Outside the trialination arena, Joron and Aelyx were both watching the unfolding battle.
Seeing Edwyn slice open the corpse giant, Aelyx, who had been suppressed by Joron for decades, couldn't help but burst into laughter.
"Joron, your student is finished."
Joron tugged at his beard, frowning. As someone who had known Aelyx for years, he knew exactly what was coming next.
On the battlefield of other planets, Aelyx loved nothing more than fighting physique focused natives. Every time one of those strong warriors managed to tear apart his undead puppet, the beating heart inside would always be their first target.
And that was the trap.
Once that heart was destroyed, it would trigger a series of spells embedded inside. Aelyx's favorite was a deadly spell called Rotblood Fog, anyone caught in it, even dragon-blooded beings, would melt into blood.
…
Edwyn thrust his sword in, cleanly slicing off the heart's connection without damaging the heart itself.
Please. After everything he'd learned about synthetic beasts, how could he not recognize an obvious core when he saw one?
Harvesting it for study was the proper route.
This corpse giant might be a showpiece, but knowledge is always valuable, no Mage would ever complain about having too much.
Edwyn removed the heart and was about to hunt down the necromancer apprentice when a blast of air suddenly brushed past his face. He ducked instinctively, a fist the size of a stew pot barely missing his head.
"…Still moving?"
Edwyn frowned and quickly stuffed the heart into his magic pouch.
Watching this, Sylas, the necromancer, nearly coughed up blood in fury.
"How the hell did he know there were spells inside the heart?!"
Staff in hand, Sylas's rage boiled over. He had embedded three different spells in that heart, waiting for Edwyn to destroy it and suffer the consequences, making it easy to merge him into the corpse giant.
Now he'd lost everything, no kill, a damaged puppet, and wasted spells.
That heart wasn't the corpse giant's core, but it was one of its energy sources. Without it, the mana cost to control it doubled.
"This won't work, I can't waste any more mana."
Sylas tried to retreat the giant, but before it could even take two steps, a black blade slashed through one of its joints, severing its lower leg.
"Who the hell builds humanoid combat puppets anyway?" Edwyn mentally mocked.
To him, making a combat puppet humanoid was amateurish. As Joron's apprentice, a master of synthetic beasts, he knew all too well their limitations.
Before a synthetic beast had a self-sustaining energy cycle, humanoid forms were plagued by issues, especially with balance.
With only two legs, one failure meant instant collapse.
Same principle for the corpse giant: the moment its leg was chopped off, it crashed to the ground with a heavy thud.
"Damn it," Sylas hissed.
He had ways to rebalance the puppet, but not with Edwyn standing right there. Edwyn could destroy things faster than Sylas could fix them.
"To hell with it. Cut the mana feed."
This puppet was now just a burden. Keeping it active would only burn precious Mana Stones, and Sylas wasn't about to waste those.
Seeing the puppet go still, Edwyn immediately lopped off its head and limbs, kicking them far away.
Sylas clenched his teeth so hard he nearly broke them.
What Edwyn just did would cost him even more mana to repair it.
"You brute, I'll show you the true power of the Necromancer's Path."
Sylas downed a Focus Potion in one gulp, calming his rage into cold fury.
Mages cast spells either by engraving them into the soul or by constructing temporary models. The latter, however, was unstable and risky, failures could cause soul shock or even instant death from magical backlash.
That's why Focus Potions, which enhanced clarity during casting, were so important.
"Hand of Death."
With a blank expression, Sylas cast the spell. A pale purple hand erupted from the ground beneath Edwyn's feet.
The moment it grabbed him, Edwyn felt a chill. A wave of weakness washed over him, and even his blood seemed to slow in his veins.
"Death Chains."
Black chains burst out beneath Edwyn, dragging at his limbs like swamp mud, making every movement exhausting.
Watching Edwyn struggle, Sylas finally smiled.
"It's over, brute."
He pulled out a Mana Stone, channeling power into a final spell. This one would be fatal,
Boom!
A magical shield barely flickered around Sylas before half his body was shredded open, exposing the corpse-like flesh beneath his robes.
"What… what just happened?!"
Stunned, Sylas looked to the sky. Overhead, the black Death Raven Moony circled, gleefully welcoming him to the underworld.
At the same time, Edwyn gathered his internal magic, sending it surging toward his heart. The bloodline seed embedded there instantly activated.
BOOM!
With a thunderous heartbeat, all negative effects vanished from Edwyn's body.
Overwhelming strength and a flood of vitality wiped away Sylas's death magic like morning mist.
Before Sylas could react, Edwyn closed the distance in a blink.
Boom!
No hesitation. Edwyn smashed in Sylas's skull with a single punch. Blood and brain matter splattered everywhere.
Before becoming a full Mage, the head remained every apprentice's weak point, no exceptions.
Above, Moony chirped joyfully in victory.
With Sylas's death, all the apprentice marks he had collected transferred instantly to Edwyn.
Sylas had already killed nineteen. Adding Edwyn's previous four brought his total to twenty-three, instantly placing him at ninth place on the leaderboard.
From his hand, the black pentagram mark began radiating powerful energy, like a lighthouse in the night.
It was a warning: this apprentice had already killed at least twenty others.
"Wait, the mark does this too?" Edwyn scratched his chin in thought.
No wonder the academy placed no limit on curse mark redemption for Mana Stones. This was how they balanced it.
The energy pulse from the mark couldn't even be concealed by Edwyn's Cloak of the Hidden One, let alone by other weaker students. It served as a natural deterrent: weaker apprentices would steer clear, reducing random slaughter.
Otherwise, powerful students like Edwyn or Sylas could massacre the rest in a month.
This was still a survival-of-the-fittest test, but not a senseless bloodbath.
Back in the observation hall, a strange silence had fallen over the crowd of watching Mages…