"Damn little bug!" Mei had been driven frantic by Yu Luo's constant jumping around and roared irritably, "I'm sick of this game already. Just obediently turn to ash!"
The thinning thunderclouds in the sky rapidly shrank at a visible rate, covering only an area of over twenty meters centered on Yu Luo. They were so black they seemed ready to drip ink. Just the faint aura leaking from them made alarm bells ring in Yu Luo's heart, and without hesitation, he activated the Possessed Skill Mind's Eye A (False).
The Mind's Eye (False) skill was a premonition, or the legendary sixth sense—a danger-predicting ability born of natural talent. Sasaki Kojiro's Mind's Eye (False) had reached A rank, coming close to the realm of foreseeing the future.
"Lightning, burst!" With Mei's furious shout, white bolts of lightning descended upon the area like a raging storm, striking indiscriminately and leaving no inch untouched. The air took on a burnt stench, and Yu Luo's exposed skin tingled and went numb. Rubble flew everywhere, as though the area had been bombarded by artillery shells.
The blazing white lightning completely engulfed the area. Even Mei herself could not see through the blinding flashes, only shattered debris streaking through the air with faint electric sparks. Every Zombie Girl in Senba Academy stared blankly at the lightning-filled zone, not daring to move, as if they were paying court to their queen.
(I said, that's enough!)
"Ah!" Mei, who had been calmly waiting to admire her handiwork, suddenly clutched her head. The wings behind her flickered in and out of sight, while her pupils shifted between red and purple. Her condition was extremely unstable.
"Damn it! Weren't you completely disappointed in this world?! Then just destroy it! Why are you resisting my power?!" Mei roared, and the changes in her body intensified. Even her floating body began to sway unsteadily in midair.
"Vermin, just you wait!" Mei finally left behind a bitter threat. Flapping her pair of translucent purple wings, she wobbled away through the air. The condensed thunderclouds, having lost their master's control, slowly dispersed as well, revealing the figures of the two people beneath them.
"Phew... phew..." Yu Luo collapsed weakly onto the ground. His long blue ponytail quickly vanished, returning to its original short black hair. His pale purple kimono and Katana also faded away, restoring his usual outfit.
"That was... too close..." Yu Luo looked at Kiana, who was sitting limply on the ground beside him, still shaken. In his vision, the energy in Sasaki Kakashi's card had just been completely depleted, while their bond had jumped from 1% to 3%. It seemed the amount the bond increased depended on the intensity of the battle.
"Teacher, are you all right?" Kiana asked Yu Luo with concern. If Yu Luo had not been protecting her the entire time, she probably would have turned to ash along with Berserker General Hoshina.
Yu Luo tried to sit up, but he could not summon even a trace of strength from his body and fell back down weakly. He glanced at the road nearly two meters above them and said feebly, "Let me rest for a while. I'm exhausted."
Kiana walked over, easily lifted Yu Luo onto her back, and carried him. Yu Luo had done all the work in the earlier battle against Mei, so Kiana had conserved most of her stamina.
"I'll carry you. We don't have time to waste. Mei could come back at any moment, so we need to leave as soon as possible!" Kiana was unusually dependable now, and the faint airheadedness she usually had was completely gone.
Yu Luo looked at Kiana like this and smiled. "Bring your head closer. I'll give you a buff." The moment he said that, Kiana began shaking violently, frightening Yu Luo into immediately wrapping his arms around her neck.
"I was kind enough to carry you, and you still want to bully me? This is just a small warning!" Kiana said indignantly. "If there's a next time, I'll toss you down and make you walk by yourself!"
"My lady, I've been wronged!" Yu Luo protested. "You saw my ability, didn't you?" At last, he took the initiative to bring up the subject both of them had deliberately avoided earlier.
Yu Luo knew there would definitely be more battles in the future. Even if Kiana was a bit of an idiot, if he kept brushing things off like this, it would sooner or later become a thorn between them. It was better to lay everything out now, though he had to come up with a convincing explanation.
"Teacher, do you mean those cards?" Kiana asked curiously.
"That's right!" Yu Luo's tone was serious, and Kiana could not help becoming serious as well. "Those cards actually aren't ordinary cards."
"No kidding. What kind of ordinary card lets you transform?" The system could not help popping up to mock him. Yu Luo rolled his eyes internally and continued his nonsense—no, his explanation.
