Her jet-black hair, soaked with sweat, clung to her flushed, burning cheeks. Li Fei looked like she had just come out of a sauna — every inch of her body damp and sticky.
Facts had proven that even the frailest, weakest ordinary girl, hit with the combo of Sensitivity Aura + Dragon's Strength + Succubus Empress + Depravity + Humanoid Creature Enthrallment + Mommy Play, would still melt down — even a Sequence 8 witch.
Trotting out the pinnacle of buff-class spells just to spice things up — could any other mage pull that off?
The corner of Li Fei's mouth quirked up. She shot another glance at the two faint lines on her abdomen, then ever so gently nudged open the door and slipped out, not disturbing the burnt-to-ashes Lady Annie.
Grabbing the kettle off the tea table and cupping it in both hands, she chugged down more than a liter of cool boiled water in one go — glug, glug, glug. Then Li Fei smacked her lips, feeling like something was missing.
"That Serpent-woman scale soup, huh… even though it's basically useless for me, after getting used to it, not having a bowl post-cuddle does leave me kind of missing the taste."
Murmuring under her breath, Li Fei lightly pushed open Lilith's bedroom door, intending to launch a surprise raid — only to find no one inside. Just the dusky sunset light filtering through the glass and spilling across the very girly room.
"Hm? Where'd those two run off to?"
Li Fei retreated suspiciously and was just mulling over whether to head out and look for them when she heard movement at the front door.
Grace and her stepdaughter were back, carrying takeaway boxes. The former had changed into a cool-toned short-sleeved dress, prim and proper down to her shoes and socks; the latter wore a white lace camisole with loose shorts, her snow-white, slender feet in a pair of wood-tone slippers, hair a little tousled — looking cool and casual.
The moment Lilith stepped inside, she spotted the crisscrossing marks on Li Fei's neck, and her face instantly went red.
She had wanted to loudly call out her stepmom for being so improper, but considering the culprit behind those marks, the words got stuck in her throat.
"Thanks for the hard work."
Li Fei beamed and ushered them inside, deftly applying a mark-removing ointment to herself, then swallowing a soybean-sized pill that prevented her belly from swelling. These two kinds of medicine were basically always on her person.
Meanwhile, the other two ladies laid out the dinner they'd bought on the table.
Five dishes and a soup. Sniffing the familiar scent from the soup, Li Fei silently gave a thumbs-up to thoughtful Miss Pokerface.
"For one thousand credits — cheers!"
Li Fei lifted the seafood soup spiked with Serpent-woman scales and downed it in one bold swig.
For this exchange event, the deep-pocketed Magic Academy had put up an even more generous prize pool than in years past.
According to the notice the school had posted, the teams ranked 19th to 36th — that is, the squads that made it through the first two rounds of the eliminations — would each receive 50 credits as a consolation prize.
Teams that made it through the third round and placed between 10th and 18th would each be awarded 200 credits.
And a squad like the Three-Mage-Girl Squad — winning all four rounds and slashing their way into the group stage — would land themselves in the top nine, with a guaranteed minimum reward of 1,000 credits.
If they made it out of the group stage, they'd be solidly seated in the top three.
Third place: a reward of 2,000 credits, plus each member could pick a single Full Moon-grade piece of equipment.
Second place: a reward of 3,500 credits, Full Moon-grade equipment, plus one entry permit to a C-rank Folded Space.
And for the champions… just the credit reward alone was 5,000, and on top of the Full Moon-grade equipment reward and a one-time C-rank Folded Space entry permit, they could also pick one rare item from the Academy's treasure vault.
Of course, these were just the core rewards. Depending on placement, there'd be additional bonuses too — things like credit-free reading time at the library, or use-time at the Mana Fountain.
The sheer generosity of the rewards made the seriousness and sincerity of the two great Academies plain to see — just the group-stage rewards alone were enough to set the heart of a mid-Sequence Transcendent racing; the top-three rewards were enough to make them red-eyed with envy. After all, money doesn't come easy, and plenty of Sequence 6 Transcendents were still making do with mismatched Half Moon and Full Moon equipment.
