A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special - Chapter 19

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 19. The Returnee’s Promotion Match (5)

In any case, with the entire party assembled, they had achieved their first objective.
Yet they were all exhausted from the consecutive battles. Romantika, in particular, who had been using Detection Magic continuously since the beginning, looked the most worn down.
Dezir Armang gestured toward the base of a tree and spoke.
“For now, let’s rest there for a moment and then move again.”
The group hastily scraped together fallen leaves and arranged them into a makeshift rest spot, then settled onto it.
When they opened the Supply Bundle they’d received from the Academy, it contained two Energy Bars manufactured to stay crisp and dry, along with five hundred milliliters of Drinking Water.
The taste wasn’t good, but this wasn’t the time to be picky about such things.
Dezir was in the middle of eating one of the hard Energy Bars when he noticed something odd and looked toward Romantika. Fram must have caught it too, for he’d stopped eating and was gazing at her quietly.
Romantika, for her part, was eating the Energy Bar without complaint, skillfully letting it dissolve in her mouth.
The Romantika who, not long ago, would have thrown a fit at the slightest hint of hard food was nowhere to be found.
Romantika felt their gaze and, irritated, stopped eating.
“Why are you staring like that?”
“Are you feeling alright, Romantika?”
“Huh? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dezir Armang smiled mischievously.
“Looks like you’ve completely adjusted. You might as well stay in Beta Class forever.”
“Don’t say ridiculous things like that!”
Romantika hurled the food bundle toward Dezir Armang.
Dezir Armang caught it, gathered Fram’s portion and his own as well, and buried them in the ground.
With their meal finished, there was nothing left to do. They savored the brief respite that had come their way.
During this interlude, Dezir Armang explained his strategy.
“There are two conditions for us to advance to Alpha Class.”
Dezir Armang stirred the fallen leaves on the ground with a small stick. The leaves, wet from moisture, were very slippery.
“First, we must be among the final nine survivors. Second, we must Clear the Quest in the Shadow World and finish in first place.”
A sharp wind bit at their skin. Dezir Armang wiped away the water droplets that had sprayed onto his cheek.
“But you said the second method was impossible.”
At Romantika’s words, Dezir Armang quietly drew thirty sticks on the ground. Then he drew a line through four of them.
“Right. With our current strength, it’s difficult. If we aimed for a Quest Clear, we’d have to account for both interference from other parties and Quest progression. It’s practically impossible.”
Romantika and Fram nodded silently.
“But think about what we’re actually targeting. Our goal isn’t first place—it’s making it into the top nine. Therefore…… our sole priority is to eliminate everyone else.”
The sticks were erased one by one in sequence.
“There are currently twenty-four people left. As we progress through the Quest, other parties will fight among themselves. If we take advantage of that chaos to eliminate just fifteen people…… making it into the top nine won’t be so difficult.”
Nine sticks remained in the end. Dezir Armang circled three of them.
“Our goal isn’t as high as you might think.”
“Indeed. That’s exactly the strategy we need to adopt.”
Fram nodded in agreement.
Whoosh—
At that very moment, rain suddenly poured down without restraint. The sound of raindrops striking leaves filled the entire forest.
Dezir Armang’s party was truly fortunate. Had they not been in a spot with shelter from the rain, they would have looked like drowned rats. But the luck granted to them ended precisely there.
The fortune given to them extended no further.
Dong.
Dezir Armang’s party simultaneously lifted their heads toward the northeast.
A clear bell tone rang out. The sound was so loud it carried distinctly through the rain.
“Romantika, what time is it now?”
“It’s one o’clock.”
One o’clock.
It had begun.
A notification sound reached Dezir Armang’s ears.

-Your prior knowledge allows you to grasp the current situation.
The Previus Clock Tower has been installed. The Previus Clock Tower is a sophisticated demonic apparatus that generates one Demon every hour.
As one o’clock struck, the Sin of Cunning crawled forth from the abyss. A Kildra Mouse has been summoned.

-A new Quest has occurred.
Demons dwell in this forest. Survive against them. The Quest will not end until the demons are eliminated.

“Kyaaaaaaah—!”
It was a scream so terrible that merely hearing it felt as though one’s heart would be torn from their chest. As if answering that hideous cry, dozens more shrieks erupted simultaneously.
“Everyone, fall back.”
Dezir and his companions scrambled hesitantly to their feet and retreated. The mound of earth beneath them, blanketed with fallen leaves, trembled and undulated as though dancing.
Had one not known better, one might have mistaken it for a spirit of soil dancing in the rain.
“Ugh—the stench!”
Romantika covered her nose. She had smelled something like this before.
A sickening reek where rotting flesh and the iron-sharp stench of blood mingled so thoroughly that it seemed to paralyze the very sense of smell itself. The memory was not so distant.
When was it?
It was definitely when she was cleaning the Training Ground….
Suddenly, a chill ran down Romantika’s spine.
“Could this first demon possibly be…?”
“Squeak!”
Something crimson burst through the churning mound of earth.
Romantika steadied her trembling hands and peered at it closely.
“A rat!”
It was a rat with long, protruding incisors.
Its body was covered in red flesh that looked as though a child had molded it from clay. Its bulging belly contracted and expanded with each heartbeat.
Two horns pierced through the flesh of its forehead, and a dark chitinous carapace enveloped its entire body.
Had someone asked her to choose a single word most fitting for its appearance, she would have answered without hesitation: “Demon.”

