Chapter 39
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The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
Crackle!
A burst of lightning exploded in front of Yuren.
A blue veil shone before him.
Magic Shield, a fourth-tier spell.
His reflexive response left him unharmed, but he was busy calming his startled heart.
‘Was that… an Elemental Bolt?’
Elemental Bolt, a third-tier spell.
It was a basic spell more powerful than Mana Shot, with effects that varied according to the attribute imbued in it.
‘The imbued attribute was lightning, so it must be Lightning Bolt.’
Lightning was an attribute specialized in speed, allowing it to catch enemies off guard.
The speed imbued into Elemental Bolt was also its defining trait, making it on average three times faster than other attributes.
‘It was like an arrow shot by a divine archer.’
If he had not reacted swiftly, it was certain that some part of him would have been blown away.
‘That’s a third-circle mage?’
Ferda was a mage who had reached the third circle, but that did not mean Yuren had underestimated him.
He possessed a Red Circle, and Red Circle holders always wielded great strength in their compatible attribute.
The fact that he had defeated Thessalos Walter at the first circle was already famous.
That was why, among mages of the same level, he was still regarded as being at the very top.
‘I thought he might even be comparable to a fourth-circle mage.’
But even that had been an underestimate.
He was wielding magic of a power far beyond Yuren’s imagination.
‘What trick did he use?’
Yuren’s eyes swept over Ferda.
Perhaps Ferda was secretly receiving help from something.
There was no way.
Before entering this Sealed Vault, they would never have allowed him to possess a weapon.
‘He achieved that casting speed purely with his own mind, without even a wand or staff to assist his calculations?’
The only way to increase casting speed was through repetition and mastery.
And repetition and mastery did not mean simply practicing like a student filling pages with the same characters.
It was only possible after tracing mana pathways had become as natural as breathing—so natural that one could cast a spell in one’s sleep.
Such a thing was impossible for Yuren.
Ferda’s genius was awe-inspiring.
“You seem curious what spell that was.”
Ferda provoked Yuren in a leisurely voice.
“For your information, it was Elemental Bolt.”
“You insolent little brat.”
Yuren’s face flushed bright red.
No matter how high his status, as a mage he was merely a greenhorn who had reached the third circle.
A magic circle formed in Yuren’s hand.
“Go on, keep acting cocky!”
In a duel to the death, titles and rank no longer mattered.
The completed magic circle did not vanish from Yuren’s hand but floated in the air.
‘A sustained-channeling magic circle.’
When magic was used, the mana in a magic circle transformed into the form of a spell—an ordinary consumptive magic circle.
A sustained-channeling magic circle instead remained drawn while mana was injected into it, allowing it to fire spells without consuming the circle’s mana.
It was a technique any fifth-circle mage could naturally use.
‘The magic circle is the same Elemental Bolt as mine.’
He inferred this from its form and the inscriptions carved into it, and, just as he thought, pure-white icicles began forming from the magic circle.
It was Ice Bolt.
“Try dodging this, too!”
Moreover, it was not a single shot but a volley.
Ferda threw himself behind a display stand to evade the attack.
Ice struck the white stone display stand and shattered.
It had frozen so solidly that under the bombardment, the display stand seemed ready to break apart.
‘As expected, sustained-channeling spells are troublesome.’
It would be a lie to say he was not at a disadvantage.
At the instant he left an opening in his concentration, he heard a sinister voice crawling toward Ferda.
-Do you need my power?
It was the demons’ temptation.
They were beings who made contracts when people were driven into a corner, demanding an absurd price in return.
‘They’ve caught a glimpse of my talent.’
Demons did not tempt people carelessly merely because they had eyes.
Of course, Ferda was not shaken in the slightest by the voice.
For now, he would focus on the battle.
‘Mana wasn’t infinite.’
Neither Yuren nor Ferda had infinite mana.
The bombardment of Ice Bolts stopped before the stone display stand broke apart. Ferda rose sharply and looked up at the magic circle.
The way to eliminate a sustained-channeling magic circle was—
‘Disrupting the opponent’s concentration.’
Just as Yuren was about to launch another bombardment, Ferda extended the magic circle he had prepared toward him.
“Lightning Bolt.”
A lightning projectile that flew in a straight line.
Its speed was exceptional, but its path was straightforward in proportion to that speed.
