"Is that even a dream?" Belo threw a glance Ayrin's way, a little speechless.
Ayrin's expression was very serious. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"She's the one who keeps saying she wants to dominate the entire kingdom. Your dream is to help her, how can your own dream be built on someone else's foundations?"
"Well anyway, this dream thing, isn't it something that you most want to do right now, that you can see in front of you but is very difficult to achieve? What I want to do now is precisely to help her beat teams from other schools, why not?"
"Then you might as well say you want to beat all the other teams and become this great tournament's champion yourself."
"Same result, it's more or less the same thing."
"Idiot, this dream thing, how can you be so casual about it, it's fine as long as it's more or less the same?"
"..."
Ayrin was about to say firmly that he wasn't being casual about it, that he'd decided his dream in all seriousness. But just at this moment, Chris started to advance toward Ferdinand with great difficulty.
Ferdinand helplessly watched Chris, considering in his mind which arcane skill to use to take her out of the fight without causing her any lethal injury.
"Sand Armor!"
He made up his mind when Chris was still over twenty meters away from him. First he shouted loudly, then clasped his hands together and fiercely struck them on the ground in front of him.
Dazzling magenta arcane particles closed packed together gushed out from his joined palms and rushed to the surface of the ground. A deep pit suddenly appeared on the ground, while his body sucked toward it streams of air mixed with large amounts of yellow sand and stone, becoming a thick armor of sand and stone.
His body seemed even bulkier now!
"You want to help her dominate the kingdom with your level? Just the current Ferdinand can crush you to death." Belo couldn't help but taunt Ayrin when he saw Ferdinand suddenly transform into a stone giant.
Ayrin didn't hear Belo's mockery at all, however. His entire attention was gathered on Chris and Ferdinand.
Chris came increasingly closer to Ferdinand. Her body wouldn't stop swaying, yet she suddenly told Ferdinand in a firm tone, "Your Southern Monsoon team is indeed really strong this year, but I'm still going to beat you. The ones to enter the main qualifiers will be our Holy Dawn Academy."
"Mm?"
The blond Stingham wasn't seriously watching the match anymore in his corner of the stands, instead sticking his head left and right, seeing if there were pretty girls around him, when a shout suddenly escaped from him. His gaze locked tight on Chris.
"What?"
The four teammates beside him tensed up immediately.
"It looks like there's a crack on Chris' clothes." Stingham shook his head in disappointment. "Too bad the crack's not in a good place, you can't see anything."
"..." The four teammates around him almost puked out blood right on the spot.
…
"Unexpectedly..." At the same moment, on top of the arena, Liszt's eyes flashed with the genuine shock of matters exceeding his expectations.
Just at this time, the clothes on Chris' left hand cracked open entirely.
The sleeves of her outer uniform around her left hand, the sleeve of her inner uniform, they all suddenly tore open under a frightening aura.
And what halted the breath of everyone in the stands was, the exposed hand and arm were entirely covered in thick bandages.
"How could there be such a frightening aura?"
Ferdinand's expression changed immediately.
Even if Chris weren't injured, her reserve of arcane particles couldn't be that much greater than his, but at this very moment, the aura gushing from Chris' left hand made his heart flutter in panic, gave him a sense of hopelessness.
"Sand Giant!"
With a great shout shaking with inexplicable shock, countless dazzling arcane particles squirted out at top speed from his arms and legs without the slightest reserve.
Dense yellow grains of sand emerged from the ground, continuously gathering around his arms and legs.
His body grew upward nonstop, his arms and legs grew incomparably huge, especially his hands that looked like two giant hammers.
Anyone could tell this was an arcane skill combining arcane power and physical strength, could imagine how frightening the power would be when such a fist hammered down.
Within this short moment however, the aura gushing from Chris' left hand seemed to have ignited the air several meters around her on her left side; even the thick bandages wrapped tightly around her left arm were charred pitch-black by the fiery aura seeping from her hand.
"What arcane skill is that?"
Ferdinand shouted out loud, incredulous.
Countless rays of black light radiated from Chris' left hand, bringing with them a fiery aura devoid of warmth. He could hear scalp-numbing fracturing noises come Chris' arm and the bandage around it.
"Ah!"
Almost everyone in the stands, no matter students from Holy Dawn Academy or Southern Monsoon Academy, everyone stood up and cried in alarm.
It seemed as if a monster with a body several dozen times bigger than Chris' own drilled its way out of her left arm. In the space of a short instant, in the air on Chris' left side, fire and blackness transformed into an unimaginable, malevolent, fiendish, terrible black flame dragon!
"Ah!"
Seeing the dragon whose mouth was about the same size as himself after he'd transformed into a giant, Ferdinand became so frightened he could no longer form words. He brandished his fists and smacked them toward the black dragon that flew through the air in his direction.
"Boom!"
Black streams of fire surrounded him in an instant.
His strength was very astonishing at this moment, but the arcane particles coming out of his body immediately vanished from sight as soon as they came into contact with the black flames, swallowed within, as if their powers merged into the fiery black trails.
