Chapter 160: Chapter 160
The academic exchange at Lingman University was scheduled for the end of December. Once it concluded, the New Year holiday would begin—a convenient marker for the visiting guest professors.
Garde City sat in the subtropics, humid and warm year-round. Even in deep winter, the air held no biting chill; only when the night wind skimmed the treetops did it sometimes leak a trace of bleakness.
With little time left in this dreamworld, on the eve of the exchange, she donned a black robe and clung to the outer wall of Lingman University like a shadow slowly congealing. For more chapters visıt N()velFire.net
The institution was inhospitable to outsiders. Its walls were riddled with sensing runes, warning grids, and all manner of invisible magical flora—but she was used to that.
Like a drop of ink blending into the night, she slipped through blind spots in the surveillance and glided onto campus.
The campus was so empty it felt unsettling.
Yvette moved deeper in and saw lights blazing by the football field—the exchange venue. She ghosted toward it, puzzled as she walked.
Shouldn’t a normal exchange be held indoors? Why choose outdoors? Jadeite winters weren’t that cold, true. She didn’t overthink it—so long as it didn’t keep her from auditing, she was fine. With that, she headed straight for the perimeter.
But the moment she stepped closer, something felt off, and her stride halted.
A sharp sense of wrongness surged up. Without hesitation, she turned to leave. Just then, a crimson curtain of light slammed down from the sky, weaving itself like a net of blood and sealing the entire campus under it.
Immediately, shadows writhed on all sides. Waves of fully armed soldiers in heavy ballistic armor flooded out! Overhead, shuttlecraft thrummed low, like a bloodthirsty swarm of steel wasps cycling back and forth. Searchlight pillars sliced the ground into jagged shards.
She turned back slowly. The crowded venue was gone, dissolved in rosy light, leaving only a bare, brightly lit field—terrifyingly silent.
She clicked her tongue, annoyed she hadn’t spotted it at once. But there was no helping it—Jadeite’s hardware and software weren’t the same as Blacktide’s. Even for her, rune-hacking was heavily nerfed here.
Besides, this was Lingman Corporation. A megacorp’s holographic tech could pass for reality.
Then, a new play of light condensed before her, resolving into the likeness of Imogen Ashford. The Lingman chairwoman spoke calmly: “We meet again, Miss Nameless.”
“How did you find me?” Yvette’s voice came through the shadows, pure curiosity. She was sure she’d been covert enough. Imogen said, “Lin-trans Biotech provided technical support—something scent-related, I’m not clear. But I imagine that once you agree to work with us, you’ll have a chance to know.”
So that was it—scent tracking. Yvette had thought she’d left a trace through shoddy stealth.
She asked instead, “You’ve teamed up with Black Tower Pharmaceuticals and Lin-trans Biotech?”
She recalled the recent visit by the CEOs of Black Tower and Lin-trans alongside the president—clearly they’d sniffed a lead from the Greenlight Tower incident and come to discuss cooperation.
“Black Tower didn’t accept. Lin-trans is willing to provide limited support—but you know, this is the Jadeite Continent.” He smiled, emphasizing, “Miss Nameless, working with us is far better than being hauled back to Blacktide, isn’t it? If you nod, the Greenlight Tower affair,
and the data leak—we can wipe them clean.”
“You shouldn’t have the leeway to say no.” Imogen said. “You can try,” Yvette replied—and her form detonated into a streaking shadow, ripping the air as she blitzed toward the far side of the field, refusing to be encircled.
But the air turned viscous, impossibly so. Channeling magical elements grew drastically harder, and many spell-forms refused to coalesce.
Clearly, a mega-spec array was blanketing the area with something like elemental lockdown.
Then a storm of enchanted rounds howled from behind. Because of the lockdown, many enchanted firearms would fail, so these weapons had obviously been designed for it—mostly kinetic, nasty enough even without magic.
It was almost an anti-magic zone.
Luckily, Yvette dabbled beyond elemental magic.
She immediately switched to the natural magic she’d recently picked up. The grass exploded in growth, blades shooting up meters high—wall after wall to soak the bullets.
“You can use natural magic too?!” A furious, startled voice rose as “Greenwild’s Wrath” Eugene stepped from the ambush, trying to wrest control of the plants from Yvette.
Last time, Yvette had scarred him. Because Imogen had withheld certain intel, he’d assumed it was fire magic countering him that led to his crushing defeat—even his prized Leaf-Vein Heavy Cuirass shattered.
This time, with elemental lockdown in play, Eugene saw his chance to wipe out the shame—after all, if she couldn’t even use fire, what was there to fear?
He never imagined she’d wield natural magic on-site.
That was supposed to be his point of pride!
