Chapter 129: Winning Academy
Lucian appeared beside Mickey.
Mickey turned. His eyes met Lucian’s. A wordless understanding passed between them.
Mickey reached out and touched Lucian’s shoulder.
Both of them raised one hand toward the sky.
The air above them shifted. Lucian’s mana — crimson-tinged, amplified by Blood Eclipse Art, boosted by Nadia’s enhancement — poured upward from his body like a geyser. And alongside it, an identical stream of crimson energy erupted from Mickey’s raised palm.
The crowd gasped. Then screamed.
Mickey Adeyemi was using blood manipulation.
"Blood?!" one broadcaster shouted. "Mickey Adeyemi is using blood manipulation! That’s a fourth ability!"
"That’s impossible!" another voice cut in. "Triple awakeners are already statistically nearly nonexistent! A quadruple awakener —"
Lucian thought, Most people thought Mickey had many abilities. They had no idea.
Mickey’s real ability wasn’t four separate powers. It was one. A single, terrifyingly broken ability that made a mockery of everything the world understood about awakenings.
SSS-Rank Perfect Copy.
It allowed Mickey to copy any ability he made physical contact with — perfectly, completely, with full functionality. He could store up to three copied abilities simultaneously. He’d copied Fire Manipulation from Carlos during training weeks ago. Kinetic Absorption from Ethan after a sparring match. Lightning from Julian during a class exercise.
Three slots. Three abilities. That was the limit.
But the moment he touched Lucian’s shoulder, Blood Manipulation entered his system — and something else was pushed out. Fire. Gone. He’d need to touch Carlos again to get it back. And the copy ability itself had a cooldown between uses — he couldn’t just run around touching people and stealing their powers indiscriminately.
The most broken ability in this tournament.
Their combined mana spiraled upward, merging in the air above the Chinese crystal. Crimson energy condensed — thickening, hardening, shaping. The air temperature dropped. The ground beneath their feet cracked from the sheer mana pressure being exerted upward.
A shape formed.
A lance.
Three meters long. Half a meter in diameter at its widest point. Made entirely of compressed, crystallized blood mana that pulsed with a deep red glow. Runes of light crawled along its surface — Lucian’s light control bleeding into the structure, reinforcing it, making it denser, sharper, more destructive.
It hung in the air above the Chinese crystal like a falling star waiting to drop.
Liang Feng saw it as her eyes went wide.
"No—"
She slammed both hands into the earth. Walls erupted into massive barriers of compressed stone and metal rising between the lance and the crystal. Each one was a meter thick, reinforced with earth mana, layered with residual intent from his Earth Dominion ability.
Liu Jiang screamed, pouring everything he had left into a final barrier — golden light spreading in a dome directly over the crystal, his finest work, A-Rank barrier creation pushed to its absolute limit.
Nine layers of defense. Earth walls. Golden barriers. Stone reinforced with metal. Everything two Mid Core Realm defenders could produce in their final, desperate moment.
Lucian and Mickey brought their hands down.
The lance fell.
It hit the first earth wall and punched through it like paper — the crystallized blood mana was denser than steel, sharper than a monomolecular edge, and carried the combined kinetic weight of two Mid Core Realm cultivators’ full output amplified by spell power boosts and enhancement.
Second wall. Through.
Third. Through.
Fourth. The lance accelerated — gravity feeding into its momentum, the Blood Eclipse Art’s circulation pattern adding rotational force.
Fifth wall. Shattered.
Liu Jiang’s golden dome appeared — the last real defense. The lance struck it and the dome held for one heartbeat. Two. The golden light blazed, cracked, splintered—
Sixth wall. Gone.
Seventh. Gone.
Eighth. The lance was deforming now — shedding mass from the impacts, growing smaller but also denser, the remaining energy compressing into an ever-narrower point.
Ninth wall. The lance punched through and what remained was no longer a lance. It was a spearpoint — a fist-sized cone of blood-crystal so dense it was almost black, carrying every remaining joule of kinetic energy from a thirty-meter freefall amplified by two cultivators’ mana.
