Translator: AnubisTL
The fifth-tier wizard, clad in a dark red magic robe, frowned as he stared at the charred remains of the Shuttle Hunter on the ground.
Experience told him that creatures with such overly simplistic body structures were most likely artificial.
And after he destroyed the second Shuttle Hunter, he was certain his position had been completely exposed.
Since he was exposed, continuing to hide was no longer a viable option.
The fifth-tier wizard's mental power surged, instantly enveloping himself in three shields of different attributes.
After completing his defenses, his feet left the ground as he prepared to quickly ascend and escape this potentially surrounded area.
Just as his body was about to lift off, a faint, ripple-like spatial anomaly emanated from a point about a thousand meters to his front left.
Spatial teleportation? Or stealth? Alarms blared in the fifth-tier wizard's mind.
As a fifth-tier wizard, he was exceptionally sensitive to spatial fluctuations and possessed a certain level of knowledge regarding spatial magic. He immediately realized that an enemy was approaching using spatial means.
He did not panic. His extensive combat experience allowed him to react with optimal precision—maintaining his ascending posture on the surface while secretly channeling his mental power. A fourth-circle wizardry specifically designed to counter spatial movement, Spatial Stasis, was already primed and ready.
Now!
At the peak of the spatial fluctuation, he surged his mental power to lock onto the source. The tip of his staff erupted with silvery-gray light.
Spatial Stasis spread out like an invisible spider web, instantly enveloping the area!
He was confident. If the enemy emerged from that spot, even a momentary stasis would be enough for his follow-up spells to crush them.
Ssssh—!
Yet, at the exact moment Spatial Stasis took effect, a jarring sound—like fabric being violently torn—erupted from behind him!
The three layers of meticulously crafted shields surrounding him, especially the outermost force field shield, flickered wildly, their structure becoming extremely unstable!
"Behind me? How is that possible?!" The fifth-tier wizard's hair stood on end as a wave of icy despair shot up his spine.
He tried to dodge, tried to turn, but his mind and body were still in a brief "recovery" state from the precise casting of Spatial Stasis. He couldn't react in time!
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
The triple shields were torn apart like wet paper before the absolute power and eerie nature of the attack!
The next instant, Jieming appeared behind the fifth-tier wizard like a ghost, as if he had been standing there all along.
His right hand was still extended in a thrusting posture, the edge of his palm still bearing the faint black cracks from cutting through space.
Spatial Slash!
This strike, born from the spatial shearing force of a phase shift, ignored all conventional energy defenses. It precisely tore through the fifth-tier wizard's shield, his magic robe, and the flesh beneath.
A massive, perfectly smooth wound opened in the center of his back!
Jieming's hand followed the Spatial Slash, plunging through the gap in the defenses like a blade and piercing the wizard clean through.
When his hand emerged from the other side of the body, it was clutching the wizard's still-beating heart!
"Ugh...!" The fifth-tier wizard's body stiffened violently as excruciating pain and a wave of weakness from rapidly draining vitality struck him.
Jieming's expression remained impassive as he clenched his fist.
Squelch!
The heart, brimming with immense life energy, burst in his hand like a ripe fruit.
He then withdrew his arm, pulling a spray of hot blood with it.
The fifth-tier wizard stumbled, falling to his knees.
Clutching the horrific hole in his chest with both hands, he gasped for breath, his face turning deathly pale.
Feeling the void and agony left by his missing heart, he struggled to lift his head. He glanced back at Jieming, whose breathing was steady and whose wizard's robe was barely stained with blood. A flicker of bitterness and resignation crossed his eyes.
"I... I lost," he croaked.
For a fifth-tier wizard, a shattered heart was merely a minor injury. He had several methods to sustain his life or even regenerate the organ.
But he knew all too well: the fact that his opponent had shattered all his defenses and delivered a "fatal" blow in an instant—at the very moment he was most vigilant—made the gap in their power obvious.
The only reason he was still alive was that his opponent had chosen to "stop at the point of victory."
Jieming's face returned to that harmless smile. He bowed slightly to the defeated fifth-tier wizard, a gesture of courtesy between fellow disciples.
Then, his figure blurred, and he vanished into thin air once more, leaving no trace behind.
The fifth-tier wizard forced himself through the excruciating pain and weakness, carefully probing the area where Jieming had disappeared. His mental power combed through every inch of space like a fine-toothed comb.
Yet he was stunned to find the area as still as if nothing had ever happened. There was no lingering spatial disturbance, no dissipating energy.
