81: Chapter 81 and the accidentally misspelled multiplier!

Chu Yin pressed her hands together, the light in her eyes brighter than the iridescent patterns on the cards: "A custom deck personally tailored by Su Bai! It's called Magical Girl · Explosion Ring! Master, look at the 3D effect of this ruby! Just touch the texture of this spirit rune paper! You can't buy this quality on the market anywhere—"

"Wait a moment." Sword Saint Lu Changsheng raised his left hand, fingers spread, making a pause gesture. "Just wait a moment."

He took a deep breath. His chest heaved violently twice. The gray stubble on his chin trembled slightly.

"You're saying—this was made by Su Bai?"

"Yes!"

"That second-year student? The one who made a cat? The one who made Li Qingyue's avatar wear a lolita outfit and cut my Mustard Seed Space in half?"

"That's him!"

"That Su Bai made you four cards?"

"Four cards!!"

"Four. All of them. Tier 1."

"Well, a deck needs multiple cards to form a closed loop—"

"You are a Tier 7 Sword Cultivator!!"

The armrest of his wheelchair groaned from metal fatigue under his slap. Sword Saint Lu Changsheng's voice erupted directly from his dantian, making the chandelier on the ceiling sway. "The top person in the youth group of the Jinghai Kendo Association! The personal disciple of the Sword Saint of Breaking Seas! Tier 7!! You bought four Tier 1 cards from a Tier 2 Card Creator?! Four cards!! Do you know how many free card slots a Tier 7 Sword Cultivator has in total?! You bound four at once!! Four!!"

Chu Yin shrank her neck, but she pressed the four cards tightly against her chest, her ten fingers gripping them firmly.

"But they're really pretty…"

"Pretty?! Look at what's written on them—'Forced Costume Change'! 'Play Cheerful BGM'! 'Full Trigger of Chuuni Lines'!"

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng pointed at the appraisal information hovering over the card, his fingertips trembling like a sieve. "You are a Tier 7 Sword Cultivator! The face of the Jinghai Kendo Association! Are you going to start every battle with a Magical Girl idol transformation animation?! Are you going to shout incantations while fighting?! And after you finish chanting and fire a shot, you'll collapse face-first on the ground?!"

"Master, how did you know I'd collapse face-first on the ground?"

"It's written on the appraisal information!! 'After magic power is depleted, the user will gracefully collapse to the ground'—gracefully, my foot! Isn't that just falling flat on your face like a dog eating dirt!!!"

Chu Yin muttered softly, "That's also quite cute."

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng clutched his chest with his left hand. He felt his heart twitching at a frequency a Tier 9 powerhouse shouldn't have.

"I, Sword Saint Lu Changsheng, have taught three disciples in my life. The first died in the Canglan Strait. The second is currently a commander on the front lines. The third is you." His voice dropped from a roar to a raspy whisper. "I thought the biggest regret of my life was losing the use of these legs. Now I realize I was wrong. My biggest regret is—my disciple's head has some issues! I allowed you to buy a magical girl card because I knew Her Excellency Qingyue would specially customize a Tier 7 card for you for Su Bai's sake, or at least you'd use it for collection… But you actually went and bound it!"

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng witnessed today what '2D shock' really meant.

What is all this?! Is Chu Yin really this clueless?

"Master, you're exaggerating…"

"I'm exaggerating? You're the one who doesn't understand. Sigh, you fool."

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng slapped the simulation of the Beast God Armament hovering beside him. The gold-red and silver-white armor expanded in the air to half a person's height, the beast-bone shoulder armor fierce and sharp. "Look at this, Tier 8 SS, orthodox armament, silver-white armor, after transforming, it's half a head taller than you! The shoulder armor can withstand Tier 9 dragon breath, the mask comes with sword intent locking—this is what a swordsman should be! Coolness is number one!"

Chu Yin glanced at the simulation of the Beast God Armament. The silver-white armor was indeed very cool. The beast-bone shoulder armor was indeed very domineering. The sword intent patterns on the mask were indeed very professional.

Then she looked down at the four pink cards in her arms, glowing with an iridescent halo.

"But Master, yours isn't cute."

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. His Adam's apple bobbed several times, but he couldn't squeeze out a single word.

