The Golem Mage

Apart from those three, Beatrice Marionette was the only other member of their team who had returned to the academy that day.

Unlike Pale and Lucas which could hide their Tier 6, she was merely a low Tier 6 mage who had just broken through; and it was evident from her unstable aura that she hadn’t consolidated her realm yet or gained full control over her new strength to be able to hide her realm.

Still, after Katie had thoroughly beaten the three mages who tried to block her and Pale, the number of challengers looking to test their strength against the top eleven dropped significantly.

Most decided it was better to remain uninjured than to risk their pride all for ranking by underestimating someone they couldn’t gauge properly.

Ironically, that made Katie the most challenged member of the team, being ranked eleventh, many saw her as a benchmark to test their strength against, but when the stream of challenges became relentless, Katie started responding with brutal counterattacks, leaving her opponents with injuries that wouldn’t heal easily.

This shift in her approach forced the others to change their target, and with the Gordon clansmen still absent from the academy, they turned their attention to the next in line—Pale.

Many assumed Pale would be an easier opponent than Katie due to how reserved he has been acting, but they quickly realized the silver-haired prince charming was actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

He faced ten mages simultaneously and left them all frozen in place, literally without lifting a finger.

He had casted a massive ice spread spell that transformed the place they stood into a frozen wasteland.

Though his spell was amplified by his Tier 6 realm, but that alone shouldn’t have stopped skilled mages from leaving the range or surviving the attack, after all it was just ice spread a low Tier Spell, but what caught them off guard was Pale’s unique ice variant ability.

While the wide-area spell acted as a distraction, he unleashed a hidden strike: ten small black ice spikes.

They were tiny, but they didn’t disintegrate or melt like ordinary ice attacks, no—these black ice spikes latched onto their targets after hitting a part of the body and clung tightly to the mages…

The black ice clung to the mages bodies that were coated with mana to survive the cold like a magnet, desperately absorbing any mana it touched, and that was when the ten mages’ downfall began.

They had felt insulted by Pale’s arrogance in accepting their challenge only on the condition that all ten fight him at once, yet, despite their numbers, they couldn’t last a single move.

Their focus had been entirely on the large-scale ice spread gathering momentum across the field, and they paid no attention to the small, seemingly harmless black ice shards.

But the moment they tried to dash out of the Ice spread range, the consequences hit hard, as it felt like they were dragging massive weights with each movement sluggish and forced.

The more they pushed their mana to escape, the more the black ice drained it and spread across their bodies, worse still, because they were still within the ice spread zone, the freezing effect of the black ice doubled in strength.

In a matter of seconds, all ten were trapped, immobilized and transformed into frozen black ice sculptures.

Fortunately for them, Pale hadn’t cast the spell with lethal intent, the temperature, while punishing, wasn’t set to kill.

Throughout the fight, he had simply stood there, staring at the cloudy sky, as if he were more interested in the weather than the duel.

When it was over, Pale walked away silently, leaving behind his frozen challengers, it eventually took the combined effort of twenty instructors, experts in fire magic and Qi mastery, to thaw and rescue the ten mages.

Some students had tried to help before the instructors arrived, but quickly realized they lacked the strength to melt the black ice.

Luckily, the academy’s call for its top-ranked experts to return meant there were reinforcements capable of undoing the damage nearby.

Ever since that incident, no one had dared challenge the top eleven again, as the current members in the institute were just too terrifying.

Katie, ranked eleventh, was infamous for breaking the bones, especially the hands, of anyone who challenged her, and recovery wasn’t easy or cheap that even after paying for treatment, those injured still couldn’t cultivate properly for a period of time.

The damaged mana veins in their broken limbs caused too much pain to channel energy until fully healed.

Many called her a sadist, as Katie’s attacks didn’t just damage the body externally, they shattered internal structures as well, and it felt as if no defence could stand against her, and worse, everyone suspected she wasn’t even using her full strength.

As for Pale, who was ranked fourth, no one dared to approach him for a spar after the black ice incident, watching him defeat ten peak Tier 5 mages without lifting a finger made it clear just how vast the gap between them truly was.

Anyone who had still harboured hopes of challenging him quickly let go of the idea.

Lucas and Beatrice weren’t even considered.

Lucas’s raw aura alone made others feel weaker; his Qi seemed to naturally exert pressure on anyone nearby. Beatrice, though not as flashy as Pale or as overwhelming as Lucas, possessed something undeniable.

She was the genius many instructors believed to be on par with Alec Gordon, the number one ranked student in the Earth Rankings and the vice-captain of their team, and there was even a rumour which had even begun to spread that she might be Alec’s girl, and everyone knew one thing: no one messed with Alec’s people without facing consequences, even if the topic was just a gossip.

Besides they didn’t believe they could defeat her, as Beatrice was never alone, her Tier 6 wooden puppet spider, known for carrying a coffin on its back, was always by her side, just the sight of it was enough to convince most people that challenging her wasn’t going to end in their victory so they saw no reason to infuriate Alec not with his return looming.