Inside the Endless Library, the avenues stretched wide and spacious.
Beneath a vaulted ceiling suspended dozens of meters overhead, lamps flared to life with every step Lanqi and Zestira took, as if parting curtains on a grand stage.
Reminiscent of a classical theater, the library's towering bookshelves were laden with grimoires of every description. Veiled in half-shadow, ghostly pages could occasionally be seen drifting freely through the air.
Black marble trimmed with gold edged the floor, gleaming faintly. At times, one would realize the floor itself was a colossal magical crystal screen, capable of projecting hallucinatory hues and navigational guides.
The first expanse that kept visitors from losing their way was an open-plan reading hall. Beyond it, a red carpet unrolled from the far end of the hall straight to the reception desk of a consultation room.
The two strode forward and stepped inside.
A massive chandelier hung above the reception desk, casting a gentle yellow radiance across its polished surface.
"Do... you... need... as... sis... tance?"
Behind the desk spoke an artificial beauty, her skin as pale as snow like a porcelain doll.
Zestira started slightly; she had assumed the golem was mute.
"We're here to redeem a treasury item."
Lanqi turned to Zestira with a reassuring smile, then addressed the golem.
"Very... well. Please... browse."
As the door to the consultation room shut behind them, the golem slowly initiated the spell circle embedded in the desk. Dark text soon surfaced across the tabletop.
Following the displayed instructions, Zestira slipped off her bracelet and set it against the sensor pad.
After a few seconds of reading, new text appeared:
[Redeemable Reward: One Pink Sacred-grade magical item.]
Ranked above White, Blue, and Purple, it stood second only to Orange Epic—the Pink Sacred tier.
"Please... se... lect... freely... from... the... trea... sury's... mas... ter... ca... ta... logue."
The golem spoke once more.
Listening to this thing talk made Zestira feel as though her blood pressure was going to skyrocket.
Lanqi, however, was clearly unbothered. He politely thanked the golem and began touching the search directory.
Some of the entries were ancient relics of the Demon Realm gathered throughout the empire's history, others were formidable magic cards crafted by master artisans, and there were also treasures brought out from Shadow Worlds or confiscated by the authorities.
"Teacher, do you want to choose a magic apparatus or a magic card?" Zestira asked after taking a deep breath.
Lanqi paused slightly at the question.
It was worth noting that the promised reward was not strictly limited to a magic card.
Pink Sacred-grade magic cards, magic apparatuses, scrolls, and raw materials were all on the table.
The drawback of a magic apparatus was that it could not be soul-bound or brought into a Shadow World. Its portability was inferior, and it carried the risk of loss. However, apparatuses offered greater functional diversity than magic cards and did not occupy a card slot.
In the Northern Continent, where real-world combat and clashes over resources were frequent, magic apparatuses were just as popular as magic cards.
Only in the peaceful Southern Continent, where everyone's focus was solely on conquering Shadow Worlds, were magic cards overwhelmingly preferred over magic apparatuses.
As for scrolls, they could be used as one-off consumables or as base materials for crafting spell cards.
Other materials depended entirely on the skill of the magic artificer working with them. Given an unrestricted choice of that grade, one would only select raw materials if neither the cards nor the apparatuses offered anything worthwhile.
"If it's among the Pink Sacred grade, I'd still lean toward a magic card," Lanqi replied.
After all, he was a native of the Southern Continent.
Furthermore, if card types were unrestricted, he would try his best to find a spell card.
Though summon cards, equipment cards, and spell cards were nominally equal, in Lanqi's personal view, spell cards were the most prestigious.
High-grade spell cards were exceptionally difficult to craft. Only specific individuals who had mastered the corresponding spell—or possessed the aptitude to master it—could create one. Epic-grade spell cards were virtually impossible to craft by hand and could only be obtained from Shadow Worlds.
Yet when it came to game-breaking magic that one might otherwise never learn in a lifetime, such as Blood Clan authorities, mastering it through an Epic spell card could sometimes reverse the course of a battle all on its own.
Equipment cards and summon cards were certainly not bad. Equipment cards had low mana costs, continuous effects, and passive stat bonuses, but their active utility was relatively weaker. Summon cards demanded tremendous mana and required dividing one's attention to control or command the summon, and once destroyed, they became useless.
