The attacker was a Senior Apprentice of the Dark Shadow Holy Tower. For someone of only Senior Apprentice rank to dare trail Kai across such a vast distance and strike here—one could hardly tell if he was brave or just reckless.
Kai always kept a backup plan for everything, a habit forged back in the Black Magic Academy. If he ever laid bare all his tricks with no strength left, he might easily fall prey to others' schemes. That was why, in the earlier basin battle, he'd only revealed his regular magic, his Earth-Element Shield Ring, and his invisibility cloak—never once using his Sun-Eye Mask. For Kai, saving 底牌 (hidden aces) and ensuring his safety mattered far more than scraping together a few extra points. Countless brilliant talents had fallen over trivial mistakes, and he had no intention of becoming one of them.
A dark-element arrow had grazed his right arm, but Kai's expression barely flickered. What did furrow his brow, though, was the sight of his portable alchemical workbench—now shattered beyond repair from the apprentice's ambush. After downing a vial of recovery potion, he walked over to the large tree where the Senior Apprentice had hidden. The trunk, thick enough for several men to encircle, was now riddled with holes like a sieve. So too was the Dark Shadow apprentice's body, a mangled mess of flesh and blood.
A tattered black soft armor caught Kai's eye. From the faint elemental aura and the magical runes etched into its fabric, he realized this armor must have been key to the apprentice's ability to tail him unseen—along with the apprentice's own unique magic. "I could try combining this with my invisibility cloak to make a new stealth item," he muttered, tucking the armor away. "But I won't know if I can unlock its secrets until the Regional Academy War ends. I'll have to study it then."
Amid the corpse's fragments, Kai also found a cracked mirror—a type of spatial storage device, now ruined. Any damaged spatial gear instantly tears its contents to shreds with spatial forces. With a soft sigh, he pocketed the broken mirror anyway. Even if he couldn't claim the apprentice's personal treasures, the mirror's decent craftsmanship would still yield basic materials if melted down. Kai never wasted even small gains.
After cleaning up the aftermath of the ambush, Kai glanced around and headed for a small valley to the south. The golden light from his badge still glowed brightly, but for now, no other Dark Shadow apprentices would likely stumble upon him. He needed to dim that annoying glow—and fast. If he couldn't, he'd have no choice but to flee back to the Blue Source Holy Tower's territory.
From his spatial bracelet, he pulled out another alchemical workbench. As a skilled alchemist and heir to most of his mentor Moses' legacy, Kai owned far more than one set of alchemical tools. Years of researching the Sun-Eye Magic had even led him to keep six regular workbenches and several spares on hand. He hadn't brought all of them, but three different models remained at his disposal.
Kai placed his Blue Source Holy Tower badge on the workbench's central mechanical arm, then picked up a screwdriver and tweezers to start disassembling it. He'd taken apart enough Holy Tower badges before to know the process by heart. As he skillfully broke the badge into smaller components, he had no idea that several mighty figures outside the Holy Towers were staring at each other in astonishment at his actions. "I wonder if I could tamper with the point data directly through the badge… but that'd be blatant cheating," he mused, shaking his head.
Time flew when fully immersed in alchemy—Kai often lost track of it entirely during experiments. He loved alchemy, loved researching magic. Back in his teens, he'd fought tooth and nail to learn at the Black Magic Academy in Menzoberranzan just to survive. Now, his drive to study came from pure passion and ambition. If Kai were content with mediocrity, he'd never have left to join the Blue Source Holy Tower Academy. He could have lived as a noble heir in Grant Territory, enjoying decades of luxury and ease.
Kai rarely distracted himself during alchemy, but halfway through modifying the badge, a memory from the Black Magic Academy surfaced unbidden. He'd been nine then. A fellow new apprentice—just an Initiate—was constantly bullied by several older Low-Rank Apprentices. Bullying was common at the academy; not every newcomer could cling to a "backer" like Kai had. (Though back then, Lina hadn't exactly been a reliable ally—Kai still remembered how she'd snapped orders at him when he first joined her quarters.) But even running errands for Lina was better than the Initiate's fate: being humiliated, even abused, by the older apprentices.
Kai had heard the Initiate vow publicly more than once that he'd get revenge someday. The Low-Rank Apprentices had laughed it off, and so had everyone else—after all, the Initiate had terrible talent, while some of his bullies were already on the cusp of becoming Intermediate Apprentices. In the Black Magic Academy, boasting without strength to back it up was foolishness, and the Initiate became a laughingstock.
Until… he volunteered for a body modification experiment by the official Magician 科索隆 (Korsolon). The result? A monster. Korsolon had declared it would live no more than three days. On the second day, it tracked down every apprentice who'd bullied it—and tore them to pieces.
