Xavier clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles turned a bloodless white. Inside his skull, a cacophony of panicked buzzing drowned out all rational thought.

  How could this be? Barely a bell's toll ago, their side had held an absolute, suffocating advantage. Why had the situation devolved into this wretched, blood-soaked nightmare in the blink of an eye?

  It had to be understood: both Gareth and Ignis were the undisputed apex predators among Crimson Lotus City’s Wizard Apprentices. They were the favored children of heaven, elites cultivated with the finest resources of their respective clans.

  Yet, these very titans of their generation had been crushed under Pierce's heel as effortlessly as one might grind ants into the dirt.

  This guy... is he truly just a Wizard Apprentice still studying in an academy?

  Xavier’s heart was a tangled knot of chaos. Fear, cold and venomous as a viper, gnawed relentlessly at his sanity.

  Pierce hasn't even drawn that terrifying Arcane Artifact yet, Xavier thought, his breath coming in ragged gasps. No one knows how many lethal trump cards he still hides in the dark. Even if I descend personally, there is absolutely zero chance of victory. I should... I should just forfeit.

  No, I cannot! The three Formal Wizards leading us would never permit cowardice before the enemy. Perhaps... perhaps I can descend, feign a few exchanges of spells, and the moment I spot an opening, I will immediately surrender?

  Xavier was entirely bereft of courage. The visceral instinct to flee bred like a plague within his mind. He absolutely refused to end up like Gareth and Ignis—pulverized into a state where not even bone fragments remained.

  Just as his internal struggle reached its peak, Wizard Zorander, standing at the vanguard of the giant eagle, suddenly turned his head. He cast a freezing, infinitely apathetic glance at the trembling apprentice.

  "What are you staring blankly at? Get down there!"

  Xavier violently shuddered, snapping back to reality. Daring not to harbor another rebellious thought, he braced himself and prepared to leap from the eagle’s back.

  However, Zorander’s emotionless voice drifted from behind him once more, chilling him to the marrow.

  "If this match is also lost, you need not bother returning alive."

  Xavier’s body convulsed. He whipped his head around in shock, his eyes met by the frost-laden, merciless visages of the three high-and-mighty Formal Wizards.

  In that fleeting second, the last trace of color drained from Xavier’s face. A cruel, crystalline realization pierced his mind.

  Compared to the colossal wealth and territorial rights involved in this planar war, the lives of three mere Wizard Apprentices were worth less than the dust beneath their boots.

  Even if, in the eyes of commoners and lesser mages, they were exalted elites and unrivaled geniuses.

  As long as even a microscopic sliver of hope for victory remained, these three Wizard Lords would never concede. They would certainly never allow him to shrink from battle.

  In this final, life-and-death duel, he either returned bearing the crown of victory, or he died in the mud below. There was absolutely no third option.

  For a moment, Xavier’s limbs turned to ice, feeling as though he had been plunged naked into a glacial abyss.

  It took a long while for him to painfully reclaim his breath. When he did, a gleam of feral, cornered-beast madness flared in the depths of his eyes.

  Since there is no retreat, I can only fight to the death!

  Xavier inhaled a lungful of freezing air and threw himself from the broad back of the Hag Eagle.

  The very instant his boots touched the scorched earth, he launched a frenzied assault like an arrow loosed from a ballista. His voluminous grey sleeves billowed violently. Amidst the sickening, agonizing crunch of warping bone and tearing flesh, both of his arms mutated instantaneously. They transformed into two colossal, black-scaled pythons, each as thick as a barrel, shooting forward in a cross-weave pattern with the speed of lightning.

  The giant pythons unhinged their blood-red maws. Bifurcated, crimson tongues flicked frantically in the air, emitting a spine-chilling hiss as they executed a pincer maneuver, lunging viciously to devour Pierce from the left and right.

  As they closed the distance, the details became horrifyingly clear. The pitch-black scales covering the grotesque serpentine heads stood on end, sharp as overlapping razor blades. Within their maws, rows of fangs—gleaming like barbed longswords—flashed with lethal, venomous intent.

  Pierce’s expression remained as tranquil as a placid lake. With casual grace, he waved his left hand. A violently compressed Fireball howled through the air, accurately blasting the right-side python away in a fiery explosion. Simultaneously, he pivoted slightly, the silver sword in his right hand cleaving the air with a biting gale. The blade struck the charging left python squarely on its skull without a millimeter of deviation.

