Chapter 636

Volume 1 Chapter 636

636.

Lil rushed ahead with astonishing velocity.

Emerging from the earth, a massive iron auger intercepted Lil mid-dash.

Boom—!

The drill’s pointed extremity collapsed and disintegrated into fragments.

Even so, gripping her war hammer, Lil didn’t lose any of her momentum.

“Our attacks are useless!”

“Aaaahhh!”

“Hold her back! Do something to halt her!”

The sorcery pupils shrieked in panic.

Those from the knight department who foolishly attempted to obstruct her path had already been swatted away by her massive weapon, sent crashing into the distance.

Right then, a heavy-armored student carrying a massive, dense shield stepped forward to intercept her.

“Look!”

“Rex is stepping up!”

Rex Stoner.

He was an elite pupil boasting top-tier marks in the third-year combat division.

His defining trait was being the quintessential frontline tank.

His movements were sluggish, and his offensive maneuvers were predictable.

Yet, his blocking capabilities were uncontested among his peers in the same grade.

He truly held the title of the absolute ultimate shield within the third-year class.

The most sought-after ally for any wizard looking to form a balanced squad!

Planted like an immovable boulder, Rex anchored himself right in her trajectory.

“My name is Rex Stoner! I’ll hold this line until my last breath!”

“Incredible! You’re amazing, Rex! Let’s go out after this!”

“Shut your mouth!”

Growling with intense focus, Rex braced his protective barrier firmly against the dirt as he braced for the oncoming girl’s assault.

Crash—!

“Hah!”

Embedding the rim of his armor into the earth, Rex pushed his weight forward.

Lil brought her heavy hammer down hard onto the metal surface.

Crash—! Thud! Kaboom boom boom—!

A deafening shockwave reverberated from the violent impact of the two armaments.

The terrain beneath Rex’s boots fractured and collapsed downward.

Severe fissures spread across the nearby soil from the sheer force.

“He blocked it!”

“That’s our Rex for you!”

“Naturally! He can even endure the strikes of Celia and Duran!”

His victory tally in one-on-one matches was somewhat lacking compared to the academy’s elite because he possessed almost no offensive power.

Still, when tasked purely with absorbing damage and anchoring a position, Rex was unparalleled.

Sensing the tremendous pressure vibrating through his barrier, Rex called out with absolute certainty.

“Senior! You won’t step a single inch further…”

Slam—!

Without a moment’s hesitation, Lil unleashed a follow-up strike.

Boom! Crack! Boom boom boom boom!

“Gah?!”

A relentless barrage of immensely weighty blows rained down without pause.

Shouting in sheer disbelief, Rex found his lower body being driven deep into the dirt.

Crash! Crunch—!

With the boy now hammered into the earth up to his neck, leaving only his defensive barrier visible, Lil brought down a final, devastating blow to conclude the encounter.

Driven into the terrain like a literal spike, Rex lost consciousness from the immense shock.

Deemed unable to continue fighting, his body was instantaneously warped from the field.

To be fair, a solitary strike from Lil didn’t pack quite the same concentrated punch as a maximum effort from Celia or Duran.

The true terror lay in the fact that her strikes never stopped, manifesting as an endless torrent of destruction.

Having neutralized the primary defender, Lil resumed her forward sprint.

“What kind of monster is she! She’s more solid than a vanguard!”

The third-years cried out in despair.

With each rotation of her weapon, upperclassmen were launched through the air in all directions.

The one who finally intercepted her relentless charge was Warredon.

Snatch—!

He caught the handle of Lil’s descending war hammer using his bare arm.

A fierce contest of brute strength began between the two elemental summoners.

“Impressive…”

Warredon made a clicking sound with his tongue.

“I see your reputation as a freak of nature is well-earned.”

“Warredon is just as terrifying!”

“It’s a clash of the titans!”

“Show some respect to our upperclassmen!”

Opening her eyes wide, Lil exerted her force and shoved Warredon away.

Swoosh—!

“Keep her pinned, Warredon!”

Airborne above the battlefield, Celia brought her blade down in a sweeping arc aimed directly at Lil.

Spotting the danger, Lil forcefully broke her deadlock with Warredon.

She leaped away dynamically from the spot to evade the descending blade.

“You won’t escape!”

Blazing—!

A scorching wave of heat and fire surged toward Lil’s position.

Yet, before the searing energy could touch her, Lil burst forward with an incredible burst of velocity, dodging the inferno entirely.

“How can she be that quick?!”

Celia gasped, thoroughly caught off guard by a level of agility that defied her predictions.

Right at that moment.

Ssssshh—!

The ambient air grew freezing cold in an instant.

“Ice World.”

Crack, snap, freeze—!

As Chloe finished chanting her incantation, a massive wave of frost locked onto Lil.

Snap—!

Before she could adjust her posture, Lil was completely encased in a solid block of frost.

“Brilliant work, Chloe,”

Nella remarked in admiration while administering medical spells to the wounded comrades.