Kai suspected the memory had resurfaced because he'd just killed so many Dark Shadow apprentices. He'd kept the "eradicate the root" principle he'd learned at the Black Magic Academy: he could have spared the Dark Shadow apprentices who'd lost the will to fight, but he refused to leave hidden threats or future enemies behind. On a battlefield where you and your foes fought to the death, mercy was nothing but a death wish. From the casualty records of past wars, Kai knew this Academy War was no game—it was a fight where lives were truly lost, just like the border wars of mortal kingdoms. Had anyone ever seen a skilled knight spare an enemy soldier?
Count Earl Grant had wanted to take Kai and Solon to war once, hoping to harden them. But the earl never knew Kai had already understood this truth long before. He remembered the Initiate's story clearly… yet he'd forgotten the boy's name.
When Kai snapped back to reality, the modified Blue Source badge lay before him. "Getting distracted during alchemy is a serious mistake," he said softly. "If Mentor Moses were here, he'd probably rap my head with his staff."
Modifying the badge hadn't required overly precise work. Once he'd taken it apart and examined its interior, Kai had quickly pinpointed the source of the golden light: the badge's central core. This core held not only the Gravity Shield (a highly effective defensive escape spell) but also stored his point total. Tampering with the points would have targeted this core—but Kai had neither the time nor the luxury of ruining his badge (he couldn't just ask for a new one). Instead, using his alchemical knowledge, he crafted a thin sheet of "chromium gold"—an inert elemental metal—and covered the core with it. With micro-engraving, he added three magical arrays around the sheet and the badge itself: Element Absorption, Energy Shielding, and Light Dispersion.
Notably, Kai had collected the chromium gold from a small resource point in the trial space. For most apprentices, resource points meant points and magic coins. For an alchemist like Kai, though, the trial space was a treasure trove of materials. Might he even gather enough resources here to advance to Official Magician? Perhaps that was another unspoken purpose of the Regional Academy War, held once every fifty years by the Holy Towers.
The modified badge's golden glow was now dimmed significantly—not fully hidden, but when paired with his invisibility cloak, it was almost as good as before. With that annoying light dealt with, Kai finally relaxed and turned to repairing his other gear. His Earth-Element Shield Ring needed fixing most urgently, and he also planned to boost his invisibility cloak's stealth. The process of repairing and modifying his magical equipment also let his magic and mental power recover slowly. Later, he pulled out other items from his spatial bracelet to tweak them as needed.
"Using Levitation Spell so often is a waste—I shouldn't squander my magic and mental power like this," he muttered. "Among Mentor's legacy and my own gains over the years, the best mount for me right now has to be…" His gaze fell on three metal discs, each covered in obvious cracks. These discs were part of Moses' inheritance; one was only slightly damaged, but the other two were split so badly Kai couldn't fix them quickly. They were clearly a set of magical equipment—Kai had seen Moses use them in his battle against the plantation owner 凯瑟森(Kaiserson). Their quality easily matched that of official magical artifacts.
Once, Kai had doubted his ability to repair such artifacts. But after successfully crafting his Sun-Eye Mask, his confidence and alchemical skills had grown by leaps and bounds. He took the least damaged disc to his workbench and began repairing the magical artifact.
Nearly a week later, the repair was finally done. Compared to the spectacle of Moses wielding multiple discs at once, Kai's single disc seemed shabby—but it was more than enough for his travel needs. Not only could it run on energy crystals, but it consumed less than one-twentieth of the magic and mental power required for Levitation Spell.
With his new mount ready, Kai turned to studying the Dark Shadow Holy Tower badges he'd collected—he had more than enough of them. After examining them, he found they were barely different from Blue Source's badges. His goal? To adapt the special badge functions he'd developed years earlier. When glowing dots (marking nearby apprentices' positions) appeared in his crystal ball, Kai let out a cold laugh. The trial space hadn't blocked this ability of the Holy Tower badges. With that confirmed, he could hunt Dark Shadow apprentices more freely—and guard against their ambushes.
Kai stayed in that remote valley for nearly two weeks. Even so, he remained top of the points ranking, and the faint golden glow from his badge never fully faded. After one last glance at the valley he'd called home for two weeks, he stepped onto the metal disc and flew northeast. A crystal ball hovered in his hand—like a hunter ready for the chase, he embarked on his journey once more.
Back at the Blue Source Holy Tower Academy, the air had grown eerily quiet the moment Kai claimed first place on the points board. Then, as his points stagnated for nearly two weeks, nerves had frayed. So when his score finally ticked up again, Johnny let out a long, relieved breath. He wasn't alone—the Blue Source Academy's three Deans sighed in relief too.
"I can't take this anymore—I need to rest," Magician Irene said, clutching her chest. Johnny's eyes were glued to the score screen; he just waved a hand without looking back. The three Deans, too, stared fixedly at the rankings.
"Johnny, you said this boy doesn't have a mentor yet?" asked Archimedes, the oldest and most respected of the three Deans.
"Not that I know of. Midici tried to take him as an apprentice, but it didn't work out," Johnny replied, scratching his head. "Wait—you're not thinking of taking him as your apprentice, are you?"
Archimedes stroked his white beard, but didn't answer right away.