  Blinding azure electrical arcs detonated with a thunderous roar. The berserk power of the Lightning Rune blasted a gory, mangled crater directly into the massive serpent’s head, sending iron-hard black scales and foul-smelling snake blood splattering in all directions.

  However, this terrifying aberration seemed entirely stripped of its nervous system. Instead of recoiling from the agony, it pushed through the rain of its own blood, unhinging its abyssal maw to bite down with renewed, rabid frenzy. The proximity was so intimate that Pierce could clearly smell the nauseating stench of rot and gore wafting from its throat.

  Pierce raised an eyebrow slightly. His footwork blurred with phantom-like agility, taking a leisurely stroll backward that effortlessly evaded the fatal bite.

  Yet, in this seemingly unthreatening moment, the world before his eyes violently inverted.

  When Pierce’s senses recalibrated, he was shocked to find himself standing in the center of a dead, desolate wasteland. In every direction, a boundless, blood-red void stretched to infinity. The firmament was shattered. Without warning, gargantuan meteors wreathed in apocalyptic flames plummeted from the heavens, smashing into the parched earth and leaving behind scorched, smoke-spewing craters.

  And at this very moment, a doomsday meteor the size of a mountain, carrying a terrifying pressure capable of annihilating the world, was crashing vertically down directly above his head!

  The suffocating oppression crashing into his face, coupled with the visceral palpitation echoing from the depths of his soul, felt flawlessly real. It felt as if in the very next second, he would be ground into a paste of flesh and bone by this irresistible wrath of the heavens.

  However, facing this absolute despair—a scenario that would shatter the psyche of any ordinary apprentice—Pierce’s gaze only wavered for a minuscule fraction of a second. In the blink of an eye, his eyes regained their ancient-well clarity.

  "I see... a mental illusion."

  As Pierce’s softly mocking whisper fell, the apocalyptic horror surrounding him shuddered and stalled. Then, like a tranquil pond shattered by a boulder, the illusion rapidly warped, tore apart, and finally disintegrated completely, dissolving into countless shards of nothingness and light.

  His vision snapped back to the reality of the forested battlefield. In the exact instant he shattered the dreamscape, a deafening whistle of displaced air erupted beside him. A black python’s tail, as thick as a battering ram, whipped into Pierce like a steel flail. The colossal kinetic force launched him backward like a cannonball.

  Seeing his strike connect, Xavier, standing a short distance away, did not reveal a sliver of ecstasy. Instead, his face contorted in sheer, unadulterated horror.

  "That is absolutely impossible! How could this bastard forcibly shatter my bloodline illusion so fast?!"

  One had to understand: even Gareth, whose Spiritual Power had reached the zenith of 120 points, required at least two to three seconds to wrest himself free from the mental control if caught unawares. Yet this monster named Pierce had completely pulverized the dreamscape in less than half a second!

  Could it be... is this anomaly's Spiritual Power attribute even more absurdly high than Gareth's?!

  No, that is impossible!

  Xavier screamed in his mind. The only logical explanation was that Pierce possessed some exceedingly rare, high-tier magical artifact capable of granting massive immunity to illusions and mind-affecting magic!

  "Damned bastard!"

  Xavier cursed through ground teeth, a flash of all-or-nothing savagery igniting in his eyes. With a flick of his right wrist, a short magic staff materialized out of thin air.

  The staff was barely forty centimeters long, carved entirely from some pallid, unknown bone. At its apex sat a profound, abyssal-purple gemstone, radiating a dreamlike, intoxicating, and hazy luminescence.

  Hovering on the mist platform above, Cecily merely stared at the purple gem out of curiosity for a few seconds before a wave of uncontrollable, violent vertigo assaulted the depths of her brain. It felt as though her very soul was being siphoned away.

  She gasped in shock, her back instantly drenched in cold sweat, and forcefully tore her gaze away, not daring to look again.

  "That is the Staff of Illusory Dreams," Yuman’s grave voice sounded beside her. "An exceptionally rare Tier 1 Arcane Artifact capable of massively amplifying the potency of mind and illusion magic."