There was only one sixth-circle mage in the world who used natural magic—him. Yet Yvette now showed formidable control, as if already a master. How could Eugene not feel gutted?
He wasn’t just losing to her—she was stripping him of his unique mark as the sole sixth-circle natural mage!
Yvette had no idea what fed Eugene’s rage; she was busy seizing control of the summoned flora. Thanks to her advantage in mental power, she wrested away more of the plants.
Thus, within the football field now smothered in towering green, with even the shuttlecraft overhead unable to see clearly, the two natural mages clashed fiercely.
Yvette’s natural magic lacked polish, but her mana and will were now far greater, letting her summon and commandeer more plants. Eugene, though more practiced, had a smaller total pool, and so countered with fewer plants, operating them at finer granularity.
Just as Eugene decided this had become a contest of natural-magic craft, the cornfield-thick greenery split to either side, and Yvette—black-robed—stood before him.
She dropped her shadow disguise. A red gleam traced her robe; her pale hand tightened into a fist and slammed into Eugene’s chest!
He went flying, cushioned from serious injury only by the Leaf-Vein Cuirass and the grass behind him.
He scrambled up from the thicket and took the invitation to close combat, crashing back and forth with Yvette among the dense blades. But within moments, panic crept in—he was losing his ability to answer.
He suddenly realized she was using forcefield magic in close quarters—pulse-focused!
He couldn’t help thinking: was it pulse woven into fire magic last time that hit him so hard?
Fire, light-and-shadow, natural, forcefield—most people need a lifetime for one. How had she learned so many?
Did her day have 24 extra hours?
At last, in a straight clash of fists, Yvette clipped him with a vicious elbow. Eugene staggered back, breath flagging, fear in his eyes—too wary now to rush in.
Yvette ignored him and swept her gaze to the edge of the crimson barrier wrapping the campus. She drew a long breath, ready to break through by force.
Imogen’s hologram reappeared to the side, calm: “Last chance. Can we truly not discuss cooperation?”
“Absolutely not,” Yvette said.
“A pity.” Imogen sighed theatrically, then suddenly called, “Green Angel!!”
The entire field—the rampant grass and even the crimson dome—shuddered violently! In the sky, a point of emerald light appeared out of nothing, then feverishly gathered, stretched, condensed!
In a blink, a humanoid of pure emerald energy hovered in midair. It had no features, no clear limbs, more an ever-flowing, amorphous mass—like a slime giant condensed from the rawest vitality. Yet a soul-chilling aura poured from it without end, blanketing the field.
“You have the power of a demon-god. We, too, have the power of a god.” Imogen smiled, admiring the Green Angel as if beholding a masterpiece.
Then the Green Angel lunged straight at Yvette. Sensing the surge of danger, Yvette lashed out with the Ashen Touch.
What followed was bizarre.
When that mysterious green energy washed over her, the life force in her body began to drain in a rush—as if the Green Angel were siphoning it directly away.
Was this the so-called “divine” power?
A capability utterly inexplicable with current magical theory?
Under the night sky, Yvette and the Green Angel flashed and collided, parted, and collided again—a chain of ruinous aftershocks.
She couldn’t let the green light enfold her. Even the Ashen Touch, if caught within it, bled life away. But if her Ashen Touch struck directly, she could steal back life and mana alike.
The battle took on a strange shape—like two vampires trying to drain each other dry.
At the same time, the exchanges didn’t lessen. Beyond life-sapping energy, the Green Angel wielded natural magic, summoning plants to strike. Yvette was far less versed there and switched to other branches of conceptual magic to respond.
Within minutes of grappling, Lingman University’s iconic hundred-meter library loosed a groan under a savage energy shock and collapsed with a roar.
Dust roared skyward like a great beast’s breath, billowing under the crimson dome and emerald glow into a mushroom cloud of ruin.
“Unbelievable.” Watching the two figures locked in a dead heat, Imogen couldn’t help but marvel.
With a force called the “Green Diadem,” the Green Angel was their mightiest creation—arguably the pinnacle of individual power in human civilization. The only thing that might surpass it was Zero, forged by Black Tower Pharmaceuticals through “divine molt.”
They hadn’t expected this mysterious Nameless to fight the Green Angel to such a standstill. If not for the different manifestations, they might have suspected Nameless was Zero.
Elsewhere, Chief Mage Eugene and the other Lingman combatants lying in ambush stared, slack-jawed,
ignorant of the inside story. To their eyes, it was gods and demons in battle.
Even the red shield overhead—able to tank the main guns of an aerospace carrier—shook under the aftershocks, on the verge of shattering!
If no one stopped them— Eugene swallowed hard, gaze sweeping the ravaged campus and the distant, twinkling city.
It wouldn’t be long before the entire university district of Garde was flattened by these two monsters.