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Chapter 110

Flash!

“...!”

Seeing the sphere of light that immediately illuminated the sudden darkness, Luize quickly grasped the situation and quickly followed up with her own Incantation Magic.

“Light Chandelier.”

Whoosh!

Encasing the sphere of light created by Se-Hoon, the light chandelier magnified its brightness several times and illuminated the entire test area. The spectacle made the other students murmur among themselves.

“What, what’s happening?”

“Is this staged?”

A sudden blackout was followed immediately by that display of magic—it was a sequence that was so perfect that it seemed planned. However, Lan Fei knew otherwise.

Never thought they would react faster than me, Lan Fei thought, halting his spellcasting in surprise.

Although the nature of the Incantation Magic came with quick activation, they still needed exceptionally quick decision-making skills to react that fast. It was almost like he was beside a hero who had participated in countless battles.

Deeply amazed, Lan Fei soon turned to look at the other professors.

“Have you heard anything in advance?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Same here.”

Unable to find out the answer from Charles and Rebecca, Lan Fei looked around.

It seems the mana supply in the Ivory Tower has been cut off without any prior notice...

Out of all places, the Ivory Tower, where the use of mana was several times greater than in other buildings, should have been the last place that such a thing would happen; the tower had literally been designed to ensure a smooth supply of mana even moments before a blackout.

Was it an attack by external forces? No, such a thing couldn’t happen at Babel.... And even if it was, things wouldn’t have ended like this.

Narrowing his eyes, Lan Fei’s mind raced as he tried to deduce whether it was just a simple accident or someone’s stratagem.

—I will make an announcement for the entire Ivory Tower.

Slamming the brakes of Lan Fei’s racing mind, a man’s desperate voice resounded from the speakers above.

—Currently, an unknown anomaly has occurred with the mana supply facility, cutting off the supply of mana to the entire tower. Please stand by as emergency generators on each floor will be activated soon.

Thanks to the announcement from the speakers, the students finally grasped the situation—but it only made them more perplexed.

“So it was all an accident? Then did she manage to create that chandelier so quickly?”

“Those two are no joke...”

Unlike the inexperienced students who just looked on in wonder, those with even a bit of experience realized just how absurdly fast the reactions from Se-Hoon and Luize were.

At that moment, right before the test site was about to get noisy with the murmurs of the students, Charles’s loud shout that was amplified by magic resounded.

“Everyone, please pay attention! It is very dangerous to wander around facilities with an unstable mana supply, so please wait here until everything normalizes.”

Finished briefly instructing the students, Charles checked the chandelier of light before looking at Rebecca and Lan Fei.

“We should light up the surroundings as well; the darkness might agitate the students’ thoughts.”

“Understood.”

“Let’s do that.”

Whoosh!

The three professors moved around the test site, creating light with magic or enchantments in any location that needed it. And thanks to the visibility in the room improving, the students also began to calm down and settle down at their desks.

When the commotion inside had settled somewhat, Luize quietly whispered, “Is this that?”

“Probably.”

The least likely accident to occur in a building equipped with a vast amount of magic facilities had occurred the exact day they were there. While some might have dismissed it as a simple coincidence, the two knew there were enemies currently present in this room, so to them, it was anything but coincidental.

I thought they were going to pull off something in the darkness.

Yet there hadn’t been any signs of magic coming from Charles, nor were there any disruption devices like last time. How and from where, then, would they attack them?

Staying on high alert, Se-Hoon scanned the entire test site to try to figure out what tricks they would come up with this time.

Vroom-

Suddenly, the lights came back on.

“Ah. The lights are back.”

“Looks like the emergency generator finally kicked in.”

Seeing that the test site had returned to normal without any major issues, the students dismissed the situation casually, and Rebecca, who had been tense, sighed in relief.

“Fortunately, it seems there was no serious issue.”

“Indeed. But to think such an event to occur at the Ivory Tower... the news will be all over this later,” Charles muttered, troubled.