"I completely... don't understand..." he sighed helplessly, his face filled with a sense of defeat.
In the world of wizards, failing to comprehend an opponent's methods often meant an insurmountable chasm in knowledge of that particular domain.
He had to admit that in his understanding and application of spatial knowledge, he had been utterly defeated by a wizard two tiers lower than himself.
He summoned his mental power to manipulate his body. The massive puncture wound on his chest began to squirm and heal at a visible rate, even regenerating his heart.
After his injuries had mostly healed, he shook his head, struggled to his feet, and prepared to fly back to the palace.
Since he had already lost, there was no point in staying.
Yet, the moment the thought crossed his mind, before he could even mobilize his mental power, his vision blurred and shifted.
When it cleared, he found himself back in the grand hall.
He knew it had to be Wizard Noren's doing—teleporting him back the instant his defeat was confirmed.
Looking up, he noticed the atmosphere in the hall was strange.
Most of the wizards weren't paying any attention to him, the defeated loser who had just returned. Instead, their gazes were almost entirely fixed on the massive light screens floating above the hall.
The screens clearly displayed the battles unfolding across the tournament area.
The most prominent one, drawing the most attention, was the central screen tracking Jieming's movements.
The hall was silent, save for the images of swirling energy on the screens and the occasional low murmur of discussion.
The wizards present were all hailed as geniuses in the outside world, and their eyes were incredibly sharp.
Jieming's lightning-fast ambush and subsequent stealth, though seemingly simple, actually contained a level of technical skill that made even these well-traveled, high-tier beings marvel.
"Triple-tasking... maintaining two continuous spatial spells on himself while simultaneously controlling a decoy fluctuation and launching a precise attack..." a white-bearded third-generation disciple muttered, his face a mask of disbelief.
Simple triple-tasking was no great feat for wizards whose mental power had been tempered a thousand times over.
Multitasking and constructing multiple wizardry models were essential skills for many elite wizards.
Even casting spatial wizardry, though complex, was something several masters present could achieve.
But combining the two—continuously maintaining multiple high-cost, high-precision spatial spells in the midst of a fierce, ever-changing battle, especially when those spells targeted oneself, a "high-value, high-interference" target—was simply inconceivable!
The reason lay in the spatial wizardry's formidable "computational black hole" nature.
Space was one of the fundamental frameworks of a plane, its rules both complex and subtle.
Any wizardry involving space, from the most basic Blink to the advanced Spatial Jump, required immense real-time calculations to determine coordinates, stabilize channels, and resist the "resilience" of space itself as well as external interference.
The computational load for this grows exponentially as the wizardry's effects intensify.
Sustained spatial wizardry—especially spells like Phase Shift and Spatial Stabilization that require constant maintenance and dynamic parameter adjustments as the wizard moves—is an even deeper abyss of computational drain.
Unlike one-time attack spells that conclude upon release, these require a continuous, precise investment of mental power for regulation.
More critically, when spatial wizardry is cast upon the caster themselves, its computational complexity skyrockets as the wizard's own energy level increases!
After all, a wizard is a massive concentration of energy and mass. Safely and stably embedding such a "behemoth" into phase space, or constructing a stable spatial force field around it, demands a level of spatial perturbation resistance and computational load directly proportional to the wizard's own magnitude and energy tier.
One could say that for sustained spatial wizardry affecting the self, the computational cost is calculated as a percentage of the wizard's own energy level!
The higher the level, the more terrifying the cost!
For those super geniuses with innate talent, relying on mental power control and computational ability far exceeding their peers, they might just barely manage to use "multitasking" to simultaneously maintain two spatial wizardries that buff themselves.
But to carve out a third stream of consciousness to precisely control another independent wizardry—that was simply wishful thinking. At least before the soul essence underwent a qualitative leap at the seventh tier, this was almost universally recognized as impossible!
Yet, Jieming did it.
"Tsk tsk, Clark, your disciple... is a bit uncanny." Wizard Augusta nudged Clark with his elbow, his tone filled with astonishment. "What he just did... can you do it?"
Mentor Clark gave him a deadpan look that said, "What kind of stupid question is that?" and remained silent.
But Augusta understood immediately: even Clark himself probably couldn't do it.
In fact, not just Clark—perhaps no sixth-tier wizard present could have done what Jieming had just accomplished.
"Unless... I grafted another head onto myself. But this kid doesn't seem to have any traces of body modification..."
He suddenly became even more interested in Jieming on the light screen, stroking his chin and marveling in astonishment.
(End of the Chapter)
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