A group of six people arrived after a few minutes of us waiting. During that time I learned that the expression "a laugh from Zwriniz" means something that happens while someone is talking about it, the same as Earth's "speaking of the devil'.

The group consisted of two humans men, a guy with pointy ear and wood-like horn in the middle of his head that bended backwards that I suspect is an elf, a small guy with a beard that was as tall as he was and two lioness women, the clothes that they were using were just like a sports team and wouldn't seem strange in a soccer's team at all, with tight colored leather that glowed with magic on my vision, an emblem on the right side of their chest that looked like an inverted pentagram with strange symbols around the circle that surrounds it.

“Staash, Kora, we came here to challenge you to another round of Manaball!” One of the lioness said, standing in front of her group and looking at both Staash and Kora, almost ignoring the rest of us.

“Didn’t…Didn’t we just beat you, like, last week?” Staash told the lioness.

“It was two weeks, actually, but that doesn’t matter, we reflected on what we did wrong and studied new ways to beat you” She answered.

“You see that we have guests, don’t you?” Kora said to the group.

The group looked at us and the bearded man waves in our direction, I waved back.

“They can participate, if they so wish to do” The lioness told Kora.

“Wouldn’t…That be impoli-...” Staash was saying but was interrupted by the lioness.

“Oh, and we brought enough food that would make royal chefs cry” She said.

“Why didn’t you start with that? Let’s move towards our usual place” Staash told them and looked at our direction. “You guys are free to participate, the same can be said about our match”

Everyone walked towards another clearing on the forest, this one much larger than the last one, at least the size of a soccer field, with a stone ground. Kora moved her hand and made an ice table with two ice benches for us to sit, except the two of them, as they were way bigger for the small bench she made. Only me and Jana moved to sit on the benches and we noticed, looking between ourselves and then at the other with a questioning look caused the bearded man to speak up.

“Ay, de foods coming after da match” He spoke.

“I would loooooooooooove to play a match of Manaball, but I’m not that good to play right now, so,” Amity said, almost crying and moving her arms to put them in her chest, as if she was feeling pain. “Even if it hurts me to say, I’m going to pass this one”

“What about you two?” One of the humans said, looking at me and Jana. “Wanna play?”

“I don’t know the rules and neither how to play” Said Jana.

“I don’t know how to play too, never heard of the game until a few minutes ago” I said.

“It’s no problem, it’s really easy. We’ll explain as we play” The other lioness said.

I nodded and walked towards them, but Jana stayed behind together with Amity and Zenshin.

“I prefer to just watch, thanks” She said.

“No problem, you can wait at the table while we mop the floor with those guys faces” Staash said.

We moved to the middle of the clearing, and the elf pulled a small bronze pillar from thin air. it dropped with a thud, and the ground beneath it cracked, showing how heavy was that pillar. The pillar was almost a rectangular brass bar, but it was pointy at the top and was covered in dense runes and scriptures that I didn’t understand. The elf began pressing some runes that began to glow in shades of blue, red, green and orange until all of them glowed in green and faded. 

The pillar suddenly shone in my vision as it began drawing ambient magicules into it to charge itself. after a few seconds of it drawing magicules to power itself, it began to float in the air, opening in four parts that shot outwards until they were in a relative position to each other, being longer than wider. the pointy top of the pillar remained in the middle while the other four parts recognized themselves, after they were set, the top part floated down until it rested on the ground, suddenly a net-like grid spread from the four pillars and surround us, forming a ground, walls and even a ceiling of net-like grid. The pointy top began to transform into a sphere.

The moment the sphere finished transforming, the lioness that first spoke walked towards it and began to speak to me.

“This is a portable field, even if you need to have five thousand strength to even lift the damn thing, if you look behind me and behind you, you’ll see a circle in the grid” I looked at the grid behind her and her team and behind me, Staash and Kora and saw the mark she mentioned, It looked like there was a hole in the net-like grid in the walls. “Those are called “goals”, the objective of the game is to hit them with this ball here, but not only that, the ball needs to be charged with a spell or just mana charged magicules”

“We’ll use the simple rules set for simplicity for you. The rules are as follows: you cannot use augmentation spells of any kind except speed augmentation. The only spells that are permitted are the ones you can put in the ball, meaning no spells that affect the play field in any way. You can hit the ball using any part of your body, and we recommend you to at least wrap the part of your body you’ll use to hit the ball with magic, you’ll see why when the game starts. Teleport magic is allowed once every two minutes, so time them well. The game ends when either team scores 100 points or the 1 hour time ends up, whichever comes first. Do you have any questions?” She said.

“From the rules, none that I can think of right now. Though, I want to know… What are your names” I asked.

The lioness smiled.

“My name is Celeber, I’m the team’s leader, and behind me are Eugeo, Eleno, Joh’ner, Innev and B’erene” Celeber, the lioness, said as she pointed to the two humans, the bearded man, the elf and the other lioness. “With that out of the question, let’s begin. The game will start as soon as the ball hit the floor”

Celeber touched the ball and it began to float in the air. Circles appeared in the ground around everyone except Celeber, for her another circle appeared near her team. In the walls behind each team the symbol in the humania language that represents the number 0 appeared and in the other two walls the symbols that represents the one hour time appeared, but it didn’t start yet.

Celeber walked back towards her circle and turned to face us, and as soon as she finished turning, the ball fell to the ground, and the moment it touched the ground a loud buzz sound echoed through the field, signaling the start of the game.