Reincarnated Grandmaster

Chapter 9: Out-calculating a Grand Mage

The heat from the crimson crystal on Vance's staff turned the falling drizzle into a thick, choking mist. Jaxon, the remaining enforcer, didn't hesitate. He scrambled on his hands and knees into the dark underbrush, eager to escape the blast radius of an angered Grand Mage. Vance was not merely an instructor; he was a battlefield veteran whose hands were slick with the blood of border wars.

"You survived Gort, and you survived the labyrinth," Vance said, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling register as he began to channel his core. The damp earth beneath his boots began to crack, thin lines of glowing red light spreading like a spiderweb across the slate. "But those were games for children. You are a slave, 704. A piece of property that stepped out of its box. My contract with Lord Erat specifies your termination, and tonight, the forest will simply record an unfortunate training accident. No one investigates the death of livestock."

The air pressure in the clearing plummeted sharply. The crimson crystal atop the elderwood staff flared with blinding brilliance, casting long, monstrous shadows against the weeping silver pines. Thick strands of liquid, white-hot fire began to leak from the stone, pooling in the mud and causing the wet ground to hiss, pop, and boil violently.

Christian stood perfectly still. His vacant eyes tracked the frantic flow of the mana spinning around the elderwood staff. Vance’s active capacity was enormous—at least twenty times his own current reservoir. If Christian attempted to use a basic spatial inversion within his three-meter grid, the sheer volume of thermal mass would overwhelm his physical body. The ambient heat alone would cook his lungs before the kinetic force could be completely redirected. To survive, he needed to alter the nature of the board entirely. He needed an exit vector that didn't involve his own physical space.

"A direct frontal assault," Christian observed calmly, his voice easily cutting through the roaring sound of the gathering fire. "You are investing eighty percent of your active mana into a single, high-density destructive spell to ensure no forensic trace remains. It is an expensive opening move."

Vance’s small eyes widened in pure, unadulterated fury at the complete lack of respect. "Arrogant brat! Burn to ash!"

With a violent thrust, Vance slammed the butt of his staff into the slate rock. "Ignis Manifest!"

A torrent of white-hot crimson fire erupted from the crystal, transforming into a massive, twisting vortex that filled the entire width of the clearing. The intense heat instantly turned the nearby pine trees into blazing torches, melting the slate flooring into a bubbling, black glass. The inferno surged toward Christian like the maw of a starving beast, moving too fast for any physical evasion.

Christian’s eyes went completely white as he reached deep into his core, touching the dark, infinite void of Malakor. The entity within smiled, its cosmic malice aligning perfectly with Christian’s cold, absolute logic. He didn't try to stop the fire. Instead, he reached out to a set of coordinates he had memorized only twelve hours prior—the precise spatial signature of the Academy’s highly fortified Mana Reservoir building, located exactly three miles away on the upper tier of the mountain campus. He knew those coordinates perfectly because they were the exact origin points of the warehouse teleportation arrays he had manipulated to hijack the herb shipments during the economic blockade.

Christian extended both hands, fingers splayed at a sharp ninety-degree angle.

"Kaelostra: Fold."

A sound like tearing silk echoed through the clearing. Right in front of Christian, a vertical seam of absolute, lightless black opened in the air. It wasn't a shield; it was a localized spatial gateway, a direct bridge connecting the mud of the Whispering Woods to the interior vaults of the Academy’s sacred treasury.

The massive, roaring vortex of crimson fire slammed directly into the absolute blackness of the open seam.

Instead of exploding, the torrent of white-hot magic was swallowed whole. The sheer vacuum of the spatial fold pulled the entire volume of Vance's spell into the darkness, disappearing as quickly as it had been unleashed. The clearing fell into a sudden, unnatural quiet, save for the crackling of the burning pine trees.

Three miles away, up the mountain, the night sky violently exploded.

A cataclysmic, blinding pillar of red and gold fire punched through the roof of the Academy’s central treasury building. The shockwave was so immense that a deep, low rumble vibrated through the earth, shaking the slate platform beneath Vance's feet. The brilliant flare illuminated the entire mountain range, turning night into a terrifying, artificial day. The sacred reservoir, packed with thousands of high-grade mana stones and centuries of accumulated wealth, had just been directly ignited from the inside out by a high-tier Grand Mage spell.

Professor Vance froze, his staff still extended, his yellowing teeth locked in a sudden expression of unadulterated horror. He stared at the massive mushroom cloud of fire rising over the distant campus, his hands beginning to shake violently as the crimson crystal on his staff sparked and died. "What... what did you do? Where did the spell go? You couldn't have absorbed it. It's impossible!"

Christian didn't answer with words. A true master never explains his strategy while the pieces are still in motion. Instead, he took two fingers and violently drove them into his own left shoulder, precisely rupturing a minor blood vessel near his collarbone to simulate a near-fatal blast injury. He tore his pristine white examinee tunic across the chest, letting the dark crimson blood spill down his torso. He fell to his knees in the mud, his breathing suddenly turning ragged, shallow, and weak. He forced his eyes to lose their terrifying focus, replacing the void with an expression of pure, unadulterated terror. He transformed his posture from an unyielding grandmaster into a broken, helpless slave in a matter of seconds.

"You... you set me up," Vance gasped, realization dawning on him like a physical blow. The unique mana signature of the fire that just leveled the treasury belonged entirely to him. Every forensic mage in the empire would recognize his unique casting imprint within the smoking ruins.

Before Vance could raise his staff to finish Christian, the air in the clearing began to crackle with high-tier teleportation mana. Three massive, glowing gold arrays materialized in the mud, illuminating the burning woods. The spatial friction was so intense it blew the smoke away in a single, violent gust.

The Headmaster of the Imperial Academy stepped out of the central array, his long golden robes swirling with defensive magic, his face pale with absolute rage. Behind him stood twenty elite Imperial Guards, their silver armor gleaming, their halberds drawn and humming with lethal energy. They had followed the massive spatial back-surge directly to its source.

The Headmaster’s piercing gaze swept across the ruined clearing. He saw the burning forest, the melted slate, and Professor Vance standing over a bleeding, ruined slave child with a smoking Grand Mage staff held high in his hands. The visual evidence was absolute, leaving no room for interpretation.

"Professor Vance," the Headmaster said, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, quiet fury that made the pressure in the ravine drop instantly. "Explain to me why your signature magic just obliterated the Imperial Treasury."