The instant she crossed beyond the cage of inscriptions, Lina stared at the multicolored spells, a thick killing intent seeping into her azure eyes.

She gathered her magic. Her heart beat faster, and with every breath her magical power surged. Dragon scales appeared across her fair palms, and dozens of massive fireballs materialized around her, ready to launch.

Once they reach the second tier, magical creatures can cast simple spells. These are inherited techniques woven into their bloodlines, and they can use them through instinct alone.

That’s why the second zone is far more dangerous than the first.

Or rather, the danger grows exponentially with every zone. Even the Mentors have to form a team to enter the forest’s final zone. Only the Sage Class headmaster can enter alone and suppress those ninth-tier magical creatures without breaking a sweat.

They weren’t even affected by magical signals, and none of them had mutated.

Just as Lina was about to rely on her dragon scales and Magic Shield to tank the damage and force her way through, He Qin’s voice came from behind her. “Raider Unit 022, attack.”

It was the activation command. Using a rapid-chanting technique, He Qin activated three puppets in succession within 0.02 seconds. The humanoid puppet, pitch-black from head to toe with both arms modified into high-frequency magical blades, darted around Lina in the blink of an eye and charged the monsters to her left.

The other, a burly Guardian, raised a magical shield and protected her and Jiang Cha as they advanced step by step. Like an immovable mobile fortress, it blocked countless attacks from the distance and the sky.

The third puppet beside her was a long-range artillery unit. Its cannons fired into the sky, precisely picking off one flying creature after another.

That was the Puppet Mage’s combat power.

He Qin coordinated from the center, issuing commands while casting temporary enhancement spells on all three puppets.

In a sense, each of them could function as a complete squad on her own.

What was Jiang Cha doing?

“Holy crap! Cha Bao, are you even human?!”

Staring at the shocking scene before her, Lina flung out a fireball and hurriedly retreated, reinforcing her Magic Shield a second time.

The cool, black-haired girl with red eyes raised a hand and unleashed thousands of Lightning Bolts, each no bigger than an iron spike. They streaked like a torrential downpour toward the magical creatures—thousands of them, constantly casting spells. But the bolts didn’t hit the creatures’ mutated, twisted flesh. Instead, they precisely pierced the spells themselves, whether those spells were already flying or still taking shape.

Every Lightning Bolt came from a different angle. They couldn’t match the creatures’ spells for destructive power, but they were more than capable of knocking those spells off course.

Wind Blades, lightning, fireballs, water bolts...

Under the girl’s precise interference, spell after spell collided. Their clashing magic threw everything into chaos, then exploded.

The chain of explosions set off an even bigger blast.

It churned the magic in the area into greater chaos, turning the whole space into a perilous magical vortex. And then...

“Cha Bao, I hate you!!!”

BOOM—!

The instant the golden-haired Little Witch came sprinting back into the protective range of He Qin’s puppets, the girl detonated the magic contained in spells cast by thousands of magical creatures. The enormous explosion, visible even from thousands of meters up, flattened more than a thousand square meters of forest beneath their feet.

“This little one’s talent is something else... Innate Magic: Information Gathering? Tsk. She’s going to be a handful.”

Mentor Vladimir, watching the whole scene unfold from the sky, also noticed the sudden explosion. Looking somewhat surprised, she pulled up Jiang Cha’s student file. Her gaze lingered on the Innate Magic entry for quite a while before she gave a quiet sigh.

She was one of the Battle Club’s instructors, so of course she had to consider the club’s future.

Jiang Cha’s combat talent was dazzling even to her. With precise calculations, she’d triggered a magical storm in the middle of such a chaotic battlefield and wiped out over a thousand magical creatures in an instant. A first-year Little Witch who could do that—and had such powerful magic reserves—was definitely a top Combat Witch in the making.

But that Innate Magic also made her every bit as gifted when it came to research.

If she wanted Jiang Cha to focus entirely on honing her combat skills and become a mainstay of the Battle Club, she’d inevitably have to fight the mentors of the secondary-discipline clubs for her.

“Cha Bao—! Were you trying to blow me up?! You totally wanted to blow me up, didn’t you?!”

The girls had no way of knowing what Vladimir was thinking or worrying about. But after nearly taking the full force of that enormous explosion to the face, the golden-haired Little Witch had her magic robe singed black around the seat of her pants. She sank her sharp white teeth into Jiang Cha’s hand, cheeks puffed with anger, and refused to let go.

“That really was dangerous. Jiang Cha-chan, please remember to warn us before you try something like that next time.”

He Qin finally caught her breath, one hand resting on her heaving chest as she spoke with lingering fear.

The sudden ignition of that immense magical storm had startled her too. If she hadn’t reacted quickly and urgently fed magic to the Guardian to reinforce its shield, they would’ve been blown away as well.

“I didn’t think it’d be that powerful either...”

The girl shook her right hand and sighed helplessly. The golden-haired Little Witch attached to it swung back and forth in midair with every movement, but still refused to let go.

Those little dragon fangs were so hard and sharp, they were nearly biting through the localized shield around Jiang Cha’s hand.

But she really wasn’t lying.

