The pale blue Absolute Domain shattered into countless glimmering motes of dust, reflecting harsh, blinding light beneath the sun.
The air hung thick with the acrid tang of impact, and the high-pitched whine of a vacuum left in the wake of its violent rupture.
Superintendent Griffin collapsed into the muddy mire, the wax-sealed shutdown decree he'd held crumpling unconsciously in his grip into a worthless ball of paper.
"No… impossible… this is a Saint-tier array…"
He stared with bulging, disbelieving eyes at the "useless" young man who'd shattered his barrier, now standing at Lu Cen's side, gasping for breath.
The young man's skin had flushed a deep purplish-red from burst capillaries and extreme heat, wispy white steam rising visibly from the top of his head.
It was heat built purely from physical exertion, with not a single ripple of ether to be found.
"Your 'miracle' doesn't seem to hold up very well to a good hit, Superintendent."
Lu Cen stepped forward, each footfall landing with a heavy, thudding boom that echoed like a heartbeat through the very ground.
He bent down, and with precise ease, flicked the experimental record stamped with the Archmagus's personal seal out from the crumpled mess of paper in Griffin's arms.
[System Notification: Compiling clues… Core parameters of the 'Sanctification Ritual' acquired.]
[Physical Synchronization Rate: 11%…]
Lu Cen stared at the hopeless look in his mother's eyes in the photograph, the leather glove on his fingertips creaking and snapping tight as his knuckles whitened with his grip.
"Lu Cen! This is open rebellion!" Griffin shrieked, waving frantically toward the carriages behind him.
"Kill them all! Every guard mage—overload your mana cores! Self-destruct!"
At his command, six violent, raging columns of mana erupted from the two carriages behind him in an instant.
Six grey-robed guard mages from the Oversight Bureau leaped out, their faces twisted with malice, their bodies swelling grotesquely from the effects of some alchemical catalyst.
Atop the purple staves in their hands, the mana crystals screamed out a high-pitched, ear-splitting whine.
The ether in the air began to surge backward in a frenzy, forming a small vortex that sucked pebbles and rubble from the ground up into the air.
"Ah Er, get the students back." Lu Cen's gaze was cold, hard as forged steel.
"The topic of today's lesson: how to handle a high-pressure vessel."
Lu Cen took a deep breath.
In that instant, his lungs let out a hissing, bellows-like roar from the extreme physical pressure he exerted.
The dirt beneath his feet was blasted away in an instant by the sudden pressure differential, exposing the solid bedrock below.
[System Alert: Massive mana self-destruction imminent.]
[Physical Impact Recommendation: Create a localized vacuum to forcibly disrupt the ether flow.]
The six mages had finished their incantations, the orbs of light at their fingertips blazing with blinding intensity.
The very moment they were about to release their spells, Lu Cen moved.
He did not charge forward. Instead, he slammed both feet into the ground and spun in place at blistering speed, sending out a ring of visible white physical shockwaves in every direction.
WHOOSH!
It was no magic—only a ferocious vacuum current, born from the ultra-high frequency oscillation of his limbs.
The current hit like a gaping maw snapping shut in an instant, sucking every last trace of air from a ten-meter radius clean away.
The raging purple fireballs and lightning bolts withered and fizzled out in an instant, robbed of the air medium they needed to manifest.
The mages' eyes went wide. It felt as if an invisible hand had clamped down around their fingers, and their lungs threatened to burst from the violent vacuum pressure differential.
Lu Cen's figure materialized like a ghost before the lead mage.
He extended his silk-wrapped left hand, and seized the priceless yew staff with perfect precision.
"Here, a staff has only one purpose."
Lu Cen let out a cold sneer, and his fingers clenched down with brutal force.
CREAK—SNAP!
It was the sickening, combined sound of hardwood being twisted apart, and a mana crystal being crushed to dust by sheer physical force.
Like wringing out a wet towel, Lu Cen twisted the staff, inscribed all over with runic incantations, into a mangled corkscrew, then tossed it to a nearby disciple like it was nothing but trash.
"Here. This curve is perfect for pull-ups."
In that moment, the mages' entire understanding of the world shattered completely.
The magitek equipment they'd prided themselves on, the very symbol of their status, had been turned into nothing more than… a dumbbell, in Lu Cen's hands.
[LITTLE TRICK: Lu Cen did not stop. He struck again and again, each blow accompanied by the sharp, cracking sound of splintering wood and crushed crystal.]
In less than thirty seconds, all six elite guard mages lay crumpled in the mud, their staves violently snapped in two without exception.
Lu Cen picked up the blue crystal from the core of the lead mage's staff, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks in an instant.
Trapped within the blue crystal was a single, infinitesimal strand of silver tissue.
It was… a genetic remnant of his mother.
[SYSTEM HIGHEST PRIORITY SCARLET ALERT: Core material of 'Maternal Evolution' detected! Sanctification replacement and extraction material confirmed.]
[High concentration homologous factor absorbed. Physical Synchronization Rate jumped to: 15%!]
Lu Cen felt as if the veins in his body were filled with boiling mercury, a primal, overwhelming inertial force erupting deep in his bones.
He could sense it in an instant: this crystal was not naturally formed. It had been refined, through unspeakably cruel means, from the very life essence of an "Isolate Batch" specimen.
"Cedric… is this what you called 'waste reclamation'?"
Lu Cen's voice dropped to a guttural, rumbling growl, the pebbles on the ground vibrating in perfect resonance with every word he spoke.
Sylvia came stumbling over, her face deathly pale as she stared at the wreckage of staves littering the ground and Griffin's stiff, puppet-like expression.
"Lu Cen… look at the ground…"
Lu Cen looked down.
The purple mana seeping from the broken ends of the staves had not dissipated into the air. Instead, it had been instantly drained away by thin, silver metallic roots spreading through the ground beneath their feet.
From the cracks beneath the stone pillars came a heavy, clicking sound, like the turning of massive industrial gears, growing faster and louder by the second.
Superintendent Griffin suddenly went rigid. His eyes began to click and rotate like interlocking gears, emitting an inhuman mechanical whir.
"Subject 07… synchronization rate achieved… ritual entering… physical phase."
Lu Cen's head snapped up, his gaze locking on the distant horizon.
At the edge of the world, atop that impossible non-Euclidean mechanical spire, tens of thousands of massive bronze gears began to spin wildly in unison.
The wails of ten thousand voices carried on the air—a signal that the physical prowess of every living being across the world was being forcefully degraded by some unknowable law.
[System Notification: Ultimate Quest Unlocked. The Extremis March.]
Lu Cen slowly closed his fist around the blue crystal, driving it straight into the flesh of his chest with brutal force.
"From today onward, Extremis Academy has no more use for ordinary dumbbells."
He hefted the original anti-magic stone pillar over his shoulder, the tip of the pillar carving a deep furrow into the ground as he moved.
"Mages' bones will be our weight plates."