Outclassed — By Brains!
"Die!"
Mo Fan roared, hurling his Fire Burst: Char Bone straight up into the air above him.
A blinding sphere of flame shot skyward, instantly flooding the pitch-black cavern with light. Below, the shadows of the savage wolf-beast and the fire-lit boy were thrown sharp and dark against the cave walls.
The Gloom Wolf Beast lifted its gaze. A flicker of confusion crossed those blood-red, savage eyes.
*Has this human lost his mind? Why throw the flames upward?*
The beast was still locked in place by Lightning Seal's paralysis — completely unable to move. Under these conditions, landing a Fire Burst: Char Bone would have been absurdly simple. It would have been no different from practicing against wooden training dummies back at school.
But Mo Fan had done something so baffling that even the beast was left wondering if it was dealing with an idiot.
Mo Fan was smiling.
He was grinning ear to ear — and in the firelight, that grin carried a gleam of wild, reckless triumph.
**BOOM!!!!!!!!**
Fire Burst: Char Bone arced through the high air like a comet in reverse, slamming hard into the base of a stalactite hanging from the ceiling above.
Char Bone fire does not discriminate between flesh and stone. The internal-burning flames turned the stalactite's narrow root glowing red in an instant.
*Crack — crack — crack — crack — crack—*
In under a second, flames capable of reducing bone to ash had burned clean through the stalactite's root.
The stalactite was enormous. With its base severed, it tilted free and plunged downward like a colossal stone sword, dropping from the very peak of the cavern.
The Gloom Wolf Beast had watched it all with contempt and confusion at first. Then it looked up. The falling stalactite was directly overhead.
Panic — raw and absolute — crossed its face.
"Bon voyage."
Mo Fan slowly lowered the arm he had used to throw, and smiled — cold and unhurried.
*Sure, Lightning Seal can only hold you for a moment. Sure, Char Bone can't finish you off on its own. But I can crush you with something you simply don't have — a brain.*
The stalactite came down like a greatsword of stone driven into the Gloom Wolf Beast's body.
It entered through the back.
It punched straight through.
It emerged from the belly.
And there it stayed — pinning the beast to the earth.
Blood welled from the wound beneath the beast's abdomen, sliding down the fractured stalactite in dark rivulets, pooling steadily into a wide, vivid stain on the cavern floor.
The Gloom Wolf Beast stood there.
It could not even fall.
As its life drained away with terrifying speed, those blood-red pupils faded, slowly returning to their original cold green.
It turned its head to look at the stone pillar that had transfixed its body, then turned to look at the tiny human standing before it.
There was nothing left in its eyes but disbelief.
Every shred of a wolf's pride and dignity had been obliterated. It was too weak now even to struggle — any resistance was already pointless.
Its life continued to drain away, second by second.
Ended by a mage this small...
A howling gale roared outside the gorge pass, and the battered, wounded students dragged their eyes upward — and froze at the sight before them.
A man descended from the heights, dropping in a long arc through the air. Behind him, an enormous pair of wings — woven from wind spirits themselves — blazed into existence and consumed every gaze in the clearing.
"Wind — Wings of Wind!!" Mu Bai had only just clawed back to consciousness. He stared up at the bearded man, utterly unable to process what he was seeing.
"It's — it's the head instructor!"
"Oh my god — am I seeing things? Is that an *angel*?!"
The entire gorge erupted in stunned chaos.
They had all assumed Head Instructor Zhankong was an extremely powerful mage. But none of them had imagined he was a high-level mage who commanded Wings of Wind.
Wings of Wind!
A skill that truly allowed a person to soar through the sky like an angel!
Zhankong swept his gaze over the ragged, wounded students — none in immediate danger of dying — then shifted his eyes to the cave, from which a thunderous crash had just sounded.
"I just hope the student who Released Fire Burst: Char Bone is still alive." He did not linger. His wide, full wings beat once, hard, and he shot toward the cave entrance like an arrow loosed from a bow.
He wove through the jagged rocks with easy precision, his flight brilliant and fluid as he blazed through the long tunnel passageway, until he broke out into the open space of the cavern floor below.
"Fire Burst: Blast!"
Hovering in the lightless darkness, Zhankong shaped the technique in one casual motion — a ball of flame forming in his palm. He tossed it into the middle of the cavern. It burst open like a firework, radiant and spectacular, flooding the entire space with light in an instant.
Zhankong's eyes swept the cave. His one hope was that the Gloom Wolf Beast had retained some shred of sanity — had left the student named Mo Fan at least barely breathing. If there was a single breath left in the boy, Zhankong could fly him back to the Waystation and put him in the hands of a healing mage. He had spent his Stardust mana without hesitation, needing to find that student as fast as possible.
The light filled every corner of the cavern.
Then Zhankong went still.
The head instructor stood frozen, brown eyes filled with disbelief.
*This — this can't be possible.*
On the stone platform above, summoner Baiyang sat in a state of frantic, anxious dread, silently praying that Zhankong would reach the cave in time.
"Someone's going to die, someone's going to die..." Chen Weiliang had crumpled to the ground. If a student died on this Field Expedition, he would bear enormous responsibility. Nothing was more sacred to the state than its mage students — even Mu Zhuoyun, the iron lord of Bo City, would never dare lay a hand on one.
Tang Yue bit her lip hard.
She was thinking back to the day she had joked with that student — Mo Fan — that when the time came, she would use WeChat location tracking to recover his corpse. She hadn't imagined that day would arrive so quickly.
She had genuinely found Mo Fan interesting. For one thing, she sensed he was hiding secrets beyond the Growth Stardust Artifact. For another, she felt he had extraordinary potential — she had wanted to see just how far he could go.
What a loss. What a terrible loss.
"Baiyang — what exactly happened? Why did your Summoned Beast lose control for no reason? Even if Char Bone caused it pain, there's no reason it should have reached a point where even *you* couldn't rein it in!" Luo Yunbo's voice carried a sharp edge as he turned on Baiyang.
A Summoner's most basic responsibility was keeping his Summoned Beast in check.
"I — I don't know either... Under normal circumstances, even if it were being killed, as long as I hadn't issued an attack command, it would never turn on the students. I genuinely don't know how this happened." Baiyang's voice was trembling.
None of it made any sense to him. He hadn't expected any student to Release Fire Burst: Char Bone — to genuinely wound his Summoned Beast. He hadn't expected the beast to lose control as a result. There had to be some other explanation.
"Then pray your beast hasn't killed too many people," Pan Lijun said, her voice flat and cold.
"I — I also — aaagh!!" Baiyang had barely opened his mouth to explain when a violent, searing pain tore through his skull.
It felt as though something had driven a blade straight through his soul. The agony drained his face chalk-white and drenched him in cold sweat in an instant.
"Now what?!" Luo Yunbo snapped, his patience gone.
"My — my Gloom Wolf Beast — my Gloom Wolf Beast!!" Baiyang collapsed to his knees as though his soul had been ripped from his body, staring blankly toward the cave entrance.
"What's happening??" Tang Yue frowned, unable to make sense of what the summoner was doing.
"My Gloom Wolf Beast... it — it's dead!" Baiyang forced the words out in a hollow, shattered voice — the tone of a man who could not believe what he himself was saying.