The Conference Room, which should have been orderly and neat, had become chaotic. Many teachers stared wide-eyed at the Magic Screen suspended in the center, pressing down on their desks as they stood up!
"...?"
Puzzled and shocked discussions immediately echoed through the Conference Room's spacious interior.
Unless one knew Silent Casting.
Otherwise.
This single Friendly Exchange card could disgust every traditional mage to death!
Thanks to the convenience of spellcasting and the freedom of combinations offered by Magic Cards, modern mages might learn spells to expand their skill sets, but very few would painstakingly practice Silent Casting.
"Could the Magic Engineering Institute have secretly developed something new again...?"
Even Vice Principal Ron, who had been holding his pen in silence the entire time, couldn't help but twitch at the corner of his eye.
He knew.
From now on, "Silent Casting" would become a required course at the Sage Institute.
This revolting card would spread like a virus. Starting from Iketerite Academy, where it had first appeared, it would gradually spread throughout the royal capital, the entire Hutton Kingdom, the Southern Continent, and eventually the whole world...
And its maker was still unknown.
There were often Card Makers with inexplicable talents who failed to realize how disruptive the cards they made would be while creating them. Only after their works had circulated on the market for a long time could their true identities be traced.
It seemed that after the examinations ended,
regardless of whether Lanchi passed,
someone would contact Lanchi and find a way to investigate the origins of this Friendly Exchange card.
Alternatively, they could simply obtain the Friendly Exchange card in his possession, reverse-engineer the poisonous magic contained within it, and then attempt to reproduce its casting principles as quickly as possible!
"It shouldn't be very likely that he made it himself, right..."
Vice Principal Ron rubbed his brow.
Although the Sage Institute also had students who knew how to make Magic Cards, it was mainly students from the Magic Engineering Institute who specialized in Card Making.
A Card Maker capable of producing this Friendly Exchange card would be an explosive presence even in the Card Making world.
As things stood,
rather than letting Lanchi, who held clues about the "miraculous Card Maker," return home, it would actually be best if Lanchi could join the Sage Institute.
With Loren, the Dean, present, no one would dare do anything reckless to Lanchi.
And if Friendly Exchange were rapidly circulated on the market in large quantities, it would undoubtedly give the Sage Institute a massive headache.
Where had this newcomer suddenly come from?
While Vice Principal Ron was puzzled, he couldn't help flipping through the documents in his hands.
The more he read the blank-paper-like résumé, the stranger it seemed.
If the previous assessment had merely been a coincidence,
then this was the second time Lanchi had left them staring into darkness.
Moreover, he had yet to display any of the core abilities of a White Mage.
His entire system still seemed like a mystery.
The documents showed
that Lanchi himself didn't possess any spells, while his White Mage role had been certified by the Magic Tower.
Then most of the card slots on him should still be filled with healing Spell Cards.
There could only be two or three purely functional spells like Friendly Exchange at most.
But what Ron couldn't understand was—
with Lanchi's low magic power, what had he been thinking by carrying such a high proportion of healing cards?
Every person's soul had a limit to the number of Magic Cards it could bear.
The higher the tier of a Magic Card, the more space it occupied in one's Soul Space after Soul Binding.
For example, Lanchi was Tier 2, so he could bind Magic Cards with a combined tier total of at most 20.
The highest tier he could bind was Tier 2.
If he reached Tier 3 in the future, he could bind Magic Cards with a combined tier total of at most 30, and he would also be able to bind Tier 3 Magic Cards.
On the other hand,
if Tier 2 Lanchi bound only Tier 2 Magic Cards, he would reach his carrying limit after binding just ten cards.
But if he bound some Tier 1 Magic Cards, he could bind more cards in total.
A Magic Card's tier could also be regarded as its "cost" to some extent.
Low-tier Magic Cards could be considered to have a lower "cost."
That was why some high-quality, highly versatile low-tier Magic Cards wouldn't be eliminated even after their owner reached a higher tier.