Thus, after filtering by the [Sealing] category and sorting by tier from highest to lowest, Lanqi focused his gaze primarily on spell cards.
Summon and equipment cards could still be considered, but once a Pink Sacred card was bound, unbinding it was no easy feat. With his flexible card slots already running low, binding a Pink Sacred magic card required extreme caution.
However, sealing arts were a rather uncommon branch of magic. The highest-tier Pink Sacred sealing spell card in the entire vault was merely Tier 5.
[Nocturnal Forbidden Zone]
[Category: Spell Card]
[Grade: Pink Sacred]
[Tier: 5]
[Effect: Casts a barrier centered on the user that blocks all vision. Casting and maintaining the barrier consumes a large amount of mana. Units within the barrier are briefly immobilized upon touching its boundary for the first time.]
[Remark: That was the last light you will ever see.]
"..."
Seeing this familiar area-of-effect visual seal, Lanqi gave it a brief glance and swiped past.
In terms of elemental attributes, this card belonged to Sealing and Darkness, bearing an effect similar to his [Radiant Virtue], though [Radiant Virtue] combined Sealing and Light.
In a direct comparison, [Nocturnal Forbidden Zone] seemed stronger, but [Radiant Virtue] was fundamentally an anti-Blood Clan specialty card.
There were only two Tier 5 cards in the Sealing category.
At Tier 4, there was only a single one.
[Forbidden Curse Seal]
[Category: Spell Card]
[Grade: Pink Sacred]
[Tier: 4]
[Effect: With the target's consent, forge a temporary subordinate contract, transforming them into your familiar and granting them attribute bonuses equal to one-eighth of your own.]
[Remark: Entrust your life to me; nothing will go wrong.]
"The effect on this card feels a bit weak," Zestira remarked from the side.
If a support used it, it only granted a minor amount of non-offensive stats to a damage dealer. If a damage dealer used it, it ended up hogging a valuable card slot with a support effect.
"Hard to say with this one," Lanqi muttered, his brow furrowing slightly.
Fundamentally, this was a curse-type magic card that incorporated certain sealing principles.
While it appeared somewhat nonsensical at first glance, paired with spells capable of "transferring familiars" or "granting potent familiar buffs," it could prove remarkably useful.
Accepting such a forbidden curse was also extremely perilous. Once transformed into a familiar closer in nature to a summoned entity, one became susceptible to certain instant-death effects and ran the risk of being further manipulated.
"It's actually quite worth taking..."
After a moment's thought, Lanqi swiped down anyway.
The reason this spell felt forbidden was that it hinted at the potential to reshape living beings into magic cards.
Yet Lanqi always felt that the core material of the [Poet of Great Love], the [Hymn of Compassion], contained far deeper magical principles along the same vein.
If he picked this card, the Poet of Great Love would probably mock him.
If she chimed in with, *"You had to trade for trash like this? I could've researched it for you myself,"* it would be thoroughly embarrassing.
Swiping downward, he quickly hit the bottom of the list.
Sealing magic cards were inherently scarce, and Pink Sacred ones were rare even in the treasury of the Protos Empire.
Lanqi's gaze finally settled on the last sealing spell, his expression turning hesitant.
[Melody Elimination Field]
[Category: Spell Card]
[Grade: Pink Sacred]
[Tier: 3]
[Effect: Eliminates all sound within a designated area around the user. A larger area consumes more mana, and maintaining the field continuously drains a massive amount of mana.]
[Remark: Those cold golden eyes... when he appeared, the sounds of the world vanished.]
"Is there something special about this card?"
Zestira noticed that her teacher had swiped past several high-damage and hard-control sealing spells, only to linger on this disruptive utility seal.
"This spell counters melody magic completely. While it can't interrupt chanted casting and won't work on logomancy, it's primarily used to cut off the opponent's communication," Lanqi explained.
Scanning the appraisal details, he could tell right away that this was unmistakably demon magic.
Moreover, it showed no signs of artificial processing, and he had never heard Talia mention such a sealing spell before. It was most likely an ancient Demon Realm artifact from a Shadow World.
If he chose this, he could neutralize the indiscriminate backlash of [Wonderful Notes].
In fact, it was practically a hard counter to [Wonderful Notes].
Back in the Purgatory Corridor Academy, had he possessed this spell, he could have shut down the classroom's hell-sound nuclear fusion entirely.