Most of her processing power had gone into calculating the Lightning Bolts’ trajectories. Even with her brain running at full capacity, she’d only managed to estimate the explosion’s approximate range of power. She’d overlooked several unexpected variables, and the blast ended up roughly twice as powerful as her highest estimate.

So, what were those variables?

First, Lina’s Red Dragon heart had drawn in far too much ambient magic. It was like adding more gunpowder to the bomb.

Second, after so many magical elements reacted with one another, a resonance effect beyond her knowledge had occurred, greatly amplifying the explosion.

Third...

The girl looked up at the Mentor floating in the sky, her expression helpless.

Without them knowing, Mentor Vladimir’s magic had been keeping watch over every student on the field. That was normally a good thing: if a student was in danger, Vladimir could react quickly and save them.

But that magic—small in quantity, yet incredibly powerful—had acted as a catalyst for the explosion. It was the biggest variable of all.

Jiang Cha only noticed it after the explosion, when the Mentor replenished that magic.

If the explosion hadn’t created a momentary magical vacuum in the area, she might not have noticed that variable at all.

“I promise I won’t do that again next time... So can you let go now?”

The girl apologized sincerely to Lina.

She really hadn’t done it on purpose. She’d even left Lina plenty of time to react.

“Hmph!”

The little one obediently let go, but she was still fuming. She gave an arrogant little snort.

Jiang Cha was still racking her brain for a way to apologize and make it up to her when the little girl spoke first. “Come battle me tomorrow! Ten matches! Ten!”

“Okay, okay... I promise we’ll keep going until you’re satisfied!”

The moment Jiang Cha agreed, she realized something was off.

Under He Qin’s exasperated gaze, the golden-haired Little Witch immediately broke into a smug grin and flashed a peace sign.

“Ehehe! Listen, Cha Bao! That was so thrilling! How’d you do it? Teach me, teach me! Next time, I’m gonna pull something huge on Senior Casey!”

Jiang Cha: “....”

How could the girl not see she’d been tricked? Lina hadn’t been angry at all. She’d just used the fact that she was in the right to get Jiang Cha to agree to her condition.

They really weren’t wrong when they said Witches were born to court danger for a thrill.

But Jiang Cha had been the one in the wrong, after all. She only sighed softly before explaining how the spell worked. “You calculate the trajectories, throw everything into chaos, then find the weak point in the magical vortex and detonate it. It’s not a very practical technique. Using it in battle is pretty tricky, and it requires very specific conditions.”

The girl thought it over. Since Lina wanted to try the technique, she might as well give her some advice.

“In your case, Lina... you could try building a magical vortex like that using only your own magic.”

“Oh?! How? How do I do that?”

Lina was clearly very interested in this kind of underhanded trick.

“The key is your Fire Dragon heart. It lets you seed the air with a lot of active magic. Then you can bombard the area with fireballs to hide what you’re really doing...”

As she explained it to Lina, their three-person team continued forward.

There was a long way between the second and third zones. If they wanted to finish their class assignment on time, they couldn’t afford to rest around here.

Fortunately, Jiang Cha’s explosion had made it crystal clear that the Witches in this area were not to be messed with. The magical creatures weren’t stupid, and even though they’d been corrupted and mutated, they’d retained a little survival instinct. Why get revenge on these Witches when they could pick a fight with someone else? There was no need to take on such a tough target!

So they didn’t run into many more monsters along the way. He Qin’s three puppets could handle them with ease.

“Um... Cha Bao, you do know, right?”

After hearing Jiang Cha’s explanation, Lina looked a little awkward.

“Hm?”

The girl tilted her head, her eyes full of confusion.

“Not every Witch has calculation skills as powerful as yours. Calculating trajectories with that kind of precision...”

“But didn’t you do it earlier?”

The girl had seen for herself how precisely the golden-haired Little Witch had picked off the magical creatures.

“That’s different!”

Lina shook her head.

“I use a single thought circuit to adjust my spells’ trajectories in real time. That’s fundamentally different from your method of calculating trajectories and knocking other people’s spells off course.”

She’d noticed Jiang Cha’s calculation ability seemed far beyond that of an ordinary Witch when they’d battled the day before. But back then, they’d only been trading spells by the dozens. It was nothing compared to today, when Jiang Cha had calculated the trajectories of thousands of Lightning Bolts and caused tens of thousands of spells to collide in chaos.

So she hadn’t paid it much attention at the time. She’d simply assumed Jiang Cha had an unusual talent for building thought circuits.

Now she could see Jiang Cha really was gifted. She had 34 thought circuits ready to go before she’d even started building them deliberately. But compared to her processing power, which rivaled a supercomputer’s, that was nothing.

“Oh, I see?”

The girl nodded, more or less understanding what Lina meant.

She thought for a moment, then offered a solution.

“So why not just pile on a ton of magic, Lina? You only want to pull off something flashy, right?”

“Oh, right! Tomorrow I’m gonna pull off something flashy on Senior Casey! I’ll lose either way, so who cares... This time, I’m gonna blast those big boobs of hers right off! Right off!”

The golden-haired Little Witch clapped her hands. Her tone was full of rage, but the idea had suddenly clicked.

He Qin: “....”

Miss Yamato Nadeshiko lowered her head and silently looked at her own ample chest.

‘I’m never battling Lina. Ever!’