  A tidal wave of dread crashed through Cecily's heart.

  Xavier, by virtue of the ancient Rage Python bloodline coursing through his veins, was already a master of illusion control. Now, stacking that innate power with the terrifying amplification of the Staff of Illusory Dreams... wouldn't Pierce, standing in the epicenter of the battlefield, face a scenario of near-certain death?!

  Pierce, naturally, detected the eerie fluctuations of the bone staff the moment it appeared.

  While he did not know the artifact's true name, his razor-sharp combat intuition instantly deduced its purpose. It was an amplifier for Xavier's bloodline illusions. The previously relaxed expression on Pierce's face tightened slightly.

  In the combat paradigms of Wizards, standard Mage Armor or heavily enchanted physical plate offered virtually zero resistance against mental illusions. Aside from an exceedingly rare minority of artifacts forged specifically for soul defense, the vast majority of conventional wards were useless against psychic intrusion.

  The only reason Pierce had been able to slice through the previous illusion with such ruthless efficiency was due to his own monstrously high Spiritual Power attribute, combined with the microscopic filtering of mental waves provided by the overlapping energy shields on his skin.

  But with the enemy now wielding a specialized Arcane Artifact to magnify the illusion, treating the next attack as a casual inconvenience would be a fatal miscalculation.

  "However... fortunately for me, the trump cards I brought today far exceed what I have shown."

  Pierce let out a low, breathless chuckle. Without a fraction of hesitation, he channeled his Spiritual Power, triggering the final Magic Tattoo inscribed upon his left leg!

  Instantly, a halo of pure, flawless white light—carrying a faint, underlying aura of sanctity—rippled outward from the sigil's lines like water. It enveloped him from head to toe in an impenetrable barrier.

  Viewed from a distance under the moonlight, Pierce appeared as if he had donned a divine robe woven from pure holy light, rendering him impervious to all corruption.

  This was the apex defensive Arcane Sigil: Sanctuary!

  In the exact same moment the light flared, Xavier’s premeditated, amplified illusion struck. An intangible, formless, yet freezing mental wave crossed the dozens of meters of void in an instant, descending upon Pierce silently like a bone-clinging plague.

  However, the divine white halo on Pierce's skin merely rippled slightly. Like an indestructible cliff face breaking a wave, the Sanctuary aura forcefully isolated and repelled the vast majority of the eerie mental fluctuation.

  Pierce’s expression faltered for a mere thousandth of a second before returning to absolute, crystalline clarity.

  After suffering the domineering purification and attenuation of the Sanctuary tattoo, the residual illusion—despite being amplified by an Arcane Artifact—had less impact on his mind than a standard mental shock. Aside from causing him to blink imperceptibly, it failed to produce any substantive effect.

  Staring fixedly at this outcome, the last vestiges of blood vanished from Xavier’s already pale face. Driven to the brink of utter unwillingness, he frantically squeezed his mental reserves dry, hysterically unleashing another, even more potent wave of illusory shock.

  But cold reality delivered the most despairing counterattack. The result was like tossing a pebble into the sea; it generated not a single ripple.

  Witnessing this, the final spark of vitality faded from Xavier’s face, leaving it as ashen as a corpse.

  Pierce, however, had entirely exhausted his patience for this tedious game of tug-of-war.

  He slowly raised his right palm. In the next instant, a sphere of silver metal, flowing like quicksilver, manifested from his hand without warning. The silver liquid hummed softly in the void, rapidly elongating and stretching. In the blink of an eye, molded by his tyrannical mental force, it coalesced into a two-meter-long, coldly elegant, and lethally slender silver war spear.

  Immediately following, Pierce’s fingertips danced in the air, leaving a trail of afterimages. Exactly five complex, esoteric Lightning Runes materialized in rapid succession. As if answering an irresistible summons, they scrambled over one another to sink into the shaft of the silver spear.

  In a fraction of a heartbeat, the spear erupted with a blinding, terrifying radiance. A layer of sticky, almost tangible azure halos locked the weapon in a suffocating embrace. The acrid stench of ozone saturated the air, and countless berserk electrical arcs leaped and hissed around the spearhead.

  It was the terrifying, physical manifestation of Lightning Elemental Power compressed and refined until it practically achieved a "liquid" state!