Without the support of his arcane particles, the thick armor of sand around him collapsed, the grains of sand flowing away like water, then blown backward and dispersed by a formidable force.
His body flew back together with the scattered streams of sand.
A sandstorm rose, enveloping the greater half of the stands. Many students suffered incomparable pain from the beating of sand and gravel. Added to the shock inside their hearts, they trembled from head to toe for a long while.
Ayrin and Belo had the same exact expression on their faces, a rare scene. Both had their mouth open wide, unable to close them at this moment.
"Dark Destruction Dragon!"
At the top of the arena, standing at the edge of the dome just like Liszt, Minlur almost lost his footing and fell from the sky at this moment. His expression was just the same as if someone had stepped on his face. "Plum... Senior Plum actually taught her this secret... secret skill on the sly?!"
Ciaran also lost the air of a prim lady, her hair in disarray. "She actually learned it!"
"Even you couldn't learn it, but she actually learned it, don't you feel mad?"
Liszt's lazy expression returned to his face with a smile. "I was wondering what she was doing with her arm always wrapped in so many bandages, it turns out it's to protect her arm as much as possible when she trains and uses this move. However, with her previous level, she would have had to force herself too much to use this secret skill, so even this way she'd still have suffered severe injuries."
"What's that?"
In a corner of the stands, the boys who were ready to tie Stingham up and give him a thrashing froze up, fear written all over their faces.
Stingham pushed a fist away and stuck his head out. "Why does it feel like the aura of a dragon!"
"Dragon aura? Arcane particle swallowing!"
The one called captain Hansen suddenly turned pale. "Dark Destruction Dragon! The strongest secret skill of Holy Dawn Academy, a skill that can swallow the opponent's arcane particles, Dark Destruction Dragon!"
"Impossible! Isn't Dark Destruction Dragon the skill that stands side by side with Holy Gates of Life? It was lost long ago! Didn't they say it's been a long long while since anyone in the entire Holy Dawn Academy learned this skill!"
…
On the edge of the arena, several Southern Monsoon teachers in charge of the team likewise shouted in a daze, "How could this be! How could they even have Dark Destruction Dragon!"
The entire Holy Dawn Arena was in chaos.
The sandy wind vanished bit by bit.
The crowd's sight slowly cleared up. They saw the half of the field where Ferdinand previously stood entirely covered in yellow sand.
Two figures, one big and one small, stood above the sand.
Chris and Ferdinand. They were both still standing!
Chris stood not far away in front of Ferdinand. Tiny grains of sand covered her body and hair. Blood oozed from the bandages on her left hand. Ferdinand's body was also severely wounded, especially his face; it looked as if someone had stepped over and over on it; probably even people from Southern Monsoon wouldn't recognize him anymore.
"I didn't expect... didn't expect you actually managed to train such a terrifying arcane skill."
Ferdinand said out all of a sudden, his voice a little blurry, as if his tongue had been beaten swollen.
"Worthy of the girl I admire. It's unfortunate, you're all by yourself in the end. You don't have powerful teammates like me, all of them ready to bravely fight at the cost of their lives!"
His voice became feverish and confident all of a sudden. "It's unfortunate this arcane skill is too powerful, you can't endure this kind of power either. Right now you're certainly unable to lift even a finger, you're about to pass out, right? That's why the final victors are still us from Southern Monsoon Academy. Chris, just obediently transfer to our school, come make history with us, come create a miracle!"
"What!"
Ayrin had just closed his mouth shut, but he almost jumped up when he heard Ferdinand make that kind of noise.
Could it be Chris still couldn't beat this guy after fighting her way this far, after using such power? Were they still going to lose this match?
"There's no need to force yourself."
Chris' voice rose at this moment, weak yet brimming with resolution, making Ayrin's blood almost boil.
"You still want to sound tough, you still want to scare me. Just quietly fall down."
Chris struggled to lift her head. She stretched out her right hand, stretched out a finger.
She looked like she wanted to use this finger to push Ferdinand's forehead, but she was much shorter than him and couldn't reach it.
This finger then fell on Ferdinand's chest.
"You even saw through that..." Ferdinand said, helpless, before her finger even landed on him. Then with a "boom," his huge body fell back straight, like a rock. And then he didn't move any longer.
"Chris wins, Holy Dawn Academy wins."
A referee ascertained Ferdinand's unconsciousness with a single glance. He signaled the medical team to enter the field at the same time he announced the end of the match.
"Ah!" Ayrin exclaimed with incomparable excitement when he heard that. The screams of almost every Holy Dawn student followed his shortly after.
"We finally won!"
Chris let out the trace of a smile at this moment, then her body also fell softly on the ground.
Sound disappeared all of a sudden.
The medical team lifted her, as anxious as if they were facing an army, and carried her away. Everyone in the field understood what truly happened.
A burst of drums and applause rose from the stands occupied by the Southern Monsoon students.
Everyone understood that at the very end of the fight, she'd stood on the edge of unconsciousness just like Ferdinand, but she only fell down after hearing the announcement of her victory.
What kind of determination was that? What kind of victory was this?