Up to this point, the third-year platoon had been desperately forming a barricade solely to keep Lil from reaching Chloe, who was their primary spellcaster.

“We were supposed to be the hunters, but we ended up as the prey. We completely misjudged our Senior’s capabilities,”

Chloe admitted, a bead of cold sweat running down her brow.

Honestly, she hadn’t been able to utilize her maximum magical output.

The pressure Lil exerted was so overwhelming that a single moment of doubt would have allowed her to close the distance before any high-tier spell could be cast.

“She read us like an open book,”

Chloe muttered, shaking her head as she analyzed the previous exchange.

While her assault appeared reckless and direct, Lil had actually been picking apart the specific vulnerabilities of every single third-year student.

Such a feat would be entirely out of reach unless she possessed an exhaustive understanding of every junior’s fighting style and traits.

“There is definitely a lot we can learn from her approach…”

Crack, splinter, snap—!

Just as Celia nodded in agreement, deep fractures began spreading across the frozen prison holding Lil.

The expressions of the surrounding upperclassmen instantly turned grim.

Shatter—!

Bursting free from the frozen shell, Lil instantly launched her war hammer straight up into the air.

Whizz—!

The underclassmen watched in utter bewilderment as Lil simply looked upward into the heavens.

“She has supreme strength, unmatched speed, and flawless defense? Does she have any weak spots at all?”

“Our only option is to use sheer numerical advantage to suppress her!”

“Look, she threw her weapon away! She’s unarmed right now!”

“Did someone mention I don’t have a weapon?”

Lil smirked.

“To an elementalist, our absolute deadliest instruments are the elementals themselves, right?”

Free of her physical hammer, Lil commenced the manifestation of her spirits.

Scanning the stunned faces of her juniors, she declared resolutely,

“This battle is far from finished.”

“Perfect! I’ve caught— Whoa?!”

Iliana, who had successfully intercepted Elena by utilizing her supreme swiftness to close the gap, initially voiced a celebratory shout.

However, her joy turned to shock when Lil’s heavy war hammer whistled past her nose with frightening velocity, forcing her to instinctively leap backward.

And during that split-second distraction.

Rattle rattle—!

Bind! Bind!

“Iliana!”

Luminescent shackles forged from raw magical energy manifested and coiled around Iliana’s limbs, pinning her in place.

“Ow, ow, ow, let go!”

Iliana cried out as the ethereal bonds tautly stretched her arms and legs.

Seeing her comrade in trouble, Chelsea attempted to dash forward to liberate her, but a barrage of radiant tethers erupted from a glowing sigil to block her.

Clicking her tongue in frustration, Chelsea twisted her body to evade the light constructs.

Meanwhile, the restrained Iliana looked up with watery eyes as a magical catalyst was pointed directly at her face.

“Could you spare me just this one time?”

“Absolutely not.”

Flare—!

An immense vortex of arcane energy gathered at the apex of Elena’s implement as she delivered her cold refusal.

Determined to be knocked out of commission, Iliana’s figure dissolved as she was teleported out of the arena.

A violent tempest began to howl all around Elena.

Whirrrr—!

Squinting her eyes at the incoming vortex that threatened to engulf her, Elena released an immense wave of mana from within herself.

Boom—!

“She completely extinguished my brother’s spell through sheer, unadulterated mana?!”

Chelsea’s jaw dropped in disbelief.

“Are you aware?”

“…!”

A sudden chill ran down Chelsea’s spine as a voice whispered right behind her ear.

“Who possesses the absolute highest concentration of raw magical capacity within Lumerin?”

Whipping her head around, Chelsea saw Elena hovering serenely with her legs crossed, peering down with an incredibly poised demeanor.

“That title has belonged to me for the past five years.”

Elena offered a gentle, serene grin.

There was another moniker associated with the prominent figure recognized as the sovereign of Lumerin.

Slothfulness.

She had never been particularly diligent and paid little heed to the academy’s curriculum.

She dominated her peer group purely through her overwhelming natural genius, effortlessly ascending to the absolute zenith of the institution’s rankings.

It was only after Leo assumed leadership of the student council that Elena finally found the motivation to actually apply herself.

Spark—! Spark—!

Zoom—!

Suddenly, Duran and Eliza materialized on opposite flanks of the levitating wizard.

Their collective objective in engaging her in aerial combat was singularly focused:

To prevent Elena from casting any wide-scale, devastating zone incantations.

This explained the tactical gathering of the vanguard’s swiftest members.

Chelsea, Duran, Eliza, and the previously removed Iliana.

Backed up from afar by Abbad on the sorcery side.

These were the strategic assets deployed specifically to corner and neutralize Elena while she was airborne.

“Your coordination wasn’t half bad,”

Elena remarked, having effortlessly executed a brief blink spell to relocate as she idly spun a lock of her hair around her finger.

“Had you spent even a fraction of the effort analyzing myself and Lil as you spent obsessing over Leo, you might have actually won this. However…”

Elena’s grin widened significantly.

“Tell me honestly. Did you even consider us a threat worth planning for?”

