The metallic tang of rust left by the grey-cloaked knights still hung thick in the air, when a clear, piercing fanfare split the air at the canyon's entrance.
Three pitch-black magitek carriages, their hulls etched with sleek platinum runes, crunched over the shattered rubble of tank tracks and came to an arrogant halt before the crumbling walls of the Extremis Academy.
The carriage doors swung open, and an expensive cloud of ambergris instantly overwhelmed the coarse, briny stench of the lower quarters.
A middle-aged man, his frame soft and paunchy from a life of idle luxury, clad in a dark gold silk mage's robe, stepped down from the running board, supported by two attendants.
He was Griffin, Deputy Head of the Imperial Education Oversight Bureau.
"So this is the 'asylum for lunatics' they built out here?" Griffin pulled out a silk handkerchief, pressed it to his nose and mouth, and stared at the aftermath of the victory with utter revulsion.
His gaze swept over the shirtless, sweat-soaked trainees, as if he were staring at a pack of uncivilized savages.
Lu Cen leaned against the wall, his hands wrapped around a rusted iron bar, silver light flickering at his fingertips, hidden in the shadow of his sleeve.
"The air in the Imperial Capital is far too sweet for you, Superintendent Griffin. I'm afraid you won't be able to stomach the earthy stench of this place."
Lu Cen stepped forward, each footfall landing with a heavy, physical weight, as if a colossal beast were moving across the ground.
"Lu Cen, mind your station!" Griffin shrieked, before yanking a scroll sealed with wax from his sleeve.
"By majority vote of the High Magus Council, the Extremis Academy is found guilty of illegally disseminating violent forbidden arts and harboring convicted felons. It is hereby shut down indefinitely, effective immediately!"
As if to emphasize his authority, he hurled a brilliant cerulean orb of mana at the ground.
WITH A LOW HUM!
A translucent, pale blue barrier flared to life in an instant, spanning a ten-meter radius.
The air at the barrier's edge warped visibly from the extreme energy pressure, thrumming with a high-pitched whine like the buzz of cicadas.
"This is the Saint-tier defensive array, the Absolute Domain." Griffin stood at the very center of the barrier, his expression twisted with unbridled arrogance. "Not even the Imperial artillery batteries can leave so much as a scratch on it—let alone you savages, who know nothing but charging in with brute force."
Lu Cen's pupils narrowed as he stared at the barrier, its surface shimmering with flowing runic light.
By the logic of kinetic energy conversion in physics, this membrane was essentially a high-frequency oscillating energy field, capable of neutralizing any physical impact not matching its frequency.
"Wanna make a bet, Griffin?" A cruel smirk tugged at the corner of Lu Cen's mouth.
He beckoned over a young trainee who was mopping sweat from his brow—the same young man deemed useless just days prior, when he'd first lifted the heavy water weights.
"If this student of mine can shatter your 'miracle' with nothing but the charge of his own body, you hand over half the cargo in your carriages."
Griffin let out a roar of laughter, his paunch jiggling wildly, as if he'd just heard the most ridiculous joke in the world.
"Shatter it? If he so much as touches the edge of this barrier, I'll eat this entire scroll!"
[LITTLE GAMBIT: Lu Cen had no intention of sending the trainee charging in directly. He crouched down, and amid a sea of doubtful stares, pulled a fingernail-sized shard of anti-magic stone from his robes.]
He carefully affixed the shard to the back of the young man's cloth shoe sole, then leaned in and whispered a few words into his ear.
"Ah Yi. Run. Match the cadence I taught you."
The young man took a deep breath. The stone at his sole thrummed with a cold, heavy rotation, brimming with unyielding physical inertia.
He broke into a run-up, his speed unremarkable, yet the timing of each footfall held an uncanny precision.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud…
With every step he took, the young man's entire body began to vibrate at a strange, singular frequency.
Within Lu Cen's accelerated perception, the system interface displayed the wavelength in real time:
[Physical wavelength locked. Structural resonance with the defensive array achieved.]
"What in the hells is he doing? Dancing?" Griffin sneered mockingly.
Yet the moment the young man stepped within three feet of the barrier's edge, everything changed in an instant.
Instead of triggering its defensive protocol as it always had, the pale blue membrane let out a shrill, agonized whine.
It was the anti-magic shard on the young man's sole, amplifying the local energy density exponentially at the precise cadence Lu Cen had designed.
"WHAT?!" Griffin's laughter died in his throat.
BOOM!
The young man slammed into the so-called Absolute Domain like a heavy armor-piercing artillery round.
There was no grand, flashy explosion—only the sharp, crisp sound of a sheet of glass shattering into a thousand pieces.
A shower of blue mana fragments glinted blindingly in the sunlight, before fading rapidly into nothingness.
From the energy backlash, Griffin was sent flying by the blast wave, tumbling a dozen times across the muddy ground, his ornate gold-threaded mage's robe caked in filthy muck.
A dead silence fell over the entire field, broken only by the sound of the young man's ragged breathing.
Lu Cen stepped up to Griffin and stared down at him from above, cold and unyielding. "Looks like your miracle is shattered. When do you plan on eating that scroll?"
Griffin was paralyzed with terror, scrambling wildly to clamber back into the carriage, only for Lu Cen to plant a boot on the back of his cloak, pinning him in place.
In the struggle, a black leather folder Griffin had been carrying slipped from his robes and fell to the ground, the wax seal on its opening already broken.
Lu Cen hooked the folder with the toe of his boot, flipping it open to the final page.
It was a yellowed photograph, depicting a beautiful woman submerged inside a nutrient tank lined with intricate clockwork gears.
It was his mother.
In the bottom right corner of the photograph, a scarlet red stamp was emblazoned clearly, the text reading:
[PRIMARY VESSEL SPECIMEN 001: DEGRADED. OFFSPRING LU CEN, DESIGNATED 'ISOLATE BATCH 07'. STATUS: UNDER OBSERVATION.]
Lu Cen felt the silver blood in his veins turn to ice in that instant, the last flicker of light in his eyes snuffed out by a black, demonic rage.
The "system" and the superhuman physicality he'd always prided himself on—they had never been anything more than a live experiment, orchestrated by Cedric, to watch how a "physical anomaly" would develop.
[SYSTEM ALERT: MATERNAL CORE SIGNAL STRENGTHENED. COORDINATES: HIDDEN COMPARTMENT IN GRIFFIN'S CARRIAGE.]
Lu Cen's head snapped up toward the black magitek carriage. From the shadows beneath it, a mechanical spider was scuttling rapidly into view, its compound eyes glowing with a sinister crimson light.