The Volt-fang Panther was a living spear of lightning, now just meters from its target. The Rock Vole was still frantically digging, its cracked shell a picture of suicidal defiance. In the stands, people were flinching, already turning away. Jin Kai's victorious, mocking laugh was already forming in his throat.
And then, the laws of physics, so reliable a moment ago, shattered into a million pieces.
Just as the panther's supercharged claws were about to rip into flesh and stone, the Rock Vole, with one final, powerful heave, simply vanished. It plunged into the hole it had just clawed from the arena floor, disappearing completely from view a fraction of a second before the killing blow landed.
The Volt-fang Panther, a creature running on pure, high-speed instinct, had no capacity to process this. Its target was gone. Its world was empty. But its trajectory was locked. Its front paws, expecting to meet the solid, resisting earth, found only empty air.
Momentum, the one true, unforgiving god of battle, took over.
The panther's body, propelled by the full, furious power of its Lightning Rush, didn't just trip. It was launched into a catastrophic, uncontrolled forward flip. A black and blue blur tumbled gracelessly through the air, sailing directly over the hole where its prey was safely hidden, and crashed—with a sickening, wet thud—into the hard-packed arena floor ten meters away.
The crack of breaking bone was sharp and ugly, audible even over the first few shocked gasps from the crowd. The panther, a paragon of ferocious beauty just a moment ago, now lay in a broken, twitching heap, its sleek form tangled at an unnatural angle. Its beautiful blue electrical charge sputtered, fizzled, and died.
For five solid seconds that stretched into an eternity, the entire arena was plunged into a dead, suffocating silence. The thousands of people who had been roaring moments before were now collectively frozen, their minds utterly failing to reconcile what their eyes had just witnessed. The triumphant laugh on Jin Kai's face was still there, a frozen, grotesque mask of disbelief.
Then, from the hole in the middle of the field, a small creature, covered in dust and loose earth, calmly crawled out. The Rock Vole shook itself off, looked over at its fallen, twitching opponent, and let out a single, sharp, piercing squeak of defiance.
"Ji!"
That one sound broke the spell.
The silence wasn't just broken; it was annihilated. An instantaneous, explosive roar erupted from the crowd, a tidal wave of sound that shook the Guild Hall to its very core. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated shock and ecstatic disbelief. People were on their feet, screaming, pointing, their faces a mess of confusion and elation.
"W-what… what just happened?" the announcer stammered into his microphone, his professional cool completely gone. "The Volt-fang Panther is… it's down! My God, the Rock Vole… it tricked it! It used the ground itself as a weapon!"
On the field, Jin Kai stared at his broken pet, then at the tiny, victorious rock, and finally at the impossibly calm boy who hadn't moved a single inch. In that terrible, clarifying silence in his own mind, he finally understood. He hadn't lost to a pet. He had been defeated by a mind that saw the entire world as a chessboard, and he had been checkmated from the very first move.
The examiner, her own face pale with shock, finally found her voice. She raised a trembling hand.
"The Volt-fang Panther is unable to battle! The winner of the match, and the NEW CHAMPION of the 2025 Mo City Beast Tamer Qualification Exam… is LIN KE!"
Up in the VIP box, while the other executives were still babbling, trying to process the impossible, Chief Proctor Magnus leaned back in his chair. A slow, deeply satisfied smile spread across his face. He had seen past the F-rank pet. He had seen past the humble orphan background. He had gambled on the mind of a true genius.
And he had just been proven right in the most spectacular way imaginable. His quiet champion had just placed a massive, heavy crown upon his own head, and with it, a target for the entire world to see. A new era was dawning.