A blue veil formed before Yuren, who had read the magic circle’s direction.
Crackle!
Ferda’s Lightning Bolt vanished upon striking Magic Shield.
It was a fast spell, but its destructive power was low.
‘If only I could combine two attributes, I could break through.’
Combining darkness, the attribute with the greatest destructive power, and lightning, the strongest in speed.
It was still impossible for him, who had only reached the third circle.
‘Then…’
Ferda turned his gaze toward the magic circle.
Although his opponent had stopped injecting mana, three Ice Bolts were flying toward Ferda.
‘Magic Intercept.’
Using a technique that intercepted his opponent’s spell, he tried to intercept the three icicles with threads made of mana.
Ferda had once been an eighth-circle archmage, but he was now a third-circle mage.
It was impossible to make all three of the rapidly approaching projectiles his own.
By giving up one, he could take two.
‘Give up the one farthest from a vital point.’
A rational, swift decision.
The Ice Bolt he abandoned tore deeply into Ferda’s thigh.
His skin split, blood flowed out, and pain climbed through his veins.
But it did not matter.
The two icicles Yuren had created now bared their fangs at their master.
“I’ll return them to you.”
A magic circle formed in Ferda’s hand.
The same Lightning Bolt.
However, that Lightning Bolt was launched from behind the Ice Bolts.
“Lightning Bolt.”
Whoosh!
The Ice Bolts shot forward with lightning speed.
They pierced the blue veil Yuren had created.
Crack!
The Ice Bolts disappeared, and the blue veil shattered.
Yuren’s eyes widened.
‘My barrier was broken?’
The Ice Bolts’ sturdiness combined with the Lightning Bolt’s speed, and the barrier could not withstand the impact.
His confusion lasted only a moment before Yuren sensed death.
He still had one Ice Bolt left.
“Lightning Bolt.”
This time, the icicle flew toward the space between Yuren’s brows.
“Aaaagh!”
Yuren stopped concentrating and threw himself aside.
The sustained-channeling magic circle scattered and vanished.
Yuren rose, feeling adrenaline spin through his head.
“Phew… You caught me off guard. Are you really a third-circle mage?”
Ferda answered.
“Are you such a pathetic mage that you need to hear it directly from me?”
“Your every action has made me think that. Even that old fart, the Imperial Archmage, couldn’t respond like you if he were reduced to the third circle.”
“That old fart is still one of the wisest people in this imperial palace.”
“You speak as though you know him. Even though you’ve never met him.”
Never met him?
That old man was the one Ferda had faced off against until the Emperor bowed his head.
As Ferda was thinking this, Yuren took something out from inside his robes.
A magical tool consisting of a round crystal set atop a wooden rod.
It was a wand.
When mana flowed through it, the magic circle engraved inside reacted and launched a spell.
The fact that he had taken it out was highly significant.
“Are you admitting defeat in terms of skill?”
“Laugh all you want. I only need to eliminate you!”
He injected mana, and a magic circle appeared.
Ferda quickly read the shape of that magic circle.
‘From a rough look, it seems to contain a fourth-tier spell.’
As he expected, the magic circle contained a fourth-tier spell.
The mana in the magic circle gathered, emitting a pure-white chill as it was honed into a point.
Its shape resembled the Ice Bolts he had fired repeatedly.
But it did not feel like a simple Ice Bolt.
The insight dwelling in Ferda’s eyes shone.
‘It’s holding an excessive amount of cold inside.’
It was a Frost Bomb that imitated an Ice Bolt.
The instant it struck or broke against something, the cold inside would burst out.
If he tried to dodge, defend against, or intercept it carelessly, it would turn against him.
‘So I have to shoot it down.’
Ferda flicked the sphere of mana held at his fingertip, making it touch the Frost Bomb.
Whoosh!
Cold like steam gushed out and froze the surroundings.
Ferda’s mana sphere froze solid as well and rolled across the floor.
It was a destructive spell powerful enough to freeze mana solid.
‘He saw through my Frost Bomb.’
It was not surprising.
A mage skilled enough to use Magic Intercept could not possibly be unaware of such a feint.
Meanwhile, Yuren cast another spell.
“Shield of the Empire!”
A magic circle drawn with highly concentrated mana took shape and became a shield.
A fifth-tier defensive spell, Aegis.
