Night had already fallen over Ikerite. The balcony curtains of Lanqi's dormitory cast the living room into dim shadow, leaving only the soft, warm glow from inside the card-crafting workshop.
On a night like this, everything within the workshop felt all the more quiet and fluid.
Lanqi set down and picked up his tools in a steady rhythm, working in seamless cooperation with the Poet of Great Love. The minds of both had reached an ineffable calm.
Upon Lanqi's workbench, an unfinished, translucent magic card continuously pulsed with arcs of light that radiated an intense sense of danger. Its very structure refused to stabilize, twisting ceaselessly under high pressure.
Previously, whenever he crafted magic cards, this was precisely the phenomenon that appeared right before they blew up.
Yet even in this state, Lanqi turned a blind eye to the anomaly, proceeding with the final steps: locking down and stabilizing the magic card's mana circuits, followed by the concluding tuning and encapsulation.
He resolutely refused to abandon this magic card teetering on the brink of collapse—or perhaps already beyond saving. He linked the magic imprints that he and the Poet of Great Love had spent the entire day engraving, one after another, weaving them into a complete mana circulation loop so that the card could sustain its operation once infused with the user's mana.
Though the crafting process seemed ever closer to success, it was in truth hurtling toward a dead end.
For this card had clearly gone wrong in the preceding steps, and its unstable structure was the most obvious proof.
Normally, a defective piece with such severe flaws ought to have been abandoned and detonated long ago, yet Lanqi continued to force it through.
Rescuing such a structure to make it function smoothly without exploding was practically impossible.
And if he failed to keep it contained, the destructive force of this card explosion would far surpass any that had come before.
Outside the workshop door, Boss Cat's eyes went wide.
It finally understood.
Rather than saying Lanqi was rescuing this magic card, it was more like he was continuously tossing terrifying fuel into a crater about to erupt!
It seemed this guy really had been researching card explosions on purpose all this time!
He simply wanted cards to blow up.
Developing the most powerful magic engineering principles of magic card destruction.
Every single bit of it had been to apply to today's card!
"Meow, meow, meow! I'm not playing along with you anymore, meow!"
Boss Cat was scared nearly out of its wits.
Curse its curiosity for keeping it outside the workshop watching Lanqi make cards.
It didn't dare imagine whether, if this card exploded, it would shatter the entire barrier.
It didn't dare stay in Lanqi's home for another second. Leaping out from the balcony, it hid beneath a tree far from the School of Sages, staring back at the window of Lanqi's dormitory.
Inside the card-crafting workshop, the Poet of Great Love remained transfixed on the magic card, channeling all her focus into helping Lanqi carry out this final life-risking step.
"Lanqi, what if the reaction won't stop?" the Poet of Great Love asked softly.
By her judgment, the outer protective barrier was sufficient to contain the blast and prevent it from affecting other rooms, but the delicate spell formula inside meant to shield the card maker would not be enough to protect Lanqi. The destructive explosion under extreme pressure might even incinerate the entire workshop to ash.
If Lanqi died, she would perish along with him.
Yet as a craftsman, she had never been one to fear death; in fact, when it came to obsession, she was many times crazier than Lanqi.
Her question to Lanqi was actually—
Compared to failing to craft this card, an even more dangerous outcome might be succeeding.
The novel magic card rupture principle Lanqi employed would trigger a chain reaction, capable under certain conditions of chain-detonating another magic card.
If temperature, pressure, and duration all reached a certain threshold, the energy generated could allow this spell formula to continue functioning, sustaining successive card explosions. Lanqi termed this phenomenon "self-sustaining card explosion," and he had even successfully experimented with serial card explosions.
Magic cards themselves were superb explosive materials; as long as one sealed them from a stable state back into an unusable semi-finished state, they entered a detonate-able state.
Under ultra-high temperature and pressure, combined with the chain formula Lanqi had developed through repeated card explosions, a chain explosion of magic cards became possible.
If it couldn't be stopped, it might produce consequences no one could foresee!
"..."
Yet Lanqi's emerald-green pupils glimmered with a light of compassion, as though he had long thought this through.
"Humanity is always imagining the future, yet that future should in fact evoke fear."
"But most people won't fear it, because they cannot comprehend the meaning behind it,"
he murmured calmly as he continued engraving.
Hearing this, the Poet of Great Love said nothing more and threw herself wholeheartedly into the final coordination.
Though Lanqi's conception held a duality, she agreed with it.
It was both the love and peace Lanqi sought,
and the balance of terror she favored.
Perhaps because both were engrossed to the extreme, the violent mutations of the card in their hands no longer registered in their eyes. Even as the final moment of shaping and fission took place, neither wavered in the slightest.
Before either could react, an intense light erupted, illuminating the entire workshop in an instant and spreading outward in rings of rampaging mana ripples.
Several magic tools in the workshop detonated in succession!
Amidst the fierce flames and roaring booms, it gradually stabilized and subsided...
...
"Who's renovating their place again?!"
"At the start of term there was already a guy making banging noises, and now it's started again!"
Students gradually emerged onto the balconies on the upper floors of the School of Sages dormitory building, leaning against the railings to voice their complaints.
"..."
In the garden outside the dormitory, Boss Cat poked its head out from behind the large tree.
It sensed that Lanqi's dorm room had exploded, but it wasn't as severe as imagined, though the soundproofing barrier seemed to have been blown apart.
"It really blew up after all, huh..."
The little black cat clutched its ears with both front paws, having just been crouching flat on the ground.
"What a waste of all those materials... how much money must that have cost..."
Especially that silver heart-like material; it was certain that wasn't something money could buy or measure in value.
After making sure that Lanqi's dormitory wouldn't explode any further, it scampered back in a hurry. If Lanqi was hurt, it needed to save him right away.
The human it was keeping had better not be gone!
The little black cat dashed swiftly onto the balcony of Lanqi's dorm, squeezed through the window crack, and navigated familiar paths to the workshop door.
Yet its feline eyes widened in astonishment.
Behind the workshop's workbench, Lanqi and the Poet of Great Love looked thoroughly exhausted, slumped limply in armchairs to the left and right, unwilling to move.
Before them, suspended in midair, was a completed magic card!
It was an extremely unstable orange magic card, its very shape appearing tenuous and shifting, as if it might trigger a violent explosion at any moment.
"An Or... Orange Epic?"
Boss Cat's brain had completely crashed.
"Let me see what's so impressive about this card."
The Poet of Great Love rallied some energy from her lethargic state and sat up a bit straighter.
Although she had contributed to making this card, she was convinced that she was the most powerful magic card.
Yet the moment she reached out to touch it, she recoiled her hand as though touching raging fire, crying out in pain.
"Magic cards had better not touch this card."
Lanqi watched the Poet of Great Love rolling around on the sofa, shaking his head with a helpless chuckle.
"It is a truly warm and sunny sealing art."
He turned his head and, as if impervious to pain, grasped the magic card, gazing at it with a smile.
[Nuclear Fusion Wolf]
[Type: Summon Card]
[Grade: Orange Epic]
[Tier: 4]
[Effect: When an attack hits a summon or equipment, it can be sealed back into a magic card state and swallowed for 10 seconds. Cooldown: 10 minutes. Can trigger a violent self-destruction; during self-destruction, it is unaffected by any magic cards and chain-detonates all magic cards in the swallowed state. The explosive power is influenced by the quantity, tier, and grade of all magic cards involved. After self-destructing, this magic card cannot be used again for 30 days.]
[Note: Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.]
Chapter 232