  A sudden, bone-deep premonition of fatal doom jolted the stunned Xavier awake. As his despairing gaze locked onto the Silver-Blue Spear in Pierce's hand—a weapon radiating the pure essence of destruction—he felt a piercing chill shoot from his tailbone straight to the crown of his head. His scalp went numb; it felt as though he were plunging into the abyss.

  I will die!

  If I cannot block this strike, I will absolutely be blasted into powder so fine not even dust will remain!

  Enveloped by the maddening shroud of pure mortal terror, Xavier’s previously handsome face twisted into the grotesque visage of a demon. He roared until his vocal cords tore. The two terrifying pythons mutated from his arms frantically withdrew to defend him. Their massive, thick bodies coiled and intertwined like colossal cables, forming two indestructible black fortress walls guarding his front and back.

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  Simultaneously, a chorus of hair-raising hisses erupted. A dense, boiling tide of venomous snakes poured frantically from beneath his voluminous grey robes. These serpents wove together in mid-air, rapidly forming a shield wall composed entirely of writhing flesh and scales.

  But it wasn't enough! The necklace around his throat, the bracers on his wrists, the pendants on his belt... a full five defensive magical items of Faint-Aura grade or higher erupted with dazzling mana fluctuations in the exact same instant. Five magical shields of varying colors overlapped layer by layer, sealing him completely within an absolute, impenetrable turtle shell.

  In the precise moment Xavier hysterically exhausted every resource to construct this awe-inspiring ultimate defense—

  Pierce’s deep, ruthless eyes darkened. The muscles in his right arm coiled and snapped. With a vicious whip of his arm, he hurled the fully charged silver-blue spear like a god casting the Spear of Judgment!

  BOOM——!!

  A terrifying sonic boom, capable of tearing a man's eardrums to shreds, abruptly detonated in the skies above the silent forest.

  The silver-blue spear, swathed in tribulation lightning, tore through the void with unparalleled, berserk brutality, resembling a genuine bolt of divine punishment.

  In a thousandth of a second—a speed entirely imperceptible to the naked eye—the spear traversed the spatial distance, carrying world-ending momentum to smash into the vanguard black-scaled python. The giant serpent unleashed a roar of fury, opening its blood-soaked maw to foolishly attempt to devour the weapon. Yet, in the infinitesimally brief moment its fangs brushed the spear tip...

  KA-DOOM!!

  An indescribable, terrifying force violently discharged. The python’s unimaginably massive head shattered without suspense, bursting like a watermelon struck by a sledgehammer, instantly dissolving into a sky-filling mist of scarlet blood!

  Once the overture of destruction was struck, there could be no cessation. The residual, headless bulk of the giant python followed swiftly into oblivion. Wherever the unstoppable edge of the silver-blue spear passed, the python’s thick torso swelled grotesquely, like a balloon injected with high-pressure gas. Then, accompanied by a sickening tearing sound, flesh and scales ruptured section by section under the berserk lightning!

  In the span of a single breath, the colossal black-scaled python—a beast capable of tearing tigers and leopards limb from limb—was reduced to a shower of raining blood and debris.

  The second python guarding the rear had no margin to even struggle. It was pulverized into ash under the same tyrannical lightning, joining its companion in death.

  As for the scalp-numbing wall of flesh composed of countless interwoven venomous snakes, it detonated the moment it made contact with the spear's edge! Hundreds, thousands of serpents were instantly carbonized by the wildly dancing, ultra-high-temperature electrical arcs. In the blink of an eye, they were burned to pitch-black cinders, finally reduced to flying ash in the shockwave, scattering into the scorched air.

  After effortlessly crushing three formidable layers of physical and biological defense with an invincible, sweeping momentum, the terrifying velocity of the silver-blue spear showed not a single sign of waning! Like an ancient, utterly enraged behemoth of thunder, it barbarically tore through the void. Carrying an aura of destruction akin to a blazing meteor crashing into the earth, it viciously slammed into the cluster of magical shields—Xavier’s final, desperate reliance!

  CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

  Accompanied by a continuous string of despair-inducing sounds of shattering glass, the five magical barriers—wards usually capable of withstanding prolonged bombardments from peak apprentice-level spells—could not hold for even a microsecond before the peerless edge of the silver-blue spear! The light flickered violently for a fraction of an instant before all magical protections burst like fragile soap bubbles, ruthlessly annihilated and penetrated in a flash!

  Under the gaze of Xavier’s pupils—shrunken to pinpoints by absolute, terror-stricken despair—the silver-blue spear, like the scythe of the Grim Reaper, carried a streak of mournful lightning and plunged heavily, without an ounce of resistance, straight through his fragile chest!

  Immediately following, the extremely compressed, wildly surging Lightning Elemental energy within the spear entirely lost its restraints, erupting outward with apocalyptic force!

  RUMBLE-RUMBLE-ROAR——!!!

  A lightning tempest akin to a Category Twelve hurricane of destruction, centered on Xavier’s body, swept outward with mad abandon in all directions. Wherever it passed, the solid bedrock shattered and collapsed like brittle biscuits. Uncounted tons of soil and rubble were drawn into the vortex of the thunderstorm and instantly vaporized.

  A blinding, terrifying brilliance of lightning suddenly bloomed within the forest. If one were to look down from ten thousand meters above, the spectacle would be breathtakingly majestic—it resembled a colossal, inverted bowl forged of pure, spectral-blue electricity, forcibly overlapping a vast area hundreds of meters across, violently erasing all life and matter within that space!

  Standing in the safe zone, Cecily's expression was utterly slack. She stared blankly at this horrific scene, resembling the divine retribution descending from mythological legends. Her mouth was dry, her throat tight, and her heart pounded against her ribs like a heavy war drum.

  Her entire understanding of reality had been deeply, thoroughly shattered by the ultimate destruction unfolding before her.

  The power of Pierce's strike... it was actually even more terrifying, even more unreasonable than the Thunderburst Arcane Sigil he had used to instantly kill Ignis!

  Such natural-disaster-level destructive power genuinely made one frantically doubt in their heart—was this really a conventional method that a Wizard Apprentice, one who had yet to condense a Spirit Crystal, could deploy?!

  Even if an ordinary Formal Wizard intervened personally, the sheer presence of the attack might not exceed this!

  A long, long time passed.

  When the sky-filling, scorched smoke and dust were finally swept away by the gentle breeze, an incredibly massive, bottomless crater—measuring a horrifying three to four hundred meters in diameter—was revealed upon the previously flat forest floor. The terrifying fault lines along its edge looked as if some unknown, ancient astral behemoth had opened its abyssal maw and taken a massive bite out of the earth.

  The center of the crater was entirely barren. Aside from the vitrified soil that was still sizzling and emitting a pungent, burnt odor, absolutely nothing remained.

  Xavier’s flesh and blood, a vessel he had once prided as a genius, had been utterly and completely eradicated from existence in the lightning storm, leaving not a single trace behind.

  Accompanied by a faint sound of parting air, Pierce’s tall, straight silhouette drifted down like a feather, landing silently in the very dead center of the terrifying crater.

  His apathetic gaze swept over the devastation. Then, he slightly raised his right palm.

  As if pulled by some invisible magnetic field, the scorched, glass-like earth beneath his feet suddenly churned. Thick dust and rubble automatically parted to the sides. A magic staff—which, despite enduring the baptism of such a horrifying lightning storm, still emitted a faint purple luminescence—floated up from the ruins and landed securely in his palm.

  It was none other than the Staff of Illusory Dreams.

  Pierce carefully examined this rare spoil of war in his hand. After sensing that, although its internal reserves were depleted, the core mana circuitry’s mental fluctuations remained intact, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

  "Luck is on my side. This Tier 1 Arcane Artifact merely exhausted its mana reserves during the energy shockwave; its physical structure suffered no catastrophic damage. As long as I take it back and nourish it at a mana node for a while, it will fully recover... Otherwise, this would have been a massive loss."

  Moments ago, when facing Xavier’s manic turtle-shell defense, Pierce had a sudden stroke of inspiration. He did not release the spear using conventional attack methods. Instead, he deliberately controlled the colossal energy contained within the five perfectly stacked Lightning Runes, holding it back until the exact moment the spear penetrated the enemy, and then unreservedly detonating it all at once.

