Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 213: This Shouldn’t Be Happening

The Battle Arts College’s practice building has plenty of rooms, enough to run dozens of assessments at once, and each bout usually takes no more than ten minutes. Even so, by the time the first round wrapped up, it was already afternoon.After eating in the spacious, lovely college cafeteria, and in high spirits, Lucia headed back to the broad central courtyard.

There stood an obsidian wall built with alchemical technology. Its surface bore decorative reliefs: the back of a woman, hurling herself like a moth to a flame into a vortex crammed with dreadful imagery; at the very center of the whirlpool, a tiny human figure. No doubt this was some artist’s imagined scene of the Legendary Mage perishing together with the Witch of the End to save the world.

In fact, the wall was also an alchemical curtain: on the reverse side a gorgeously patterned array was carved. When the time came to publish results, the reliefs on the front would slowly fade, replaced by text revealed as stone etchings—ranking the examinees from the top-left down to the bottom-right.

As soon as the results appeared, Lucia hurried over, rising on tiptoe to peer from afar.

Everyone around her did the same. At this point no one paid her any mind; rubberneckers don’t show up right on cue—everyone here was a candidate, and each only cared about themselves.

A few seconds later, at the very first slot in the top-left, Lucia saw her own name. She’d braced herself for it, yet it still startled her; she couldn’t tell if she should feel delighted or uneasy.

To be honest, she still felt a bit woozy—an inexperienced country girl comes to the Academy of Truth to take an exam, and suddenly she’s a prodigy? The shift was too fast; her mindset hadn’t fully caught up yet.

Moreover, something else nagged at her. In the morning assessment, she had used the improved combat art Yvette gave her and one-shotted the college’s alchemical automaton. But in the cafeteria, she overheard other students saying that automaton was supposedly a tough nut to crack.

For the first time she truly felt how terrifying the power of that improved combat art was—so terrifying that using it in front of others put pressure on her.

It wasn’t that she wanted to hide her strength; she just feared the art was too strong, too conspicuous—a tall tree catching all the wind. If someone traced it back to Sanggren Village, and then to Yvette… who knew what they might dig up?

So for the upcoming ranking challenges, she planned to try her dad’s original version first; if the opponent was too strong, she could always switch back to the improved one.

The Battle Arts College had a sprawling arena district, offering a multitude of platforms in various sizes. On ordinary days it served as a teaching area for practical classes; it was also often used for exams or events. During winter and summer breaks, outside organizations even rented it to host competitive tournaments and the like.

In the afternoon, after the first-round rankings were posted, all examinees gathered here to take part in the second-round ranking challenges, where lower-ranked students initiated challenges upward.

By now the stands were packed—candidates’ families, current students, and plenty of outsiders. Clearly, everyone knew this was the most entertaining part of Spring Admissions.

On a tower at the center of the stands, Conrad Dean—the head of the magic-sword division in charge of this Spring Admissions—had just come up when he saw the dean, Ignatius Zackley, already standing at the edge of the tower’s viewing platform. Ignatius was overlooking the orderly crowd below, leisurely holding a cup of black tea.

“I hear you served as examiner for that young Miss Sterling. How did it go?” Ignatius asked calmly, watching the ebb and flow of people below.

Conrad’s expression turned complicated. Hesitating, he said, “She—she’s no ordinary student.”

“Oh? For even you to say that, how ‘extraordinary’ are we talking?”

“Dean, that Sterling girl has inherited a legacy from some unknown female expert. And the combat art she used—I… I couldn’t make sense of it.”

“Couldn’t make sense? You mean you couldn’t identify the lineage of what she learned?” Ignatius said in surprise.

On the Radiant Continent, powerful combat arts are almost all renowned and distinctive, with clear lines of transmission—like the top-tier techniques in a wuxia tale. One can quickly judge by the art’s traits, the user’s background, and their nation or race.

And Conrad, after all, was a Greatsword Master and a division head at the Battle Arts College—one of the continent’s first-rate experts.

There was actually a combat art even he couldn’t place?

“So I’d like to trouble you to take a look,” Conrad said.

“Alright.” Ignatius smiled faintly. “Maybe some old-timer who never shows their face has finally come out—female, even? Let me see if it’s one of the few I know.”

The second-round ranking challenges were run in batches—one batch per hundred candidates—using dozens of small platforms to wrap up fights efficiently. This round even provided rare elixirs to restore mana and stamina, ensuring no one would falter from a gauntlet of matches.

In truth, the number of actual challenges wasn’t that high. Those with the urge to fight clustered at the two extremes: either hovering near the admission cutoff and pushing for a little more, or among the very top geniuses dissatisfied with their rank.

Also, the top fifty earned different amounts of college points based on rank. Points could be used to grab elective slots, buy potions and alchemical gear, or even be exchanged directly for gold coins—a de facto scholarship, and very tempting.

Because most people in the middle opted to hold their position, the challenge rounds flew by. Before sunset, they had already moved on to the incoming class’s top hundred by rank.

Up on the tower, Ignatius soon noticed a young freshman challenging Lucia—a boy ranked twelfth, named Sinclair, from the Herman Empire.

The two stepped onto one of the vacant platforms, instantly drawing the attention of every nearby seat.

When red light flared around Lucia, Ignatius asked, “This is the mysterious combat art you mentioned?”

Conrad glanced over; it seemed about right. He answered at once, “Yes, Dean.”

“Mm. A fire-attribute art—I’d better watch closely.” Ignatius said. As the famed Saint Swordsman known as the “Flame Demon’s Hand,” he was also a Magic Swordsman adept in fire-type combat arts. This mysterious set Lucia used fell squarely in his wheelhouse.

“Then please watch carefully. By my estimate, the fight may end in an instant,” Conrad cautioned.

Ignatius shot him a sharp look, then nodded and focused. But soon, as the boy and girl clashed—flames and sword-light colliding—Ignatius’s expression shifted from intent, to puzzled, to a knit-browed oddity.

Because what he saw did not match Conrad’s description of a one-and-done. The two were fighting fiercely. With superb swordsmanship, Lucia seized a huge advantage—an undisputed prodigy, to be sure—but where was that top-tier combat art? Her fire-type techniques and Sinclair’s wind-type looked… not all that different in tier, honestly.

“Conrad, you’re not pulling my leg, are you?” After watching for over a minute, Ignatius said slowly, “This fire-type art looks to me like it descends from the ‘Hellfire Style’ of the old ‘Ironforge School.’”

The Ironforge School had once existed among the southern nations, a magical school that developed original spells and combat arts, then selected the best to teach broadly and collect tuition. Their “Hellfire Style” was the flagship art of the time—solid quality and adaptable to many classes: Magic Swordsmen, shield warriors, axe fighters, archers, and more.

From his observation, the fire techniques this girl named Lucia used, while having some original flourishes, still showed heaps of “Hellfire Style” all through the details. A so-called esoteric art so profound even a Greatsword Master couldn’t read it? Come on—wasn’t this just a reskinned patchwork?

Conrad was stunned, too. He watched the fight closely, studying Lucia’s every move, his expression growing more and more lost. Under his breath, he muttered, “Th—this… shouldn’t be happening—”

Because the external effects of the arts were so similar, he actually began to doubt whether he’d gotten it wrong.

Could he really have gotten it wrong?