It had been created after the hero named Aegis and boasted an ironclad defense.
That shield would recognize magic on its own and move without Yuren’s instructions.
‘A troublesome bastard.’
For someone who had never seen it before, there was no spell more troublesome than this.
‘…or so one would be inclined to think.’
But Ferda knew it well.
The more troublesome the opponent, the more clearly he remembered them.
That was why Ferda waited.
For the moment when the bastard grew overconfident in his own magic.
‘Now.’
It was the moment Yuren was using his wand to cast Frost Bomb.
At the same time, two spheres formed in Ferda’s hands.
One was an ordinary Mana Shot,
and the other was a Mana Bomb made by compressing a greater amount of mana together.
‘No way…’
The moment he saw the Mana Bomb, Yuren’s intuition drove the thought into his mind.
He tried to deny the ominous thought.
It was impossible.
Could a mage who was merely third-circle know how to counter a fifth-tier spell?
Though he denied it, Ferda’s spheres flew toward Yuren.
The first sphere rushing in was the Mana Bomb.
Aegis’s shield sensed the Mana Bomb and moved.
Boom!
The area filled thickly with mana.
At the same time, the shield’s movements began to stutter unnaturally.
Yuren’s eyes widened.
‘He knows how to counter Aegis?’
A mage’s battle was about revealing one’s cards.
One often played a card assuming that if the opponent did not know what it was, they would not understand it.
No, that assumption was essentially something one had to make.
If one chose moves while preparing for every possible outcome, even situations outside the standard, one could not use any magic at all.
Yuren was facing something outside the standard.
‘Then the second sphere…!’
He would target the Frost Bomb.
Once a spell had been cast, a mage could extinguish it through sheer will.
But things created by a wand or staff could not be stopped midway.
Ferda would wait for the moment the Frost Bomb was completed, make contact with it, and detonate it immediately.
‘Like hell I’ll let you!’
Yuren swiftly cast Magic Shield.
A blue veil covered the space before him.
It was a defensive spell that a single Lightning Bolt could not pierce.
The mana sphere could not touch the Frost Bomb.
The completed Frost Bomb could simply be thrown somewhere else.
But contrary to what he had thought—
the spell Ferda cast was—
‘Lightning Bolt?’
It was the same lightning arrow.
Yuren could not understand.
‘It shouldn’t be able to pierce it, so why did he choose that?’
Even with excellent power, it lacked the force to pierce his veil.
As Yuren tried to find the answer, only then did he begin to see something.
Something even darker, buried in the dark background, was attached behind Ferda’s back.
It looked like an arm he had been hiding, and it was making a throwing motion from low to the ground.
“Ah.”
What entered his vision was a frozen mana sphere.
It had frozen in the aftermath of the Frost Bomb, making it extremely hard.
Hard enough to use as a substitute for a metal projectile.
He had retrieved that sphere from the blind spot in Yuren’s vision.
“Lightning Bolt.”
The moment it rose into his path, lightning shot forth.
A Lightning Bolt came flying with the solid mass of ice loaded onto it.
Crack!
Magic Shield shattered.
Yuren’s body lurched violently.
Even so, Yuren was a seasoned mage.
He did not close his eyes with an enemy before him.
In his field of vision, he saw the mana sphere Ferda had saved flying toward him.
‘I have to find a way…!’
But by then, the mana sphere had already touched the Frost Bomb.
Whoosh!
White steam burst out, turning the area into a field of frost.
The steam did not dissipate easily.
‘He must have died instantly.’
Judging from the power, it would not have been strange for Yuren to die.
His defenses had been neutralized, and even if he had resistance to magic, he could not survive a direct hit from a cold bomb.
Even so, Ferda did not lower his guard.
This was the Sealed Vault, and the human will to live was at work here.
‘Demons sometimes make that will a reality.’
And his concern became reality.
Crumble—
Yuren’s form, an ice mage covered in frost, moved.
His frozen clothes and wand broke apart into shards of ice, but he himself did not.
And at some point, a book was in his hand.
“Kihihihit…!”
A laugh steeped in madness cried out for ecstasy.
“Ahh. So this is what it means… to gain a demon’s power.”
It was the typical utterance of someone intoxicated by demonic power.
The book in his hand was Marbas’s Frostcraft.
‘Marbas, the demon of frost and destruction.’
