Cardinal: God Spell

Sora sighed as he finally recovered from the pain after almost 10 minutes and lay on his back staring up at the night sky with a frown; the way he saw it there was good news and there was bad news. The good news was that the spell was not only effective but it created that softening effect that made the finishing blow all the more effective, be it momentum, added offensive force or overall effectiveness that move was a guaranteed finisher at his level regardless of which era's standard he used.

The bad news was that he had strained his Mana arteries and muscles too much when forcefully transitioning the energy from Fire to lightning magic when he tucked, and the way it happened he knew that regardless of where he stored that power in his body if he didn't find a way to mitigate that transition process, the strain that transition put on his body would destroy his mana arteries and possibly even his physical body depending on the scale. The long and short of it was without a solution, he would be lucky if in the long-term he only ended up crippling himself as a mage as he might outright cripple himself altogether, at that point dying would be the merciful option.

"FUCK!!!!!!!", Sora cursed at the top of his lungs in anger as he slammed the side of his fist into the ground, "I don't see a way to fix this before tomorrow... I will have to find a way to use up the remaining Lightning energy in my body when I've travelled the distance I need to so I can cast Fire magic afterwards" Sora was about to conclude before an Idea suddenly hit him, "Wait... The reason I designed my lightning mana path this way is because of the freedom it boasted... nothing is stopping me from adding another martial art in the mix based entirely on my lightning magic and the way my new spell is structured", Sora concluded with a grin before getting up and leaving the open field; the next part of his preparation sure as hell didn't need him to use any mana so staying out here in the cold was both inefficient and a waste overall.

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Marcus walked into the indoor training area so he could exercise physically before he went on to cultivate before the matches later today, he reckoned that being the earliest to warm up would give him an advantage on how sharp and prepared he was for the group fights today; at least that was what he thought before he saw Sora unconscious laying on his back with sweat dripping down his bare upper body. Sora lay on the ground with his arms and legs spread a little to the side, his mouth was open with drool running down the side of his face, his fairly grown-out hair was everywhere and being shirtless one could see the work he put into his physique now. He was beginning to form a set of 8 abs, his sides were well cut, and his biceps and triceps were perfectly pumped for his size only needing to be shaped up a bit more with his jawline being a lot sharper than it was a few months back. "What on earth has this little freak been up to that he ended up like this", Marcus asked himself with a chuckle.

Shaking his head Marcus left Sora to his means and went to stretch out before going over to the treadmill for a light jog to get himself focused. Somewhere along the line Sora opened his relaxed deep red eyes before sitting up with a light yawn, he got up and stretched himself out before turning to Marcus who was about to finish his morning jog. Sora walked over to the fountain and washed his face to get all of the drying drool off before drying his face with his assigned towel and going over to the Cardio section; Sora grabbed a set of 10 kg strap braces and placed one on both wrists and shins respectively; he then added 20 kg mini plates and strapped them in before wearing a 50 kg weighted belt.

Sora started with simply weighted squats before going to weighted lunges, weighted jumping lunges, weighted sit-ups, weighted ab crunches, all forms of weighted push-up variations, ann weighted sumo walks. Before ending his final section he moved to the bar and did everything from weighted chin-ups to weighted pull-ups, weighted muscles ups and weighted reversals. Sora was so focused that he didn't notice Marcus take breaks from his workouts occasionally to gawk at the sheer ridiculousness of the weight Sora was putting into his workouts. Sora removed the extra weights and placed the weight straps back before going towards the open mats; he started with basic kicks including high middle and low front kicks, side kicks, sweep kicks and side kicks. He then changed to drill kicks, reverse drills kicks, Jumping Axe kicks, flying kicks, question mark kicks and even Brazilian Kicks. Marcus was mildly impressed but didn't see the point of all of this, they were Magicians and didn't have any need for things like martial arts anymore, it already took a lot of time, effort, dedication and focus to navigate the current magic system, not only did magic take too much to of a person's life to focus on anything else, once you learnt magic martial arts became irrelevant because of how weak it was in comparison. That wasn't Marcus' business though, if a potential competitor wanted to commit career suicide who was he to stop them in their tracks? 

After almost 2 hours into Marcus' session, the other members of the 4th group walked in, equally surprised to see Sora 'wasting his time' practising martial arts. "Do we need a first year that wastes his time on this bullshit??", Leonardo asked with an annoyed look on his face, It was one thing for them to have to cooperate with a mediocre 1st year, but he refused to reduce himself to someone who wasted his time with unserious mages who actively wasted their own time, Leonardo was a late stage advanced mage with 9 stars fused to his advanced magic core, he awakened the "Herald of Frost" Ice element as a basic mage, the "Nefarious Blight" Shadow element at the intermediate level, and the "Herbal King" Poison element at the advanced level; he was the ultimate crowd-control mage and one that was respected for his perfect timings when it came to manipulating the enemy lines mage and magical beast alike.