"And you only have one card." Chu Yin became more and more confident as she spoke. "I have four. Four. A deck. Each one is a set. When transforming, all four cards glow together—"

"You, you, you—do you know what four cards mean! Four card slots!! Four!!"

"Four card slots for four iridescent-grade spirit rune paper custom Magical Girl deck cards, isn't that a great deal!"

"A great deal, my foot!!! Are you not going to equip sword technique cards in the future?! Are you not going to equip defense cards?!"

"Master, didn't you say that the best defense is offense?"

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng choked. That famous quote he had repeated in his Kendo lessons for twenty years now hit his own face like a boomerang.

The simulation of the Beast God Armament hovering nearby was still rotating slowly. The silver-white armor was cool. The beast-bone shoulder armor was domineering. The sword intent mask was professional. But Sword Saint Lu Changsheng suddenly felt that this card, in front of the four iridescent pink cards in his disciple's arms, had lost so badly it didn't even have its underwear left.

It wasn't because of combat power. It was because his disciple didn't care about combat power at all.

She only cared about whether it looked good.

The only fortunate thing was that because Tier 1 cards were such a low level, they could be removed and used at will. Otherwise, if it were a high-tier card, once refined, it would be difficult to detach. Cards were things that recognized their owners.

"...Do you know what my Beast God Armament looks like after transforming?" Sword Saint Lu Changsheng's voice suddenly became extremely confident. Thinking about how his transformation was cooler than his disciple's, he felt an aura of dominance radiating from behind him.

"What does it look like?"

"Silver-white armor, beast-bone shoulder armor, sword intent mask, two point one meters tall! It has the aesthetic of a cyber Sword Saint, can you understand that feeling? The path of the sword is like the eternal long night, but with me, Changsheng, there is heaven, hahaha!"

"So ugly." Chu Yin blurted out.

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng buried his face in his palms. His gray hair hung down from his shoulders, and he slumped in his wheelchair in a posture approaching nirvana.

"Go," his voice muffled in his palms, indistinct. "Go test your cards, go transform. Go use your Explosion Magic, go collapse face-first on the ground. I don't want to deal with you anymore."

"Then Master, are you still going to test your Beast God Armament?"

"Test what? Test nothing." Sword Saint Lu Changsheng revealed one gray-blue eye through his fingers, his gaze mixed with indignation, resignation, and a hint of extremely subtle jealousy. "My card is about becoming cool. Your card is about becoming cute. We are no longer on the same track."

Chu Yin blinked, then suddenly burst into laughter.

"Master, you admitted my cards are cute!!"

"I didn't say that!! Get out!!!"

Chu Yin swept out of the nursing room like a pink whirlwind, her irrepressible, joyful laughter echoing in the corridor. Sword Saint Lu Changsheng stared at the direction where the door closed, then looked at the simulation of the Beast God Armament still rotating, thinking it looked cool, and suddenly felt that the silver-white armor wasn't so pleasing to the eye anymore.

"...At least I don't have to shout any chuuni lines."

He muttered to himself, then gradually became confident again. "Li Qingyue didn't make a move, it's a good thing I didn't buy it. It really has to be a high-tier card! Watch me turn the tide!"

Thinking about how he could transform and show off, and return to the battlefield, he couldn't help but feel happy for a moment.

— — At the same time. Su Bai sat in the studio with the system panel hovering in front of him. Kyubey crouched on the table, its tail lazily sweeping twice.

[What are you calculating?]

"Checking a calculation." Su Bai's fingers swiped across the translucent light screen. "All four deck cards have been delivered. I haven't had time to re-verify the causality cross-feedback of the Final Movement module. During the design phase, I only calculated the single-card multiplier, and I just casually filled in 1.0 for the coupling coefficient column."

Calculating space curvature. Verifying lens folding frequency. Verifying magic power compression ratio. The first three items were fine, completely consistent with his initial design. Then he pulled up the measured value of the causality cross-feedback coupling coefficient.

[Causality cross-feedback coupling coefficient: 3.17] [Initial design estimated value: 1.0 (excluding cross-resonance)] [Actual multiplier after coupling correction: 100.0x]

Su Bai blinked. He looked at it again. It was still one hundred times.

