Survival Rule #1 at the Magic Academy:
Never, ever, EVER get cocky in front of the Dean.
Li Fei had traded her usual robes for a light combat outfit, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked sharper than usual — poised and lithe — though the expression on her face was unmistakably that of a woman marching to her own execution.
At that moment, a ring of ritual markings blazed to life around her, radiating brilliant light as mysterious runes flickered in and out of visibility, encircling her in the center of a wide-open field.
Her sparring partner Yusura stood within the same ritual boundary, ten meters away, watching her across the distance.
Losing your nerve before a fight had even started was a terrible habit — but the image of Kenan nearly losing the ability to father children under Yusura's mountain-crushing paternal love was still vividly fresh in Li Fei's mind. Her rational mind told her plainly: trapped inside the [Balance Crystal] ritual, stripped of her attribute advantage, she was almost certainly about to get absolutely pummeled by this crusty old man.
— Why on earth had she thought it was a good idea to mouth off in front of the Dean?
Reaping what she had sown, Li Fei tightened her grip on the sword-staff in her hand, her heart churning with regret.
The grey-white base layer and cloth armor covering her from head to toe offered nothing beyond light comfort — no bonus attributes whatsoever. The firefly-grade sword-staff was worlds apart from her Blade of Joy.
"Miss Li Fei cuts quite the dashing figure," Yusura remarked pleasantly, his expression kind and grandfatherly.
The old half-beastman wore no armor — only a single loose garment — and carried a long, narrow single-edged blade in one hand.
What was more, his muscles had filled out considerably since their last meeting. He no longer looked so gaunt and withered; it was as though he had shed twenty or thirty years in just a few days, transforming from a man with one foot already in the grave into someone who merely looked middle-aged.
— Damn this old schemer. How much had he been holding back? He must have already advanced.
Li Fei cursed him inwardly, but let a smile bloom on her face and tried playing the emotional card: "I'm sure we'll be working together often going forward, so let's keep this friendly — a light exchange, nothing too serious, we stop when we've made our point…"
"Go for the kill," Nicole called out softly from outside the ritual boundary. "Don't worry — with me here, nobody's actually going to die."
What an elegant woman she was, always wearing that composed, warmly mature smile, radiating a kind of intellectual grace. The grey braid draped over one shoulder in particular gave her the unmistakable air of a reliable, straight-laced married woman — the sort of image that delivered an instant deathblow to impressionable young girls with a weakness for that type.
— So how was she capable of saying something so utterly monstrous?
For a disorienting moment, Li Fei could have sworn she was hallucinating — demonic horns and bat wings sprouting from Nicole's back, sending a chill crawling up her spine.
She shook her head sharply, steadied her breathing, and forced her emotions back under control. Her grip on the sword-staff tightened.
The [Balance Crystal] ritual worked by suppressing Transcendent attributes down to a fixed threshold, creating an idealized level playing field for combat. Naturally, what had been activated here was only the most basic version — effective only against lower-Sequence Transcendents. The more advanced the ritual, the steeper the cost to deploy it.
For the fight that was about to happen, this tier was more than sufficient.
As for why she had chosen the sword-staff —
It was common knowledge that in low-Sequence combat, a warrior going one-on-one against a mage whose spellcasting system hadn't fully come together and who lacked instant-cast ability wasn't a guaranteed win every time — it was a win nine times out of ten.
Li Fei had no illusions that Yusura was going to give her the time and space to lob a Fireball at him.
Besides, for the exchange activities coming up, she had already planned to go in swinging with pure melee aggression. It made sense to train specifically for that — she wanted to know, stripped of her attribute and equipment advantages and with no poisons or sneak attacks allowed, exactly how large the gap was between herself and a warrior who had been truly forged in the crucible of real combat. And then she intended to close that gap as much as she possibly could.
"Ready to begin?" Yusura asked, patiently waiting for Li Fei to settle herself.
"Please," Li Fei said.
She glanced at her stat panel — everything except Charisma had plummeted to 20 — shifted her center of gravity forward, and let her tone sharpen into something serious.
Their attributes and equipment were roughly equal now.