“…”

A heavy silence followed her piercing inquiry; no one could find the words to respond.

“Nana and Lil have been observing your progress ever since you entered your freshman year. Consequently, we are intimately familiar with you all—your tactical preferences, your tells, and exactly where your capabilities fall short or shine,”

Elena elaborated, continuing to toy with her hair strands.

“We calculated precisely how much pressure we could absorb from your offenses and mapped out the exact path to our victory. Devising a counter-strategy was second nature to us,”

Elena let go of her hair, her face shifting to one of mild disinterest.

“I am certain you didn’t view us with contempt. I recognize that you afforded us proper reverence and recognized our status as your upperclassmen. Yet…”

Elena’s gaze sharpened intensely as she pressed further.

“Did it ever cross your minds to actually overtake us?”

“…”

“Did you ever once try to close the distance between our levels?”

A chilly smirk graced Elena’s lips as she surveyed the speechless underclassmen.

“We hold the position of your seniors. Allow me to establish reality firmly while the opportunity presents itself,”

Elena lifted her right hand, extending her index finger directly toward the sky.

“We aren’t merely walking in Leo’s shadow like the rest of you. We stand at the front line… we are the benchmarks you are supposed to be chasing,”

Whir—!

A concentrated orb of fire ignited at the tip of her finger, radiating heat like a miniature solar body.

“When on earth did she invoke that spell?”

“Was that incantation entirely silent?!”

Elena directed a charming smile toward her bewildered juniors.

“It is nothing extraordinary. Just simple simultaneous casting.”

“You managed to craft an invocation of that magnitude using parallel processes?”

Chelsea inquired, completely floored, to which Elena merely gave a casual shrug.

“It wasn’t that hard.”

To be fair, the third-year group had never truly analyzed Elena or Lil with any depth.

Their attention had been utterly consumed by the brilliant, overwhelming presence of Leo within that same class.

They overlooked the staggering depth of Elena’s arcane capacity and innate brilliance.

They failed to understand why former students labeled Lil a freakish talent and a flawless master of spirits.

They had simply accepted those titles as mere rumors without evaluating the reality behind them.

And the consequence of that oversight was utterly devastating.

Elena and Lil had thoroughly broken down the third-years’ traits.

Meanwhile, those third-years had eyes only for Leo.

The conclusion of a conflict between an explicitly prepared force and an unready one was predetermined.

Just prior to discharging her spell, Elena cast a final glance at Chelsea and remarked,

“You people aren’t the sole individuals favored by the Hero of Beginnings.”

Chelsea’s pupils dilated in shock.

Flare—!

Kaboom boom boom—!

The moment the spell detonated, every single person in the vicinity aside from Elena was caught in the massive blast radius.

Outcries of agony echoed from the dust.

Surveying the devastation, Elena murmured nonchalantly,

“Things might have gotten tricky if Karl or Sia were present to manage things.”

Elena chuckled softly, thinking of the tactical mind of Karl and the highly meticulous Chen Sia.

“The instructors we train under aren’t exactly lenient, after all.”

Just then, an aggrieved protest pierced the air.

“Senior Elena! Why did you blast me as well?!”

“Oh come on, a little blast like that wouldn’t put you out of action, right?”

“That’s completely unfair!”

Lil’s complaints resounded through the field.

Rustle—!

“Over there! She ran in that direction!”

“Secure her immediately! Move!”

“Where is the front line support?!”

“Stop trying to boss us around!”

Hearing the chaotic arguments behind him, Karl peeked his head out from a dense thicket, chuckling under his breath.

“Underclassmen are far too predictable!”

Karl, who had woven twigs into his hair band to create a makeshift disguise, smirked mischievously as he drew his concealment mantle tighter around himself.

He waited patiently for the vanguard fighters to march past his position, and the moment the trailing spellcasters caught up:

“Surprise?”

“What?! Senior Karl is right—”

Swish—!

Karl flicked his wrist, hurling several elongated alchemical vials nestled between his fingers directly into their midst.

Kaboom boom—!

“Ahahaha! Too simple! They literally charged blindly just because I feigned a retreat! They even separated from their group thinking I was free points!”

Karl roared with laughter as he watched the spellcasters get engulfed in the blast and automatically disqualified from the match.

“He’s over here!”

Karl’s smirk deepened as the forward knights wheeled around to hunt him down.

“These kids really don’t learn from their mistakes!”

Karl extracted a polished glass orb from his pouch and clicked a trigger on its surface.

Detonation—!

“Gahhh!”

“Watch out, the path is rigged!”

A series of concussive blasts ripped through the exact trail the knights had traversed moments before without a second thought.

“The commotion is coming from that vector!”

“Time to make myself scarce.”

Having successfully dismantled the squad, Karl swiftly retreated from the area as new footsteps approached from the distance.

A grounded combat student groaned while tracking Karl’s departure,

“That is so… dishonorable…”

“There is no such thing as dishonor in Lumerin! Staying on the field is the only absolute reality!”