80: Chapter 80 What is this thing?!

The third card — Red Magic Staff.

Su Bai pulled out the third sheet of iridescent spirit-pattern paper.

If the design philosophy of the first two cards was still within the realm of what a "normal Card Creator could understand," then the third card was a complete abandonment of all restraint.

The circuitry of this card contained no attack modules. It was a pure mana nozzle.

Once activated, the staff would materialize in Chu Yin's hands — a deep red staff, half a head taller than her, with a fist-sized ruby embedded at the top.

The circuit structure of the staff itself was extremely crude, so crude that any Card Creator would frown upon seeing it.

Because Su Bai had cut out all redundant nodes, leaving only a single acceleration channel running directly from the soul gem to the top of the staff.

Within this channel, mana would not be converted, regulated, or diverted. It would only be compressed and then blasted out from the tip of the ruby.

Single-point output. Controllable direction. Nothing else.

The cost was that once this card was activated, all other cards on the user would be forced into hibernation. She wouldn't even be able to activate basic defensive skills.

[Are you sure Chu Yin will accept this restriction?]

"She will accept it," Su Bai said without looking up. "She's even capable of crying on the street and saying she wants to wear a dress."

[Logic holds.]

The third card was finished. It took five hours.

— The fourth card — Explosion Magic of the End.

By the time Su Bai laid out the final sheet of iridescent spirit-pattern paper, it was already late into the second night outside the window.

This was the terminal card for the entire deck. Everything the first three cards did — the soul gem switching forms, the Infinite Sword field setup, and the staff compressing mana — was all to pave the way for this moment.

All the mana from the Tier 7 mana pool, having been accelerated through the staff's one-way compression channel, completed its final amplification within the Causality Contract array of the Explosion Magic of the End, and was then fired off in a single blast.

He drew a circle in the very center of the paper. It wasn't a circle in the geometric sense, but a "closed loop" in the sense of the Causality Contract — starting at the mana pool and ending at the firing port, with the curvature of every circuit segment in between precisely calculated to ensure that the mana would only accelerate and never decelerate throughout the entire channel.

The most critical part was that Causality Contract amplification array. Su Bai embedded a set of Space Folding lenses between the staff's exit and the finale's entrance.

The core logic of the lenses was to repeatedly fold the mana in an extremely short amount of time, allowing the same stream of mana to pass through the same amplification node multiple times in the same instant. Theoretically, this could increase the output multiplier by tenfold.

He finished the last stroke and shook his sore wrist.

The four cards were lined up in a row. The dark pink card faces shimmered with an iridescent glow under the lights.

"It's done."

[Su Bai, you have been crafting cards for thirty-one consecutive hours. Rest is recommended.]

"Call Chu Yin over first."

— When Chu Yin received the message, she was swinging her sword in the Kendo Association's training room.

She glanced at her phone screen, and her sword flew straight out of her hand, nailing itself into the target wall opposite, the hilt still vibrating with a hum.

The junior disciples beside her watched in stunned silence as their usually serious and rigid senior sister rushed toward the door at a speed completely inconsistent with the image of a Tier 7 Sword Cultivator.

"Senior sister, where are you going —" "Stomachache!"

Before the words even finished, she had already disappeared at the end of the corridor.

When Chu Yin burst into Su Bai's studio, her hair was blown about as if she had just finished a hard battle. Her uniform collar was crooked, her ponytail was half-loose, but her eyes were brighter and more piercing than the mana lamps on the card-crafting table.

"Where, where is it — my card!"

Su Bai pointed to the four neatly arranged cards on the table.

Chu Yin's footsteps suddenly stopped. It was as if someone had pressed the pause button. She walked to the table step by step, holding her breath, and reached out with both hands as if cradling a holy relic.

"So beautiful..."

It was truly beautiful. This time, Su Bai had used entirely iridescent spirit-pattern paper, and the card faces came with an inherent layer of flowing, seven-colored halos.

The soul gem card was translucent pale pink, with a 3D projection of a miniature gem floating on the card face.

