I'll Take It All!

The dust had fully settled, and what the entire arena saw next stopped everyone cold.

The Gloom Wolf Beast — which had seemed to vanish in an instant — had come to a halt directly in front of Li Junwei. Its four paws were planted atop the Vine Wall, its head brought to within less than a meter of Li Junwei's face.

Put simply: with the slightest murderous intent, those fangs could have bitten Li Junwei's head clean off.

"Come back."

The Summoning Mage's voice rang out at that moment.

The Gloom Wolf Beast was perfectly compliant. It leapt down from the Vine Wall without ceremony and didn't spare so much as a glance at the heap of defeated challengers, padding unhurriedly back to Mo Fan's side.

Those unhurried strides. That faintly raised head. Those eyes still shimmering with unspent hunger.

The message was plain as day —

*Humans?*

*Pathetically weak.*

"Xu Zhaoting, are you absolutely sure you haven't seen him in only a year??" the girl beside him asked, barely able to keep the disbelief out of her voice.

Xu Zhaoting himself was completely dumbstruck.

*Was that thing really Mo Fan??*

Even if he'd broken through to Intermediate-Level Mage not long after the Bo City disaster, there was no conceivable way he could have trained a newly awakened Summoning Element to this level in just one year. The Gloom Wolf Beast that had just casually dismantled Li Junwei's five-person team was in a different league from any ordinary Demon-Beast. If the Vanguard Squad had crossed paths with a creature like that back on the road, they would have been annihilated to the last person.

"I don't know anymore," Xu Zhaoting muttered. "He's... he's just inexplicably strong."

He found himself less and less able to make sense of Mo Fan. The things about that guy that defied all explanation just kept piling up.

"What in the — that damned Gloom Wolf Beast got *stronger*?!" Luo Song, who had gone out of his way to sabotage Mo Fan, exploded in a furious string of curses.

He'd written off the Gloom Wolf Beast as a non-threat. A single Ice Lock was all it would have taken.

Now the thing was in the Ascension Phase. Without his absolute full attention, he might actually get caught out by it — and that was before even accounting for Mo Fan himself, with his Intermediate-Level Lightning Element on top of everything else.

*I need to seize every last cultivation resource earmarked for my cousins. Otherwise this bastard is going to keep pulling further and further ahead.*

The faster Mo Fan grew, the more uneasy it made him. He'd already lost to that guy once. There would not be a second time.

Li Junwei and his teammates trudged out of the sealed cage, hollow-eyed and drained.

This was not the outcome they'd wanted. They should have taken down at least one Summoned Beast — instead they'd been thoroughly dominated by a single Ascension Phase creature. The taste of it was thoroughly unpleasant.

First an Intermediate-Level Mage had delivered a punishing blow to everyone's morale — new students and seniors alike. And now this: a Summoning student fielding an Ascension Phase Gloom Wolf Beast, a creature so overwhelming it left people struggling to breathe.

Pearl Academy was said to be full of hidden prodigies. Li Junwei had experienced that truth firsthand today. He wasn't sure whether walking out of the Beast Cage like this — having been shown mercy — looked as pathetic as it felt. He wasn't sure, either, what Qin Xiao Mian thought of him now.

"Mo Fan, you're incredible — make up the gap we're missing, please!!" The scrawny Summoning student was practically bouncing with excitement as he shouted up at the stage.

A quiet smile of relief finally eased across Zheng Bingxiao's face. The Gloom Wolf Beast was every bit as powerful as the Bone-Eating Demon. If Mo Fan could weather the relentless assault from the remaining departments, their resources were coming back.

Hai Dafu and Wang Liting were no fans of Mo Fan, but with everything now riding on him, the irritation on their faces masked a private, grudging relief.

"You're all being a bit optimistic, don't you think? There are still a full fifty people left to go. Five per group means ten waves — do you honestly think Mo Fan's Gloom Wolf Beast can hold off all ten??"

"...I suppose you're right. Ugh. Curse that insufferable bastard. The moment I hit Intermediate-Level, I'm getting my revenge."