It hit the Chinese Vanguard Academy crystal.
CHIME.
A sound like a bell being struck in a cathedral. The crystal didn’t crack. It didn’t chip. It fractured — a single line running from the impact point to the base, then branching, then spreading, then—
The crystal exploded outward in a shower of light and fragments.
Silence.
One second of absolute, deafening silence.
Then—
"CHINESE VANGUARD ACADEMY CRYSTAL — DESTROYED."
"EUROPEAN ALL-STAR ACADEMY — WINS."
The stadium detonated.
One hundred thousand people on their feet. Screaming. Crying. Throwing things. Hugging strangers. The barrier dome rattled from the sheer acoustic pressure of the crowd’s roar. Cameras shook. Broadcasters lost their voices. In every academy on every continent, students watching the feed erupted in their own halls and courtyards and dormitories.
Lucian’s legs gave out.
He dropped on both knees, then his hands. The Moon Shattering Blade clattered beside him. His vision swam. Blood Eclipse Art shut down automatically as his BE hit critical levels — 13% and falling. His mana sat at 1,000 MPU.
Finally.
The word left his mouth as a barely audible whisper.
The referee — the gold-eyed Grand Core Realm official — floated down to the center of the arena. He raised his hands for silence. It took nearly two minutes for the crowd to quiet enough for him to speak.
" Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests, representatives of the forty-eight academies of the International Awakened Research Council." His voice carried through the dome’s amplification system, steady and formal. "The International Champions League — one of the largest inter-academy competition in the three-hundred-year history of the post-Cataclysm era — has concluded its sixty-seventh annual tournament."
He paused.
"In a stunning upset that will be analyzed and debated for years to come, the European All-Star Academy of the United Kingdom has defeated the Chinese Vanguard Institute — the reigning three-time champion — in the grand finals."
Another roar. He raised his hand again.
The referee continued — listing individual commendations, thanking sponsors, announcing the date and location for next year’s tournament. Lucian heard none of it. He was face-down in the grass, counting his heartbeats, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
A shadow fell over him.
Lucian tilted his head. Wei Chen stood above him — chest bandaged, arm in a sling, but upright and smiling. He looked like what he was: a twenty-three-year-old man who’d just lost the biggest fight of his life and was handling it with more grace than most people could manage.
Wei Chen extended his uninjured hand.
"Good fight," he said simply.
Lucian took the hand. Wei Chen pulled him to his feet.
"You’re young," Wei Chen said. "Your fundamentals are messy, your Sword Intent is barely born, and you fight like a brawler pretending to be a swordsman."
Lucian raised an eyebrow.
"But," Wei Chen continued, "your foundation is obscene. You should train your footwork more and refine more sword arts too. Give it two years — maybe three — and I won’t be able to touch you."
He released Lucian’s hand and turned to walk toward the Chinese team’s exit. After three steps, he looked back over his shoulder.
"Next time we meet, I expect another proper duel."
Lucian’s mouth twitched.
"Whenever you’re ready."
Wei Chen nodded and walked away.
The referee’s voice droned on in the background. The crowd had settled into a sustained hum of excitement and conversation. Medical staff were streaming onto the field to tend to injured fighters. The Chinese team gathered around their destroyed crystal, Liang Feng on his knees, Liu Jiang being supported by Shen Yu, Bao Lei still furious and straining against the remnants of Lucian’s chains that hadn’t yet dissolved.
The next match was announced — the third-place bout between the United States’ American Apex Academy and France’s Elysian Lumière Academy. Semi-final losers.
Lucian didn’t stay to watch.
A hand touched his shoulder. Warm and gentle.
Clara.
She’d come down from the stands at some point — her silver hair catching the stadium lights, her slit-pupil eyes scanning his injuries with an expression that flickered between concern and something harder. Anger, maybe.
"You idiot," she said quietly.
"I won," Lucian replied.
"You can barely stand."
"I still won."
Clara stared at him. Then she pulled his arm over her shoulder, wrapped her other arm around his waist, and started walking him toward the stadium exit.
"Come on. Let’s go. You need to rest."
Lucian let himself be guided.