Headmaster Sly turned to face Leilin and the other apprentices. "You are all the finest apprentices of our Black Bone Forest. You have survived battles of blood and fire. You are not hothouse flowers — you are young, ferocious lion cubs! I want you to hunt your prey, stalk them, ambush them, and finally — tear them apart!!!"
As he spoke those last words, Headmaster Sly's bright eyes suddenly turned bloodshot, radiating a savage gleam. His entire face seemed to twist with ferocity.
Leilin's expression was solemn. Inside, he didn't know what to say.
Next, the Headmaster promised numerous rewards — rare resources and advanced knowledge that could be earned by killing the opposing apprentices. The apprentices' faces lit up and their eyes gleamed.
"As expected of the rumors — our Headmaster is an extremely aggressive person!" Leilin sighed inwardly. "I wonder how many of them will actually survive in the end?"
Meanwhile, the headmasters of the Gothic Sage's Cottage and Whitewood Castle were also delivering speeches. Seeing the opposing apprentices cheering and nodding enthusiastically, Leilin felt a small measure of relief.
The academies along the South Coast had each inherited the style of their respective headmasters. Black Bone Forest Academy clearly revered brutal violence, openly preaching the doctrine of the law of the jungle — its overall style leaned heavily toward that of dark wizards.
These two rival factions, on the other hand, clearly leaned more toward the light wizard tradition. Although many of their apprentices had already reached the Third-rank, Leilin didn't see the shrewdness and cunning in their eyes. Instead, there was still a fair amount of naivety — quite similar to several retired apprentices he had encountered in Polar Night City.
"If that's the case, there's still a chance!"
A sharp gleam flashed through Leilin's eyes. His only goal was to accumulate enough contribution points to exchange for Grimm Water. He had absolutely no desire to stir up unnecessary trouble.
The price of a single vial of Grimm Water was fifty contribution points. That meant Leilin would need to kill five Third-rank apprentices from the opposing side, or slaughter even more Second-rank apprentices, to accumulate enough points.
"
Leilin studied the opposing apprentices, his gaze lingering on several Third-rank apprentices whose energy fluctuations seemed noticeably weaker.
These would all be his prey going forward!!!
"Very well! This secret realm entrance will remain open for three days. During this time, you will be randomly teleported to various locations within the realm. Keep the badges on your chests safe — they are proof of your merit and your passage back!!!"
With a wave of Sly's hand, the Black Bone Forest Academy apprentices formed orderly lines and began entering the secret realm entrance.
Through the mediation of the Nightwatch Lighthouse, Black Bone Forest had also secured several favorable conditions — such as being allowed to enter before the other two academies, gaining a certain advantage.
But Leilin understood all too well how laughable their slight positional advantage was against the enemy's overwhelming strength.
Both sides had roughly the same number of apprentices — around two hundred each — but the enemy's Third-rank apprentices outnumbered their side by five or six times.
Setting aside the many Black Bone Forest apprentices who had fallen in battle, there were still others who hadn't returned in time or had defected and been killed. The result was that in terms of elite strength, Black Bone Forest was vastly inferior to its opponents.
Under these circumstances, the fact that Black Bone Forest's Headmaster was still taunting the enemy like this made Leilin somewhat inclined to believe the earlier rumors — that the war had been started single-handedly by this very Headmaster Sly!!!
While lost in thought, Leilin followed the apprentice in front of him into the secret realm entrance.
……
Hummmm!!!
Upon entering the secret realm, Leilin's vision went dark. When he came to, he was standing on unfamiliar ground.
His head was spinning, as though a hundred thousand bees were all beating their wings at once. Leilin's face scrunched up in discomfort, and he nearly vomited on the spot.
"The host is experiencing adverse reactions. External symptoms include dizziness and nausea. Preliminary assessment: aftereffects of spatial transportation!!!"
The Chip's voice rang out. Leilin slapped his forehead, then uncorked his water flask and splashed the cold water over his face. Only then did he start to feel somewhat better.
He surveyed his surroundings. Before his eyes was a stretch of low shrubbery and thickets. Among the surrounding grass grew several unknown fruit trees, their branches heavy with purplish-red berries covered in fine thorns.
"Chip, scan the surroundings!"
Leilin issued the command, and a three-dimensional blue holographic map immediately materialized before his eyes.
"Doesn't seem to be any danger." Leilin nodded, then chanted a few syllables.
As the spell incantation took effect, Leilin's appearance began to undergo a strange transformation. His eyes grew larger, his lips thinned, and his hair changed color — he became an entirely different person. Even his height decreased by several centimeters.
Most remarkably, after this Zero-level Spell was complete, the energy fluctuations emanating from Leilin's body gradually weakened — receding from Third-rank Apprentice to Second-rank, and finally dropping to roughly First-rank Apprentice levels.