Looking around, Lan Fei suggested, “Given that something might happen again, it might be best to cancel our illumination magic and quickly finish the remaining evaluations.”

“Good idea.”

“Let’s do that.”

Like before, the three professors quickly went around the test site, dispelling the lights they had created instead.

Whoosh!

One by one, the lights vanished like snuffed-out candles, but then, right as Lan Fei began to turn his head—

Flicker-

The lights he had just dispelled returned one by one like they had never gone out.

“...What?”

Wondering if he had made a mistake, Lan Fei looked around, only to see the lights of the other two professors also returning as if they had never been extinguished.

The inexplicable phenomenon made them all pause, forming a strange tension.

Bzzz-

A chime then sounded from the speaker.

—The issue with the mana supply facility has been resolved, and we will now begin to restore mana sequentially.

Oblivious to the strange tension, the students believed that everything would return to normal now that the malfunctioning mana supply facility had been repaired. In contrast, it finally dawned on Se-Hoon what was about to happen.

“...Run!”

Feeling the wave of mana surging from below, Se-Hoon grabbed Luize’s hand and ran toward Lea.

Thwoom-

A tremendous wave of mana was cascaded toward them from the mana supply facility.

Ordinarily, the twelfth floor’s emergency generator should have shut off and transferred control, but a coincidental glitch had instead kept the generator running, superimposing with the supply of mana from the facility.

Woooooong!

Overloaded by the overwhelming output of more than double the usual mana supply, the entire twelfth floor went into overload mode in an instant, prompting the Ivory Tower’s automatic control system to seek out yet-to-be-activated safety equipment to counteract the situation.

Ssssssh-

But when those were activated on top of the participants’ submissions, which were all also supercharged by the overflow of mana...

Fwoosh!

Rumble-

All the formulas and Formulaic Armaments began to run amok.

“R-run!!”

“It’s a mana surge!!”

Gaping at the submissions beginning to go berserk from the overload of mana, the students in the test site screamed and quickly fled to the emergency exits.

Normally, that would have been the right decision for such a situation where a chain of explosions could occur at any moment, but what they were experiencing was something far from normal.

Thump!

Having entered overload mode, Ivory Tower’s protective measures were activated, isolating the test site with blast walls and enveloping it with a mana barrier—they were completely sealed in.

“What! Why are these coming down now!”

“Shouldn’t they let us out first?”

Crashing into the ones frozen by the sealed exits in abject horror, the slower students belatedly discovered that the exits were sealed off and froze as well. Then, like something had snapped, the test site descended into utter chaos.

The endlessly rising mana.

The noisily vibrating submissions behind them, ready to explode at any moment.

The shut exits.

Boom! Pow-Bang!

Rattled by the sounds of small explosions from behind them, the students’ fear of death was stroked, forcing them into a panicked state. Naturally, their thoughts immediately went to the rashest course of action as they looked toward the blast wall blocking their way.

“Break... break it! Just break through the blast wall, and we’re out!”

If a wall was in the way, then the solution was simple—destroy it. Arriving at the same conclusion, some students prepared to cast offensive magic, utterly shocking Lan Fei, whose eyes widened in alarm.

“Stop! If you use magic now, it could...!”

If they tried to use magic now, when the air inside the test hall was in a state of supersaturation with mana levels more than two hundred percent above normal, then they would utterly fail and create more danger, especially since the students had lost their rationality.

But before Lan Fei’s desperate cries could be heard, some students had already unleashed their magic, inadvertently creating new bombs everywhere.

“What, what’s happening? Why is my magic... agh...!”

“Someone, help...!”

The students who attempted to use magic were immediately inflicted with a mana surge, startling those around them and causing stampedes in every direction. The scene of test site three was now utter pandemonium.

Lan Fei grimaced.

“Damn it... in such an environment...”

