Electrify

Four damage at instant speed kills nearly everything that walks, which is exactly why it costs four mana. This is the deliberately overpriced ceiling of red's creature removal: the rate red pays when it wants the reliability of killing a large threat without the conditions its cheaper burn carries. Red's efficient answers all buy their discount with friction (spectacle demanding a prior spell, a mandatory damage trade, a death trigger the target has to supply); this one asks nothing but that you point it at a creature and pay full retail. The design logic is that red removal scales its mana cost against the size of the body it can guarantee to kill: one mana buys three damage with strings attached, four mana buys four damage clean. The instant timing is the part doing real work, letting it ambush an attacker mid-combat or answer a threat the moment it loses summoning sickness, but the price means it never competes with red's premium spells on raw efficiency. It is a workhorse common in the truest sense: the removal you run when you need a guaranteed answer and nothing sharper is on offer.