The projection blurred again, a flicker of spatial distortion streaking across the illusion field—then it snapped back into focus with a sudden crack of thunder.
Not the battlefield thunder of clashing spells or collapsing biomes.
No—this was louder. Closer.
A lightning bolt split the screen, dancing in an erratic arc across the cracked forest floor, singeing two monsters and accidentally shattering the remains of a broken rune pillar in the process.
"Ah-ha—NOPE, not today! You furry spell-eating acid-fanged nightmares, I see you!" the voice rang out, high-pitched and panicked, as the familiar figure of the lightning mage burst onto the screen in a whirl of sparks and flailing limbs.
"Oh, stars," Aurelian muttered. "It's him again."
"Sparkjaw," Selphine sighed, rubbing her temple with the grace of someone already bracing for a headache. "Or whatever he's calling himself."
Toven "Sparkjaw" Vintrell—half performer, half catastrophe—was not fighting like a knight or a soldier.
"Curse the mages and their bright ideas," he shouted as he dove over a shattered tree root, flipping mid-air with an exaggerated twist before landing in a crouch and letting off a lightning pulse that sent three more monsters staggering. "What genius designed a trial where the floor tries to bite you?!"
One of the monsters lunged.
He screamed. High. Unapologetically.
And then vanished in a stutter of light, only to reappear ten paces away, already mid-curse. "You all need therapy! And snacks! I'm not your dinner!"
Despite the theatrics, he wasn't losing.
And that—more than the chaos—was what made Selphine narrow her eyes.
"Wait," she said. "Look at his footwork."
Aurelian's brow furrowed. "What?"
She gestured subtly as Sparkjaw dashed sideways again—this time spinning beneath a monster's lunging claw and rebounding off a slope of stone, not in a panic, but with a deliberate bounce of momentum.
Aurelian leaned in, brow furrowed. "That's not just dodging."
"No," Selphine said quietly, eyes sharp and focused. "That's form."
Sparkjaw pivoted again, this time launching himself off a crumbling rock with one leg tucked in and the other flaring outward—not for flair, but to twist midair and arc a burst of lightning from heel to bracer in a single, fluid motion. The blast hit a leaping monster dead in the center of its throat.
He landed, rolled, and kept moving—feet striking the ground at angles that redistributed his weight like a dancer skimming across a spell-etched floor.
Aurelian exhaled. "But that's... martial. Not magical. I've seen something like it from blade-dancers, but they weren't lightning channelers."
Selphine's lips pressed into a thin line. "And that's exactly what makes it strange."
Because for all the grandeur of magic, for all the elegance of spellcasting and theoretical arts, there were unspoken rules among the awakened.
And one of them was simple:
Body or magic core. Not both.
It wasn't law—but it might as well have been. Every cultivation art, every lineage philosophy, every mentor across the empire whispered it in one form or another.
Focusing on your magic mana core—refining it, growing it, making it a star unto itself—took everything. Time. Energy. Spirit.
And so, most mages sacrificed the physical.
They grew brittle-boned, robed and robed again, hovering behind layers of spell shields and crystal wards. Not weak—but prioritized. Efficient.
Cultivating both the core and the body simultaneously?
The ones who tried usually fell behind—too slow in their core's growth, too weak in their physique to keep up with martial cultivators. Pulled in two directions, and crushed somewhere in between.
"His movement…" Aurelian said slowly, like a man unfolding a riddle too absurd to be real, "it's precise. It's light. That balance control—that's from physical cultivation, isn't it?"
"It has to be," Selphine murmured. "No mage footwork flows like that naturally."
"If he's cultivating his body and mage core at the same time," Aurelian said, almost to himself. "That shouldn't work."
Selphine didn't answer.
Because it shouldn't.
And yet the proof was leaping across their screen, cursing everything from beast saliva to the stitching of his own pants, all while weaving arcs of lightning so sharp and sudden it made fully trained spellweavers look sluggish.
One monster pounced from above.
Toven backflipped beneath it, lightning sparking off his boots mid-spin, and when he landed, his bracers exploded in a wide discharge arc that fried the creature from the inside out.