She had Cloud Dragon Fold and Sword Mastery. Her actual combat experience leaned heavily toward poisoning, sniping, and cutting down easy prey — but she had been through life-and-death battles before.
Worth a shot… she might even win.
"Then I won't hold back," Yusura said.
The words had barely left his mouth when the half-beastman's slightly hunched frame erupted with astonishing agility and explosive energy. With each stride he closed the distance toward Li Fei, the sheer force of his advance radiating an overwhelming sense of menace.
Yusura's movement was deeply strange — the rhythm of his footfalls kept shifting unpredictably, setting the nerves on edge, while his body rocked and weaved constantly.
It was a completely different fighting style from the one he'd used to discipline Kenan, and it sent alarm bells screaming through Li Fei's mind.
On instinct, she gripped the sword-staff with both hands, slid her left foot back into a forward stance, and tensed every muscle in her body, locking her gaze onto Yusura — intending to absorb his charge and cut him down in a single decisive strike.
"Hah!"
In an instant, Yusura had already closed to arm's reach. The wind pressure flattened the fur across his body against his skin — and Li Fei's coiled, fully-loaded downward slash came crashing toward his skull.
Clang.
Through the screech of ringing metal, Yusura tucked his elbow in and raised his blade inverted, the upward-angled edge catching Li Fei's strike with pinpoint precision.
In that instant, their eyes met — and Li Fei found herself staring into a pair of wolf-eyes cold as iron yet blazing with ferocious aggression. This was the half-beastman warrior who had cut down countless lives in his youth, razed villages and slaughtered clans — and in this moment, all of that killing edge was laid bare, his murderous intent cold enough to freeze the blood.
Li Fei's heart lurched — but her body didn't pause. She had already begun pulling back to wind up another slash, when she suddenly felt the weight vanish from her hands, followed immediately by a searing, bone-deep pain.
In the same instant their blades connected, Yusura had twisted his edge to deflect and drain Li Fei's force away — then his right leg swung like a battle axe in a horizontal sweep, his shin bone slamming with brutal force into Li Fei's left ribs. Several of them snapped clean and drove inward toward her lungs.
Thud.
In a single exchange, Li Fei was launched several meters through the air like a broken rag doll, sent tumbling across the ground by a blow carrying tremendous savage force. Blood came up with every cough.
"Not even in the same league," Irena remarked.
She was perched side-saddle on her broomstick, floating in the air and watching her dear little sister get thrashed, legs swinging idly, a large paper bag of fried potato strips cradled in her arms.
Nicole's expression didn't change. With a light pass of her elegant hand, gossamer-thin threads of magic flowed toward Li Fei and enveloped her.
Clearly, broken ribs and damaged internal organs barely registered in Dean Nicole's estimation — a single casual spell, and Li Fei's pain began to ebb away rapidly.
"Ptoo."
Li Fei spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, and with a sharp hissed intake of breath, pressed a hand to her still-aching ribs and climbed back to her feet. The hair at her temples was plastered to her skin with sweat.
The gap in ability was even wider than she had imagined.
Sword Mastery made Li Fei's strikes steadier, faster, and more powerful — to the point where she could kick an apple tree on a whim and slice every falling apple before any of them hit the ground.
As the skill leveled up, her attacks would grow faster, more precise, more punishing.
But when to strike, at what angle, and where to put her weight — those were things she had to figure out herself.
It was like competitive gaming: some players had crystal-clear heads in the heat of a fight, making razor-sharp decisions in real time — knowing exactly how much distance to keep, when to commit, who to focus down first — but their mechanics just couldn't keep up, their hands refusing to obey while their brain screamed instructions. Li Fei was the exact opposite. Thanks to Sword Mastery, the sword-staff moved in her hand like an extension of her own will — she could hit exactly where she meant to hit, at exactly the angle she intended — but her combat sense… left something to be desired.
Picture a player born with lightning-fast hands but the game sense of someone stuck at 1200 ladder rating, going solo queue against a 2000-rated opponent. Completely outclassed, no room to fight back.
"Ptoo."
Li Fei spat out another mouthful of blood, tasted the iron spreading through her mouth, and let out a self-mocking little laugh.