  Even he had not anticipated that this extreme method of energy venting would produce an instantaneous burst of power so horrifyingly potent. This momentary peak damage far exceeded the data he had collected during safe testing in the enclosed spell laboratory!

  Based on a rough estimation of the heaven-punishing destructive force just witnessed, the instantaneous burst power of that strike... very likely approached infinity, or perhaps even broke through the terrifying threshold of 400 degrees!

  Under this devastating power—comparable to the full-force strike of a Formal Wizard—there was absolutely no Wizard still lingering in the Apprentice realm who could withstand it head-on, whether relying on the physical body or conventional defensive methods!

  Pierce calculated inwardly, arriving at a highly objective conclusion: Even if I were standing in Xavier’s position, unless I possessed precognition of the danger and ample preparation time to forcibly stack hundreds of reinforced Mage Armors upon myself, I, too—despite a constitution far exceeding my peers—would be instantly vaporized into ash by a lightning detonation of this magnitude.

  "The lethality of this trump card is undeniable, but the drawback is equally glaring—it is a bit too costly in terms of lost loot." Pierce looked at the empty crater and shook his head with a touch of exasperation. The highly valuable magic items and Dimension Pouch Xavier originally carried had all been reduced to cosmic dust in the lightning storm.

  "Furthermore... the drain on Spiritual Power is indeed excessively severe."

  Feeling the intense weakness and fatigue radiating from the depths of his soul, Pierce couldn't help but frown slightly. To perfectly control the instantaneous detonation of that berserk energy during that earth-shattering peak strike, it had violently siphoned away nearly half of his massive Spiritual Power reserves like an industrial pump!

  Having endured this high-intensity, back-to-back bloodbath of a one-versus-three gauntlet, compounded by this final, overdrafting burst, the Spiritual Power within his sea of consciousness was now nearing the absolute redline of depletion.

  If an elite apprentice in peak condition were to jump out right now, he feared he would truly be forced into a bitter struggle.

  Fortunately, this cruel duel—which dictated the fate and profit distribution of countless individuals—had finally drawn its curtain with Xavier’s fall.

  Pierce concealed his slight exhaustion and slowly raised his head. His gaze, as tranquil as the abyss, pierced the lingering smoke and looked straight up at the colossal Hag Eagle high above. His eyes met the murderous glares of the three Formal Wizards leading the Crimson Lotus City delegation.

  Led by the veteran wizard named Zorander, these three Formal Wizards—who had previously been so high and mighty, believing victory was in their grasp—now possessed expressions so profoundly ugly and gloomy, it looked as if they had each swallowed a dead fly whole. They glared down at Pierce in the crater, their eyes radiating a biting, winter-cold killing intent without the slightest attempt at concealment.

  However, facing the terrifying pressure and death stares of three Formal Wizards—auras sufficient to mentally break an ordinary apprentice—Pierce acted entirely unbothered.

  Not only did he display not a fraction of cowardice or fear, but the corners of his mouth even curled upward slightly, sketching a faint smile brimming with mockery and provocation. Then, under the fire-breathing gazes of the three Formal Wizards, he slowly, methodically, and with exquisite elegance, took the Staff of Illusory Dreams—the Tier 1 Arcane Artifact representing the heritage of Crimson Lotus City—and brazenly stowed it into his personal Dimension Pouch.

  Witnessing this highly provocative gesture with absolute clarity, the corners of Zorander’s eyes twitched violently, out of his control. His fists, hidden within his voluminous sleeves, cracked audibly.

  But he was, after all, a Formal Wizard who had weathered countless storms. He knew that under the rules witnessed by the Astral Coalition, a loss was a loss. Any display of impotent rage would only bring further humiliation. He drew a deep breath of freezing air, forcibly suppressing the churning murderous intent within his heart, and withdrew his gaze from Pierce. He turned instead to the white mist platform opposite them, looking at Elric and the others, who were observing them with the posture of victors.

  "Hmph... Aurora City has won this round's share contest for the new plane."

  His voice was so cold it felt as though ice chips were falling from it. Having dropped this humiliating admission of Crimson Lotus City's absolute defeat, Zorander had no face left to remain. He swung his staff violently. The colossal Hag Eagle beneath his feet let out a hoarse shriek, flapped its wings to conjure a gale, and without looking back, transformed into a black shadow that fled miserably toward the distant horizon.