Naturally, Li Fei was drooling over the champion's reward too. As long as she could pluck the crown for herself, she'd be that much closer to the Third Heaven of Furnace Battle-Qi.
"Tomorrow's group stage — our main opponent is Annesia's team. Any good suggestions?"
Li Fei ladled herself another bowl of soup, sipping it in small mouthfuls while she asked her teammates for their thoughts.
The group-stage matchup list had already been released.
Mercifully, the Cleaver Squad and the Klein-and-Kova team were in different groups.
But there was bad news too — the Model Squad was in the same group as them, and they were just as fearsomely strong. Current consensus had them pegged as "locked in for second, vying for third."
"Very strong."
Grace laid out the intel she had observed: "In all four matches today, Bruce didn't use a single Spell Scroll."
"Fer real."
Li Fei had a bit of a headache: "Every one of them is Sequence 7, and every one of them has the ability to swing the situation…"
Bruce, the Noble-school Transcendent — that single card of his Tier-3 scrolls alone meant nobody dared underestimate him. Li Fei had no intention of testing whether her own resistance could hard-tank Tier-3 spell damage.
George, the War-school one — that suit of steel-can armor of his was both strong and tough, capable of overturning a Sequence 7 warrior.
And the supposedly harmless Life-school mage girl Annesia was the single most unstable factor in any fight. She cultivated at least two schools of magic — Life and Chaos — and her "Chaos Casting" specialty made her spells exponentially more threatening.
Which meant: no matter who they targeted, even if they focus-fired one down, the remaining two were still more than enough to take their lives.
"Let's open up by going after Annesia."
Lilith offered the safer suggestion — in team fights you can never go wrong by instagibbing the healer.
"No good."
Li Fei shook her head: "She has a shield, unlikely we can insta-kill her. And on top of that, the second that steel-can charges in, we'll have a hard time holding him off…"
After a brief moment of thought, she slowly set the bowl down: "We have to take George out first."
"Eh?"
Lilith blinked, then gently pointed out, "I feel like his armor is really thick…"
"That's right. But it's armor after all — a precision contraption driven by gears and engines. And the more precise something is, the more easily it breaks down."
Li Fei shot back: "Do you really think a lower-year student could possibly develop, all by himself, a suit of armor that's flawless from the inside out?"
Not waiting for her stepdaughter to answer, Li Fei answered her own question:
"Not likely. Otherwise that guy would probably have been recruited up to the 'Main Academy.'"
"My guess is, George's armor mainly relies on external anti-magic and shock-absorbing materials to protect the internal mechanical structure… which means, the inside of the armor is fragile."
"So we can work from the inside — make George's armor go out of control."
Li Fei slowly laid out her plan.
"But…"
Lilith threw out a question of her own: "How do we sabotage the inside of the armor? Corrosion and damage from within is the specialty of Death-school mages. Damage-class spells of other schools generally need to reach the mid-Sequences before they get any inside-out effect."
"Open your mind up — you've gotta be inspired."
Li Fei locked her gaze on a knowledge tome in the System Shop and patiently guided her: "A person who's been stabbed — even if their organs are damaged, even if their guts get pierced through — can still tough it out and keep fighting. But machinery is different. Just having a single component disturbed might send the whole apparatus into chaos."
"And certain Curse-class spells already come with a tiny bit of damage on their own… For a Transcendent, that kind of damage is no more than a tickle. But for machinery — just one gear out of place and you've got a kill-shot effect."
"Wasp Swarm!"
Under Li Fei's hints, the two of them spoke the name of a spell in unison.
Nature-school spells excelled at summoning, and the buff-class spells were no slouch either. Curse and damage-class spells were truly the blind spot and weak point of this school of magic — extremely rare.
The Tier-2 spell [Wasp Swarm] happened to be one such exception.
The effect of this spell was to use mana to generate a swarm of wasps inside the enemy's body, disrupting the target's thoughts through buzzing sounds and pain — an outstanding curse-class effect.
