Medeili advanced slowly, her light source cutting through the gloom. At the end of the corridor, the glow illuminated two side-by-side alcoves carved into the stone wall.
Items rested within each niche.
To the left lay a fruit the color of crag-blue; to the right, a platinum seashell shimmering with a glazed luster.
She paused for a moment, musing to herself, “A choice between two?”
She turned to ask for Wang Yue’s opinion, only to find a shimmering film of light blocking the path behind her. The mechanism here demanded she make an independent decision.
Medeili smiled faintly and reached toward the left.
The moment her fingers brushed the fruit, the right alcove was instantly sealed by a stone slab. It was indeed a “one-or-the-other” scenario. She had chosen the fruit because she noticed the vine-and-flower patterns carved into the rock wall didn’t match the shell at all, but seemed to be an extension of the fruit itself.
At the corridor’s exit, Wang Yue held her Far-Sight Cube in one hand and her wand in the other, keeping a vigilant watch in all directions.
Suddenly, she spotted a flickering shadow on a walkway attached to a massive stone pillar about two or three hundred meters away.
“What are you looking at?”
She raised her hand and pointed. A fork-shaped rune suddenly flared at the tip of her wand!
A pseudo-crystal trident, over twenty meters in length, materialized out of thin air. Its edges were razor-sharp, its crystalline surface gleaming with prismatic light as purple mist rolled and dissipated across its length.
She hurled it. Like a giant’s spear, it tore through the clouds and plummeted!
Whale Hunter’s Fork!
The trident crossed a hundred meters in an instant, colliding with the stone pillar with a piercing, mournful howl.
Before the sound of the impact even reached the ear, the stone pillar had already begun to disintegrate. Shattered rock exploded outward, and a circular shockwave bloomed in mid-air!
Rumble!
The stone pillar snapped and collapsed, its upper half plunging straight toward the ground.
Mavis pulled her head back, her heart leaping into her throat. A moment later, a soul-shaking boom echoed from far below.
She exhaled sharply, her voice trembling. “Phew… how terrifying. Is this the strength of the Black Team’s captain? I can instant-cast the high-tier Whale Hunter’s Fork too, but I can only manifest a five-meter crystal structure.”
“Captain, are we still going to move in?” a teammate asked.
“If she were alone, we might have a chance to clash. But there’s another one inside that corridor. We don’t have a guaranteed victory against two captain-level opponents. Let’s bail, let’s bail! Hehehe~”
Mavis turned and bolted.
The falling rocks from the collapsing pillar had smashed the walkway. Wooden planks were snapped, and cables were severed; the path looked like a condemned building in the middle of demolition.
Mavis didn’t slow down. She took small hops over minor gaps and cleared the larger ones in single bounds, landing steadily on the other side. Her teammates couldn’t keep up with her, forced to stagger across the swaying, precarious walkway.
The gap between a regular contestant and a captain-level witch was glaringly obvious. Whether it was mana capacity or physical prowess, they were simply on different levels.
Finally, Mavis leaped down from a height of four or five meters, landing lightly on her feet.
While waiting for her teammates, she rested her chin in her hand, contemplating their next move.
“It’s better not to provoke those monsters from Class Five. Our team can’t reliably win against more than two captain-level witches… Our starting position was unlucky, getting tangled up with the strongest group, the Black Team. We might even run into them again.”
Determined not to court death, Mavis led her team in the opposite direction to avoid any contact with the Black Team.
After walking for a while, they seemed to have escaped the danger zone and began searching for items. They soon found a shrine built into a rock wall.
“Hold me up!” Mavis commanded.
A tall teammate immediately crouched down, grabbed Mavis by the arms, and hoisted her high. This allowed the petite girl to reach the shrine’s mechanism.
Although Mavis hated being treated like a child—especially when it came to “kids’ meals” that came with toys—she couldn’t afford to care about that right now.
“Too easy, ha!”
With a few quick maneuvers, she solved the puzzle. The internal gears groaned as a stone tray slid out. On it sat a large paper bag, its contents unknown.
Mavis’s nostrils flared. She caught the scent of fried chicken and French fries.
“Eh?”
“Captain, it’s food!”