  Mentor Yuman’s robes whipped in the wind. She crossed her arms, watching the defeated scurry away in disgrace, a completely unhidden sneer of mockery curling her full, ruby lips.

  And when she turned her head, casting her gaze back to the young apprentice Pierce—who was utilizing the Levitate spell to slowly float back to the white mist platform—her profound, night-sky eyes uncontrollably shone with an unprecedented, fiercely bright light.

  It was not just her. Even Elric, known for his rigid strictness, and the Masked Wizard, who never revealed his true face and perpetually exuded an aura of chilling gloom, both broke precedent. Beneath the mask and upon the aged face, an unconcealable, heartfelt smile of profound relief and pride flashed simultaneously.

  To be completely honest, when their side had lost two champions consecutively and stood at an absolute disadvantage—when Pierce was forced to step onto that death-filled arena as the sole, desperate survivor—these three Formal Wizards representing the will of Aurora City had, deep down, prepared for the worst. They held no unrealistic fantasies about this seemingly insurmountable duel.

  After all, miracles were called miracles precisely because they were so impossibly rare. A "one-versus-three" legendary exploit, dripping with individual heroism, might sound blood-pumping in a bard's knightly tale, but in the cruel, rigorous combat systems of Wizards, turning it into reality was as difficult as ascending to the heavens!

  Furthermore, standing opposite him were not random stray cats or dogs meant for slaughter, but three fully armed, apex elite apprentices representing the absolute highest combat standard of another massive Wizard City!

  But who could have imagined that this Pierce—who appeared perhaps a bit too young—would repeatedly unleash such terrifying power and horrifying methods on this highly scrutinized, desperate stage? Methods that shattered common sense and surpassed the very limits of the apprentice realm!

  With a posture of absolute coldness, absolute dominance, and absolute suppression, he swept through the three arrogant, peerless geniuses like the autumn wind scattering fallen leaves, executing them seamlessly! Ultimately, relying on his own strength alone, he turned the tide in this tempest that seemed destined to capsize them, securing the high-stakes gamble concerning countless resources and interests for Aurora City!

  This miraculous, heaven-defying turnaround truly left everyone present feeling an extreme sense of disbelief and shock, as if they had plunged into a dream!

  This shock was so profound that when the magically depleted, slightly fatigued Pierce finally landed back on the soft white mist platform, even the Masked Wizard—whose cold, iron-blooded demeanor usually terrified apprentices—broke precedent. He pierced the alienation brought by his icy mask, proactively offering the victor a highly rare smile of approval and affirmation, nodding to him with utmost solemnity.

  One could not blame these high-ranking Formal Wizards for losing their composure. After all, the political and resource implications behind this bilateral inter-city duel were simply too massive. The final victory of this battle directly dictated the absolute dominant control over more than 70% of the core resource harvesting and profit distribution in the newly discovered Divine Plane—the Plane of Turin!

  Now that this colossal 70% share had been forcibly snatched by Pierce, it was foreseeable that for decades to come, all Wizard factions within Aurora City, including these leading mentors, would reap tremendously massive, substantive benefits from this resulting ocean of resource allocation. Pierce's actions had undoubtedly achieved a merit of monumental proportions for the city's entire Wizard conglomerate.

  "You did exceedingly well. One could even say you far exceeded all our expectations." Elric walked forward briskly. His perpetually taut, aged face was now covered in a sincere, amiable smile. He looked at Pierce with burning eyes and made a promise in a rare, gentle tone:

  "Once we return safely to The Spire Academy aboard the Cloud Skiff, I will personally draft a comprehensive report. I will document, word for word, the crisis-averting, monumental merit you achieved in this planar war, and submit it to the highest ruling authority, the Council of Dawn. For such a heaven-shaking contribution, the rewards bestowed by the Council will absolutely not be a small sum. Whether it is high-tier knowledge, rare potions, or powerful Arcane Artifacts—as long as it is a resource urgently required for your current stage of cultivation, you may spend this transit time calculating your desires, and boldly present your demands to the Council when the time comes."