—Your prior knowledge allows you to identify this creature.
Kildra Mouse. A 2-Star Demon that commands countless rats as though they were its limbs. It feeds on human blood, and once it has marked its prey, it never abandons the hunt.

“Shriiiiek—!”
The Kildra Mouse threw its head back and wailed. Its ear-splitting cry pierced the heavens.
Then the earth began to dance at a scale incomparable to before.
Rumble.
The swollen ground finally ruptured, and jet-black creatures crawled up through the fissures.
They were unmistakably rats. Not merely a handful—thousands upon thousands of them. By the most conservative estimate, there were at least three thousand.
All those rats moved as one. The undulating, writhing mass resembled a single, colossal organism.
“Ah… ah….”
Romantika’s face drained of all color.
Dezir, watching her with unseeing eyes, seized her arm and hauled her backward. Then he spun around and drove hard against the earth.
“Shriiek!”
Immediately after, the swarm of rats surged toward Dezir’s party like a tidal wave.
The rats’ ear-splitting shrieks burrowed into Romantika’s eardrums.
Her body shook violently.
“I’m going to lose my mind. I’m going to lose my mind. I’m going to lose my mind. I’m going to lose my mind. I’m going to lose my mind. I’m going to lose my mind. I really am going to lose my mind!”
If she had to swim through that wave of rats, she truly might go mad.
The party drove their legs forward desperately. The wave of rats moved at tremendous speed. Any faltering of their pace meant they would be swallowed whole.
“Gasp… gasp!”
The wind bit at their skin.
With each footfall, the sound of grass rustling.
Trees drew near, then receded once more.
Sometimes they had to swerve to avoid trees blocking their path, and each time the air filled with a tremendous crash.
Glancing back to discover the source of the sound, they saw the very trees that had blocked their way already engulfed by the black tide, splintering into sawdust.

Wind Blow.

Romantika hurled the wind spell toward the swarm, but it had little effect.
It slowed their advance only briefly. The gap closed almost immediately.
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
The disadvantage lay with Dezir’s party.
The forest floor was slick beneath their feet, and the densely packed trees impeded their flight. The group grew weaker, and their pace of retreat slowed steadily.
Meanwhile, the rats, as though immune to exhaustion, maintained their original speed and bore down relentlessly.
“The path ahead is blocked!”
It was a massive ancient tree.
A massive tree, its girth so enormous that three grown men linking arms couldn’t encircle it. Ice fragments glinted across the severed stump.
‘That must be the tree that fell when I fought Lapras earlier. Of all the times…’
Dezir Armang gauged its height. It looked to be at least a meter tall.
Fram, leading the way, planted his hand on the tree’s back and vaulted over, landing gracefully on the far side.
With his superior physical prowess, such a height presented little difficulty for him.
“Three….”
The problem lay with Dezir and Romantika, both mages by training.
Dezir released Romantika’s hand. Holding onto each other now would only slow them down. To clear this obstacle, they needed maximum speed.
“Two….”
The meter-high tree loomed closer with each stride. Dezir tensed every muscle in his legs.
“…One, now!”
Dezir’s foot struck the ground. A seemingly endless moment hung suspended before he landed. He glanced back. Romantika’s face had plunged into a puddle of standing water—her foot had caught on the tree trunk mid-jump.
Thud!
The massive tree they’d just cleared exploded into sawdust.
A torrent of mice surged into that very spot.
The distance between the group and the tide of rodents had narrowed to three paces.
“At this rate, they’ll catch us!”
Romantika’s cry pierced the air.
Dezir forced himself to think through the panic.
“If we kill just the main body of the Kildra Mouse, it’s over!”
“Where is it?!”
“In that mass!”
“That’s insane! How do you expect us to catch one mouse in that swarm?!”
The true body of the Kildra Mouse.
He could identify it clearly enough among them. Its form was distinctive enough, different enough from the ordinary mice, that spotting it was simple.
But buried as it was among countless others, targeting only the true body was impossible.
‘But what if I could draw it out of the swarm?’
The tide of mice had nearly overtaken them now. Some of the faster ones were already crawling up their bodies.
There was no time.
Dezir drew in one long, measured breath.
“I’ll pull the Kildra Mouse out of that swarm.”
He would use it.
Use the very reason the Kildra Mouse was hunting them.
Just before the tide of mice crashed over them, Dezir bit down on his thumb with all his strength.
Crack!
Something snapped, and blood gushed forth. Dezir swept his bleeding left arm forward through the air.
‘Screeeeee—!’
A spray of blood steamed white against the air. And from within the tide, a creature erupted like a breaching dolphin—a rat, its small frame bristling with a jet-black exoskeleton, painted crimson.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————