The Infinite Phantom Sword had a silver-white background with countless glowing sword shadows. The Red Magic Staff had a deep red background with a 3D ruby that sparkled when light hit it. The Explosion Magic of the End was a pure pink halo, with a closed Causality Contract ring slowly rotating in the very center.

Chu Yin examined the four cards over and over, the curve of her mouth becoming increasingly dangerous.

"Ahem." Su Bai cleared his throat. "Listen to me regarding the practical application —" "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm." "After the staff is activated, it will seal all your other skills —" "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm." "After the Explosion Magic is fired, your mana will be drained, and you will lie face down on the ground, unable to move for at least ten minutes —" "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, so awesome!!"

Damn it!

Su Bai shut his mouth; this person wasn't listening at all.

She was holding the Red Magic Staff up to the light, poking at the 3D ruby with her finger, her eyes reflecting the deep red glitter. Kyubey, crouching nearby, tilted its head.

[Her heart rate is even higher than yours was when you were crafting the cards.]

"I can tell."

"This fairy wand can be materialized, right!" Chu Yin suddenly shoved the staff card in front of Su Bai, the light in her eyes no longer describable as just "excitement"; it was something more fundamental, a fanaticism carved deep into her genes. "A real object, right! Taller than a person when held in hand, right! It automatically changes clothes when transforming, right! And this pink light — look at this pink light! This iridescent pattern is just too beautiful, what kind of paper did you use —"

"Did you hear a word of what I just said —"

"Four cards!! A full four cards!! Every single one is so good-looking!!" Chu Yin hugged the cards to her chest and spun around in place several times, her ponytail whipping out a happy arc. "And every one of them is a matching set! They're all Magical Girl themed! Do you know how hard it is to put together a set of cards with the same style on the market? Most decks have different art styles for every card, and they look hideous when put together! These four of yours are clearly from the same series —"

Su Bai gave up on the idea of explaining the practical side effects.

— Meanwhile. North Jinghai City. The top floor recuperation room of the Kendo Association.

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng sat in a wheelchair, a holographic screen floating in front of him.

On the screen was a gold and red card — Tier 8 SS-rank, Heavenly Sword Absolute Blade · Beast God Armament.

A simulation of silver-white battle armor rotated slowly on the screen, the beast-bone shoulder guards fierce and sharp, every line screaming "masculinity" and "orthodoxy."

He had spent an entire morning calibrating all the circuits of this card. The seven-axis space frame had been changed to five-axis, the rotating structure changed to translation, and the wish module had been cut from the Causality Contract — he didn't really understand these technical castrations. But he understood one thing.

This card didn't require gender-bending. It didn't require wearing a pink lace dress. It didn't require turning him, a grown man, into a combat loli on the battlefield.

And that silver-white armor after transformation was truly cool. So cool that he stared at the simulation for a long time. So cool that he almost forgot that the underlying framework of this card had been copied from a sophomore student.

"This is what you call an armament," Sword Saint Lu Changsheng muttered to himself, a long-lost curve appearing on the corner of his mouth. "This is what a Sword Saint should look like."

He was just about to activate the card to perform a full transformation test when the door to the recuperation room was pushed open.

"Master!!" Chu Yin rushed in.

Her ponytail had completely come undone, a few loose strands of hair sticking to her forehead, a thin layer of sweat on her face, but her overall state of mind was unbelievably good. She was clutching something tightly to her chest.

"Master, look!!" She lined up the four cards in a row in front of Sword Saint Lu Changsheng's wheelchair.

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng lowered his head, scanning them one by one from left to right.

The first one. Tier 1. Pink. A 3D projection of a miniature gem floated in the center of the card face.

The second one. Tier 1. Silver-white. Countless glowing sword shadows flowed slowly across the card face.

The third one. Tier 1. Deep red. A fist-sized 3D ruby.

The fourth one. Tier 1. Pink. A closed Causality Contract ring rotated in the center.

Appraisal skill automatically popped up the card information —

[Forced Costume Change · Magical Girl Transformation] [Exclusive upbeat BGM will play during transformation] [Explosion Magic Chant · Full over-the-top lines triggered]

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng read these lines over and over three times.

"...Huh?"