a fluidity that did not imitate combat. It imitated controlled falling. A rival appeared to her left, faster than she was. He tried to overtake her, without contact. But in the Ring, overtaking without permission was a mistake.

Virka turned her hip. Her leg rose like a bladeless scythe. The strike was low, precise. It did not seek damage. Only rupture. The opponent's leg lost stability. He fell with a clumsiness that did not belong to him. He tried to recover. Virka did not allow it. Her foot struck his back at the exact angle. Not with anger. With sentence. His body spun on itself and was projected toward the left side. A hatch activated, but not with the usual urgency. The body brushed the edge, stopped at the corner. And then another secondary figure —a faceless, voiceless runner— coming right behind, stumbled over him.

Both went out together.

Seven.

The young man with the high bun moved with a different rhythm. Neither aggressive nor evasive. It was pure displacement. Within the mist, his steps were measured shadows. One of the runners tried to catch him, blocking him with both arms. The bun did not respond with violence. He only turned his torso and let the contact dissolve. But in doing so, his elbow brushed the center of the rival's chest. It was not a strike. It was a touch.

The opponent's core vibrated.

The energy of his ARMEX collapsed. The safeguard protocol activated. Dome. Expulsion.

Six.

Sebastián was not hunting. Not chasing. Not seeking victims. But he advanced with a force that did not imitate the others. His steps were no longer just resistance. They were controlled drive. He did not need speed. He needed space. And the field, as if understanding him, began to give it to him.

The first to cross his path was one of the secondary runners, desperate to overtake him. He made the mistake of trying to shove him with his shoulder. There was no impact. There was response.

Sebastián's arm rose. Not fast. Not furious. Just lifted with decision. The fist descended with contained force, as if trying to stop a wall that never fell. The impact was enough for the rival's torso to bend, and the ARMEX core reacted instantly. The plates fractured. The energy collapsed. The dome burst. The body was projected backward.

Five.

Another runner, who had witnessed the strike, tried to take advantage of the opening left on the right. He was agile, but not precise. His ARMEX already showed signs of wear. Sebastián did not need to calculate. He simply turned his body, planted his left foot, and launched a straight punch with his right. The impact was sharp, straight to the sternum. The suit's plates did not withstand it. The core vibrated. Dome. Expulsion.

Four.

The field had changed. The blood was in the air, but not from cuts. It was pressure. It was effort. It was the mark of those who could no longer keep going. Not all fell from blows. Some simply could not take another step.

The instructor, from above, made no gesture. He did not write anything. He did not speak. He only watched.

And the Rakzar kept deciding.

The roar of expulsions still floated in the air like an impersonal echo, but the field did not stop. It did not need to fall silent. Only continue. The six hundred and fifty–meter line slid under their feet like an invisible frontier, and what came after was not relief nor sentence. It was the true face of exhaustion. A straight lane, without bifurcations, without moving walls or evident traps. The ground trembled irregularly, contained tectonic vibrations, as if the creature beneath the Ring breathed with impatience. In the distance, the blue light of the finish began to define itself like a thread suspended over an open wound. It was not salvation. It was the final cut.

Virka did not change her rhythm. Not because she was saving energy. Because she had not lost any. Her body, flexible and tense like the edge of a spear, maintained a perfect displacement line. Her breathing was measured. Her ARMEX, intact. Every impulse that projected her forward did not come from excess, but from balance. While others learned to run with what they had left, she ran with what she had always known how to contain. The field did not punish her. It did not acknowledge her. It simply let her pass, as if in her path it found nothing worthy of stopping.

The redhead, on the other hand, felt the burn in every joint. Her suit had reached levels of demand that exceeded the average from the beginning, and now, in the obstacle-less stretch, her body had to respond with what it still preserved. She clenched her teeth. Her legs, still firm, no longer moved with elegance but with necessity. The ARMEX core marked its final peaks of stability. She knew it. She felt it in the trembling of her torso, in the electric fatigue along her spine. She looked at Virka. Not as an enemy. As a barrier.

She did not scream. She did not hesitate. She simply extended her fingers toward the center of her chest. Tapped the core twice.

The overload was immediate. A low hum crossed her spine like a serpent of molten metal. The internal energy surged with contained violence, reprogramming the suit's functions into a single objective: speed. The acceleration was explosive. Her figure seemed to blur. The air split around her. Her heels left trails of heat on the trembling ground. It was not a wager on the future. It was the entirety of the present. And she burned it without blinking.

Sebastián did not react. He did not need to. The hum of the overload reached him like a whisper at the back of his neck, but his steps were already defined. His ARMEX had begun to shut down in the previous sections. Not from external damage, but from internal hunger. The Core of the Inverted Origin, though contained, had drained enough to leave the suit dry, functional only as an empty shell. The system knew it. The Ring knew it.

A few meters from the finish line, the ARMEX stopped responding. No jolts. No lights. Only a soft death, almost dignified. The energy ceased to flow. The internal sensors died. The system no longer recognized him as an active competitor. His name disappeared from the mapping. The world shrank to his feet, to his lungs, to his legs built to endure more than any machine could calculate. His body—carved by pain, strengthened by the denial of the impossible—continued forward without doubt. Without energy. Without support. Only him.

The finish approached like a horizontal blade. And between it and the rest, the figures were already separating.

The young man with the high bun observed from behind. His ARMEX remained functional. His body, tired but not broken. He did not need to compete for a position he had not sought. He was not there to win. He was there to see. To record. To remember. He kept his pace steady, without accelerating, without forcing. He let the tension surround him without swallowing him. His arrival would be clean. Not brilliant.

Thirty meters from the final line, the duel had been defined.

Virka held the lead. Her cadence was constant, each step exact. The redhead closed in with the momentum of the overload, a lightning bolt of forced metal, but the gap did not yield. The distance between them narrowed… but did not collapse. The overload was violent, yes, but unstable. And Virka was not a wall. She was a line.

She crossed first.

Not with glory. With precision.

The redhead crossed after her. Her speed was such that she could not stop upon arrival. She leaned forward, her legs trembled, and her entire body shuddered. The ARMEX flickered, vibrated, and then died. The energy was spent. Her systems shut down. She held herself upright by will. By rage. For having come so close.

And then, Sebastián arrived.

It was not an elegant or explosive finish. It was inevitable. Like a hammer that does not stop when falling. His body crossed the line without sound, without an active core, without official recognition. But there he was. Third. Complete. Not defeated. The ARMEX dead. The flesh intact. The gaze steady.

The young man with the bun crossed fourth, without fanfare, without deviation. His back straight. His face without tension. Like someone who has read an entire text and still has not decided what it meant.

The Ring's sensors marked the end of the phase. The blue light spun once more and then shut down. The corridor remained in partial dimness. There was no celebration. No announcement. Only bodies breathing. Some collapsing. Others standing.

Virka took two steps, stopped, and turned her face just slightly, as if confirming the world still existed. The redhead sat without surrendering, her hands still clenched. Sebastián did not move. He simply held his axis like someone who does not seek air, but decision. The one with the bun looked at the walls as if asking a question no one could answer.

The first phase had ended.

But no one felt they had won anything.

________________________________

END OF CHAPTER 56

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