If pandemonium had broken out in an environment with insufficient mana levels instead then he would have been able to supplement the deficiency somehow with his own mana, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. In an oversaturated state like now, it was impossible to delicately control his mana to do anything, let alone quell the mana surges of those suffering from it.

If the surges were mishandled, those students could potentially suffer from mana impairment later on. So since magic was out of play, Lan Fei immediately looked towards Rebecca, whom he deemed to have a higher chance of solving the situation.

“Professor Rebecca! With an enchantment... Professor Rebecca?”

“What in the world...”

Failing to react to his call, Rebecca just stared blankly behind her, prompting Lan Fei to follow her gaze.

There, in the middle of the test side, he saw three calm figures who hadn’t run away like everyone else.

“They’re mad...”

What possible reason could there be for them to remain at the epicenter of such a perilous situation? The bizarre sight left Lan Fei utterly troubled.

“Tsk, tsk.”

Meanwhile, Se-Hoon just clicked his tongue, calmly observing the chaos unfold.

“I’ll give them credit for running away, but to recklessly use magic... these kids have no fear.”

Although he understood their fear of the imminent explosions to some extent, he honestly hadn’t expected them to turn themselves into ticking bombs.

Seeing that Se-Hoon could casually comment about the students, Lea, who was still anchored to the desk, took a look around the test site.

“Um... is it okay for us to stay here?”

Like everyone else, even Lea felt a chill at the terrifying sight of the submissions around them trembling, a sign of an imminent explosion.

“It’s fine. Besides, it’s thanks to us being here that the room hasn’t exploded yet.”

“Thanks to us?”

“Yes,” Se-Hoon composedly said, pointing to the device sealed by Luize’s spell.

“What would have happened if we had just left this behind and run away?”

“...You’re right.”

Lowering her gaze toward her own submission wrapped in cloth, the Sphere, Lea swallowed dryly.

Right now, all that was happening was that the other submissions were simply running amok on their own, but if the Sphere—with the ability to forcibly resonate with all the devices in the room, amplify their power several dozen times—were to be included...

“If we had just left it, probably more than half of the people in this room would have died.”

In truth, most would likely be barely clinging to their lives. Envisioning the scale of that disaster made even Se-Hoon grimace.

I thought they would just pull off some simple tricks... but it was blowing up the entire room instead.

Regardless of whether they really intended to cause an explosion or just wanted to see their reaction, either way, it wasn’t the act of a sane person.

Well, they were never sane from the start.

Anyway, they had achieved their goal of testing the limits of their adversary, Dawn. Now, what remained was to resolve the situation without significant collateral damage.

“I have a way to solve this, but... there’s one problem,” said Se-Hoon.

“What is it?”

At Luize’s question, Se-Hoon turned to look seriously at the two of them.

“Both of you need to successfully execute a specific technique each, one that you haven’t managed to pull off even until yesterday, right here, in one go.”

“...”

“...”

Normally, in such crucial moments, one could even fail well-practiced tasks due to nerves—especially when lives are at stake. So to execute a technique that they had never successfully performed before, right here and now? Even just hearing that was daunting.

“Hasn’t that always been the case?”

“You always tell us to do that.”

Yet... both of them didn’t even blink.

How many times had they been suddenly briefed just moments before a task and then told to just go for it? And having observed Se-Hoon for quite some time, the two held one conviction deep within their hearts.

He’s asking us to do it because it must be doable.

Though the tasks he often gave them seemed like impossible feats, he had never, ever, truly given them something impossible. He was basically an unscrupulous boss who exploited his workers to the brink, all the while carefully ensuring it was within legal limits to avoid any legal issues if someone tried to report him for labor exploitation.

With that reluctant belief in their hearts, the two calmly accepted his challenge and waited for further instructions.

“Alright. Let’s do it,” Se-Hoon said with a content smile, fully satisfied by their trust.

***

Around a chaotic exit, Charles was busy treating the injured and calming those distressed by the commotion.