The difference between mana wasps and ordinary wasps was that the former had no "stinger" and could only use feeble force to repeatedly batter with their wings. Their duration was very short, and once they died, no corpse was left behind. So even though mana wasps could appear directly inside the enemy's brain and run amok in there, they were still classified only as "Curse-class magic" rather than "Damage-class magic" — though of course, for ordinary people, it was still very dangerous. It was just that Transcendents had even their brain regions reinforced, so they weren't all that fragile.
"Mm-hm."
Li Fei snapped her fingers, swirling the soup in her bowl like a business elite gently swirling red wine in a stemmed glass, looking very much like she had wisdom-in-hand:
"Wasp Swarm by itself might still have a gambling element to it. But if Wasp Swarm is paired with a flame add-on… there's no reason George's armor wouldn't be destroyed!"
"But… in our training camp the past couple of days, I never saw you use Wasp Swarm."
Excited as she was, Lilith raised one last question.
"There are only names given wrong, never nicknames called wrong."
As her Wealth Points ticked down, Miss Spell Encyclopedia smiled, light and unbothered, and snapped her fingers again with a flourish:
"apis coloniam."
Wasp Swarm (Lv1)
Spell Effect: Generates mana wasps inside the target's body, disrupting the enemy's actions.
Duration: 2 seconds
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Mana Cost: 20
In an instant, Lilith — used as a spell test subject by her wicked stepmother — went pale as a flower, clutching her head and shrieking as if she were holding a hornet's nest in her arms.
Two seconds later, baring teeth and brandishing claws, she pounced on Li Fei, intent on matricide.
The next morning.
"A small bet brings pleasure, a big bet brings wealth — the chance to change your life is right before your eyes; passersby, don't miss out~"
Inside the Magic Academy, a Sequence 8 [Gambler] was loudly hawking his wares, egging on classmates passing by to take part in his "charity event."
The school administration forbade "compelling others to participate in gambling," but they didn't ban voluntary betting games — fools who lost their entire family fortunes to gambling were better culled by natural selection as early as possible, sparing the Academy embarrassment down the line.
Of course, during the marketing pitch one was also forbidden to use Transcendent abilities, otherwise it would be deemed "compelling others to participate." Anyone caught was expelled, no exceptions.
Under the [Gambler]'s industrious and rather persuasive hawking, the makeshift stall was packed shoulder to shoulder, plenty of classmates opening up their purses to bet on today's gambling pool.
Still, what these students were pulling out were gold coins and small-denomination Goldsmith Notes — none of the heavily addicted gambling-dogs had shown up.
At the stall, with its steady stream of customers, a pitifully lovely pink-haired beauty with a bronze-colored Academy brooch pinned to her chest sidled over.
Today's gambling pool was: "Which team will make it out of the group stage?"
"Brothers, sisters, the moment to test your eye for talent has come! Quick — place your bets on the team you favor…"
The Gambler chattered on without pause: "To tell you the truth, I'm not someone who cares about money. I'm running this betting game mainly to prepare for my Ascension Ritual… Group C, the Cleaver Squad is invincible. Group B is a tight race, everyone consult the odds and buy as you see fit. But as for Group A — personally I'm betting on the 'Three-Mage-Girl Team.' After all, Miss Spell Encyclopedia is a once-in-a-generation talent…"
"FNNNDP."
Immediately some hot-tempered fella cut him off: "You're saying you favor the Three-Mage-Girl Team, but you're listing odds of 1:2.3? Are you running charity over here? Cut the crap — I'm putting my money on the Model Squad."
"That's right. We're not blind either. However outstanding Miss Spell Encyclopedia's talent is, in hard strength there's still a gap between her and them. I'm buying the Model Squad too!"
"I'll throw in ten gold coins as well, on the Model Squad…"
The Gambler took in the money with a smiling face, but in his heart he was cursing — figuring he'd have to do another round of charity today.
Suddenly, a soft, sweet voice drifted over:
"Um… I'd like to bet on the Three-Mage-Girl Team."
The pure, sweet tone made the stall fall silent for a moment, and when everyone turned to look, they all drew in a sharp breath at once.
