Chapter 661: The Domain of Wizard Kings
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The first kill came much earlier than Tom had expected.
After all, this was everyone’s first time experiencing the game, and they had only just finished learning the rules. Logically speaking, everyone should’ve been cautious at the start, feeling things out and figuring out the mechanics before thinking about killing opponents.
And yet, the first wave of minions had barely disappeared before a kill already happened.
The fight had broken out in the bottom lane, where Fleur and Kamio were facing each other.
Thinking about it, the two of them actually had somewhat overlapping archetypes. Kamio was a Japanese fox yokai, while veela occupied a fairly similar place in Western legends.
Still, neither of them had any "natural enemies" mentality going on.
Fleur already had enough headaches dealing with Daphne targeting her constantly and had no interest in making another rival. As for Kamio... she always stayed hidden in the background, and on top of that, her emotional intelligence was terrifyingly high. Pretty much everyone liked her.
Today’s matchup was completely random, without any deliberate arrangement.
Even so, it immediately excited the audience.
Human nature was universal. Who didn’t enjoy watching women fight? And who didn’t enjoy watching beautiful women fight?
The moment the two faced off, they instantly attracted most of the crowd’s attention. The remaining spectators focused on mid lane, where two more pretty girls were battling it out: Daphne versus Ariana.
By the fourth round of the tournament, the students from every school had already formed their own opinions regarding the champions’ strength rankings.
Without question, the universally acknowledged strongest contestant was Ariana.
An Obscurus host, Grindelwald’s disciple, and Dumbledore’s younger sister. Her list of buffs was stacked to absurd levels, to the point that people felt hopeless comparing themselves to her. Even students from other schools subconsciously believed this year’s champion was almost certainly going to be Ariana.
Next came Kamio.
Kamio had placed first in two rounds and top three in another, giving her the best overall performance so far. More importantly, every single one of her victories had felt bizarre and impossible to predict.
And in the wizarding world, mystery itself represented power.
Only after that came Daphne.
Although Daphne’s current ranking sat around the middle, everyone knew from the dragon battle that she was the kind of person who truly had a "Powerful Patronus" backing her. The only reason her rankings weren’t higher was because she treated the competition too much like a game and never took it seriously enough.
As for the other four contestants, there wasn’t much difference between them. They all fell within the understandable range of excellent students.
So when Fleur faced Kamio, most people assumed Kamio would win, or at the very least gain the upper hand.
But instead... She got instantly destroyed in just a few exchanges?
Yeah... Even Tom was confused.
He’d been busy misleading the politicians earlier and hadn’t paid attention to what happened. After watching the replay on the light-screen mirror, however, realization slowly dawned on him, and his expression became increasingly strange.
He seemed to have accidentally screwed Kamio over.
The rule sealing everyone’s wand power affected all contestants to some degree, but no one suffered from it as badly as she did.
Because everyone else had gradually learned magic from the basics upward. Even if they specialized later on, they still knew a handful of simple beginner spells that required little magical power or advanced casting skill. Those were more than enough to survive the early game.
Kamio was completely different. She came from a top-tier magical race, and her mother was even the yokai leader. By the time she was old enough to learn magic, she’d already skipped straight to racial secret arts and ancient spells.
After awakening in the modern era, she’d never bothered studying basic magic either.
So now that her wand output had been sealed, Kamio’s mind was practically blank. She couldn’t even cast low-level spells like Stunning Spell or Impediment Jinx.
Fleur didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but she clearly noticed something strange about her opponent.
Naturally, she didn’t waste the opportunity.
A few quick spells triggered the alert mechanism, and a purple beam of light descended from the sky, sucking Kamio upward.
At the same time, the number on Fleur’s bracelet jumped.
The four hundred gold reward for First Blood was instantly credited to her account.
Still, Fleur didn’t choose to return to base. Instead, she pushed the minion wave under the tower while staring greedily at the panda tower statue as it happily destroyed her team’s goblin minions.
Half a minute later, Kamio teleported back to lane.
This time, she behaved much more honestly, standing safely beneath her tower and awkwardly using the Bird-Conjuring Charm to last-hit minions.
Normally, beginner-level spells had an effective range of around ten meters.
But inside the canyon, spells dissipated into nothingness after traveling less than five meters.
Ordinary spectators couldn’t notice details like that.
Dumbledore and Grindelwald, however, both revealed expressions of shock.
In another private box, Newt suddenly showed a look of realization as well.
"Tom... isn’t this a little too outrageous?" Dumbledore tilted his head slightly and quietly asked the boy beside him.
The space created by the Undetectable Extension Charm distorted outsiders’ perception, making the canyon appear larger and more majestic than it really was. It also affected spell travel distance.
But the champions inside the canyon, along with the buildings and monsters, remained completely unaffected.
They couldn’t perceive the spatial distortion at all.
To anyone capable of understanding the underlying mechanics, this level of control was practically miraculous.
"Not outrageous at all. Not even a little."
Tom flashed a flawless smile and replied casually, "It’s fun to watch now, and it was fun designing and researching it back then too. Spending extra effort studying magic is never a bad thing."
After a brief pause, he added, "Besides, defining the effective range was an important detail."
Dumbledore gave the boy a long, deep look.
Even his entertainment carried ambition behind it.
Meanwhile, Grindelwald sitting on Tom’s other side was even more shaken.
The Dark Lord lowered his head, hiding the flickering light in his eyes.
Compared to Dumbledore, Grindelwald possessed knowledge of many higher-level fields from Morgan and Tom’s system. His experience and perspective were far broader.
On the surface, the wizarding world didn’t seem to possess any concrete ranking system for strength. In reality, however, every tier was separated by an enormous gulf.
The reason there were no formal rankings for weaker wizards was simple... They were too weak to bother categorizing.
A Century King could infuse magic with willpower, altering the very nature of spells and massively increasing their power. They stood worlds apart from ordinary wizards.
Legendary-level beings could use their will to influence the world itself and borrow its magic.
As for Wizard Kings... their will alone could directly influence the world itself, rewriting the laws of magic within a localized area.
Gods of Magic... At present, there weren’t any beings of that level teaching within the study space yet. The gap was simply too vast. Even if someone explained it to him, he wouldn’t understand.
And this canyon... Rather than some amusement park Tom built for entertainment, wasn’t it actually an experimental field for exploring the domain of the Wizard Kings?
The countless strict restrictions. The physical laws that completely defied common sense.
No... Just how far had Tom already advanced?
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