“There are drinks too. Four cups—exactly one for each of us.”
Mavis thought for a moment, her eyes brightening. “That’s right! Food and water are very important. The match will be long, and you can’t fight on an empty stomach, right? Let’s dig in!”
“Yeah, it’s good to have a full stomach before you go on your way.”
Suddenly, a strange voice rang out right in their ears!
“There’s an extra person!”
“Captain, watch out!”
“It’s the Black Team!”
“Enemy attack!”
The teammates cried out in alarm.
Mavis spun around and saw a blonde, red-eyed girl standing inches away, grinning at her with a devious smirk.
“Lilith!”
Recognizing the intruder, Mavis raised her wand, but Lilith had already slipped behind one of the teammates, letting out a string of manic laughter.
The wand, infused with a cutting enchantment, acted like a dagger in Lilith’s hand. She stabbed repeatedly at the teammate, shattering two layers of shields in the blink of an eye!
Lilith used the girl as a human shield. Mavis hesitated, unable to attack for fear of hitting her own comrade.
“Grab her!”
In the crisis, Mavis made the right tactical call. In a multi-versus-one close-quarters struggle, a grapple was the best way to restrict the enemy.
Class Four was different from Class Five; they were more united. They had practiced together for two weeks before the match, resulting in seamless cooperation and disciplined training. Furthermore, they were all top-tier students; they wouldn’t lose their heads just because of a sudden ambush.
The teammate being held hostage turned around to grapple Lilith!
However, Lilith was like a slippery fish, sliding out of the girl’s arms. With a flash of movement, she vanished into the shadows. Her shrill laughter echoed from all directions, the overlapping sounds creating an eerie, unsettling atmosphere.
Mavis’s expression darkened. She made a tactical hand gesture, and the four members of the Purple Team immediately stood back-to-back, wands pointed outward.
Though their faces were pale with tension, their movements were decisive and their fighting spirit high.
Lilith’s voice drifted in from nowhere, her tone chilling. “You actually dare to resist? Your name is Mavis, right? I’m going to pluck that cowlick right off your head!”
The small girl shuddered as if hit by an electric current. She instinctively covered the cowlick on her forehead and yelled indignantly, “Aaah! Is that something a human being says? Dorothy was right—you really are a complete villain!”
Mavis fired an illumination spell. A flash of light threw intricate, distorted shadows across the stone forest.
“She’s over there!”
A teammate shouted from the left. Mavis immediately swung her wand in that direction, unleashing a spell!
A shimmering, wing-shaped burst of white energy flickered and dove toward the target!
White Bird!
Compared to the Splitting Sword, the White Bird lacked destructive power and speed, but it possessed homing capabilities and left a trail, making it perfect for tracking single targets.
Lilith’s silhouette appeared in another spot. She slashed outward with a Splitting Sword, the blade of air cutting through the atmosphere and arriving in an instant!
“She’s here!”
With a collective shout, four wands pointed toward her. Three Magic Missiles formed rapidly, flying toward Lilith in a triangular formation!
The fourth wand—Mavis’s—instant-cast a Rigid Shield!
A purple, glass-like pseudo-crystal shield expanded in front of the Purple Team, blocking the Splitting Sword. The two forces collided, sending bright shards scattering across the rocky ground like glittering dust.
The storm intensified.
The rain whipped about, growing more violent with every gust of wind. Purple lightning snaked through the sky, exploding into a dazzling ball of thunderous fire atop a nearby peak!
The sudden flash illuminated Lilith’s small face. Her bangs were soaked into clumps by the rain, but the downpour couldn’t extinguish the fury in her eyes.
She was exasperated. She hadn’t expected to meet such stubborn resistance.
While the three teammates besides Mavis couldn’t instant-cast, they were fast enough to draw low-tier runes in two or three seconds. Give them five to ten seconds, and they could finish mid-tier runes.
With the four of them working together, they were a balanced unit of offense and defense. As long as they maintained their formation, Lilith was like a mouse trying to pull a turtle—she had nowhere to bite.
“Hmph, how boring,” Lilith muttered.
Her eyes darted around, landing on the fried chicken and fries still in the shrine. Her lips curled into a wicked smirk.
I’m going to steal their food!