The bettor was a pink-haired beauty so lovely she could topple nations and ruin states — features pure and otherworldly, large eyes dewy and moist, a holy aura about her, plus a fragile, pity-evoking quality. Yet her about-to-burst-out figure was downright scandalous: her orange-red skirt-hem fierce and bold, the eye-searing slit design at the neckline even more alluring than the snug, long black silk legs.
"Where did she pop out from? A girl this pretty, I shouldn't have no impression of her…"
"Three minutes — I want her complete profile!"
"Miss Spell Encyclopedia's status as school belle is being challenged…"
Amid the whispered murmurs, the pink-haired girl covered her chest with both hands, eyes shining with anticipation: "Is that all right? I'd like to bet on the team Miss Spell Encyclopedia is on…"
"No problem. How much?"
In the face of money, even if the victim was such a flower-faced, moon-bright beauty, the Gambler didn't go easy on her.
"Mm…"
The pink-haired girl bit her lip and smiled shyly: "Would ten thousand gold coins be okay?"
The instant the words left her mouth, the whole place fell dead silent.
A full few seconds later, the surroundings erupted back into uproar.
"Huh?!"
"Did I hear that right…"
"What an adorable girl, how did she end up… sigh."
Amid the clamor, some wore envious expressions, while others looked downright pained — looking at a girl this charming, how could she be missing a few screws upstairs?
Miss Spell Encyclopedia's outstanding talent was no lie, and that one fleeting glimpse of her deep-red battle-qi the day before had dropped countless jaws. But once everyone had cooled down, they ultimately realized that battle-qi cultivation at that level, while indeed peerless among the freshman class, was still lacking when compared to truly powerful teams. Against a Sequence 8 warrior she could only manage "suppression"; against the Model Squad — who hadn't yet shown their true strength — winning was a remote prospect at best.
Meanwhile the Gambler's eyes were shining as if he were beholding a gold-radiant angel. In a trembling voice, he asked:
"May I ask the esteemed classmate's name?"
"Kaname Madoka."
To avoid her good-student persona collapsing, Li Fei trotted out the alter ego she'd kept buried for many days, and gave a docile reply.
— This classmate Kaname Madoka — I, Charity-King Gambler Lu, am willing to hail you as the King of Kings of Charity!
The Gambler could hardly contain his excitement. He was about to agree on the spot when his partner-in-business tugged at his sleeve, signaling with his eyes, "The stake is too big."
But the Gambler patted the table in front of him, returning a gaze brimming with confidence — the message couldn't have been clearer:
If we end up having to pay this out, I'll eat this table right here on the spot.
Seizing the lull, a kind-hearted student finally couldn't bear to watch this flower-faced, moon-bright beauty lose this badly, and softly reminded her:
"Classmate, gambling carries risks…"
— When others are fearful, I am greedy. When others are greedy, I add to my position.
— I'm already a clubhouse model anyway, so all in!!
Miss Kaname Madoka was roaring inside, but on her face she put on a dazed, adorable expression:
"The fight hasn't even started yet — who wins and who loses is unknown."
"In that case, why not pick the side with higher odds? Wouldn't you make more that way?"
The classmate trying to advise her twitched the corner of her mouth, words on the verge of coming out but never spoken.
What kind of demonic logic was this?
"Deal!"
At this point the Gambler had also snapped back to his senses, eyes flushed red with excitement: "Classmate Kaname Madoka, by the rules, anything within a hundred gold coins just needs payment and a signature. After all, we're all Magic Academy students — nobody's going to break a contract over a tiny bit of betting money like that. But your wager is on the larger side, so to play it safe, let's still go ahead and sign a spell contract."
"By the standard rules, the cost of the contract should be split between us… but I really admire your courage and your eye for talent, so the money for this contract — I'll cover it!"
"Ah, really?"
Miss Kaname Madoka clutched at her teetering, eye-searing chest, revealing a sweet, innocent, harmless smile, and earnestly expressed her thanks: "Then thank you so much."
You're still thanking him?
This girl really is missing a few screws…
The moment the spell contract took effect, the classmates off to the side all shook their heads and sighed, faces full of pity and sympathy.
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