Chapter 288: Everything Was a Test from the Elders
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Defeated.
It seemed both unexpected and yet completely reasonable.
Harry had no trouble accepting his loss. Even the most overpowered, sky-soaring legends eventually meet their match and fall. He was just an ordinary thirteen-year-old boy—nothing remarkable—and winning or losing in a competition was perfectly normal.
If you asked whether he was convinced by the outcome, the answer would be a resounding yes. Harry genuinely accepted it. Although Li Jiannan was only five years older than him, in reality, their exposure to magic differed by at least twelve or thirteen years. When it came to early childhood education, England had made no investment at all. Sure, teaching magic to under-eleven-year-olds with unstable magical cores was risky, but there was no harm if they just avoided practical lessons.
In Taishi Celestial Empire, children began learning magic in kindergarten at age three, nurturing interest and hobbies. They continued in elementary school with theoretical knowledge and hands-on skills, formally practiced magic starting in junior high at eleven, then specialized in subjects during high school, and finally, in university, spent years deepening their expertise. This layered education system meticulously dismantled the empire's complex and arcane magic system into manageable stages.
Faced with such a vast difference in educational systems, even two people with identical talent would ultimately achieve vastly different results.
Li Jiannan had talent equal to Harry's, yet he had studied longer, had better resources, enjoyed a superior environment, and was wealthier. While others were still laughing over blue and green-grade gear, this guy had been sleeping next to a divine-grade weapon chest for more than a decade.
Losing to someone like that, Harry felt no psychological burden. The only regret was that he hadn't been born earlier. If he had been just a bit stronger, maybe he could have witnessed this era's true Sword Immortal at full power.
As for the earlier fight, Harry had gone all out without relying on external tools. But as for how much strength Li Jiannan had used—that was anyone's guess.
"I passed?"
As Harry exited the stage, he pondered over that cryptic remark. One match still remained—a showdown with Tupac, which would decide second and third place. But Harry no longer cared. People only remember the champion. Second and third meant nothing—at least, not to him.
The thirty-minute rest period passed in a flash. Once his condition had mostly recovered, Harry calmly returned to the arena. His injuries from the previous match were far from minor. Li Jiannan's final sword strike had sliced from his left shoulder to his hip, cleaving his entire body in half with a razor-sharp platinum blade. Just like his duel with Anna, Harry once again experienced being split apart. The crimson barrier was practically a life-saving artifact—it instantly erased all magical traces from his body, and within seconds, the medical team had pieced him back together. Still, the platinum sword's destructive power far exceeded that of "Godslayer's Edge," leaving Harry weak from the aftermath.
"Barely holding together."
After rechecking his condition, Harry nodded in respect to Tupac as they faced off in the arena.
The guy Professor Flitwick called a "vegetative menace" was indeed a handful. However, the small arena restricted his abilities. Sure, his spore tactics were more potent in confined spaces, but those methods were better suited for stealth and assassination. In an open, honorable setting like this, their threat level was significantly reduced.
Harry hadn't brought "Fire's Delight" into this match—the sword had shone brilliantly before but was better suited for handling tough opponents that even Ebony couldn't deal with. If Harry had wielded it against Lu Chuan, that thick turtle shell would've been shattered in just a few strikes. But "Fire's Delight," which excelled in single-target combat, wasn't ideal against someone like Tupac—who specialized in stealth, ambushes, large-scale attacks, and decoys.
Harry suspected Tupac's Animagus form wasn't an animal or insect, but a plant—a type Harry had never seen before. When Li Jiannan's sword rain pierced him, Tupac had emerged from a mass of wildly thrashing tendrils.
Harry acknowledged the guy was strong, even a total freak. But a formal arena duel wasn't his preferred battleground. What truly suited him was the upcoming free-for-all, the large-scale battleground where he could fight without restraint.
Still—
The instant the starting signal blared, a sharp, grating sound exploded in Harry's ears—like the wail of a ghostly infant, shrill and unbearable!
In dueling matches, the use of directly lethal means—such as the Avada Kedavra curse—is strictly prohibited. This ban also extends to magical plants like Mandrakes, whose cries can kill. The most bizarre and sinister thing about Castrobushe wizards, who rely entirely on magical plants for combat, is that you can never predict what kind of monstrous root—or surprise—they'll pull out of their trousers next!
Tupac had already realized that Harry's fighting style bore a slight resemblance to Li Jiannan's. That similarity lay in the terrifying destructive force both possessed—each capable of landing a single, soul-crushing blow. Although Harry couldn't tear through the magical barrier surrounding the dueling stage, the fact that he could shake it meant he could absolutely seize the right moment to drag Tupac down with him.
He couldn't afford another failure like the one he'd suffered against Li Jiannan. Thus, Tupac abandoned his usual strategy of hiding and charging up a powerful move. Although he was confident that one devastating World of Trees attack could flatten everything within the duel arena, the boy before him wasn't about to give him that kind of time.
The Mandrake he had personally crossbred, modified, and cultivated had lost its fatal cry, but retained—and even enhanced—its potent hypnotic and sleep-inducing effects. Within a radius of twenty meters, even well-defended wizards would be tortured to their knees by its terrifying sound-based magic. Within fifty meters, unprepared wizards would fall into a peaceful, twelve-hour slumber.
Most duelists would open with a balanced combination of offense and defense. But Tupac, who had watched all of Harry's matches, had noticed something—this boy never actively used defensive spells. Not even when facing the overwhelming Sword Rain; Harry always chose to counterattack rather than defend.
Offense is the best defense—but only if your attack can intercept the incoming strike!
Tupac's finger stiffened on the metaphorical trigger just as Harry stumbled slightly. The harsh, unnatural sound—like the wailing of a demonic infant—hadn't brought him down, but the intense dizziness and stabbing pain in his ears made his reactions lag for just a moment.