  Hearing Elric’s solemn promise, Pierce’s spirit—previously somewhat lethargic from the excessive overdraft of Spiritual Power—jolted awake like parched earth receiving sweet rain. He took a deep breath and immediately nodded respectfully in acknowledgment. "Thank you for your cultivation, Mentor Elric. I will remember this."

  Slaughtering his way through the labyrinth, risking his life on this desperate stage... was it not all for this very promise of lavish rewards from the higher-ups?

  With this world-shattering merit acting as his foundational bargaining chip, the rare auxiliary resource he had obsessed over—the one indispensable for his advancement to Formal Wizard, the Spirit Surrogate—was finally, definitively secured.

  As soon as he returned to the city and smoothly retrieved the precious Spirit Surrogate from the Council, adding it to the auxiliary potions he had already prepared, he could immediately enter closed-door cultivation. Without any lingering worries, he would begin his assault on the ultimate shackle of the apprentice stage, attempting to condense the symbol of the transcendent—the Spirit Crystal!

  That realm of the Formal Wizard, dreamed of by all apprentices, the realm that commanded rules and truth, was now within his arm's reach. It was no longer a distant horizon!

  Cecily, who had been standing obediently beside Mentor Yuman, finally recovered from the aftershocks of the terrifying, god-like battle. Meeting Pierce's gaze, she blinked playfully, then unhesitatingly raised a thumb toward her tide-turning companion—a gesture representing extreme admiration and praise.

  Looking at her endearingly charming demeanor, Pierce’s taut nerves relaxed, and he returned a gentle, tranquil smile.

  Suddenly, as if recalling something, he slowly turned his head, casting his gaze back down to the bloody battlefield that had been bombed into a scarred, moon-like surface.

  A gentle breeze, carrying the faint scent of ozone and blood, brushed past, lifting the hem of Pierce's robe. He sighed softly in his heart.

  It is a pity for Sutherland. His luck was simply too poor, running into the enemy's ace, Gareth, right from the start. He failed to survive to the end, dying miserably beneath those eerie, blood-colored vines.

  Otherwise, had he lived to see the end of the match, relying on the massive resource rewards distributed from Aurora City's total victory, the young legionnaire who had struggled bitterly at the peak of the apprentice realm might truly have carved out a sliver of hope to break his chains and ascend to a Formal Wizard.

  However, in this cruel Wizarding World, the law of the jungle is the only truth. Fortunately, I managed to blast Gareth—his murderer—into headless meat paste with the force of a thunderbolt during our frontal clash. That can barely be considered avenging the fallen comrade.

  Thinking of this, Pierce couldn't help but sneer inwardly. Speaking of which, Crimson Lotus City's losses in this planar share duel were catastrophic, cutting straight to the bone.

  Not only had they suffered the humiliation of losing this crucial opening battle under the watchful eyes of all, but they had also thoroughly, completely buried Gareth, Ignis, and Xavier—three new-generation elite geniuses with profound family heritages and immense future potential—in the soil of this foreign battlefield within the Plane of Turin, leaving not even ashes behind. Such a generational wipeout was a devastating, heart-bleeding price for those specific Wizard families to bear.

  Even more critically, in the overall strategic gambit concerning the ownership rights of the new plane, Crimson Lotus City was now trailing one highly passive step behind. In the upcoming series of high-tier matches, if they made even a single mistake and lost one more bout, this months-long covert and overt war between the two cities would be conclusively terminated. When that time came, they would be forced to swallow their pride, sign the contract, and hand over the colossal, paradigm-shifting wealth of the Turin Plane to Aurora City on a silver platter.

  I wonder when the Council plans to hold the remaining two high-tier duels that will decide the ultimate fate...

  A curious thought flashed through Pierce's mind. But he quickly shook his head in self-mockery, tossing the notion out. It was a concern unbefitting his current station.

  Forget it. If the sky falls, the giants will hold it up. The strategic gambits and slaughters between High-Tier Wizards are far beyond my current qualifications to worry about or interfere with.

  Right now, the most important—and indeed, the only core matter—for him was to return to the academy safely, rest and recuperate, and then head to the Council to claim his rightful spoils of war. He needed to make the most flawless, foolproof preparations for the upcoming, barrier-breaking battle to condense his Spirit Crystal.

  Becoming a Formal Wizard was the first and only ticket to the vast, boundless truths of the endless Astral Plane!