Hanako and Satou started to fight one another in a very tight space within the forest. "You really think you're stronger than me, punk", Satou taunts Hanako but Hanako quickly launches himself towards Satou and punches him in the chest. "Well, you better fight with your fist more than your words cause you ain't doing nothing to me with those vague taunts", Hanako replies to Satou's comment during their battle. Satou takes Hanako by the hoodie and chucks him into a tree, completely destroying the tree in the process. "Note to self, this idiot can launch me with ease and destroy trees with the amount of velocity and force he uses to toss me around", Hanako thinks to himself until suddenly…
The loud monstrous noise is getting louder as May, Aoi, Sabito and Himiko heads towards it. Multiple trees started to fall down and the ground starts to rumble as they see a group of Spiritual creatures running away from the unknown threat.
"Hey, Himiko", May says to get the attention of Himiko. "Yes?", Himiko asked May to know what's up. "Where are you other two teammates?", She asked her and with no hesitation, Himiko answered pretty quickly and with a blank face, "Oh- they both got completely knocked out by Satou as soon as we entered the arena". Everyone was shocked but not surprised with this info knowing Satou's behaviour.
They continued walking and found someone stuck under a giant log. May made a quick work with the log as she daws on her bear mask and easily carries and throws away the log from the contestants, body. Aoi quickly tend to his injuries and checks up on him to see if anything happened. "May I ask, where is the rest of your team?", Sabito asked the poorly injured contestant. "They all went towards the loud noise- I was to scared so I ran away but I ended up getting hit with a giant log and got stuck under it", he explained to Sabito while still gasping for air. Himiko quickly gets up onto one of the trees to scout out for the fallen contestants, teammates and she found them being ambushed by a group of Spiritual creatures. Himiko does a quick job on them by squashing all four of the Spiritual creatures with a hammer she made out of her kinetic sand.
Aoi, May and Himiko checks up on them while Sabito is dragging along the poorly injured contestant with him.
Hanako quickly gets up and dodges Satou's incoming boomerang which destroyed ten more trees behind where Hanako just dodged from. "Get back here, you coward!", Satou screams at the top of his lungs at Hanako as Hanako tries to think of a plan to defeat Satou and continue with the trial. Satou tries searching for Hanako before getting a giant tree falling onto him which was cut down by Hanako and his blood sword. Hanako thought to himself, "This has to work- surely", but he jinxed himself as Satou easily lifts the giant tree and hits Hanako with it, launching him far away from Satou. Without giving Hanako any time, Satou pounces Hanako with a strong gust of wind to push himself towards Hanako at high speed but Hanako quickly puts up a blood barrier which softened the attack and knocked Satou back from him as Hanako gets up with a injured leg.
Hanako pulls out his blood sword again and he isn't going down against Satou without a fight as he launches towards Satou and attacking him in a fast paced motion which left a few scratches on him. Satou pushes Hanako away with a small gust of wind.
After tending to the injured team, Sabito told them to run back to the starting gate due to the fact they aren't able to continue the trial with all of them being badly injured. The loud noise got louder and Himiko saw something from outside of her vision. She pushes May, Aoi and Sabito as the ground beneath them all gets destroyed, trees get demolished and Himiko creating a makeshift kinetic sand shield around herself gets knocked to the side, knocking her out cold. "Himiko!", Aoi screamed out for her name before they all finally witness the true creature that has been causing all the chaos. "There is a Grade 0 Spiritual creature in the arena so be careful and make sure to run away", the reminder that Kuriyami gave in the begging lingered back into all of their heads as they witness the giant monstrosity known as the Grade 0 Spiritual creatures. A giant beast that puts fear into all of them as it continues with it's horrifying terror along the arena as none of them are unable to move due to shear horror.
Hanako gently gets back onto his feet and gets smackdown by Satou into another batch of trees which injured Hanako. Hanako puts back his blood to quickly heal himself back up and while Satou thought that he defeated Hanako, Hanako bit him on the neck which made Satou let him go from his grasp.
"I'm done with this stupid non-sense of yours Satou!", Hanako screams at Satou as he creates two blood sword, and prepares his final attack at Satou and finishes him, once and for all. "You think you're the only one who's done with this bull crap huh", Satou says to him with full confidence and a giant smirk on his face. Satou grabs his boomerang but Hanako didn't want to give him any chance to fight back so he strikes at him with two blood swords in hand, launching him into a giant rock. The knockback didn't knock out Satou completely but both him and Hanako started to feel something else. The ground beneath them started to shake and the both of them wonder what it was but continued to fight against one another.
May snaps herself out from the fear and snaps Aoi and Sabito back into reality. "We need to stop that thing before the situation gets worse", May says to the both of them. "Okay then, I'll go check up on Himiko while the two of you go ahead and try to stop that thing also make sure to rescue some people who might be in danger", Aoi says to the two of them as she runs towards the passed out Himiko to tend to her injuries. Both Sabito and May runs towards the giant monstrosity as they hatch a plan to put an end to the creature.
"May! I have an idea", Sabito screams at her and tells her his plans on stopping the creature in it's tracks. May wears her fox mask which gives her an extra speed boost to allow her to outrun the giant creature. As Sabito was running besides him appears Aoi and the knocked out Himiko as Aoi holds onto her. "So, any major injuries?", Sabito asked Aoi. "Nope- Just a complete knockout", she replied to him.