"Mimicry Spell (Improved Version) — capable of altering a person's height and appearance, as well as adjusting spiritual power fluctuations. Cost: 3 mana, 3 spiritual power!"
The Mimicry Spell was the spell Leilin had specifically chosen before leaving the academy.
After his advancement to Third-rank Apprentice, he had finally met the conditions for the Chip to refine spell models, and had completed the improvement of the Mimicry Spell while in Polar Night City.
Of course, no matter how much the Chip refined it, the Mimicry Spell remained only a Zero-level Spell. It could deceive apprentices, but it could not fool a full Wizard's detection. Otherwise, Leilin could have simply used the Mimicry Spell to disguise himself as a Second-rank Apprentice and returned openly.
Furthermore, the Mimicry Spell could only lower Leilin's energy fluctuations to disguise him as a lower-rank apprentice — it could not make him appear as an ordinary person or a full Wizard.
However, in a secret realm blood-battle where only apprentice-level combatants participated, the Mimicry Spell's effectiveness would never be seen through by other apprentices.
"That'll do." Leilin examined his current appearance in a small mirror.
A golden-haired boy apprentice with only First-rank Apprentice energy fluctuations — in this state, even if Biji and
"Still, habits aren't so easy to change. I'd better try my best to avoid running into anyone I know."
Leilin's eyes flickered, and he vanished into the undergrowth.
……
Elsewhere within the secret realm, apprentices from various academies had already begun to encounter one another, sparking several fierce yet brief battles.
Beside a small pond, a dark-haired apprentice wearing a black cloak blasted a Black Bone Forest apprentice on the opposite side with lightning, reducing him to charred remains.
At another spot on the battlefield, Jiamen wore a grim expression as countless green vines suddenly erupted from his body, wrapping a Whitewood Castle apprentice into a tight ball of vegetation. As the vines constricted further, bright red blood slowly seeped through the gaps, dripping one drop at a time onto the ground.
Battles like these erupted across the secret realm without pause. Overall, Black Bone Forest's Third-rank apprentices tended to gain the upper hand in one-on-one combat, while First- and Second-rank apprentices from either side who were found by the enemy faced immediate death.
A brown-haired apprentice with freckles across his face, wearing the robes of the Gothic Sage's Cottage, had eyes that were not large but were filled with panic and vigilance as they swept continuously across his surroundings.
"Damn it!!! I was teleported straight here — way too far from the academy's rendezvous point..."
The apprentice muttered complaints as he hurried along.
Boom!!!
Without warning, several cracks split open in the ground. Yellowish-brown earth spikes shot up from the soil, and in the blink of an eye, they pierced straight through the apprentice's grey robe and the armor beneath, tearing a massive hole in his abdomen.
An expression of agony and disbelief froze on the apprentice's face. As blood and organs spilled outward, the light gradually faded from his eyes.
More than ten minutes later, the surrounding grass rustled and parted. Leilin shed his green camouflage suit and approached the apprentice's corpse.
He crouched down and removed a red badge from the apprentice's chest.
"Just a Second-rank Apprentice. Worth three contribution points!"
Leilin tucked the red badge into his robes. The badges worn by apprentices from different academies came in different styles — Black Bone Forest's were uniformly black, the Gothic Sage's Cottage's were red, and Whitewood Castle's were white. Additionally, badges varied in design according to the apprentice's rank.
"Chip! Pull up my current data!"
"Ding! Leilin Farell — Third-rank Apprentice, Formal Knight. Strength: 3.1. Agility: 3.3. Constitution: 3.7. Spiritual Power: 8 (13.2). Mana: 8 (13) (mana is synchronously determined by spiritual power). Status: Healthy."
"A single Mimicry Spell and Earth Spikes have already consumed five points of spiritual power and mana. From here on, I need to conserve spiritual power and try to resolve combat with potions whenever possible!"
Leilin's gaze flickered restlessly.
This was an academy blood-battle, not some treasure-hunting tournament. Based on the intelligence he had gathered, Leilin was now certain that the opposing academies had designated several gathering points for their apprentices to converge, after which they would collectively hunt down the Black Bone Forest apprentices.
Black Bone Forest's apprentices, already weakened in numbers, could not afford to designate their own gathering points — doing so would let the enemy sweep them all up in one go. Their only option was to fight a scattered guerrilla campaign.
Leilin could already foresee that during the first day, Black Bone Forest's Third-rank apprentices might still manage to kill a few of the enemy and maintain a slight advantage. But once the opposing forces gathered in sufficient numbers, they would inevitably begin a systematic hunt, chasing the Black Bone Forest apprentices through the secret realm like ducks flushed from a thicket.
The mere thought of the enemy apprentices forming a magical formation, unleashing an overwhelming barrage of spells in his direction, made Leilin's scalp tingle with dread.
"If I want to earn enough contribution points, I have to do it now. The longer I wait, the worse it gets!!!"
Leilin's expression was dark as water.