Luna concealed herself between the bushes. She was there all this time. She had also witnessed all the thing that happened there. In the beginning, she led Ren to there in hope he would became scapegoat for the duel between Elena Elsgard and Marcus Blaze.
Since before the test, she saw that both of Marcus and Elena had specifically declared their attention to beat Ren in the test, Luna exploited this chance for her own gain. She purposely failed her snipe on Ren before. Then, she pretend to escape from her hiding spot. When Ren chased her, she led him to the place where Marcus and Elena gathered.
And, Ren was not her only victim as she was also did the same to Elena and Marcus. When the test started, she began tracking Elena first. When she arrived at Elena's location, Elena had already beat Dylan. She shot Elena and intentionally missed her target. As Elena noticed Luna's presence, Luna already tried to escape from Elena.
Then she led Elena to where Marcus was. As Elena's attention was shifted to Marcus, Luna diminished her presence from there and started tracking Ren.
She had developed a perfect strategy. She led Elena to Marcus first so that those two would fought each other. Then, when Ren arrived there, they would changed their target to him and fought him together or better, had a three-way match.
When a victor emerged as the other two were eliminated, Luna would came out of hiding and caught them by surprise when they were exhausted from the battle. They would not have time to react with her shot then and she would became the winner of this battle royale.
That's what she had planned initially.
However, the outcome she sought was totally different from what happened. First, she never expected that Ren could holding his ground when fought with two supposedly the strongest students in freshman year.
When Marcus suddenly attacked Elena from behind, she was not even surprised as it was within her expectation. She knew Marcus would probably launched a sneak attack on Elena when the latter let her guard down.
Luna thought Marcus should hold himself a bit more and let Elena exhausted her mana more. To be fair, Marcus was not the wisest man she know.
But, the thing that made Elena flustered was Marcus's sudden elimination from the test. She never thought that idiot would used two different artifacts and violated the rules. Pendant that Marcus crushed was an artifact known as 'Pendant of Flame' which acted as a catalyst for Blaze family's member to use their Bloodline Magic.
Marcus still couldn't used his Bloodline Magic properly, that's why he needed that pendant to help him triggered and controlled the magic. For veteran like Marcus's father, Maximilian, he no longer depended that pendant to use 'Pride of Marra'.
Luna was not sure whether Marcus didn't knew his pendant was an artifact or he simply forgot that he already used artifact before, but his carelessness cost him dearly. And Luna also not liked it as it was also interfered her plan.
But, where there was bad thing, there was also good thing happened. Ren surprised her with his magic skills and his battle sense. Although Ren had much lesser mana and magic power, but his understanding on how magic works and his combat ability made him on par with Elena, if not better than her.
Luna herself, gasped in shock when Ren pulled the new concept of magic application and using ice magic sneakily on Elena. Luna was surprised when Ren could used something that even Firaz, the strongest mage in the kingdom, could not produce.
As Luna saw both Elena and Ren were nearly exhausted their mana, she readied her magic gun on her right. When Ren was pointing his sword on Elena's throat, Luna jumped from her hiding spot and pointed her magic gun to her target, Ren.
A green magic formula already appeared at the end of her magic gun's barrel. And Luna was crafting another magic formula on top of it. Then, she shot it to her target.
[Rock Charge]
A bullet made by stone was coming from the magic formula and shot directly towards Ren in full speed. Luna smiled when she released the shot. She confident Ren could not avoid the shot as she caught him in surprise and didn't give him any second to defense himself.
Luna targeted Ren first because he was still quite well compared to Elena. Elena was already injured with Ren's ice spear pierced her body. Luna thought she could easily dealt with Elena after this. As she had an upper hand, she could used element of surprise and dealt with more dangerous one, that's why she targeted Ren first.
However, Luna's jaw dropped when she realised the bullet did not exactly hit Ren as it went through him before he changed into a mist and dissipated into the surrounding air.
"What??!!"
As Luna flustered from what had happened just now, a whisting sound was heard nearby. Luna turned her sight to the where that sound came from and saw Ren was there, leaning her back on the tree while tossing his sword into the air before caught it back.
"Aha, the same magic at the entrance test. I thought you never you use it." Luna regained her wit.
"Need to take extra measure here to deal with sly fox like you. For sure you will ambush me the moment I let my guard down." Ren replied.
"Looks like I underestimate you quite a bit. That magic of yours, I think it was not a simple illusion magic. Perhaps, it was the same 'fusion' technique that you use when you casted ice magic before." Luna tried fishing for information from Ren regarding his 'illusion' magic.
