A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special - Chapter 18

Episode 18. The Returner’s Advancement Exam (4)

Dezir Armang passed by Romantika and approached Fram.
“What’s my role, Dezir?”
His eyes held a peculiar mixture of anticipation.
“Fram, ideally I’d want you to play Dealer, but given our party’s composition, the role you’ll need to fill is Half Dealer.”
“Half Dealer……”
Fram repeated the words as if etching them into his mind with deliberate care.
“Protect us. Romantika and I are mages, which means we’re extremely vulnerable to close-range combat. That’s why your role as our only melee fighter is absolutely crucial.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Fram struck a playful salute.
The gesture was so endearingly charming that Dezir couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh.
Fram’s lips curved into a gentle smile as he met Dezir’s gaze.
Romantika, watching the exchange, spoke up.
“Dezir, what about your role?”
“My role is Anti Magician. And well……if I had to say something else……”
He paused to consider for a moment.
“Perhaps Play Maker?”
The time had come.

—The Shadow Gate opens.
Students, please proceed into the interior of the Shadow Gate.

An announcement chimed through the air.
Dezir took a step forward.
Simultaneously, the gate’s doors bloomed open in all directions, and a blinding light poured forth.
When his eyes opened again, the landscape before him was entirely transformed.
Birds shrieked as if tearing the air itself, and from the rustling heaps of fallen leaves came the damp scent of autumn.
Between the skeletal branches of densely packed trees, the morning sun slanted through with cutting intensity.
Dezir drew a deep breath into the depths of his lungs.
Location: forest. Time: approximately eleven o’clock in the morning.
An announcement followed immediately.

—Find the enemy’s headquarters.
Participants do not die in this world. Upon receiving a death judgment, you will meet the failure condition and be expelled from the Shadow World.

—You are a soldier.
You have received intelligence that the hostile faction’s headquarters is located in this area. As a soldier on our side, you must search out the enemy’s stronghold.

Fram and Romantika were nowhere to be seen.
All thirty participants had been assigned to different locations—purely at random.
“Lucky timing.”
Dezir sensed the flow of Mana from behind and immediately ducked.
An Ice Bolt meant for his head embedded itself in a tree trunk.
Crack.
Frost bloomed in the air.
The one who had cast the spell was a girl about Dezir’s age.
“To think I’d find you so quickly.”
“Am I really that famous?”
“……Infamous, rather.”
A low hum resonated.
Magical formations arrayed themselves before her.
At the same moment, Dezir began deploying his own magic.
“I am Dezir Armang of the Nameless Party.”
“I am Raflas of the Blue Moon Party.”
Both mages’ spells materialized simultaneously.

[Ice Blast!]

The magic Raflas deployed was the advanced form of Ice Bolt—Ice Blast.
Ice Blast enveloped an Ice Bolt within a crystalline sphere. To intercept it, one had to shatter the outer shell and strike the inner bolt a second time.
Soon, a crystal sphere laden with bitter cold shot toward Dezir.

[Fire Road.]

Fire Road. A first-circle flame attribute spell that pierces a straight line with compressed heat.
Dezir predicted the Ice Blast’s trajectory and deployed Fire Road to intercept it.
But Raflas proved formidable as well.

[Aqua Wave!]

Along the Ice Blast’s path, water surged up from the ground.
The torrent, rising some two meters high, engulfed the Ice Blast.
A hollow whistle.
The Fire Road dissipated without a trace, its force spent.
Crack!
Yet the wave that had sheathed the Ice Blast did not escape unscathed. Unable to withstand the blast’s bitter cold, the water froze solid.
Locked within the frozen wave, the Ice Blast itself came to a halt.
“…….”
Dezir regarded Raflas. She was smiling.
Shatter!
The Ice Bolt within the Ice Blast detonated, shattering the frozen shell that contained it. Countless ice shards scattered in all directions.
As ice fragments, luminescent and drifting with falling leaves, engulfed him in an instant, Dezir staggered beneath the impact.
But that was not the end.
The fragments that had shot outward suddenly froze mid-air, as if time itself had stopped.
Suspended in the void, tens of thousands of shards converged at a single point and began to spin.
Sharp as blades, the ice fragments wove a vortex around Dezir.
Screech!
The ancient tree, which must have weathered countless seasons, was pulverized into sawdust.
Thud.
A flock of birds took flight skyward.
Dust rose in a choking cloud.
But the ice shards that enveloped Dezir soon swept it all away.
“Any last words?”
Raflas wore an expression of supreme confidence.
“That’s a solid strategy.”
Dezir spoke as if instructing a student.
Raflas snorted and clenched her fist.
The vortex of ice blades around Dezir contracted. The hem of his coat, where it touched the vortex, crumbled to dust and vanished without trace.
“But you chose the wrong opponent.”
Dezir opened his palm.
The ice fragments that had been closing in to obliterate him began to gather toward his hand like iron filings drawn to a magnet.
Maintaining their spherical form, tens of thousands of shards condensed into a single, perfect orb without a single piece left behind.
A light of shock flickered in Raflas’s eyes.
“That’s……!”
“Watch and learn.”
Dezir raised his right hand for all to see.
Suspended within it was a sphere of ice, compressed to the size of a fist, hovering in the empty air.
He hurled the ice sphere toward Raflas.
As it traveled, the sphere dispersed a tremendous volley of Ice Bolts in all directions.
The apex of ice bullet magic—Ice Orb.
Dozens of Ice Bolts bloomed before Raflas’s eyes.
She had no time to react. Arrows of ice struck her entire body.
Her legs, her torso, her shoulders, her abdomen.
Crack! Crackle!
“Ngh……ahh!”
Crack!
When the fifth Ice Bolt struck true, Raflas’s entire body scattered into gray dust.
A notification tone announced the death of an Alpha-class student with mechanical indifference.

