The screech of the Storm Cloud Sparrow tore through the arena, a chaotic barrage of soundwaves that rattled the very air.
Luke winced, rubbing his temples as the piercing noise dug into his ears.
“Tch.
How obnoxious,” he muttered, shaking his head at the sheer volume.
“Mana!” “Silence Spell!” Mana’s cheerful voice rang out.
She twirled her staff, the gemstone at its tip flaring with intense arcane energy.
With a graceful sweep of her arm, a massive, glowing magic array materialized in the sky, expanding outward to completely swallow the massive avian beast.
The Storm Cloud Sparrow’s ‘Sound of Chaos’ relied entirely on manipulating ambient mana to amplify its shrieks.
Caught within the suffocating grip of the Silence Spell, that flow of energy abruptly shattered.
The deafening screech choked off, leaving behind a sudden, heavy stillness.
“Much better,” Luke murmured, nodding in deep satisfaction as the ringing in his ears finally faded.
“A little peace and quiet goes a long way.” Across the city, the live broadcast chat exploded with confusion.
Viewers stared at their screens, completely baffled as to how the deafening sonic attack had been neutralized so effortlessly.
They couldn’t comprehend the mechanics of the spell.
Inside the opulent viewing room of the City Lord’s Mansion, the atmosphere shifted.
Cang Fenghua, Principal Gu, and the other dignitaries leaned forward, their hands tightening on their armrests.
“Was that…
a magic-sealing spell?” Da Baiman murmured, her expression twisting into a complicated grimace.
As a Magic Card Master who relied heavily on spell-casting summons, she understood the devastating implications of such an ability.
A hard counter to magic was a nightmare for someone like her.
“To think Luke’s Dark Magician Girl possesses such utility,” Zhao Chengyuan said, his eyes narrowing in calculation.
“A Magic Card Spirit that wields devastating offensive spells while simultaneously mastering anti-magic techniques…
she is, in every sense, a spellcaster’s absolute nemesis.” He paused, shaking his head slightly.
“Still, utility alone doesn’t win battles.
A magic-sealing spell cannot bridge the gap of the skies.
The beast still holds the absolute advantage of flight.” Back inside the unified exam space, the Storm Cloud Sparrow thrashed in fury.
Stripped of its voice, the Six-Star beast let its rage fuel its physical power.
Its colossal wings beat furiously against the air, propelling its massive body out of the Silence Spell’s restrictive zone.
Violent gales whipped through the arena, kicking up dust and debris.
With a vicious flap, the beast launched two massive, razor-sharp wind slashes, hurtling toward Mana at breakneck speed.
Luke merely smiled.
“You aren’t the only one who owns the sky.” Facing the lethal blades of wind, Mana didn’t even flinch.
She simply tapped her staff against the air.
In the blink of an eye, her boots lifted off the ground.
She floated upward, twirling through the sky with an elegant, weightless grace, allowing the violent wind slashes to whistle harmlessly past her.
The live broadcast chat instantly derailed into absolute chaos.
[Holy shit!
My wife can fly?!] [Back off, who are you calling your wife?!
But seriously, she can fly?
That’s completely broken!] [She’s a witch, you idiots!
Flying is basic witch behavior!] The image of Mana dancing through the air, perfectly evading a Six-Star beast’s desperate assault, left millions of viewers screaming at their screens.
In the exam monitoring room, Bei Hanyun and Wang Ping stared in stunned silence.
Her raw destructive power was already terrifying enough to break the established rules of combat, but granting her aerial mobility?
This completely shattered the limits of what an ordinary Magic Card should be capable of.
“Flight…” Cang Fenghua muttered, a sudden look of realization washing over his face.
He had been scrutinizing Luke’s relaxed posture since the massive bird first spawned.
“No wonder the boy never panicked.
This was his trump card all along.” Even a seasoned veteran like the City Lord hadn’t anticipated this level of versatility.
“The Storm Cloud Sparrow has officially lost its only tactical advantage.” “And let’s not forget,” Principal Gu chimed in, exhaling a long, dramatic sigh of relief as he leaned back into his plush leather chair, “her offensive output is more than enough to threaten that overgrown pigeon.” He crossed his legs, instantly resuming his infuriatingly smug, composed demeanor.
Damn this old fox!
Zhao Chengyuan and Da Baiman glared at him, their eyelids twitching in unison.