 "Leave it", Lima ordered, "Considering what I've seen from him he doesn't seem like the type to do what is unnecessary... If in truth the first round starts and all of this turns out to be a waste I will personally punish him for dragging us down". Leonardo wasn't satisfied with leaving things like this but if Lima himself was still vouching for the kid he would need to take it with a grain of salt for now. "In any case, I will give you all the briefing for the 2nd round of the tournament while we are all here", Lima said, calling the rest of the 4th group over to him. "We have been informed that we will be facing the 2nd group first off, then the 3rd group, and lastly the 1st group; the worst performers of the top two groups will then be eliminated along with the other groups that didn't qualify and the remaining 8 will partake in a round robin elimination tournament till 5 remain".

The next round wasn't important yet, but Lima said they would approach the fight with each team differently. For their first match against Team 2, their opponents were; Chen Piso the first-year Elite, Xiao Yaya the second-year, Christopher Lance the third-year, Clarence Joules the 4th year, and the second strongest student of the academy, Zhu Linlin.

On paper, the team only had to win once to make the final cut, however, the fact of the matter was that they had to overcome the monster that was Zhu Linlin before they could even begin to dream of qualifying, and that is assuming the others could pull their weight in their respective fights, sure they would have a group fight that could go either way, but the other members of the team weren't push-overs by their right, hell the only 'weak' person on their Team was Chen Piso and his mirror match was a literal scholar of magic, even if he wasn't aware of that.

"Frankly, Linlin is a Monster- Even if for whatever reason we could ignore her main weapon being her Soul Element, she was still a Profound Level Healing, Poison, and Curse Mage whose favourite meal of the day was debuffs and Healing", Lima said quite frankly, "On top of that she had a ridiculously powerful Soul Beast in the form of a Half Dragon... if it wasn't a hybrid we would likely have been screwed royally, but this doesn't change the fact that this Half Dragon would be on the level of a Chieftain Class Creature in terms of raw strength alone, ignoring all of its abilities as a Half Thunder Dragon, one that she was capable of manifesting and even fusing with at this point in her career".

"We can use that", Sora muttered aloud unwittingly as he began pondering in the back of the ground, "If she is used to having ridiculously high defence and offence that no one would usually stand a chance against, she should have moments when her guard is down and she is vulnerable... Reinforced body or not, Soul elements can only manifest their Soul Beast's spirit form even at the Profound level if we can either make her burn her mana or catch her off guard it wouldn't be too far-fetched to knock her out in one big blow", Sora said with critical thought going into it.

The fact of the matter was simple, reinforced bodies or not, Mages would succumb to wounds from powerful blasts of magic if they didn't have the appropriate defences to counter a given attack and that was a fact. That was evident in the fact that Sora, an at-the-time Basic mage was able to harm Hie-Jin Oh, an at-the-time advanced mage to the point of drawing blood. The very fact that Lingling was a crowd-control mage meant that if she was hit with a solid enough attack, she too would be forced to retreat for a while and recuperate.

"That would have been a good idea if she wasn't also a healing mage- The fact is that Healing mages at the profound level can instantly heal any wound their Profound spell comes in contact with", Lima argued with an almost disappointed expression, "Even if they can only heal the wound; the mental drain, fatigue, mana drain, exhaustion, and even pain from the injury and healing processes remain after the instant healing at her level... She's not invincible", Sora said firmly as he looked Mu Lima in the eye with a serious look on his face. "... In this hypothetical strategy of yours, how exactly do you plan for us to overwhelm her and her team... also who do you suggest even delivers the final blow in this 'master plan' of yours", Leonardo cut with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

"The Idea is simple... Our Captain holds Linlin down for as long as he can and we all have a maximum of a minute to beat our mirror match and either help others who haven't won yet, or assist in the match against Linlin... In the hypothetical fight against Linlin, Jun Wie will act as our tank soaking up the brunt of the physical damage that Linlin's Dragon Soul Beast can dish out, Marcus would then have the job of assisting Jun Wie with his Psychic element to the very least disrupt her spell casting to buy the other time, at this point Leonardo, the captain, and I will be providing cover fire at a distance while the Captain prepares to finish Lingling off with his Profound Level Space and Fire elements.

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Team 2's Training Area

Chen Piso stood with his head lowered before his Captain and the second-strongest student of the Interstellar Magic Academy, Zhu Linlin- The Direct older sister to Zhu Longwei, and the strongest member of the Zhu Family below the age of 30. She sat on the bench, drenched in sweat as she had just finished a workout of her waiting to see what this punk from the year below wanted. "Out with it" " she ordered without sparing Piso as much as a glance, "I know what I must do to help this team win and give my contribution, I just wanted to be certain I had your clearance to go through with it", Piso started as he began briefing his Captain on the strategy he would apply in the next day's match against Team 4, and why he felt he needed to play such a role.