-One contestant eliminated. Remaining participants: 29.

* * *

Romantika calculated a magical formula.
The formula began to take shape before her. It was the structure of a detection spell.
A second-Circle spell, though Mana consumption varied up to third-Circle levels depending on the Detection Range—and Romantika had been lavishing Mana on deploying detection magic the moment the Shadow World began.

[Detect.]

Wind radiated outward in a circle centered on Romantika.
Every sensation touched by that wind transmitted to her. Trees, stones, and living signatures. Within a one-kilometer radius centered on her, there were five presences.
The detection spell had barely finished unfolding.
Romantika fired a Wind Bullet without so much as moving her lips.
No casting was required.
Ultra-long-range sniper fire executed through Silent Casting. There was almost no delay between detection and strike.
The Silent Casting magic Dezir had trained her in all this time was now bearing its fruit.
The bullet tore through the air. Controlling its power was no difficulty. The hardness of the spheres she’d trained with all along matched human bone density exactly, so adjusting the bullet’s power to that same level presented no challenge.
Snap!

-One contestant eliminated. Remaining participants: 26.

“Okay. Not that one.”
Someone spoke to Romantika just as she was about to deploy detection magic once more.
“How’s the search for Dezir going?”
Fram drew up close beside her.
Fortune had granted Romantika and Fram starting positions quite near each other.
When Romantika deployed her first detection spell, she’d been able to locate Fram immediately.
The only member of their party not yet regrouped was Dezir.
“So far so good. But I’ll find him soon.”
Wind rippled outward from Romantika’s position once more.
The spreading wind conveyed sensory information back to her.
Four living signatures within effective range.
A bullet took shape before Romantika. Fired simultaneously.
“Three…… two…… one.”
“…….”
No matter how long she waited, the notification she’d anticipated never came.
Whisper.
Instead, the dissolved bullet scattered as a gentle breeze that slipped beyond her control, tickling her cheek.
Romantika smiled broadly.
“Found him.”
“Found what?”
A voice suddenly rang out from behind them, and Romantika and Fram spun around.
The voice belonged to a typical two-person party: a swordsman and a mage.
“Spamming detection magic like that just broadcasts your own position.”
“Even knowing our position…”
Romantika replied to the mage’s sneer with a smile playing at her lips.
“I don’t see where your confidence comes from that you can actually defeat us.”
And Fram drew his blade, continuing her thought.
“Stop wasting breath.”
The swordsman facing Fram reached for his hilt to draw, but Fram had already closed the distance, his blade piercing straight through the man’s chest.
“What…… what?”
The swordsman’s body crumbled.
At the same moment, Romantika’s bullet struck the mage behind him squarely.
A combination as swift and seamless as light itself!
Both bodies collapsed into white dust in an instant.

-Two have been eliminated. Twenty-four remain.

“Well then, shall we go find this wretched party leader?”
Romantika shrugged.

* * *

Somewhere along the way, the sky had turned ashen.
Rain seemed imminent.
Rumble, rumble.
Dark clouds writhed and churned, their rough voices filling the air.
The wind lashed like a wild tide, and the temperature plummeted.
“I took down two of them myself.”
Romantika crossed her arms, her expression radiating pride.
Dezir Armang reached out and ruffled her hair.
“Looks like you haven’t been lazy with your training.”
Romantika looked up at him with visible displeasure.
“Hey, wait! Don’t touch someone’s hair without asking!”
Dezir Armang, charmed by her indignation, withdrew his hand as quickly as it had risen to her head.
“Dezir!”
Fram slipped between Romantika and Dezir Armang with ghostly precision.
“I took down one too!”
He swiftly placed Dezir Armang’s hand atop his own head and stood perfectly still, surrendering himself to the touch.
“Foolish Dezir.”
Romantika watched the scene with obvious disapproval, then suddenly turned her head away.

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