Premiere

"Hey! Look what I brought back!"

In Room 327 of Building One of the Liebin Spellcaster Academy women's dormitories, Galina struck a smug pose in the doorway.

As the Sutton Kingdom's top spellcasting school, its standard student dorms were all double rooms.

"What junk did that guy send you this time?" Her roommate Yuffie did not even look up, absorbed in her practice problems.

She was preparing for the Wand Cup Inscription Competition. In the preliminary rankings, some unknown rogue spellcaster had placed above hundreds of students from prestigious schools like theirs, putting everyone under immense pressure.

"What do you mean, that guy? He's my boyfriend, okay!"

"Does he know you're his girlfriend?"

"Of course! He gave me two tickets to the hottest premiere of Holy Mountain Journey. Do you know how much one of these tickets would sell for on the resale market right now?"

Galina pulled two glittering golden tickets from her expensive handmade bag.

"But as your best friend, of course I thought of sharing them with you first. So? Let's go see Magic Shadow at the Wranglers Theater tonight."

"Do you really want to share?"

"Of course!" Galina's eyes drifted toward the window.

"Don't worry, I'll carry you on the group assignment." Yuffie was about to refuse on the grounds that she needed to prepare for the competition when she suddenly caught sight of the rune on the Magic Shadow ticket.

Many theaters inscribed runes onto tickets to verify their authenticity, and the rune on this ticket belonged to her most admired illusionist—Flynn Uman.

Her interest immediately piqued. Studying required a balance between work and rest, and she had to see anything Teacher Flynn had been involved in.

"Let's go. Give me a moment to get ready."

"You said yes! Great!"

Outside the Wranglers Theater, prosperity had returned after a long absence.

Carriages packed the street before the entrance, while all kinds of vendors had gathered there to get a share of the profits.

"I found a snack I've never seen before," Galina said as she ran over carrying a paper box. "It's called popcorn. They actually allow people to bring food inside."

Yuffie tried a piece. It was sweet, with a fragrant rice-like aroma. Not bad at all.

"You have no idea. When my family took me to see plays as a child, there were so many rules. Forget eating—even sneezing or coughing would get you scolded."

The audience gradually entered the theater.

The moment they stepped into the screening hall, they could see how different it was from a theatrical stage. There were no sets at all, only a massive screen hanging from the ceiling.

The room was also much darker than a theater, making it difficult even to find one's seat. Some people had resorted to casting illumination spells.

A staff member repeatedly broadcast the precautions through an amplification spell. "All light sources will be shut off once the film begins. Please do not panic. During the screening, please refrain from casually using illumination spells, as they may disturb others..."

The two-thousand-seat theater quickly filled up, and the entire hall fell into darkness.

Then images appeared on the screen.

Cornflower Street lay beneath the night sky. In the thick fog, a carriage pulled by four griffins raced onward.

Inside the carriage, someone urgently communicated through a transmission spell. "What do you mean all the healing potions from Kullman Potion Factory have problems?"

Quite a few audience members recognized the man on screen.

"Isn't that Master Soren?"

"That's him. He came to give a speech at our school when I graduated."

A sudden impact cut off the audience's whispers, and they grew tense along with the plot.

Yuffie recognized the drake from Drogo’s Toy Store.

Now she was genuinely interested in this Magic Shadow. How exactly had they made a drake perform the movements they needed?

The following scene of the drake's corpse transforming truly frightened quite a few people.

Not Yuffie, but Galina grabbed her arm in her nervousness, squeezing so hard it hurt. She was surprisingly strong.

The story settled down, showing the male lead's ordinary family life and why he was taking his daughter to Holy Mountain.

But after the horrifying opening scenes, the everyday plot only made the audience more uneasy. They had no idea when that "bomb" would finally explode.

A clever approach.

Yuffie realized this was not an art form that relied solely on visual spectacle to succeed. It had a solid dramatic foundation as well.

And once zombies appeared aboard the train, wave after wave of climaxes came so fast that no one had a moment to catch their breath.

From then on, the theater could no longer stay quiet. Gasps, screams, and uneasy breaths rose and fell without pause.

Yuffie, too, was swept up in the emotions of the story.

She grew tense when the protagonists were separated from their loved ones, worried as they passed through train cars occupied by zombies, and joyful when they reunited with their family.

Then, when the protagonists were trapped outside the safe carriage, the buildup of emotion reached its peak.

Why?

Why, after breaking through so many hordes of zombies, were they being kept outside the door by their own kind?

Her extensive reading experience told her that someone was supposed to die at a moment like this.

It was only an ordinary dramatic technique. Why was she so uneasy?

When the boy repeatedly hurled spell spheres at the sealed door, and the half-orc used his body to block the zombies—

She grew furious. At the same time, she began to hate the characters in the story, especially the potion factory executive who had incited the others not to open the door.

She even took it out on the real Kullman Potion Factory. Kullman Healing Potion, which had once represented good value for money, suddenly made her feel a little sick.

She had decided. From now on, she would spend a little extra to buy healing potions made by other people. The difference was not much anyway, and it would make her feel better.

Meanwhile, Galina had already been on the verge of losing control when the half-orc held the door. When he spoke the name of his unborn daughter before dying, she, like many others in the theater, burst into uncontrollable sobs.

Yuffie understood. From today onward, the age of theater was over. It might not disappear, but Magic Shadow would surely force it into an unglamorous corner.

When she saw the elderly goblin woman choose to open the carriage door and die together with those coldhearted people, a painful thrill rose in her heart despite the bloody, brutal scene before her.

The two hours passed in a flash. Not a single second of Magic Shadow had bored her.

It was even better than she had expected.

Maybe after graduation, she could become an illusionist who created illusions for Magic Shadow productions too, just like Teacher Flynn.

At the end of the film, the male lead recalled his daughter's birth, smiled as he transformed into a zombie, and fell from the train.

As a father, the last thing he did in life was still to protect his daughter.

The film did not directly show the father falling. It showed only a shadow disappearing between the tracks rushing backward, carrying a sorrowful kind of romance.

Galina was crying so hard she could barely breathe.

Yuffie wanted to comfort her. It was only a story, after all. But just as she was about to speak, she found her own voice beginning to tremble. At some point, warm tears had streaked down her face.

When the final two survivors stopped before the checkpoint at Holy Mountain, the film came to an abrupt end.

Names appeared one after another on the screen, recording even the names of every zombie actor in meticulous detail.

This was treatment traditional theater would never offer. Even during the final curtain call, bit players were merely swallowed by the crowd, serving as part of the backdrop.

The lights came back on, and the audience rose to their feet, giving long-lasting applause. Even though they were not sure whether the creative team was present, this was praise the work deserved.

Then, however, an angry roar shattered the harmonious atmosphere in the theater.

"Look! It's that bastard potion factory executive! Don't let him get away!"