The Seventh Sun Joins the Fray

Thanks to the Dimensional Detection Technique, Dago possessed an intuition far sharper than most people's, one that ordinary wizards could not even comprehend.

Dago raised his head and surveyed the entire arena.

The matches were still underway. Everything looked normal.

Yet he caught the faint scent of a conspiracy.

He could not tell what had set it in motion, or where it had come from.

Dago grew restless.

His gaze swept the venue again and again, but he still could not find Yadar.

Instead, it met the eyes of a young man from the Lava Brotherhood, eyes as fierce and scorching as a lake of magma.

Ignatius.

Ignatius stared coldly at him. Compared with his initial loathing and hostility, there was now something strange and unreadable in his eyes.

He gave Dago a cold smile, then slowly looked away.

Remembering Violet's warning before the matches began, Dago found himself wondering:

Could Yadar have struck some deal with him? Did Yadar deliberately let me win so I'd face Ignatius later, and Ignatius could kill me openly in the arena?

Dago shook his head. It seemed unlikely.

Bribing a Third-Ring Wizard to accept the humiliation of losing to a Second-Ring Wizard—and perhaps punishment from the power behind him—would surely cost too much for that alone.

As he kept turning possibilities over in his mind, the second round ended before he knew it.

The only matches Dago had paid attention to in that round were those involving the Third-Ring prodigies.

But their opponents were so far beneath them that there was little to learn. Most won with just one or two spells.

Ang, whom Dago watched most closely, had used nothing but an ordinary second-tier Shadow Scythe in both rounds.

He had plainly mastered the spell to an extraordinary degree. When he cast