Mo Fan glanced back at his Summoning classmates. Honestly, if these resources hadn't belonged to the entire department, he would have been done after sixteen defeats and off the stage without looking back.

But what could he do? His family wasn't exactly rolling in money. Coming to Pearl Academy meant squeezing every last drop out of the teachers and the school. The Gloom Wolf Beast had come through spectacularly — its power had surged beyond all expectation — so they might as well go all in and fight until it hurt.

The Gloom Wolf Beast had survived disaster and emerged stronger for it.

After that brutal, savage battle, it had forced its way into the Ascension Phase. The Ascension Phase was the period during which a creature began its push from Servant-class toward Battle-General-class — its power far outstripped any ordinary Servant-class creature, yet still fell meaningfully short of the true Battle-General threshold.

Beast-Refining Blood struck even Ascension Phase creatures with tremendous force. If Mo Fan put on a strong enough showing today, he stood to receive a vial. Clearly, though, even Beast-Refining Blood wouldn't be enough to push the Gloom Wolf Beast all the way to Battle-General-class — that would take substantially greater resources.

Dean Xiao's speech earlier had been stirring and high-minded, the kind of words that made blood run hot. But from where Mo Fan stood, the old dean had also slipped something far more important between the lines: this Beast Battle had laid Pearl Academy's true survival philosophy completely bare.

Resources could be seized.

Either shrink to the back forever, watching others dazzle the stage through fearful eyes — or grit your teeth, pour everything into growing stronger, and on some future day, burst into the light and command the world's gaze.

The more you retreated, the more the corners swallowed you. The more you dared to fight, the brighter your future.

Spotting challengers still massing near the entrance, Mo Fan seized the gap between rounds and raised his voice.

"Dean Xiao, I have a question."

"Go ahead," Dean Xiao said.

"Our Summoning Element department failed to hold off a hundred challengers, so this semester's resources go to the other departments. But if we do succeed — we only keep what was already ours. Isn't that a little unfair to us?" Mo Fan called out clearly.

Dean Xiao let out a quiet laugh at that, and swept his gaze across the other department heads.

"An excellent question, Mo Fan. We did consider this. Beyond the hundred-person threshold, there exists another standard — one that cuts the other direction entirely. If the Summoning Element students can withstand two hundred consecutive magical bombardments from the other departments combined, then every cultivation resource from every department this year will be awarded to the Summoning Element department."

The instant those words landed, the vast arena erupted.

Everyone present had known that falling short of the Summoning quota meant severe punishment. What no one had known was this: if the Summoning Element defeated two hundred students drawn from all the other departments, all of those departments' cultivation resources would be handed over entirely.

*What in the — resources from a dozen-plus departments pooled together? That's an astronomical amount.*

The Summoning Element had only seven students. The rest of the student body, across every other department, numbered at least four thousand.

Four thousand students' worth of cultivation resources concentrated in the hands of seven people. The Summoning department wouldn't just rise — they'd practically ascend into another stratosphere.

"The reason this rule was never publicly announced," Dean Xiao continued, his tone perfectly unruffled, "is that in all the years Pearl Academy has existed, no incoming Summoning cohort has ever come close to achieving it. With no realistic prospect of anyone reaching it, whether to announce it or not seemed rather beside the point."

"Dean." Zhou Zhenghua, head of the Earth Element department, looked pained. "I wasn't even told about this."

The other department heads exchanged bewildered glances. The younger ones truly had not known there was this jaw-dropping additional clause buried inside the rules.

"Alright — your question has been answered. Anything else?" Dean Xiao said.

"Nothing more to ask," Mo Fan replied. One moment he wore that composed, calculating calm he'd carried through everything — and then, in the next breath, a slow smile curved across his face. "I simply want to make a brief statement to all the other departments' students here."

*A statement? What kind of statement?*

Five thousand-odd students from the other departments stared at this lone Summoning student, none of them certain what was coming.

"I burn through cultivation resources faster than your average Mage. So — I apologize in advance." Mo Fan gave a slight bow, then straightened. "Your resources... I'll be taking all of them."

When he raised his head again, the harmless mask was gone.

In its place: an expression of absolute, unabashed arrogance.