The urge to drag Principal Gu out of his chair and beat him senseless had never been stronger.
Hovering above the arena, Luke watched the aerial dance with calm eyes.
He knew it wasn’t true, unrestricted flight—Mana was simply manipulating ambient mana to create a localized floating effect, walking on the air itself.
Still, it was more than enough.
“Mana,” Luke called out, his voice cutting through the whistling wind.
“End this.” “Dark Burning Attack!” Mana shouted, her cheerful tone replaced by a surge of intense, focused power.
Against a Six-Star beast, her standard dark magic wouldn’t guarantee a clean one-hit kill.
It was time for her ultimate strike.
Arcane energy flooded into the ruby at the tip of her staff, condensing into a sphere of volatile, blinding pink and black light.
The sheer density of the mana caused the air around her to warp and tremble, the artificial space of the exam dimension groaning under the pressure.
Sensing the catastrophic threat locking onto it, the Storm Cloud Sparrow let out a panicked, voiceless shriek.
In a desperate bid for survival, it expelled a massive surge of thick, stormy clouds from its feathers, completely obscuring its colossal body in a dense smokescreen.
“Hiding won’t save you!” Mana declared, brimming with absolute confidence.
She gripped her staff with both hands and swung it forward like a bat.
The Dark Burning Attack tore across the sky, a roaring comet of magical annihilation that plunged straight into the heart of the storm clouds.
A deafening, earth-shaking boom echoed across the dimension.
A magnificent, terrifying shockwave of pink energy detonated from within the smokescreen, painting the sky in a blinding flash of destruction.
When the explosive light finally faded and the turbulent winds dispersed the remaining clouds, the sky was completely empty.
The towering Six-Star Storm Cloud Sparrow had been entirely vaporized.
The only proof it had ever existed were a few large, azure-blue feathers drifting lazily toward the ground.
Mana flew over, neatly plucking the loot from the air with a satisfied hum.
The live broadcast chat froze for a split second before erupting into a frenzy of text.
[Holy hell!
A Six-Star beast, completely erased in one hit?!
That’s too brutal, I’m addicted to this firepower!] [WTF!
Luke definitely suffers from firepower insufficiency phobia!
He must have dumped every single point of her six-dimensional stats into pure attack power!] Staring at the empty sky, millions of viewers felt their understanding of reality fracture.
“How is that even possible?” Bei Hanyun whispered, her eyes wide and unblinking.
“Even a Six-Star entity…
just gone.” While Mana had displayed incredible tactical versatility with her Silence Spell and aerial maneuvers, to novice Magic Card Masters, raw destructive output was the ultimate metric.
Brute force was a universal language, and Mana spoke it fluently.
From the very beginning of the exam, she had only ever needed one strike to end a fight.
Obliterating Four-Star and Five-Star beasts had already pushed the limits of Bei Hanyun’s comprehension.
But one-shotting a Six-Star boss?
That completely broke the established rules of cultivation.
Could it be…
is the Dark Magician Girl actually a Seven-Star Magic Card?
The sudden thought sent a chill down Bei Hanyun’s spine.
Premium Four-Star summons like the Inferno Knight and Water Azure Beast could easily crush Three-Star enemies, but they struggled against foes of their own rank, and were actively hunted by higher-tier predators like the Wood Spirit Vine.
Mana, however, treated Five-Star and Six-Star threats with the exact same level of casual dismissal.
Many had suspected she was secretly a Six-Star card, but Seven-Star?
That was a world of power novices didn’t even dare to dream about.
The chasm between Six-Star and Seven-Star wasn’t just a step up; it was a canyon separating mortals from legends.
Yet, watching the ashes of a Six-Star beast scatter in the wind, the impossible suddenly seemed very real.
Elsewhere in the monitoring room, Wang Ping of Third High School stared blankly at the screen, his soul slowly leaving his body.
Witnessing that magical nuclear explosion had thoroughly shattered his will to compete.
Maybe intentionally failing the exam isn’t such a bad idea, he thought numbly.
If I repeat a year, at least I won’t have to exist in the same generation as this monster.
Of course, choosing to hold himself back came with its own fatal risks.
He would have to carefully weigh the benefits of avoiding Luke against the absolute certainty of his parents stringing him up by his ankles for a brutal, tag-team beating.
[Akarin’s Note: Enjoying the story?