Lanqi Is All Set

Examiner Ferrat had originally been utterly certain. Even without magic cards and the vast majority of his spells, he could easily handle the Tier 3 Hyperion however he pleased. Yet now... Wracked with agony across his entire body, coupled with the fury festering inside him ever since he had been inflicted with Mute, he found himself momentarily unable to focus on dealing with her. Besides, Hyperion hardly mattered anymore. Ferrat only knew one thing: no matter the outcome of today's exam, if he did not kill Lanqi, he would not get a single night of good sleep this entire month! In the distance... Realizing that Examiner Ferrat's aggro had locked entirely onto him, Lanqi immediately turned and ran. At the same time, he did not forget to whip out the flawed healing cards that were off cooldown, layering them onto Ferrat. Torment, unabated. Even though Ferrat could not utter a single word, in a moment where emotions ran so wild that ten thousand words condensed into raw expression, anyone could read his true thought plain as day across his face: *If I don't slaughter you today, I'm no son of a man!* After a brief pause as if his mind had crashed, Ferrat accelerated like a comet without a shred of hesitation, whipping up a fierce gale as he tore toward Lanqi! "Don't you dare get near him!" Hyperion moved as fluidly as a shadow, nearly disappearing into the grassland. Only her cold eyes, glinting like the pupils of a venomous scorpion, remained fixed on Ferrat. The assignment Lanqi had given her was to delay Ferrat as much as possible while ensuring she didn't get killed in one shot. Under the present circumstances, Ferrat, severely disrupted by Lanqi, was no longer capable of posing an insurmountable threat to her. The longer she dragged this out, the more chaotic Ferrat's tempo would become. The scorpion-tail dagger gleamed with a chilling light beneath the dark clouds, like the Grim Reaper stalking a frigid night. Across the Eleven Great Plains, Examiner Ferrat and Hyperion became locked in a dramatic pursuit. ... Inside the conference room of the School of Sages. "How is he supposed to win, though?" Watching Lanqi exhaust magic card after magic card, an instructor could not help but voice their confusion. Though the situation had been temporarily stalled, it clearly would not hold much longer. Hyperion was doing everything in her power to impede Ferrat and keep him away from Lanqi. Lanqi, meanwhile, had begun casting while kiting, using his superior attack range to torment Ferrat as much as he could. Yet Ferrat could afford countless mistakes, whereas Hyperion and Lanqi could afford only one. Even without a mistake, the distance between Lanqi and Ferrat—who had previously cast a sustained wind spell—was inexorably shrinking. There was no way they could hold out for the full thirty minutes like this. The moment Ferrat took Lanqi down, the absence of Mute and mental disruption would cause Hyperion to collapse in an instant. "By unleashing that flurry of healing spell cards, Lanqi has also exposed the fact that he isn't running a damage-reflection build." "Ferrat can kill him without any hesitation now." The instructors familiar with Ferrat understood why he had not prioritized attacking Lanqi at the start when Lanqi's deck composition was still unknown. Calculating based on Lanqi's deck capacity of twenty tiers in total, he had already used sixteen tiers' worth of healing spells up to this point. Far more than any of the instructors had anticipated. Of the remaining four tiers, one was known to be the Tier 2 Friendly Communication, leaving nowhere near enough capacity to assemble a viable reflect-damage system. "They can't win. They have no way to halt Ferrat's approach." Watching Hyperion barely intercepting Ferrat time and again while the examiner relentlessly advanced across the screen, the instructors in the conference room knew that after all the back-and-forth struggling, today's entrance exam was nearing its curtain call. "Unless Lanqi still has a trump card in his final card slots." "Unlikely." "If he had something that could turn the tide, he would have played it already." It was true that Lanqi still had unknown card capacity. However, every instructor present knew that no matter how potent or demanding the activation conditions of a Tier 1 or Tier 2 magic card might be, it could never deliver an attack capable of bringing down the Tier 5 Ferrat in one blow. A sharp clatter of clashing metal from the broadcast screen drew the debating instructors' attention back once more. They all turned their eyes to the battlefield, which was fast approaching its conclusion. Pursuing Ferrat across the plains, Hyperion flung a throwing dagger straight toward his head, only for it to be deflected violently by a mana barrier. A flicker of astonishment flashed through her eyes, but she quickly regained her icy composure, darting through the grass like an elusive, venomous viper, shifting position every instant. Just a few more throws and she could shatter that barrier. Ferrat's available minor spells all had cooldowns; he would soon have no choice but to face her threat directly once again. Yet... Just as she retrieved her weapon, Ferrat's figure abruptly halted. Even though Ferrat had not turned around, Hyperion felt a pulse of mana perception lock firmly onto her. Under that targeting, a wave of cold dread welled from the depths of her heart. Ferrat seemed to have discerned long ago during their earlier clashes that the instant she reeled her weapon back, she would reveal a brief opening. Yet Ferrat was likely not operating on pure reason right now; fueled by fury, he had relied on sheer combat instinct to seize the ideal moment to strike her down. Before Hyperion could even react, wind magic surged from Ferrat's body like razor-sharp blades, sweeping her up and blasting her backward. It was merely a Tier 1 minor wind spell, yet in Ferrat's berserk state, it erupted with force that Hyperion was utterly powerless to resist! The next instant, Ferrat tore away once more, bolting madly in Lanqi's direction! "Damn it!" Crashing hard against the earth, Hyperion scrambled to her feet and gritted her teeth in pursuit. During their previous skirmish, Ferrat had already closed much of the distance between himself and Lanqi. Under these conditions, even if she pursued him with everything she had, it would likely be futile. A Tier 2 healer would be reduced to ash in fewer than two strikes from a Tier 5 mage. Though Hyperion had staked everything on Lanqi and fought strictly according to his tactical plan, now that things had come to this, she found the imminent collapse hard to accept. Dark clouds pressed low overhead, the air growing ever more suffocating as muffled thunder rolled across the grassland like the wrath of heaven. Lanqi watched the unstoppable Ferrat close in on him. By his estimate, he was about to enter the effective range of Ferrat's minor spells. Lanqi slowed his pace, stopping altogether. For one thing, he couldn't outrun him anyway. For another, every piece of groundwork had finally fallen into place. Lanqi looked down placidly at the magic card materializing upon his palm. This was the magic card crafted in collaboration with Talia, using his family's ancestral relic, the Hymn of Compassion. Talia had carried out nearly the entire crafting process with her own hands, while he had merely acted as her assistant at her side. The only part driven by him was the step of illustrating and defining the summoned entity's form. The finished card had not only exceeded Lanqi's wildest expectations—it had left Talia herself, the master card maker, thoroughly astounded. He knew this would be his very last card for today's exam.