I Want to Grow Stronger

The shockwave from Fire Burst: Blast shattered the Gloom Wolf Beast's upper and lower jawbones in an instant. Its snout crumpled grotesquely before the raging flames swallowed it whole.

The remaining blast-fire showed no mercy. It surged down into the Gloom Wolf Beast's throat and flooded the creature's belly, swelling its body outward until it seemed on the verge of bursting.

**BOOM!!**

The detonation arrived. The ferocious Gloom Wolf Beast, reduced to a scorched husk by Fire Burst: Blast, crashed heavily to the ground at Baiyang's feet.

Baiyang's sneering face went rigid. A dark, terrible stillness settled over him.

His previous Gloom Wolf Beast had been of even finer bloodline — one he had been carefully cultivating into a supremely powerful Summoned Beast — only to have some trainee stumble into killing it by sheer dumb luck. That death could at least be written off as a fluke. But this time, the Gloom Wolf Beast had been obliterated outright by two back-to-back Elemental Magic strikes.

"I'll grant that you're nothing like the usual students who crumble the moment they see a Demon-Beast — you're no worse than some seasoned Hunter-mages. But you still have to die, and I'm going to feed your corpse to my next Summoned Beast!" Baiyang pressed one hand to his chest, pale-faced, his whole body convulsing violently as he spoke.

*He had underestimated this student after all.* A Lightning Seal: Furious Strike followed by a Fire Burst: Blast might badly wound a Gloom Wolf Beast, but under normal circumstances it shouldn't be enough for an outright kill. Yet this boy had forced the Fire Burst straight into the beast's open mouth — detonating it from the inside. No ordinary student would ever think of that move, let alone execute it.

Still — a dead beast was a dead beast. Once he secured the Earth Sacred Spring, his standing would be transformed entirely. A Gloom Wolf Beast would be beneath a Summoner of his caliber soon enough.

"Both of you — kill him!!" Baiyang's gaze hardened as he barked the order at his two Black-Beast Demons.

The Black-Beast Demons, which had been pursuing the other students, wheeled immediately toward Mo Fan at their master's command.

The Black-Beast Demons were far more agile than the Gloom Wolf Beast. They could leap across car rooftops and dart nimbly between vehicles, using the wreckage as cover to shift position in rapid succession.

These two Black-Beast Demons clearly knew how to hunt in tandem. They split to either side of Mo Fan, flanking him perfectly. Even if he deployed a Lightning Seal technique to pin one in place, the other would be at his throat in an instant.

The two Black-Beast Demons closed in. Without the Sickle-Bone Shield, Mo Fan had time to complete only a single Star Trail.

There was no time to think. On instinct, Mo Fan began drawing together another Fire Burst.

The Fire Burst: Blast might buy him one reprieve — but whether he could deal with both fast-moving Black-Beast Demons after that was another question entirely.

"Teacher Xue — Release Light Radiance!" Not far away, Mu Bai shouted the instruction to Xue Musheng.

Xue Musheng glanced at Mu Bai and saw a deep stellar-blue radiance rapidly condensing in the young man's palm. Experienced enough to read the situation immediately, he didn't hesitate — he unleashed his Light Element magic without a moment's delay.

Light Radiance: Blind!

When Released effectively, the blinding brilliance could sear out a Demon-Beast's eyes and strip it of its combat ability entirely.

Sensing the flash, Baiyang slowly turned his face away, a look of contempt settling over his features.

*Light Radiance has no real killing power — look away and your vision recovers in moments.* As for his two Black-Beast Demons — *please.* They were creatures of darkness, but they had no eyes at all. Light Radiance: Blind was utterly wasted on them.

"Dark Ice Slash!"

The voice came from directly behind him. An instant later, a bone-deep cold swept in at the back of Baiyang's neck.

Within the pale-white radiance of the Light Radiance, a jet-black blade-shaped object materialized without warning. It glimmered with frigid light, radiating a piercing chill — and swept silently through the air toward Baiyang.

Baiyang had been shrewd. With no Summoned Beasts nearby, he had positioned himself beside a car, ensuring the other students couldn't blindside him. But the black ice blade cared nothing for obstacles. It carved straight through the vehicle, splitting it cleanly in two, then continued on to slash diagonally across his shoulder and neck.

The blade was razor-sharp and utterly devastating, severing everything from his left shoulder up through the side of his neck.

Not a drop of blood fell. The wound had already frozen over with a crust of frost. Baiyang crumpled slowly to the ground, his upturned face locked in an expression of pure disbelief.

*A Mage who commanded three Summoned Beasts — killed by students who would have wet themselves at the sight of a Demon-Beast just a year ago?*

*A Slash Enchanted Gear.* Why would an ungraduated student be carrying something so expensive? And the strike had come so suddenly — so suddenly that he hadn't even had the chance to activate his defensive Enchanted Gear.

Xue Musheng's Light Radiance began to fade. In its dying brilliance, Mo Fan watched both Black-Beast Demons abruptly stop moving.

As if something had clamped around their throats, the two Black-Beast Demons writhed where they stood in obvious agony. What surprised Mo Fan even more was that their pitch-black bodies appeared to be melting — dissolving bit by bit, as if scorched by intense heat.

Within five seconds, the two Black-Beast Demons that had nearly taken his life dissolved into twin puddles of black pus at his sides, bubbling with a nauseating froth.

"Black-Beast Demons are bound to their master's soul," Xue Musheng said, wiping the sweat from his brow. "When the master dies, they are destroyed along with him. That is why they are the Black Church's most loyal instruments of harm."

The others drifted in from a distance, one by one. They glanced at Baiyang's corpse, then at the two pools of black slime, their faces etched with exhaustion.

Killing Demon-Beasts might have earned them a few quiet claps. But after witnessing a betrayal like Instructor Baiyang's, they had been forced to revise their understanding of what people were capable of. It would be a long time before any of them adjusted.

"The Slash Enchanted Gear my uncle gave me for my eighteenth birthday finally got some use," Mu Bai said with a rueful smile, noticing everyone staring at him.

A Slash Enchanted Gear was a classic offensive type of Enchanted Gear — once activated, it could release a single devastating slash of tremendous power, though at the cost of an enormous drain on Magical Energy. The Slash variety was even more expensive than Armor Enchanted Gear, well beyond the means of most Mages, let alone ordinary people.

What Baiyang had least anticipated was that one of these students would be carrying a Slash Enchanted Gear. No family, after all, would entrust something like that to a student who hadn't yet graduated.

Whatever else could be said, Mu Bai's Slash Enchanted Gear had saved them all. Without it, those two blazing-fast Black-Beast Demons might well have been more than any of them could handle.