You Think You're the Only Intermediate-Level Mage?

No one could have anticipated this move from Zhuang Lifeng.

This was the Beast Battle — by all convention, challengers were supposed to take down the Summoning students' Summoned Beasts. Zhuang Lifeng's unconventional assault on the Summoner himself sent every Summoning student in the stands into an uproar.

"That's against the rules! You can't go after the Summoner directly!" Hai Dafu was the first to shout.

"Not technically," Jiang Yunming said calmly. "The Beast Battle is defined as a contest between the Summoning department and all other departments. There are precedents for challengers using exactly this tactic to defeat our side. The senior in question had a beast even stronger than Mo Fan's Gloom Wolf Beast."

Jiang Yunming never discussed combat scenarios in class, and he had certainly never forewarned his students that in the Beast Battle, the Summoner themselves could become a target.

Some lessons only truly sank in after you lived them firsthand.

In real combat — when facing Demon-Beasts — a Summoner had to know how to protect themselves.

"Damn it, Mo Fan has only held off seventy-nine so far — he hasn't even hit a hundred yet..." Hai Dafu muttered bitterly.

The Gloom Wolf Beast had been undefeated through seven or eight consecutive waves of five-person teams. And then this Zhuang Lifeng appeared — far more experienced than any of the others — abandoning the beast entirely and going straight for the Summoner himself.

"He talked himself up too much and dragged the whole Summoning department into a war with everyone else," Wang Liting swore.

Zhuang Lifeng moved at extraordinary speed. The wind itself was his engine, and the dust beneath his feet split apart in a rolling wave as he tore across the arena floor.

Closer and closer. He could already make out the insufferably arrogant face of that obnoxious Summoner — the face that deserved a thorough beating.

"Idiot," he snarled inwardly. "With that little ability, you dared to talk so big!"

He didn't even need magic at this speed. A straight-line collision would be more than enough to send the loudmouth sprawling.

Of course, Zhuang Lifeng kept a sharp eye on Mo Fan's every movement. At the slightest sign of Enchanted Gear being deployed, he was ready to adjust his approach immediately.

Light?

There was purple light in that guy's palm — but it didn't look like Enchanted Gear...

Wait. *Purple?*

The expression on Zhuang Lifeng's face froze solid.

In this world, aside from a handful of rare elemental variants, the only thing that glowed purple was *Lightning!*

"I never said I wasn't an Intermediate-Level Mage..." Mo Fan's grin spread wide, his eyes glinting with barely-veiled mockery as violet light blazed behind them.

The purple star traces crystallized almost instantaneously into channels of arcane power, and countless lightning seal marks writhed and coiled around Mo Fan like serpents.

"Lightning Seal: Frenzied Lash!!"

At this range, Zhuang Lifeng had no time to reach for a defensive Enchanted Gear item.

Every lightning seal erupted into a fierce purple serpent, thrashing wildly and lashing out without mercy.

Zhuang Lifeng reacted fast — he tried to swerve and dodge.

Mo Fan had chosen the second-tier Lightning Seal precisely because he knew how fast Zhuang Lifeng was. Frenzied Lash's lightning whips thrashed in every direction at random — no matter how quick the man was, there was no escaping the chaos.

And the moment even one of those lightning seals connected, every accompanying arc of electricity surged toward the target like a pack of ravenous serpents descending on prey.

Every wind trace on Zhuang Lifeng's body was shattered by the assault. Purple electricity crawled across him from head to foot — forget sprinting across the arena, he couldn't move a single finger. His body convulsed beyond his control.

"Eighty!"

Mo Fan hadn't released the full Lightning Seal — doing so might have knocked Zhuang Lifeng outright unconscious. He simply let the smile linger and added the defeat to his running tally.

Zhuang Lifeng's face had gone ashen. He stared up at Mo Fan through a haze of pain.

*An Intermediate-Level Mage... no wonder he had the guts to challenge every department.*

The moment Zhuang Lifeng went down, the packed stands erupted.

Zhuang Lifeng revealing his second element had already stunned the crowd — it meant yet another Intermediate-Level Mage had surfaced among the freshman class.

And before anyone could recover from that shock, the insufferably arrogant Summoner dropped a Lightning Seal that left the entire stadium dumbstruck.

He — he was *also* an Intermediate-Level Mage!

Pearl Academy was renowned for its talent, but this was absurd. Intermediate-Level Mages kept materializing one after the next!

Most freshmen hadn't even turned twenty yet. Reaching Intermediate-Level before twenty made you a freak by any measure — and now, counting Luo Song, that was three of them.

Perhaps the latter two hadn't yet mastered full Intermediate-Level spells — those were notoriously difficult to wield — but with the innate talent to break through this early, releasing Intermediate-Level magic was only a matter of time.

"He — he's also Lightning Element?" The girl with the high ponytail turned to Xu Zhaoting beside her, her eyes wide.

Xu Zhaoting gave a helpless smile. There wasn't much to say.

Back during the decisive battle at the Mu Clan Estate, the moment he had seen that Mo Fan's Lightning Element power surpassed his own, every last trace of his pride had quietly evaporated.

"Has he mastered any Intermediate-Level Lightning magic?" the girl pressed.

"Honestly, I don't know," Xu Zhaoting said, shaking his head.

"He's untouchable. An Ascension Phase Gloom Wolf Beast paired with that Lightning Seal — nobody here can beat them."

"Just grind them down. That's the only option — wear out the Gloom Wolf Beast's stamina as fast as possible."

The seconds ticked by. Challengers kept arriving in one wave after another.

Mo Fan and his Gloom Wolf Beast stood like a fortress gate that no number of attackers could breach. The defeated "corpses" at their feet had long since piled into a small mountain.

In the battles that followed, Mo Fan consistently deployed the Lightning Seal to support the beast in combat. The Seal locked enemies in place while the Gloom Wolf Beast swept the field clean — a combination that conserved the beast's stamina considerably, since even it could not fight without limit.

Before long, the count broke one hundred.

For every Summoning student, that number was cause for relief — their own semester's cultivation resources were now secured.

None of them had imagined, going into the event, that Mo Fan would be the one to stand up for the department. Now, Wang Liting aside, every one of the other five had developed genuine admiration for him.

Not just anyone could hold off an entire department's worth of students single-handedly.

Even after passing a hundred, the challengers showed no sign of stopping.

Who wanted to admit defeat?

Even knowing their group couldn't win, any damage they could deal to the Gloom Wolf Beast was worth the attempt. Driven by that logic, the "corpses" kept piling higher, and before anyone realized it, the count had crept toward a hundred and fifty.

By any reckoning, Mo Fan had personally eliminated a full hundred students from other departments.

The sheer spectacle of one man standing against a hundred had left the entire school on edge.

"What a pack of idiots. Five to a group, all Basic-Level Mages, and they can't even coordinate properly the way that first group of challengers did. Going in like this is just handing out free points!"