“Master! I don’t want you to die!”
Dorothy clung to Wang Yue, wailing at the top of her lungs. Her warm, wet tears splashed onto Wang Yue’s face.
“Shut up… you’re jinxing me.”
“But, but… your arms… hiccup… it hurts just looking at them!” Dorothy didn’t dare use any force, holding Wang Yue’s limbs as if she were cradling a porcelain vase covered in cracks.
Wang Yue’s face was as pale as paper. Tearing pain radiated from every part of her body, as if she had been flattened by a steamroller. It was a suffocating agony, like being repeatedly skewered by red-hot iron rods. She could do nothing but grit her teeth and endure.
Too many joints and ligaments were damaged. The multi-point explosions of pain nearly made her black out.
Through her Mystic Arts, Wang Yue had gained speed and explosive power far beyond human limits. However, the strength of her ligaments, muscles, and joints simply couldn’t support that level of physical enhancement.
Even a professional athlete who had trained for a decade could tear a ligament if they weren’t prepared for a sudden impact—let alone someone driving their body with ten times its normal power.
Humans had limits, after all.
Forget a young girl; even a grown man’s body would collapse under such an overload. These Mystic Arts were clearly not supernatural powers tailored for the human physique.
“A student is injured!”
Voices called out from a distance as several teachers rushed over, led by Professor Tone.
“What happened here?”
She swept a glance over Wang Yue. Seeing that the girl wasn’t in critical condition, her gaze shifted to the monster insect whose head had been smashed to pulp, its body still twitching. Then, she looked toward the headless corpses slumped in the tea stall and the small statue resting on the table.
Upon seeing the statue, Professor Tone’s expression shifted instantly. “Attention! A pollutant has been detected! Seal off the Quicksand Lowlands immediately!”
She drew a Shelley Wand from her sleeve—its tip a slender prism and its handle textured like melting wax. She pointed it toward the sky, and a burst of violet light exploded dozens of meters above the ground, scattering countless droplets of magic.
The droplets didn’t fall. Instead, they scattered outward like rain spinning off an umbrella, connecting and spreading into an airtight magical barrier that rapidly blanketed the sky and the perimeter of the small market.
Wang Yue waited expectantly for the teachers to cast a healing spell on her, but everyone except Tone scattered to search for and rescue other students. No one paid her any mind.
Tone pulled out a teardrop-shaped instrument and brought it close to the statue on the table. The needle on the stone dial swung violently, finally coming to rest tremulously at the three-quarter mark.
A second group of teachers arrived carrying a Sealing Box. The small statue was lifted into the air via sorcery, placed inside the box, and the lid was wedged shut tight.
Only then did the hurriedly arriving Housemother, Mrs. Diaz, feed Wang Yue a small bottle of bitter, slimy healing potion.
The Housemother really is the best, Wang Yue thought. No wonder the senior witches in Building 3 call her Mama Diaz.
After drinking Mama Diaz’s medicine, the pain subsided, though her limbs still wouldn’t obey her; the potion hadn’t fully taken effect yet. Wang Yue didn’t dare use “Puppet” to force herself to move, fearing secondary injuries.
At that moment, she realized something.
There might be no such thing as healing sorcery in this world. Magic apparently couldn’t be derived into powers of mending and restoration. No wonder Medicine was a separate subject; if healing sorcery existed, Medicine would have been folded into the Sorcery curriculum.
“Housemother, what was that monster? A centipede-man?” Wang Yue asked weakly.
Mrs. Diaz’s furrowed brow relaxed slightly. She looked at Wang Yue with a soft gaze and replied, “The details are still being investigated. However, I heard from the faculty that it was a four-man exploration team. The highest-ranked among them was merely a ‘Light-Seeker.’ They recklessly entered a Violet Zone and opened a temple from the early Enochian Era belonging to the Shaggai… or perhaps a branch of the Insect from Shaggai.”
“Violet Zone?” Wang Yue asked, confused.
“You won’t learn about the danger zone classifications until your third year. For now, you only need to know that human settlements are safe. Everywhere else is not.”
Since the lockdown of the market hadn’t been lifted, they were stranded. The Housemother decided to give Wang Yue and her roommates an early lesson on the geography of the Evernight Realm. It wasn’t a secret, but it was information usually out of reach for commoners.
“There are five classifications: Pale, Lead-Grey, Crimson, Violet, and Pitch-Black. The danger levels range from lowest to highest. There are no clear markers at the boundaries, and their shapes aren’t fixed. They can overlap or nest within each other, and they can change at any time.
