The conference room, which should have been orderly and quiet, had descended into chaos. Many instructors stared wide-eyed at the magic screen suspended high in the center, pressing their hands against the tables as they shot to their feet!
"...?"
Confused, shocked discussions immediately echoed through the spacious room.
Unless one possessed the technique of chantless casting...
Otherwise...
This single card, "Friendly Communication," could thoroughly torment every traditional mage!
Thanks to the casting convenience and modular combinations offered by magic cards, modern mages rarely endured the bitter training required for chantless casting, even if they learned individual spells to expand their skill repertoires.
"Did the School of Magic Engineering do some new R&D behind our backs again...?"
Even Vice Dean Ron, who had remained silent with pen in hand all this time, could not stop a twitch at the corner of his eye.
He knew.
From now on, Chantless Casting would become a mandatory course at the School of Sages.
Like a virus, this infuriating card would start from Ikerite Academy, where it first surfaced, and spread across the entire royal capital, the whole Hutton Kingdom, and onward to the Southern Continent, the entire world...
Yet its creator remained unknown.
There were always card makers gifted with inexplicable talents who failed to realize how disruptive their creations were to the meta when crafting them, and only after their works had circulated on the market for a long time could their true identities be tracked down.
It seemed that after the exam ended, whether Lanqi cleared it or not, people would seek him out to investigate where "Friendly Communication" came from.
Or they might seize the "Friendly Communication" in his hand directly, reverse-engineer the poison magic imbued within, and strive to replicate its casting principles as quickly as possible!
"It shouldn't be possible that he made it himself, right...?"
Vice Dean Ron pinched the bridge of his nose.
Although some students in the School of Sages knew how to craft magic cards, it was primarily students from the School of Magic Engineering who specialized in card making.
A card maker capable of cooking up "Friendly Communication" would be a mind-boggling presence even in the card-crafting world.
As things stood now...
Rather than sending Lanqi packing when he held clues to a "miraculous card maker," having him join the School of Sages would actually be the best outcome.
With Dean Loren around, no one would dare mess with Lanqi.
And if "Friendly Communication" quickly flooded the market in large numbers, it would give the School of Sages an enormous headache.
Just where on earth had this rookie sprung from?
Perplexed, Vice Dean Ron could not help flipping through the file in his hands.
The dossier, clean as a blank sheet of paper, seemed stranger the more he looked at it.
If the previous exam round had been a fluke, then this was the second time Lanqi had delivered a performance that made their vision go dark.
Moreover, he had not displayed any of a white mage's core duties yet.
His entire combat system remained an enigma.
According to the file, Lanqi did not know a single spell himself, yet his white mage vocation was officially certified by the Magic Tower.
That meant the vast majority of his card slots would still be healing spell cards.
Purely utility spells like "Friendly Communication" could account for two or three cards at most.
Yet what Ron could not understand was—
With such low mana intensity, what could Lanqi possibly be thinking by packing such a high proportion of healing cards?
Every person's soul had a cap on the number of magic cards it could bear.
The higher the tier of a soulbound magic card, the more soul capacity it occupied.
For example, since Lanqi was Tier 2, he could only soulbind magic cards whose total tiers summed up to 20 at most.
Furthermore, the highest tier of card he could bind was Tier 2.
If he reached Tier 3 in the future, he would be able to bind magic cards totaling up to 30 tiers, and bind Tier 3 cards.
On the other hand, if a Tier 2 Lanqi bound only Tier 2 magic cards, he would hit his capacity after binding just ten.
However, if he bound some Tier 1 cards, he could carry more.
A magic card's tier could, to some extent, be viewed as its "cost."
Lower-tier magic cards could be considered to cost less.
Therefore, certain high-quality, universally useful low-tier cards would not become obsolete even when the caster reached higher tiers.
Right now, Vice Dean Ron thought that if Lanqi instead filled all his slots with targeted utility spells like "Friendly Communication," relying on the massive mana pool and sustained casting ability provided by his high Mind stat, he might truly become a pure utility support capable of producing miraculous results.
"Even if Lanqi pulled off a miracle here, the real problem comes next."
"The gap in tiers is simply too wide."
The instructors in the conference room began watching the battle with intense focus.
Seeing a glimmer of hope in a duel they had considered utterly decided naturally sparked a strange sense of anticipation.
Yet they also knew all too well that the chasm between basic stats at Tier 5 versus Tier 2 and Tier 3 was vast as an abyss.
Even with just his fists and basic offensive magic, Ferrat could easily batter the fragile Lanqi and Hyperion to death—not to mention that Ferrat still had access to a handful of small, instant-cast spells. Conversely, the two examinees could hardly inflict meaningful damage on him.
The odds had merely shifted from a ten-to-zero to a nine-to-one.
...
On the magic screen, the battle on the Eleven Great Plains continued.
Just as Ferrat was reeling in shock, he grasped the bizarre reality: he was unable to chant any spells.
The moment the realization struck, a sudden chill shot through his heart.
He snapped to full alert.
A sound like cutting air whistled by.
A figure appeared out of nowhere; by the time her form materialized, she was already thrusting fiercely toward Ferrat's chest, aiming straight for his heart!
The attacking Hyperion was dangerously close to Ferrat.
The dagger in her hand was a hair's breadth from piercing Ferrat's heart.
Moreover, the bizarre dagger, shaped like a scorpion's tail, gleamed with an eerie crystalline sheen—it was clearly laced with deadly poison.
*Get lost!*
Ferrat tried to roar, but could only produce bizarre noises. At the same time, a scorching, crimson ring of light erupted around him!
Even if he could not chant spells, he still had low-tier, small-scale instant-cast spells at his disposal!
The ring of light expanded outward from his body, flashing and vanishing, instantly blasting the suddenly materialized Hyperion away.
"Haa... haa..."
Taking the brunt of the strike, Hyperion quickly rolled to her feet.
Aside from a few minor burns, she was largely unharmed.
Meanwhile, the Hyperion who had stayed beside Lanqi dissolved like a bubble—it was merely an illusion left behind after she concealed herself with magic.
"Bastard, you dodged it," Hyperion muttered under her breath, her face dark.
In midair, a line of blood now traced Ferrat's cheek, crimson drops sliding down the wound and dripping off.
In that split second earlier, realizing she could not pierce his heart, Hyperion had put all her strength into hurling the scorpion-tail dagger like a projectile, aiming straight for his head!
Drawing upon his wealth of combat experience and keen reflexes, Ferrat had tilted his head on instinct, dodging the follow-up blow.
Yet he still had not completely evaded a dirty trick at point-blank range.
Excruciating pain spread from the wound on his cheek, causing veins to throb across his forehead.
Evidently, even a mere graze had poisoned him, and the wound refused to close—even though Ferrat had buffed himself with a delayed healing spell before coming.
Furthermore, Ferrat was currently inflicted with the Muted status Lanqi had imposed on him, leaving him unable to cast purification magic on himself to dispel these debuffs.
Enduring the agony like a blade scraping his throat, his only choice was to rely on his Tier 5 resistances to weather the poison's duration!
Although the Tier 3 toxin on Hyperion's dagger posed little real threat to a Tier 5 combatant like Ferrat, fury was gradually blazing within his chest!
The two weak rookies on the ground possessed virtually no teamwork to speak of.
Yet both were utterly foul, underhanded scoundrels.
One inflicted poison and bleeding while turning invisible, nowhere to be found on the map.
Behind her stood an insufferable prick sealing spells away, with no telling what other vile tricks he had up his sleeve.
This pair of scoundrels had to be a match made in hell to have ended up together!
Chapter 25