My System Just Exploded, And You Ask Me to Become a God?-Chapter 61 --One by One, You’ll All Fall

"See that over there?" Joad pointed smugly. "That’s the seven-layered magic array. Senior Leit is waiting right in the center, ready for your so-called challenge. But personally, I doubt you guys can even break through the outermost layer. Might as well turn around and go home while you still can."

He struck a pose, all arrogance and smugness, like a petty villain reveling in a temporary win. Unsurprisingly, his attitude only further enraged the young elites of the Luminous Pearl Kingdom.

"You little brat! It’s just a damn magic array. Seven layers? Ha! I’d break through seventy!" one of them shouted.

"Shh! You can mess around with food, but don’t mess around with your words," another whispered. "That might be Leit’s personal array. Who knows what it’s capable of?"

"So what if it is?" someone else scoffed. "A magic array is still a magic array. Every array has a solution. I don’t care how gifted Leit is—there’s no way he could handcraft an array with zero weaknesses!"

Murmurs spread through the crowd. Despite their bravado, none of them dared to make the first move.

Harvey, watching from the sidelines, was baffled. "What the hell is going on?" he muttered under his breath, throwing a questioning look toward Joad.

But Joad ignored his older brother completely. With hands on his hips and an exaggerated look of disappointment, he taunted the group again.

"All that bragging earlier—and now you’re frozen stiff? What, did your courage evaporate?"

He gasped dramatically, then covered his mouth with mock surprise. "Oh no! I get it now. You all must’ve wet your pants just looking at Senior Leit’s array!"

"Shut your damn mouth!"

The son of Count Greypine was already hot-tempered. Now that Joad was openly mocking them, he couldn’t take it anymore.

"Let me be the one to test this ’Senior Leit’ of yours. Just a mere seven-layered array? Don’t tell me it even comes close to Master John’s double-ten-layer Seraphic Grand Formation!"

As he spoke, he summoned a surge of mana, forming a tightly-woven protective barrier around himself. Without hesitation, he charged straight toward the outermost ring of the magic array.

Belzebuth and Clark, however, remained rooted where they stood. They didn’t act rashly—before understanding the nature of the array, they preferred having someone else take the risk first.

They had followed the crowd here in the heat of the moment, yes—but they weren’t complete fools.

Inside the heart of the seven-layered magic array, Leit had already noticed the commotion.

"Who are you people?" he called out. "You need to leave—now. This place is extremely dangerous!"

He didn’t understand why Joad had brought so many strangers here. But what he did know was that this array wasn’t entirely stable. Residual traces of violent mana still lingered within it, and any reckless intrusion would trigger a dangerous backlash.

And just as expected—when Count Greypine’s son stepped into the first, outermost red layer of the array, a blurred silhouette of a magical beast silently emerged behind him.

The mana distortion was subtle—too subtle for him to react in time.

CRACK!

In the blink of an eye, the dense mana barrier surrounding him shattered into dust.

His eyes widened in shock as fear finally took hold. In desperation, he fumbled to retrieve a magical artifact for protection.

But it was already too late.

In the split-second it took him to search, the phantom beast lunged again—faster and more vicious than before.

A chilling scream echoed across the mountaintop.

When everyone turned toward the source of the sound, they found Count Greypine’s son sprawled helplessly on the ground.

A deep, gory gash—so wide it revealed bone—ran across his chest.

"This is..." someone muttered.

The entire crowd gasped.

The look in their eyes shifted—confusion, disbelief, and creeping fear filled the air.

Everyone here was familiar with his strength. After all, Count Greypine often boasted endlessly about his beloved son’s mage rank.

Yet that very same high-tier mage had just been felled in seconds.

Clark frowned deeply. As an array mage himself, he understood more than the others.

An array mage’s strength was usually tied directly to their mana affinity level. The higher the level, the more complex and powerful the arrays they could craft.

From its coverage area, Leit’s seven-layered array only enveloped about half the mountaintop. That scale suggested a level 5 affinity at best—definitely not the rumored level 6 that everyone kept whispering about.

But the appearance of that phantom magical beast... That wasn’t something a typical array mage could do.

Clark recalled something he once read in an ancient tome: only array mages with at least level 7 mana affinity could embed mana guardians—semi-sentient defenders—within their formations.

Even then, most mages opted for stone golems or similar constructs—tough, durable, and easy to control. Their primary function was to buy time for the array mage to repair or strengthen their arrays.

It was considered the ideal defense.

But Leit’s approach was completely different.

Instead of durability or control, he had embedded a high-damage, highly stealthy, highly aggressive magical beast into the array.

Clark had never seen anything like it.

Yes, it was powerful—but it defied the conservative logic that array mages usually followed. High damage came at the cost of stability and defense. It was practically sacrilege in their field.

Clark wasn’t the only one deep in thought.

Even Belzebuth, standing beside him, had gone pale.

Though he lacked in-depth knowledge of arrays, the oppressive aura radiating from Leit’s formation was undeniable.

It made his skin prickle. Cold sweat beaded on the back of his neck.

He suddenly remembered something—this bone-deep sense of dread... He hadn’t felt anything like it in years.

"That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?" Joad called out mockingly.

Seeing Count Greypine’s son get flattened by just the first layer had only fueled his ego further.

"Everyone can talk big. But you might wanna check your actual skill level before you run your mouth."

"You’ve attended a few banquets and suddenly think you’re on par with legendary geniuses? Please."

He scoffed, then turned to the rest of the stunned youths.

"You all saw what happened to that idiot, right?"

"I’ll bet anything—every single one of you could charge this array together, and you still wouldn’t break through more than half the layers."

"Hell, I doubt you’d even get past the second one!"

"Keep flapping your lips and you’ll end up biting your own tongues!"

"Enough!"

Clark stepped forward, face like stone. Ignoring those trying to hold him back, he summoned his mana and manifested an array of his own.

The runes glowed as they clashed with Leit’s formation head-on.

"I’ll wipe that smug grin off your Ilan faces."

"Double-layered magic array—engage!"