"...Three?"

He calculated it again. 3.17. Calculated it one more time. Still 3.17.

It wasn't a linear superposition. The four deck cards shared the same soul gem core, and the causality circuit of each card would produce positive resonance with the other three.

The soul gem's high-conversion mode would amplify the projection density of the Infinite Sword, the deployment density of the Infinite Sword would increase the magic power compression efficiency of the staff, and the compression efficiency of the staff would amplify the burst base of the Final Movement—then the aftermath of the Final Movement's burst would in turn reactivate the soul gem, forming an additional round of secondary amplification.

During the design phase, he hadn't calculated this round at all. At the time, his mind was full of "let's just make the four cards first," and he had waved his pen and filled in 1.0 for the coupling coefficient column and skipped it.

Now that the cards were done, he sat down and honestly finished this math problem. The number he calculated was exactly ten times what he had originally estimated.

"...Damn."

What was even more absurd was that without knowing the correct parameters, he had left the coupling channels extra wide. The redundancy he had added by intuition back then, looking back now, was just enough to contain the 3.17 cross-feedback in every place. His hands were faster than his brain, and fast and accurate.

[In other words—]

"In other words, I failed math but have full marks for practical ability." Su Bai leaned back in his chair. "I miscalculated by an order of magnitude during the design phase. But the parameters I used when making it were correct."

In layman's terms, when Su Bai told Chu Yin about the Explosion Magic, he estimated that the power could be increased by ten times.

But in fact, he had filled in one wrong parameter… The true amplified power of the Explosion Magic was one hundred times!

Tier 7 Sword Cultivator Chu Yin, with a full magic pool, poured all her magic power into the Final Movement at once. Through the compression channel of the staff, the cross-resonance of the four-card closed loop, and the secondary amplification of the soul gem… it was finally blasted out from the bombardment port of the Final Explosion Magic.

Because it used Chu Yin's own magic power, the coordination of the four cards was unexpectedly powerful, except that the side effects were extreme…

He imagined the scene. A beam of light shot out from the tip of Chu Yin's staff, the diameter of the light beam likely covering half a street, the recoil likely pushing Chu Yin back ten meters and embedding her face-first deep into a wall.

The glass of nearby buildings would probably all shatter in the same instant, and the smell of burning would likely linger in the air for several days… He didn't know how strong a Tier 7 swordsman could be, but all in all, a one-hundred-fold amplification… should be pretty awesome, right?

"...Forget it."

Su Bai closed the data panel.

[Are you not planning to correct it?]

"Correct what? The coupling coefficient 3.17 is contained by the circuits I drew myself. I just miscalculated during the design phase, the cards themselves are fine, it's just a one-hundred-fold amplification."

[So.]

"So let it be." Su Bai stretched and stood up from his chair. "Anyway, more power is never a bad thing. One hundred times, at most, it changes the target from 'beaten to dust' to 'vaporized.' Not much difference."

[There is a big difference.]

"Big or not, so be it."

[Understood. Do you need to inform Chu Yin about this multiplier?]

Su Bai thought about it seriously. Chu Yin's smiling face, holding the cards with glowing eyes, appeared in his mind. Along with the image of her screaming as she pulled out the star cards. And the image of her kneeling on the ground crying her eyes out.

— — The key is that this person doesn't listen to his explanations at all, and Su Bai highly doubts whether she, a Tier 7 swordsman, would use this card. She's probably just going to keep it for collection, right?

"...Better not. Anyway, she'll find out after she uses it. If it's for collection, then there's no point in me telling her."

[At that time, a mountain might have already been blown up.]

"Then let it blow up."

Outside the window in the distance, the aurora canopy of the commercial district was slowly switching to the warm orange of the evening. Tomorrow was the launch day of the Beast God Armament, and also the day his Magical Girl shop would face competition head-on.

Su Bai found that he didn't really care about that competition. He was now looking forward more to seeing how big of a firework would go off when Chu Yin activated those four cards.

"By the way." He suddenly put down his cup. "If it's one hundred times, the recoil should also increase tenfold, right?"

[Yes. She might be blasted into the wall by herself.]

"...I'll bring a first-aid kit to the scene when that happens."

[A wise decision.]