"Careless… I got distracted."
Harry tugged at the corner of his mouth and uttered a single syllable: "qo" (Lightning).
Sparks of electric-blue energy danced across his body. A burnt, acrid smell rose from his skin as countless spore-like parasitic particles were carbonized by the high-voltage shock. The gentle yet ferocious lightning surged over him, and he coughed up a cloud of foul-smelling black smoke. The moment the spores touched him, they had already begun to invade his body. Had he hesitated for even a second, they would've taken root, fed on his flesh and blood, and sprouted within him in mere moments.
Even Professor Flitwick found these plant-based foes a nightmare to deal with—and Harry's opponent today had chosen a particularly devious and insidious path, one that was both obscure and almost impossible to defend against.
While Harry didn't find this kind of tactic especially detestable, his anger was undiminished—especially because some of it was aimed at himself for being caught off guard.
"mul-qua-lass" (Strength – Armor – Life)
A pitch-black aura of nen armor enveloped Harry's entire body. Countless activated spores tried to take root on the surface, forming a squirming fungal mat nearly an inch thick. It writhed, attempting to drive tendrils into the nen armor and siphon magical energy for nourishment.
The mat secreted a highly acidic digestive fluid. As it dripped to the ground, an acrid, corrosive stench filled the air, and deep black pits pitted the arena's hard surface. But in the next instant, Harry's nen armor shifted from dark iron-grey to blinding white lightning. The fungal mat was instantly charred, splitting apart with cracks and scorched fissures.
Holstering Ebony and White Ivory, Harry gathered a ball of lightning between his palms. In a blink, the polarized nen energy coalesced—and he unleashed it with a sweeping motion.
Nen Beast – Thunderstorm Dragon!
The beast, modeled after the form of Thor the Thunderstorm Dragon, unfurled its massive yet elegant body across the sky. A torrent of lightning cascaded from its maw like a waterfall, the ionized air warping with waves of heat and light. The splashing elemental breath, like molten steel, gleamed with a white-hot brilliance even more terrifying than the searing heat of actual metal.
Tupac specialized in concealing himself and activating the spores and magical plants he had cultivated for surprise, large-scale attacks. But standing before him was, aside from Li Jiannan, the most dangerous area-of-effect attacker in the entire tournament. Only Lu Chuan, the human artillery fortress, could rival Harry when it came to sheer firepower and suppressive attacks.
As a pure-blooded "Spellcaster," Harry's role was to clear the map—and that was exactly what he did best.
"Liz" (Ice)
The blinding white light softened slightly in an instant, and the bone-chilling cold of ice formed a thin, misty layer across the dueling platform. The subzero temperatures froze the very life force of the arena, and the spore cloud, which had already been mostly cleared by the thunderous breath, was now completely frozen and inactive. For plants, both lightning and frost were brutally effective. Everyone knew that the Fire team's plant-based wizards had special offensive techniques, and their magical plants had been specially crossbred for targeted effectiveness.
But lightning and frost? Wizards who wielded these two elemental magics were rare, indeed. And as for Tupac's homeland, Castrobushe—it was a tropical rainforest where snow was a rare sight.
Even the howling, ugly Mandrakes, with their deadly cries, were now silenced. Under the combined effects of the thunderstorm and the freezing ice, the previously chaotic arena had returned to the stillness it was meant to have.
Yet, once again, Tupac's figure disappeared. At this moment, Harry was certain—this man's Animagus form wasn't an animal or an insect, but a magical plant he had never seen before.
Beneath the red carpet, a large pit had been dug, and in the dark recesses of the hole, thick, coin-sized roots—more durable than steel cables—were coiling.
Or rather, it was a plant named after beards—not the beards of Merlin, but a vicious, carnivorous vine capable of strangling giant fire dragons. It was the Titan's Beard, a rare magical plant native to the Amazon Rainforest.
Unfazed by flames, it was now frozen in ice. At such a low temperature, the plant's activity was severely suppressed. The once unyielding roots had turned brittle and fragile in the icy grip, a fact Tupac had never anticipated. He had no idea Harry could wield such intense freezing magic.
Just like when he had ambushed Harry, Tupac wasn't given a moment to recalibrate. Death's attack had already arrived.
Someone raised their right hand high, and the palm, seemingly poised to hold up the sky, began to gather a surge of magical power. A massive sphere rapidly began to take shape at their fingertip.
"Nen Polarization: Thunder – Spiral Nen Field!"
The massive sphere, once smooth and round, instantly transformed into a chaotic maelstrom of energy, a shattering machine. The now brittle roots of the Titan's Beard were shredded by the expanding nen field, and the once slow-moving, stiff tendrils shot forward, their frozen tips barely unaffected by the extreme cold. But as the spiral nen field enveloped them, all resistance was futile.
The thick vines, once as large as coins, tore through the spiraling energy sphere and reduced to tiny threads, no thicker than a pinky finger. By the time they reached Harry, these thin vines were frozen solid and fell to the ground in broken, irregular fragments.
A flicker of red light ignited at the center of the spiraling nen field. Tupac's protective magical shield, which had blocked the cold, was completely torn apart by the lightning-charged nen. The crimson shield, his last line of defense, stabilized his vital signs just moments before the freezing cold claimed him entirely, dispersing the bone-chilling frost.
The dueling competition was now over, and the rankings were finalized.
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"I passed? What does that even mean?"
After stepping down from the stage, Harry approached Li Jiannan and asked him.
"An elder asked me to test you."
Li Jiannan, holding his sword case, answered indifferently.
"Do I know them? I mean, that elder?" Harry asked, slightly confused.
"Sethilarys Scgji. The Sun Dragon gave you that stone, didn't they?"
(End of Chapter)