"Those cards are actually made from special quantum materials. When I use the cards and perform certain strange movements, my quantum fluctuations change. When the frequency of my quantum fluctuations matches the frequency of a historical hero's quantum fluctuations, I gain that hero's power."
"Oh, oh, I see." Kiana spoke as if she had suddenly understood, but her face was full of question marks. She understood every word Yu Luo had said separately, but once they were put together, she had no idea what they meant.
Actually, Yu Luo did not know what he was talking about either. He was just making things up. Whenever something could not be explained, quantum mechanics would do the job.
"You're actually bullying such a stu—such an innocent child. Doesn't your conscience hurt?!" The system sounded heartbroken, as if it were mourning the fact that it had ended up with such a heartless host.
"Were you about to call her an idiot?" Yu Luo was not falling for that. A miserly system like this had no right to lecture him about conscience.
"You misheard. The thunder just now must have been too loud, and there might be something wrong with your eardrums. Let me examine them for you." The system gave an awkward laugh before diving back into silence.
"So, take this." Yu Luo held a Noble Phantasm Card between his fingers. It depicted abstract weapons such as blades, spears, swords, and halberds, with the word [Struggle] written on it. "I've fully limit-broken this card. It can make your attacks a little stronger."
Kiana curiously accepted the Noble Phantasm Card and turned it over and over in her hands. "Teacher, how do I use it?"
"Hold it in your hand, draw a circle in the air, and shout, 'Balala energy, Little Magic Fairy transformation!'" Yu Luo explained with a straight face, fighting hard not to laugh. If he laughed now, Kiana would really get angry and throw him down.
"Hey, bullying the intellectually disabled is against the law!" The system righteously objected to Yu Luo bullying Kiana.
"A great ice fairy once said that people who call others intellectually disabled are the truly intellectually disabled." Yu Luo effortlessly shut the system down.
Meanwhile, Kiana had already believed Yu Luo. She drew a circle in the air and shouted, "Balala energy, Little Magic Fairy transformation!"
Holding back his laughter, Yu Luo activated the Noble Phantasm Card's effect. The card in Kiana's hand disappeared, transforming into a bronze-colored glow that sank into her body, almost imperceptible to the naked eye.
"That's it?" Kiana felt a strange, faint force coursing through her body. She clenched her left fist and threw a hard punch into the air, producing a fierce gust of wind. Somewhat uncertainly, she said, "It does seem a little stronger?"
Yu Luo rolled his eyes. Who told her to be such a physical monster? If it were an ordinary girl, this card would at least let her go a few rounds with a typical taekwondo fighter. Yu Luo had relied on this Noble Phantasm Card to charge through the horde of Zombie Girls earlier.
"Let's go. We don't have much time, and we don't know when that girl named Mei will come back." Lying on Kiana's back, Yu Luo interrupted her attempt to test her new toy and urged her onward.
"Got it, nagging Teacher." Kiana stuck out her tongue, easily carried Yu Luo, and leapt up onto the road in just a few jumps. Only then did they clearly see the environment after it had been ravaged by lightning.
All the glass windows in the dormitory building had shattered, yet there was not a single shard of glass on the road. That was because the once-flat road had become a massive crater over twenty meters wide and more than two meters deep. The two of them had been lying right in the center of that crater.
More than half of the Zombie Girls in the dormitory building had been wiped out. The small number remaining were still immersed in the terrifying pressure from before, trembling and not daring to move. For a moment, the most difficult stretch of their escape route—from the dormitory building to the back mountain—had become completely unobstructed.
"Ah, Mei really is a good person." Seeing the scene before him, Yu Luo immediately gave Mei a good-person card. "She even cleared the road for us. The next time we see her, we definitely have to thank her properly."
Kiana ran across the open road with Yu Luo on her back and said, "But her voice sounded..."
"Desperate, right?" Yu Luo said that he had felt the deep despair buried in Mei's words as well. He pushed up a pair of nonexistent glasses. "Looks like she has her own hidden circumstances. Maybe it's one of those situations you often see in novels."
"What kind of situation?" Kiana asked curiously.
"I'm not telling you. The wisdom of mortals."
"Teacher, if you keep beating around the bush to call me stupid, I'm really going to throw you down!"
"Why are you so smart when it comes to this... Ah! That hurts! Pull me up already! I was wrong, I won't say it again!"
Before you continue