"..."
Zestira pondered in bewilderment.
She always felt that her teacher looked at magic cards through a rather bizarre lens.
Cards she thought were terrible, he found decent.
Yet cards she thought were exceptional, he barely glanced at before swiping past.
Lanqi considered it for a moment. While there were acceptable choices among the Pink Sacred sealing cards, he decided to see if there were better alternatives first.
Switching the filter to [Mental], he began swiftly browsing the detailed appraisal information of card after card.
Zestira watched quietly from the side.
"Teacher, wouldn't it be better to choose a magic card you can use right away?" she asked softly, puzzled.
Every time she watched Lanqi browse magical items, he always sorted by tier from highest to lowest.
Across the treasury's Pink Sacred collection, high-tier items were far scarcer than low-tier ones.
While high-tier cards were certainly much more expensive than low-tier ones, the problem was that, setting aside whether there were trading channels available, high-tier magic cards were inherently difficult to sell.
"In truth, once you reach higher tiers, high-tier magic cards are exceptionally hard to acquire. Not only are the materials rare, but even for a card maker, crafting a finished Tier 8 magic card is vastly more difficult than a Tier 3 card maker crafting a Tier 3 card. If you have the chance to obtain one, unless you're in an emergency and desperately need an immediate combat boost, it's always best to aim as high as possible," Lanqi explained as he browsed.
She likely hadn't seen the effects of high-tier magic cards yet, which was why she assumed low-tier cards could hold their own.
Low-tier Epic cards could indeed remain useful for a lifetime.
Many other low-tier tech cards could also produce outstanding results under specific circumstances.
Yet in terms of raw power and scaling multipliers, an insurmountable chasm would always exist between low-tier and high-tier cards.
Tiers 1 through 3 were low-tier cards, mainly used for counterplay and filling out archetypes. Tiers 4 and 5 were the backbone of utility cards. Tier 6 was the true dividing line; many powerful Purple Rare general-purpose cards were Tier 6.
For instance, the Tier 6 Purple Rare spell [Designated Purification] could remove a specified abnormal status or control effect and grant temporary immunity to it thereafter.
There was also [Spell Counter], which triggered when an enemy cast a low-tier or low-grade spell to negate it and double its cooldown, as well as [Forced Dispel], which forcibly cleansed all statuses from oneself or an opponent.
These three were among the most popular Tier 6 Rare magic cards—flexible and easy to swap into any build. Once someone reached Tier 6, practically anyone who could afford them carried one of each.
That was why back in the Banquet of Sanctuary Villains Shadow World, their team couldn't chain hard crowd control on the Saintess of Destruction.
They had relied almost entirely on soft control to hinder her.
Higher still, Tiers 7 and 8 were the realm of true overwhelming power. At Tier 7, even Blue Precious magic cards were nearly impossible to buy, and their effects were so strong they could scarcely be countered.
"So that's how it is."
Zestira nodded with a flash of understanding.
She had assumed her teacher was looking at high-tier cards merely to cash out the reward.
Still, even if he did find a Tier 7 magic card, how long would it take before he could actually equip it?
Zestira remained half-comprehending.
Her curiosity now shifted to what kind of card her teacher would ultimately choose today.
Another ten minutes slipped by.
Lanqi inspected card after card, yet reached no decision.
Regrettably, whether under Sealing, Mental, or the Light and Fire categories he checked afterward, not a single Tier 7 Pink Sacred magic card appeared.
He seemed to glance at the Healing attribute purely out of formality before closing it.
He didn't even examine the healing scaling multipliers.
She had no idea why he had checked that category at all.
Zestira was certain these were the only magical affinities her teacher was compatible with, representing the optimal choices for his archetype. Perhaps in the future, he could even analyze their underlying principles to dismantle and reconstruct them.
It was normal not to find high-tier cards in niche categories like Sealing and Mental; adepts in Sealing, for example, were inherently rare.
As for major, popular elemental categories like Light and Fire, the absence of high-tier cards was purely a matter of luck—they had likely been claimed years earlier.
"..."
Lanqi rested his chin in his hand, lost in thought.
Then, he shifted the filter category to [Wind].
Zestira: "?"
The moment her teacher made this inexplicable choice, she had an uncanny premonition that someone was about to suffer.
Chapter 298