The blood she was spitting now was the price of the water she'd let into her brain back when she had been showing off.
But blood and pain could also be a very effective whip.
A flame she had been deliberately keeping buried — a hunger for real combat — began to spread through her chest, burning higher and hotter, illuminating something behind her eyes.
"Again."
This time she was the one who charged — feet tracing the Cloud Dragon Fold footwork, her silhouette flowing and elusive, making her genuinely difficult to pin down.
Carrying the momentum of her sprint, the sweep of Li Fei's sword-staff came faster and wilder than before.
The howl of wind filled her ears, but it couldn't cool the blood beginning to boil through her veins.
— Equal attributes across the board. A slash with the full force of a sprint behind it is not easy to stop. A wide horizontal sweep is even harder to dodge. Show me the distance between us, Yusura!
In her soundless roar, the battle-hardened Yusura did not disappoint. The instant her sword-staff cut loose, his blade traced a tiny arc — precise and wickedly angled — then snapped back as if he'd touched a live wire, and he stepped back once.
The retreat could never outpace a charge; that kind of evasion bought fractions of a second at best, after which Li Fei could simply press forward and run him through with her single-edged sword-staff.
But in that fraction of a second, the outcome was already decided.
Li Fei's fierce slash was made to look effortless as it was sidestepped, while Yusura's vicious, ruthless counter sent a sudden numbness shooting through her fingers — and then the sword-staff went spinning out of her hand.
"Huh?"
Li Fei blinked and looked down at her raised arm.
Her palm was still flawlessly pale and smooth.
But from pinky to index finger — those four sinful digits — were lying on the ground at some point she hadn't even noticed.
This blow had dealt Li Fei damage not unlike the strike Kenan had received that nearly ended his lineage.
"Ah… oh…"
Irena flinched. The fried potato strips dropped from her hands. She instinctively clutched her own hands to her chest.
A moment later, her expression contorted into something conflicted — she appeared to be working out how to console her sobbing, clingy little sister afterward.
But Li Fei stood frozen like she'd had a screw come loose, staring at the severed bone protruding from the wound, letting the blood pour freely down.
Every nerve in ten fingers connects to the heart — the pain of severed digits sent visible tremors and spasms rippling through her body.
And yet Li Fei's mouth split wider and wider into something that was not quite a smile, a deranged and eerie peal of laughter tearing out of her, the exquisite face beneath it twisting and fracturing into something unrecognizable.
Rage, indignation, ambition, bloodlust, the urge to destroy — negative emotions surged and tangled together, congealing into pitch-black sludge that pulsed outward with every hammering of her heart, overflowing the chambers and seeping into her mind.
This morbid, neurotic expression had been seen before — by the Moonlight Wolves in the Wolf Den, by the five corpses in that den before they became corpses, by the sirens swallowed by Abyssal Lava.
Li Fei bent down, picked up her fingers, and turned the blazing, feverish intensity of her gaze on Nicole.
Nicole raised an eyebrow. Then threads of magic flowed out, cleansed the dirt from the severed digits, and stitched them back onto her hand.
"Nnh — ah — mm — ah…"
Through the searing agony, Li Fei let out low, stifled gasps.
At some point she had bitten through her own lower lip; blood dripped from her chin — yet a flush of flushed, elated color was spreading across her face, the corner of her mouth convulsing in something like a smile.
When feeling returned to all five fingers, Li Fei picked up her sword again, tilted her head at Yusura, crooked her index finger in a provocative beckoning gesture, and let out a raspy, ghoulish laugh:
"Come on then."
…This woman is insane.
That morbidly alluring smile made even Yusura's concentration slip for just a moment — but his instincts immediately pulled him back to cold clarity.
His voice, when it came, had lost its easy naturalness:
"My apologies."
No holding back. No hesitation. Yusura launched himself directly at Li Fei, every hair on his body bristling upright, eyes cold and merciless.
Lunatic or madwoman, a blade through the throat would settle it either way.
Li Fei answered with a delighted laugh and stepped in to meet him, her sword-staff cutting through the air with a sharp cry.