"It was mist." Ren answered calmly. "It was the fusion of fire and water magic while I used water and wind elements to create ice magic. I created my mirages using this magic to confuse my opponents. In facts, it was not a mental type magic like any other illusions."
"So that's why the examiners from the entrance exam could not detected you even though they already cast anti mental magic before." Ren just nodded his head confirming Luna's claim.
"Since when you cast this magic?"
"Since the moment our princess there used Frost Domain. After all, Mist Magic works well in cold temperature. In other words, it was better using this magic when someone used ice magic with large area of effect."
As Ren was busy explaining, Luna prepared her magic in silence and then launched a sneak attack on Ren.
[Rock Cannon]
However, her attack was worthless as the one she targeted was not the real one as the magic went through his body as he turned into mist and destroyed the trees behind.
"Looks like you are not quite a patient person." After Ren said that, he surprised Luna with multiple copies of himself and surrounding Luna.
"Darn.." Luna began deploying her magic. She shot every one of Ren's copies with her magic in hope one of them would be the real one. Otherwise, Ren with all of his copies started talking at the same time.
"You are indeed a quite exceptional mage. You can use Magic Combine this early, although you need that magic gun to assist you. That magic gun surely was the customized one. You programmed 'Wind Boost' spell on that magic gun before the test started. So, every time you use that, it could cast Wind Boost by itself and you combined it with your own magic so you could increase the speed of your projectile magic."
Luna was taken back from Ren's statement. She could not believed as all of thing he said was true. But she never stopped her attacks on Ren's copies increased her pace and shot her magic towards them quicker than before.
She stopped her shot barrage when she noticed all of Ren's copies were already gone as not a single one remained. Then she felt a pain coming from behind as Ren suddenly appeared from behind and stabbed her back with an ice sword.
"You forgot that mist magic was not used for creating mirage only, I also used it to conceal myself from plain sight." Ren whispered on Luna's ear.
As Luna realised her mistake and knew she couldn't beat Ren anymore, she turned her face into a smile and opened her mouth. "You are really something else, Ren Milford."
Luna's body changed into particles of light and vanished from there. Then, Ren heard an announcement not long after that.
[Luna Longbow was eliminated. The remaining participants : 2 person]
Ren heaved a sigh of relief when he heard that. The test had finished. Now he can finally relaxed. He laid down and watched the sky above.
"If those two examiners were affected by your magic although they already used anti mental magic, then how did Professor Siegfried could saw through your magic?"
Ren nearly jumped in surprise when he heard that voice. Ren then get up and turned around. He was shocked as Elena was staring at him intently. Her looks now quite disheveled but was not enough to hide her beauty. The two spears that were stabbed on her had long gone, but the blood from them was still clearly visible reddening her white uniform.
"Ehh, you are still here?" Ren asked innocently. He totally not realised that Elena was still there. When he listened to the announcement before, he was not focused and missed where it states the remaining participants were two.
Elena did not responded on his query and still stared at Ren. Ren stared back at her as well. Then, Ren opened his mouth as an awkward silence began to creep on them after few seconds.
"Why are you staring at me like that?"
"You still not answering my question."
"What question? Ahh..." Ren now remembered it. The surprise from before made him forgotten that question Elena asked. Ren then turned serious and answered her.
"That's because he used Aura. Although you cannot see the exact person, but you can see the silhouette of the concealed person using Aura Sensory."
"How does this Aura Sensory works?" asked Elena curiously.
"It depends on the user. When you focus your aura on your eyes, it could heightened your vision into another level. You can see something far or you can see something in slow motion. In this case, Professor Siegfried used Aura to see something that cannot be seen by naked eye."
Elena began contemplating after she listened that explanation from Ren. After few minutes, she looked at Ren and thanked him.
"Thanks for that. I will learn how to use Aura after this. Now, like I said before, I already lose to you and admitted my defeat. I will surren..." Elena could not finished her sentence as Ren decided to interrupt.
"Wait a moment, princess." Elena stopped her talk and looked Ren in the eyes. Ren continued. "I need to tell you something. After I think thoroughly, I just want to say that I..." He paused a little bit to raise the suspense.
"Surrender from this." After he was saying that, Ren turned into particles of light likes other eliminated student and then vanished from there.
Elena astonished. She blinked a few times, not believing what had happened just now. Suddenly she was alone there.
[Ren Milford was surrendered from the test. The winner of the Battle Royale is Elena Elsgard]
As Elena heard the announcement, she clenched her jaw as the anger started stirring within her before shouted Ren's name at the top of her lungs, ignoring the pain on her shoulder and thigh.
"Rennn Milfordd!!!!!"