In the square!
Everyone stood utterly stunned.
Their eyes were fixed on the ordinary-looking wizard before them and the immense mental power that could not be ignored.
Ian?
A student?
Their senior?
They struggled to fit it all together, feeling a shock unlike anything they had ever known.
Ian was Horton's student?
Everyone's breath caught!
"How is that possible? How could he be Horton's student?"
On the other side, Jiabai stared blankly at Ian in the distance, then at Horton, who stood not far away and seemed at once strange and familiar.
He could not understand it at all.
How had things taken such a turn?
How could Ian, an apothecary from the Potions Department, have caught Horton's eye and become his disciple?
Fear spread through his heart.
In an instant, he understood that all his schemes had come to nothing, because this was the Horton Wizard School.
And here, Horton was the sky itself.
This time, he had truly struck an iron wall.
He was not alone. Everyone else's gaze changed as they looked at Ian.
"So this was what you were counting on?"
Vivian finally understood where Ian's confidence had come from.
Not Vilo, but Horton.
"You sly kid!"
Ed's eyes lit up as though he had seen something entirely new.
Layton and Joran exchanged a glance, each seeing the other's astonishment and delight.
By a twist of fate, it seemed they had bet on the right side.
As for the other wizards on the judging panel, they looked as though they had swallowed poison.
The network of connections these people had built once held the academy in its grip. Yet at that moment, before Horton, before true power, it seemed so fragile and helpless.
Farther out,
the members of the Cultivation Sequence all wore grim expressions. Among