Predictably, Yusura dropped low, contorting into a strange and awkward angle to slip past her counterattack — without even breaking his advance, only fractionally slowing — while his blade flicked upward, and in the moment they crossed, the edge slid into Li Fei's waist.
Clatter.
The sword-staff hit the ground. Li Fei's hand shot out and seized the blade cutting through her own flesh — blood sprayed across both their faces — but Yusura's momentum inevitably stuttered to a halt.
Li Fei, who in her very first battle had killed two Moonlight Wolves by trading wound for wound, let out a soft moan through the bone-deep pain, twisted her waist, and drove her weight into the motion.
"Got~ you."
Through the sweet laugh, the wound tore wider, scorching blood instantly soaking her clothes — but her index and middle fingers had already pressed together into a blade, and in a single flash they drove toward Yusura's eyeball.
A sword swing would cost her a fraction of a second she didn't have; a punch wouldn't be enough to put him down. Li Fei chose the most efficient and sufficiently lethal method available.
Yusura's reaction was already fast — he dropped the blade and threw himself backward almost without pause — but measured against that decisive, pitiless strike, it was still a beat too slow. Li Fei's fingertips drove into the eye socket and twisted.
"RAAAUGH!"
Yusura's face contorted into something savage. He bellowed and, before her finger-blade could go any deeper, his left hand seized Li Fei's wrist and wrenched it with a crack of snapping bone, while his right arm swung in a full arc, the edge of his palm chopping down toward the back of her neck.
"Subarashii…"
Already critically wounded and running on fumes, Li Fei had no way to dodge the killing blow.
The "trade wound for wound" instinct alone was never going to be enough for Li Fei to take down a warrior whose combat experience, technique, and tactical sense all far surpassed her own. All she could do now, before she was put down, was savor the roar and the anguish her enemy made when she hurt him.
The pain she had braced for never arrived. An immense and overwhelming wave of magic froze the space around them.
"If your neck were actually broken, even I would find it troublesome to repair," Nicole said, with a light clap of her hands. "This round — Li Fei loses."
"That said… your performance just now reminded me of a certain witch who kept carving her way out even after her spine was torn out. Not bad at all."
As she commended Li Fei's showing, her magic was already steadily repairing both combatants' injuries. In moments, every wound on their bodies had sealed, and even their shredded clothing had restored itself to pristine condition.
The latter courtesy was extended exclusively to Li Fei — Yusura, for his part, offered his thanks to the Dean with a sincere and respectful bow.
"You two rest for a—"
"No."
Li Fei closed her eyes. The tip of her tongue — stained crimson — traced slowly across her lips. One hand drifted down to brush, almost tenderly, over the place at her waist where the blade had opened her up, as though savoring the memory of an exquisite, irresistible pain.
When her eyes opened again, the same flush of pleasure and excitement was still written across her face. She drew deep, shuddering breaths; the movement of her chest was almost visible beneath the fabric, and deep within her pupils, a faint red luminescence flickered.
She raised her sword and leveled it at Yusura, voice husky with a parting, wanting smile:
"Please — teach me more."
...
A brutal morning of relentless sparring. By the end of it, Li Fei had gone from being completely unable to respond in front of Yusura to having some room to maneuver — no longer being beaten one-sidedly, and even managing to land the occasional counter when she wasn't actively trying to trade deaths.
The gains were enormous.
Of course, combat was like most skills — easy to pick up, hard to master. Brutal high-intensity fighting could push someone's performance from twenty points to a passing grade in short order, but closing the distance from ninety-nine to a perfect hundred was another matter entirely.
"It hurts so much…"
Li Fei opened her eyes, lying in a pool of blood.
The experiences of having her skin sliced open, her bones broken, and her organs punctured had all been real — and even with all of the Dean's considerable power, she could only repair the physical damage. She could not erase what the nerves had already memorized.
The thick smell of blood clung inside her nose and mouth. Submerged in pain that felt simultaneously real and unreal — crashing over her like tide after tide — Li Fei shuddered several times, and yet the flush across her face only deepened.
With a slow, heated exhale, the red glow in her pupils seemed to shift into the shape of a small heart, and she murmured with a faint tremor in her voice:
"But why does pain make me feel so good…"
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