At this moment, Vice Principal Ron instead felt that if Lanchi filled his entire body with targeted functional spells like Friendly Exchange, then with his high Mana limit and sustained casting ability brought about by his high spirit, he might truly become a purely functional support capable of producing miraculous effects.
"Even if Lanchi has displayed miraculous effects, the real problem comes next."
"The tier gap is simply too great."
The teachers in the Conference Room began focusing intensely on the battle.
In their eyes, the originally suspense-free confrontation had actually shown a glimmer of a turning point, naturally bringing with it a trace of strange anticipation.
But they also knew full well that the basic attribute gap between Tier 5 and Tier 2 or Tier 3 was like a natural chasm.
Even with nothing but his fists and ordinary attack magic, Ferrat could easily beat Lanchi and Hughberlian—two fragile opponents—to death. What was more, Ferrat still had a few small spells that he could cast instantly. By contrast, it would be difficult for the two examinees to inflict any effective damage on Ferrat.
The odds had merely shifted from ten-to-zero to nine-to-one.
On the Magic Screen,
the battle on the Ilyavin Great Plains continued.
Amid Ferrat's astonishment, he grasped the abnormal fact that his opponent had cast without chanting.
At that thought, a chill suddenly swept through Ferrat's heart.
He instantly became alert.
As if a sound had sliced through the air,
a figure appeared from nowhere. By the time she materialized again, she was already driving her blade viciously toward Ferrat's chest and heart!
Hughberlian, who had launched the attack, was extremely close to Ferrat.
The dagger in her hand was almost about to strike home and pierce Ferrat's heart.
Moreover, a strange crystalline gleam shimmered across the bizarre scorpion-tail-shaped dagger, clearly indicating that it was coated with deadly poison.
"Damn it!"
Ferrat wanted to roar angrily, but could only produce a strange noise. At the same time, a deep-red, searing ring of light burst out around him!
Even if he couldn't cast by chanting, he still had low-tier, small-scale spells that could be cast instantly!
The ring of light expanded from his body and vanished in a flash. Hughberlian, who had appeared so suddenly, was instantly flung away by the ring of fire.
"Phew, phew."
Hughberlian, who had been struck head-on by the attack, quickly rolled to her feet.
Aside from a few minor burns, she wasn't seriously injured.
Meanwhile, the Hughberlian who had originally been standing beside Lanchi scattered like a mirage. She had merely been a decoy left behind after she made herself invisible with a spell.
"Bastard, you actually dodged that."
Hughberlian spoke in a low voice, her expression dark.
In midair,
a line of blood had appeared on Ferrat's cheek. Blood began sliding down the wound and dripping away.
In that split second earlier, Hughberlian had realized that she couldn't stab Ferrat through the heart. She had instead poured all her strength into throwing the Scorpion Tail Dagger like a projectile, aiming straight for his head!
With his rich combat experience and keen reaction speed, Ferrat had instinctively turned his head and dodged the attack.
But he ultimately failed to completely evade the dirty trick at such close range.
Severe pain spread from the wound on Ferrat's cheek, making the veins on his forehead throb constantly.
Clearly, he had already been poisoned by what was merely a graze. The wound was also difficult to heal, even though Ferrat had applied a delayed healing effect to himself before coming here.
Ferrat was currently under the Silence effect Lanchi had applied, and he couldn't yet use Purification Magic on himself to remove these negative effects.
He had to endure the pain of a blade scraping his throat and rely on his Tier 5 resistance to tough out the poison's duration.
Although the Tier 3 poison on Hughberlian's dagger posed almost no threat to Tier 5 Ferrat,
Ferrat could already feel his fury gradually burning hotter!
The two weak newcomers on the ground clearly had no real coordination.
But both of them were Netherworld-level nuisances.
One could turn invisible while poisoned and bleeding, making him impossible to find on the map.
And behind him was another bastard who sealed spells, and who knew what else he would pull out next.
This wretched couple had to have suffered divine retribution to end up together!
The content over the past few days has been rather Netherworld-level, so the update time has also moved from the worldly 6:00 a.m. up to the Netherworld's 12:00 a.m.!
Before you continue