Satou gets a jump on Hanako and hits him hard with his boomerang. "You really think a weak sauce like you could beat me? Pathetic whimp", Satou says to him. "You think I'm pathetic? What a joke", he replies to him as he grabs Satou by the ankle and toss him to the side. Hanako quickly gets back up and is now equipped with razor sharp blood claws. He launches himself at Satou but Satou was quick to react and created a tiny wind barrier around himself to avoid from getting attacked. Then, he punched Hanako right in the face to push him away. Afterwards, he launches at Hanako with his boomerang hitting him multiple times. "Die, you fool! Die!", Satou said to him as he slowly descends into madness. Hanako while getting hit multiple times at high speed from Satou, he silently stabs him in the chest with his blood claws which majorly injured him.
"Why the hell did you do that for?!", Satou screams at him in confusion. "To finally beat you!", Hanako screams at the top of his lungs and puts his secret plan into motion. "Blood Shed Webs!", he screams those words at the top of his lungs as he used his blood and Satou's blood to create a giant cobweb that attaches itself to the nearby trees and makes Satou unable to move from his spot. "What the hell is this?", He asked Hanako in frustration. "It's just my un-escapable cobwebs. Don't move cause it's very corrosive but what am I saying, you can't even move with this thing being built into your veins of blood.", Hanako explains his whole plan to him before he quickly sucker punched Satou knocking him out cold, once and for all. "Phew, that was tiring. Man, what are the others up to anyway", Hanako says to himself before he gets a call from his walkie talkie. After hearing it, he quickly runs towards the giant wave of energy.
"Aoi! Go send Himiko back to the starting gate and then come back to help us out with this situation", Sabito tells to Aoi, she nods and runs back to the starting gate to make sure that Himiko can get to a safer place. Sabito pulls out his walkie talkie and signals for Hanako.
"Buddy, we need your help here. We have a grade 0 spiritual creature on our hands and it's gigantic and we need all the help that we can get", he says into his walkie talkie. Hanako quickly answers the walkie talkie, "Got it! I just beat the living hell out of Satou and I'm on my way, I can feel that giant spiritual energy coming from probably your direction. I'm on my way right now" and he puts down his walkie talkie. Sabito rushes forward to see the giant spirit about to crush a whole team with it's one foot but they were all quickly saved by May as she swiftly moves on her feet and swipes them away from the spirit. "May! You handle with the rescue mission, I'll create a giant barrier so this thing can't go anywhere as we wait for Hanako's help", he tells her and she nods in agreement. Sabito puts up a giant barrier of spiritual wave to block the spirits path.
A loud scream can be heard in the background as a whole team is chased down by a spirit that can multiply itself by using the fear in humans to do so. Sabito was about to make a move before Aoi appears and makes it rain nails on the spirits.
"Take this!", she says to the spirit as all of her nails lands on them. She quickly pulls out her hammer and another nail and smacks the nail into the ground. All of the nails were attached to the one nail that Aoi smacked into the ground and as the nail was nailed down into the ground, so as all the spirits, crushing them into nothingness.
Sabito gives her a thumb up as he keeps the barrier up. He isn't able to go help the girls with the rescue mission because he needs to concentrate on keeping the barrier up. Another army of spirits approach them alongside the other two remaining teams. May switches out her fox mask for her tiger mask as she runs towards one of the last remaining teams. She did a quick job on the army of spirits, slashing each and every one of them and Aoi is dealing with the other army with the help of her trusty hammer and another contestants support. She swings her hammer around taking out the spirits while the contestant turns their body into a sharp sword and slashed away at the spirits.
With all of the contestants saved. May and Aoi goes to Sabito and help him out by defending against the giant Spirit. The girls both take turns to attack the giant spirit but it's strength out powers them, pushing them back.
"Principle, do you really think this is safe? I feel like we should go down there and help them out right now", Mifuyu asked the principle as she is concern with them not helping out the future students. "Don't worry Mifuyu-san. Nothing bad will happen to them, plus I wanna see these future student's potential out in the battlefield like this", the principle said to her with a calming tone. "Bu-", Mifuyu was about say something before getting cut off by Kuriyami. "Sorry, Mifuyu-san but we have to stuck to the rules", he explained to her as she looks back at the screen filled with worriedness for the future students of the school.
"I- I don't think any of us can keep this up for any longer", Sabito says to the girls as all of them are about to run out of their breaths. "Where is Hanako?", May asked them with her trying to keep her breath going.
"I don't know but we have to keep fighting or else-", Aoi was about to say something but they look to the side of them and see the spirit is about to crush all of them with its giant foot.
The teachers and students are filled with horror as they are about to witness something horrible until…
A male contestant appears on top and behind of the giant spirit and pulls out his blood sword. "Beyond The- BOUNDARY!!!", Hanako screams at the top of his lungs as his sword grew bigger and more unstable. He slashes at the giant spirit as his sword breaks down and becomes corrosive, but he was able to slash his way through the spirit. The spirit was cut in two before it was able to step onto Hanako's friends. Everyone was in a state of shock, happiness, joy and excitement as they see the giant spirit finally got killed. The teachers and students celebrated in this wonderful victory as the spirit falls down backwards and Hanako comes crashing down onto his friends as he semi-faints in the air. Sabito and May quickly catches him and put his arms around their shoulders to carry him. "Hanako", May says to him. "Yes?", he says as he looks at her. "You are awesome and one hell of a fighter!", May says to him to give him more courage.
"I have a special reward for you", May says to him as she kisses him on the cheek. "I-", Hanako stutters and blushes. "That's to help you heal up faster", May says to him. As the spirit was beaten, Kuriyami picks up his mic and finally announces the end of the first stage.