Sorcerer efficiency

The wind over the training ground seemed to freeze for an instant.

The blue cursed energy that had been spilling wildly from Feng like boiling steam settled eerily in that moment.

It no longer thrashed violently from inadequate control. Instead, it became a clear, deep, steady film like flowing water, fitting snugly against his skin and every fold of his clothes.

The pressure in the air shifted from a sharp, stinging pain to something heavy, damp, and cold.

Feng took a small step back and held his staff across his body, his eyes fixed on the purple figure ahead.

Mei Mei noticed the change. Her long, porcelain-white fingers brushed lightly over the axe handle, while her braid swayed in the wind, concealing the cold gaze she reserved for studying her prey.

In her eyes, the flow of his cursed energy, previously riddled with openings, was gradually drawing together into a seamless whole. That astonishing rate of evolution sent a low warning through her instincts as a Grade 1 Sorcerer.

"Truly excellent self-management. All that distracting 'noise' has been filtered out. This smooth flow... it's practically a blue-chip stock moving toward stability under precise calculations."

Mei Mei chuckled. The crow on her shoulder suddenly beat its wings and soared, circling above the training ground in a black ring.

Her cursed energy began gathering at her toes. Around the blade of her massive, heavy axe, the air warped slightly under the compression of densely concentrated cursed energy.

"Now, what kind of defense do you intend to use to hedge against the 'cost' of this move?"

The instant she finished speaking, Mei Mei left a deep crater where she had stood and crossed several meters in a flash.

Rather than swinging directly, she used the long axe as a pivot and let her momentum carry her into a spinning leap.

Her deep-purple skirt bloomed like a flower in midair. With her cursed energy so tightly concentrated, every movement produced a dull sonic boom.

At the edge of the woods, Megumi Fushiguro's tense shoulders eased almost imperceptibly when he saw the change in the flow of cursed energy on the field, only to stiffen with even deeper concern.

Cold sweat dripped from his temples along his jaw, and his dark-green eyes flicked constantly between their movements.

"The efficiency of his cursed energy has improved by more than an order of magnitude. That flow... is he imitating the circulation of water?

Although he neutralized Mei Mei's cursed technique with amplification, she's now turning this into a pure contest of output through cursed energy reinforcement."

Megumi Fushiguro murmured to himself, his gaze locked on Mei Mei's crow as it constantly changed position.

"Watch the shadows! Feng, she's sharing the crows' vision. The movements in front of you might just be guiding you into the real 'trap.'"

Sure enough, as Mei Mei spun in midair, one of the crows circling high above suddenly let out a piercing shriek.

Wrapped in thick black cursed energy, it shot like a black lead bullet straight toward the black-haired boy's back, carrying the savage force of a suicidal strike.

Ahead of him, Mei Mei shifted her massive axe from a diagonal chop to a horizontal sweep, sealing off every route forward.

The pinnacle of Crow Manipulation, Divine Wind... is that really necessary?

I'm starting to think it's not just this world-even these bizarre teachers are far too harsh. Feng wanted to complain, but there clearly wasn't time.

Divine Wind was an exceptionally fast killing move with tremendous penetrating power.

But Feng already possessed physical immunity, so the move actually posed little threat to him... He could therefore exploit that gap in her knowledge without hesitation, using the opportunity to close in quickly and seize an unexpected victory.

But...

That was a loser's way of thinking. The physical immunity granted by his cursed technique depended on his own control, offering him a certain margin for trial and error.

If he made it his primary means of fighting, he would only stagnate.

Besides, this was a trial to begin with.

"What I have to do is, without using a full Domain Expansion or my cursed technique's physical immunity-"

Feng's gaze suddenly turned cold.

"Defeat you!"

Feng unleashed Domain Amplification again!

Thick black cursed energy burst against the edge of his Domain Amplification as the suicidal crow struck, like a mass of ink forcibly churned apart, leaving an acrid, scorched smell in the air.

At the instant that black afterimage was about to pierce his defense, Feng tilted sharply to the right. His toes scraped a muddy streak across the grass as he narrowly evaded the bloody gust trailing the crow.

But the massive axe had already reached him from the front.

The muscles in Mei Mei's arms tightened beneath her fitted sleeves as she exerted her strength. With a shrill boom, the heavy axe blade struck precisely at the center of the hardwood staff he had raised across his body.

With a teeth-grating crack, the staff's wooden fibers split instantly beneath the tremendous force.

Within that invisible film of amplification, the rich purple light wrapped around the axe blade was neutralized and dispersed, but the sheer physical strength of a Grade 1 Sorcerer still poured relentlessly through the point where their weapons met.

Feng's arms sank sharply, and the webbing between his thumbs and forefingers trembled.

A microsecond before the staff broke completely, he drove his rear foot into the ground and used the recoil to shoot backward. The hem of his dark-blue uniform whipped wildly in the fierce wind as he just barely avoided the icy axe blade sweeping past the tip of his nose.

At the same time, Feng's right hand clamped tightly around half of the broken staff as he retreated. His blue cursed energy instantly shifted from a gentle, flowing state to a violently compressed one, enveloping the splintered wood.

He turned sideways, rotated his hips, and swung his arm in one seamless motion.

The broken staff shot like a short bolt from a heavy ballista, trailing a visible ring of white sonic pressure as it flew straight toward the space between Mei Mei's brows.

Mei Mei's pale-blue eyes narrowed slightly. The long hand gripping her axe handle remained still; she merely shifted her upper body less than three centimeters with an almost languid motion.

"Crack!"

The broken wood skimmed past her braid and flew behind her, blasting a fist-sized hole deep into a distant tree trunk.

"What precise calculations.

Using the instant your weapon was destroyed to create a blind spot and an opening to attack-the 'premium' on that move could even offset the staff's depreciation."

Mei Mei held the massive axe in one hand and let the remaining half of the staff fall to the ground.

She lightly licked the corner of her lips, her gaze lingering for a moment on Feng's dark-red eyes. The cursed energy around her began pulsing at an unstable, high frequency.

"But now that you've thrown away your only close-combat weapon as a consumable, the 'cost' of your defense is going to double."

She's fast... no! Speed from cursed energy alone couldn't possibly explain that...

I concealed that strike very well. There's only one possible explanation. Feng glanced at the crows in the sky.

Taking out all the crows at once would be difficult, but despair can also give rise to new life.

Beneath the trees, Megumi Fushiguro had already reached instinctively for the cursed tool pouch at his waist.

The scattered rubble on the training ground reflected in his dark-green eyes. His gaze swept back and forth between Mei Mei and Feng, and the crease between his brows deepened.

"It's not just amplification. Even the force of his throw was enhanced with precisely controlled cursed energy.

At that speed, if Mei Mei hadn't predicted its trajectory, that strike would already have decided the match."

The lower half of Megumi Fushiguro's face was buried in shadow, and his low voice carried a tension he could barely conceal.

"Feng's cursed energy consumption has already reached a critical point, while Mei Mei hasn't even broken a sweat.

Without the staff, if he relies on amplification alone to take a heavy weapon of that weight head-on, his body will give out first."

Just as Megumi Fushiguro said, Mei Mei's figure broke free of the constraints of distance in the next second.

Her massive axe swept upward in an exaggerated crescent arc. This time, its target was not his weapon, but Feng's jaw, at the precise instant when his previous exertion had ended and he had yet to muster fresh strength.