He stood there for a second, panting, then raised his hands to the sky with mock agony. "Is this what tuition gets me?! WHERE'S MY HEALTH PLAN?!"
The crowd around the illusion pillar laughed, but Selphine and Aurelian didn't join them.
Because beneath the showmanship—beneath the noise—was something else.
Aurelian didn't blink.
He just leaned in closer, eyes glued to the illusion feed as if the projection itself might whisper secrets back to him.
"…He shouldn't be able to do that," he said again, softer now. Less disbelief. More calculation. "Not with that clarity of channeling. Not while moving like that."
Selphine's arms were crossed now, posture tight. Her gaze tracked every twitch of Toven's feet, every spark of lightning that snaked across his bracers before launching into a pulse or a bolt or a whip-crack arc.
"I want to see his cultivation path," she said bluntly.
Aurelian nodded. "So does everyone else."
He glanced sideways, sweeping his gaze over the gathered crowd. Most were still laughing—charmed by the spectacle, the absurd commentary, the reckless speed.
Some, like them, were watching with sharpened eyes.
A few figures in the back wore plain robes, but their fingers moved in quiet sigil tracing—trying to follow the spell pattern, trying to dissect the rhythm of Toven's casting.
Others, older mages, stood with arms folded, too still, too silent—observing, the way you did when you realized a piece of forbidden theory might've just stepped off the page and started doing backflips across the battlefield.
"It's going to cause a stir," Aurelian said.
Selphine didn't respond right away.
Then: "It already is."
"He's hiding behind the act. Most people will think he's just lucky."
"But the ones who matter," Selphine murmured, "will want to unpack him."
Aurelian looked up toward the looming spires of the mage towers in the distance, where he knew the observing panels for the Academy's inner circle had been lit for hours now.
"They're watching," he said.
"They all are," Selphine answered.
And without saying it, they both knew the truth:
Toven "Sparkjaw" Vintrell wasn't just surviving the exam.
He was rewriting what people thought was possible inside it.
And that kind of magic?
Wouldn't stay secret for long.
The chaos behind him howled like a dying world.
Lucavion moved through it—not with speed, but precision. Where others might have sprinted, he flowed. Every step a calculation. Every dodge an instinct honed on steel and suffering. The collapsing biomes tore at the edges of the world, smashing acid lakes into crumbling cliffs, hurling burning fragments of the fake sky down in a storm of molten prophecy.
But none of it touched him.
He was faster than disaster. Smarter than the slaughter.
By the time he reached the convergence zone—where the final line of compression narrowed like the throat of a funnel—the earth had turned black with scorch and impact, the sky above torn between false starlight and the white glow of broken mana.
No more ripples of destabilized space. No more roaring waves of hybrid monsters or sentient constructs twitching with unstable cores.
Lucavion slowed his pace as the terrain evened out into a strange, circular basin of obsidian stone and smooth, carved pathways. Ancient symbols glowed faintly beneath his feet—unfamiliar, but deliberate. A pattern of order drawn in the middle of chaos.
And at the center of it all—
A towering spire. Not natural. Not overgrown.
Smooth obsidian like the floor, etched with glowing threads of silver-blue runes spiraling upward. It hummed faintly, pulsing in rhythm with the compressed world around it.
Lucavion blinked once.
Or, more accurately, the final staging ground.
He let out a breath, chest rising with the exhale—not from exertion, but from awareness.
The point where all paths would converge. The location where Zone Lords would meet, where elites would clash, and where the final phase would likely unfold.
And as his eyes swept across the wide expanse of blackened stone, he noticed something odd.
There were no footsteps in the dust.
No voices. No sparks of mana. No figures pacing or waiting in anticipation.
Lucavion's smirk grew, slow and inevitable.
"Of course I'm first," he said, voice dry as wind over a blade. "It's only proper."
Vitaliara, still perched lightly on his shoulder, gave a soft flick of her tail.[No fanfare? No applause? Tragic.]
"Let them catch up first," Lucavion said, walking toward the base of the spire, his boots echoing in the eerie stillness. "It wouldn't be fun if they didn't have something to be late to."