One of the Seven Great Demons and the archduke of the Hell of Extreme Cold.
He was a demon perfectly suited to Yuren, an ice mage.
‘He must have contracted with Marbas right before the explosion and survived.’
Selling one’s soul to Marbas granted the blessing to survive in extreme cold.
Seeing this, Ferda sank to the floor.
Having lost too much blood, his thigh could no longer support him.
His superhuman concentration was also reaching its limit.
“Oh dear… Where has that confident Regent gone? Come on, we have to fight again, don’t we?”
Yuren taunted Ferda.
Everything was turning against Ferda.
At that moment,
the malice filling the room began moving once more.
All the demonic books in the Sealed Vault stirred and shifted.
-Offer up your soul. Then I shall give you the power to kill that worthless thing.
-I’ll give you the power to burn the bastard insulting you! Offer me your soul!
-I’ll give you power. Better to live in this world than roll around in a dog turd, wouldn’t you say?
The demons’ whispers churned Ferda up.
It felt as though something were tugging him this way and that to seize his body.
It was proof that Ferda’s body had been driven to the edge of a precipice.
Ferda, who until then had only been panting raggedly, opened his mouth.
“They say that just before death…”
A smile formed at the corner of Ferda’s mouth.
It was different in nature from the few smiles he had shown before.
It was a smile that rose from emotion.
“The face of the person you love appears first.”
Yuren frowned as he looked at Ferda, who had suddenly begun spouting nonsense.
“And do you know what I see before me right now? You. Do you know what that means?”
“What the hell are you talking about? Don’t tell me you’re going to say you love me?”
Ferda’s blue eyes stared at Yuren.
They glowed as he used magic.
That light, which had not died, was pride. And those eyes made Yuren look wretched.
“It means it’s not time for me to die yet.”
At that moment, Yuren’s intuition shone once more.
‘I… can’t defeat this man?’
Even though he had contracted with the demon Marbas, this man was saying he could not defeat him.
‘That can’t be.’
Then what did that make him, who had sold his soul to a demon?
What did that make him, unable to defeat a third-circle mage even after laying down everything at the moment of death?
As he tried to pull himself together, Ferda asked,
“Do you know the mage’s unspoken rule?”
The mage’s unspoken rule.
Never reveal the ultimate measure one possesses, even at the moment of death.
In other words, it referred to a wild card capable of overturning everything.
“So you’re saying you’ll use your final spell? You can’t have that much mana left anymore, can you?”
Yuren was right.
The mana Ferda had left was barely enough to cast Elemental Bolt once.
The blood running down his thigh had not even been staunched, and his leg could no longer exert any strength.
It was obvious that Ferda, not Yuren, was the one cornered.
Ferda smiled deeply and said,
“Don’t jump to conclusions. When did I ever say it was magic?”
Not magic?
At that moment, he sensed a presence behind Yuren.
“It’s not too late after all.”
What came out of nowhere was a man’s voice.
Yuren turned his head.
A brown-haired man dressed as a guard stood there.
‘A guard…? No way.’
There was no way a mere guard could come to a security area like this.
He was obviously an intruder.
And not just that—
An intruder of considerable skill, for breaking into this Sealed Vault was no easy feat.
The man moved first.
He nimbly closed the distance.
‘I have to respond.’
Yuren drew a magic circle.
At that moment, the man’s ordinary eyes were dyed bright red and began to shine.
‘What? Why is the mana…?’
Wherever that light gazed, the mana gathering in the magic circle was forcibly scattered.
‘Could it be…!’
A race he had thought had vanished into history came to mind.
“Are you one of the Red-Eyed?”
In other words, a mage killer.
The dagger in the man’s hand pierced his neck.
“Kgh—cough!”
It had precisely bored through his windpipe and artery.
All he could produce was the sound of air escaping.
Ferda, who had been watching from behind, spoke to the man familiarly.
“Be careful. He sold himself to a demon.”
“I know.”
The man gripped the dagger with both hands and took up his stance.
“Even so, I have quite a history with demons myself.”
He pulled the embedded dagger free and swung it in a wide arc.
Yuren’s vision flipped, and he went flying through the air.
In his consciousness, which had not yet been severed, he could see Ferda.
Ferda was casting Lightning Bolt toward Yuren’s head.
“Farewell. You beast who has lost your pride.”