“Everyone, calm down! Just because the submissions are running amok doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll explode! Using magic recklessly to escape is even more dangerous in this situation!”

The students gradually regained their composure thanks to his words, or perhaps because they saw the already-collapsed ones. Continuing his encouragement, Charles glanced toward the three people in the center.

Who would have thought he’d identify the fuse so quickly... his decision-making skills are truly top-notch.

Originally, Charles’s plan was to meddle with Lea’s submission, the Sphere, when the lights went out and recreate the incident from two years ago. He wanted to see how those three would react when the submissions exploded one by one, with cries of fear and anger echoing from every direction.

I never would have thought that he’d light up the room immediately and also seal the Sphere right as the mana surge began...

It was almost as if Se-Hoon knew of his plan all along. However, all Charles felt was awe; he wasn’t suspicious at all of Se-Hoon’s quick decision-making.

His aptitude for magic is a bit lacking, but... he would definitely serve as a good assistant.

Though the Barmuth idiots clamored about how dangerous Se-Hoon was, it was against Charles’s nature to just let such talent go unutilized. And so, Charles pondered deeply about what to do.

Woooong-

At that moment, a strange ripple passed through the entire room.

It felt like someone was grabbing the back of everyone’s neck, forcing all eyes to focus on the girl standing in the center of the test site.

“Whew...”

Wearing a black steel mask with an X pattern across it, Luize stood there with her eyes closed, dominating the room with her presence. The palpable intimidation emanating from her prompted the students to instinctively draw upon their mana.

“From now on,” Luize began, opening her glowing blue eyes and glaring at everyone. “Anyone who messes with my mana is going to die.”

Her warning spread like a growl from a fierce dog. Given the circumstances, the authoritative command could have sparked resistance, but no one dared oppose her. The emotion—the determination—contained within her warning was unmistakably clear: she was determined to resolve the situation.

Okay.

Luize, observing the scene, clenched her fist and mentally reviewed what she needed to do next.

I need to control all of the unnecessary mana in this test site.

She needed to use an application of Speech Proliferation which she had practiced several times with Se-Hoon in the training room. The area was much larger than the training room and the mana level was in a state of supersaturation, but... it wasn’t something entirely impossible to pull off.

Most importantly though...

Her old mentor who was now her nemesis was currently watching her from far away amidst the students. Recalling the benign facade that concealed his true nature and deceived her, something deep within her stirred.

Grind-

Though she hysterically wanted to tear out the throat of her detestable nemesis right then and there, she meticulously controlled her anger.

The best support weapon for an incantation sorcerer was their emotions, and right now, her utter hatred for her nemesis was perfect for amplifying her power.

“Whew...”

With each exhale, the mana around her followed her breath, and soon, an immense amount of mana gathered around her. The mana congregated around her, obeying her will.

Having succeeded with the preparations for her incantation, she recalled the concept of Speech Proliferation that she had learned from Se-Hoon.

I just have to imagine how people flock together after hearing a rumor...

Although the analogy that Se-Hoon used was quite fitting and helpful for grasping the overall concept of Speech Proliferation, it didn’t quite align with her synesthetic mindscape.

Therefore, Luize adjusted it.

I will be the one calling them.

Instead of her waiting passively, she envisioned forcibly bringing everything under her control. She was a leader commanding a troop—that vivid synesthetic mindscape was imbued into the incantation in her mouth.

“Wolf’s Howl.”

Whoosh-!

Her incantation swept through the entire test site instantaneously. The surging mana abruptly halted, and then, as if they had been waiting for someone, they began to gather in front of Luize. The pack of wolves was converging at the call of their leader.

“The surrounding mana has...” Astounded by how quickly she had brought the mana level to normal from the supersaturated state, Lan Fei was unable to finish.

“Now!”

“Here I go!”

Swooosh!

At Se-Hoon’s signal, the cloth was torn away, revealing a dazzling golden ring—Lea’s newly refined Sphere.