Shadow Stinger was still puzzled when a strange clamor suddenly rose from the ground.
The sound, like blades being sharpened, kept coming from the thick black smoke.
Shadow Stinger's pupils contracted. When he peered into the smoke again, he finally saw what was making the noise.
The crows whose beaks were buried deep in the metal floor were all doing the same thing.
They clawed frantically at the floor, trying to pull their sharp beaks free.
Their beaks were embedded two or three centimeters deep. Ordinarily, creatures this weak could never free themselves by their own strength.
Even an ordinary person would struggle to pull a cork wedged into a wine bottle's neck.
Yet before Shadow Stinger's eyes, the crows began wrenching their beaks free, one after another, and flapping into the air.
As if guided by an unseen hand, they all converged on the same point overhead.
Spectators seated near the Competition Ring heard the commotion inside the black smoke, but they could not see what was happening.
It sounded like someone had thrown a stone onto a beach crowded with seagulls, sending them into the air in a panic, wings beating wildly.
The crows gathered together. Though they kept colliding, they forced themselves into a tiny space.
That space continued to shrink.
Before long, every crow had freed itself from the floor, and the flock overhead slowly took on the rough outline of a human body.
Only one crow stayed apart. It flew toward the astonished Shadow Stinger and landed at his feet as if he were not there.
Shadow Stinger hesitated over whether to kill it on the spot, but in the end, he held back.
The crow picked up the mask that had fallen to the floor and flew toward the flock.
A hand that had