A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special - Chapter 22

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 22. The Final Clash (2)

The distance was too close; Fram had no way to evade, and struck by the shield, he fell.
Fram had barely steadied himself and was reaching to locate Percival’s position when the man was already upon him.
Clang!
Blades locked.
A test of strength.
The worst scenario he’d hoped to avoid—and precisely the one Percival had engineered.
Fram’s hands trembled.
Percival seized the moment, pouring even more force into his grip on the sword.
“Ugh!”
Fram began to retreat.
Yet Fram was no mere victim. He twisted his blade to the side, redirecting the collision of forces laterally. With admirable control, he guided Percival’s sword to slide down the flat of his own blade.
The momentum sent Percival’s body lurching forward.
Fram seized the opening. His shortsword flashed toward Percival’s shoulder like a ray of light.
Crash!
The steel breastplate split like paper, and blood sprayed into the air.
He couldn’t have said how many times he tumbled.
Percival finally pushed himself to his feet once sufficient distance had opened between them and Fram.
‘I lost?’
Percival closed and opened his eyes several times. Just weeks ago, Fram had been beneath him in skill. His attacks were fierce, yes—but nothing more. A trivial swordsman, or so he’d thought….
One thing had become unmistakably clear.
Fram was now a step above Percival.
“What—what in blazes are you?”
Percival spoke as though unable to believe it.
“What do you mean?”
“How could you change so much in mere weeks?”
Fram smiled.
“Why would I owe you such an explanation?”
……
Percival’s face twisted with frustration.
Yet he did not rush at Fram as he had before. He’d learned that rash approach meant defeat.
“Damn it, what is Doneta doing?”
Percival’s voice rang out, thick with exasperation.
Meanwhile, Doneta had drawn his sword but couldn’t advance rashly. The fog surrounding him on all sides was far too thick. With visibility so poor, finding Romantica was nearly impossible.
“Is the mist this dense?”
It wasn’t.
By Doneta’s recollection, the fog should have dispersed after her initial ambush. Yet it had grown denser, more opaque than before.
“She’s being rather clever about it.”
She was deliberately expending mana to sustain the fog.
But knowing that changed nothing for Doneta. The only thing he could do was—
Whoosh!
—take the brunt of wind bullets hurtling through the haze.
Doneta bore the throbbing in the back of his hand and refused to let go of his sword.
It was truly strange.
He couldn’t pinpoint Romantica’s location, yet she somehow sensed his position with uncanny precision, launching spell after spell.
“Is she reading my movements through the wind itself? Mages are an insufferable breed.”
Moreover, whenever he charged in the direction from which a bullet had come, Romantica had already fled that position.
It was utterly demoralizing—he had no choice but to stand and be attacked.
“She’s thought this through carefully enough, but it won’t matter.”
In the end, it was irrelevant.
Doneta tapped the Golden Necklace he wore. A gentle breeze stirred, and the fog lifted.
His vision cleared. And there was Romantica, her expression one of disbelief.
“That necklace… it was Magical Equipment?”
Magical Equipment.

It was equipment imbued with magic—several times more expensive than ordinary weapons and armor.
“I told you you’d regret it, didn’t I?”
Doneta’s magical equipment wasn’t limited to the necklace alone. He pointed a ringed index finger toward Romantica.

[Fire Ring.]

A second-circle flame attribute spell.
A ring of fire materialized beneath Romantica’s feet, and as it shot upward with searing heat, it blocked her escape.
Doneta brought the blade’s sharp edge near her eyebrow.
Romantica shrugged her shoulders.
“Well, I’m starting to regret it a little.”
“Too late for regrets now.”
Doneta spoke with a cutting edge to his voice.
Romantica glanced toward his left.
“Too late to dodge, too.”
“What?”
Doneta spun sharply to the side. An enormous boulder filled his vision.
Boom!
An explosion thundered across the field, and Doneta’s body was hurled sideways with brutal force.
“Ugh…….”
Doneta brushed dust and gravel from himself as he staggered upright.
His appearance was a complete disaster. The refined nobleman’s attire was covered in dust and disheveled, making him look like a vagrant, and the expensive coat he wore had its leather torn beyond repair.
“This Beta Class bastard……!”
Dezir Armang moved to stand in front of Romantica.
“You bought us good time.”
“……If I’d had enough mana, I would’ve won.”
“Support Fram.”
“Understood.”
Romantica rushed toward Fram’s side.
Doneta raised his middle finger toward her departing form.
“Not so fast!”
Light poured forth from the reddish-brown ring.

[The Sigh of Land.]

Rumble!
A second-circle attack spell that binds enemies even as it delivers a devastating blow.
The earth trembled and rocks erupted upward, hurtling toward Romantica. But Dezir Armang stepped in front of them. The mass of stone came down upon him from above.
Dezir Armang was buried under the pile of earth. Doneta moved swiftly toward the rubble and swung his blade.
Clang!
“Agh…….”
A sharp, numbing sensation shot through Doneta’s hands, drawing a gasp.
He hadn’t cut through. The earth encasing Dezir Armang had hardened like steel.
“What——?”
“Don’t deploy magic against him!”
A shadow flashed past the bewildered Doneta.
Azest’s body shot toward Dezir Armang at tremendous speed. For an instant her form and the rubble seemed to occupy the same space, and in the next moment a line appeared down the center of the pile as it split cleanly in two.
Azest’s gaze turned backward. Dezir Armang, who had been crouched within the earth, rose to his feet. The instant their eyes met, he opened his mouth.

[Stone Break.]

Boom!
The bisected rubble exploded outward like shrapnel in all directions. The shockwave sent Azest flying into the air.
The scattered earth surged toward her like a snake striking at prey.
When she completed her spin and landed, her wrist was ensnared by a mass of earth. Pressure strong enough to crush bone bore down upon it.

[Winter Fist.]

Crack!
Azest drove her right arm, now frozen solid, hard against the wall. The crystallized earth shattered and fell to the ground.
She bit her lip hard. Simultaneously, the incantations unfurled.
Then Dezir and Azest’s battle began in earnest.
Ice spears crystallized and vanished; flames danced and swirled before the stone floor inverted, extinguishing everything in an instant. Water surged and rippled, only to evaporate moments later, leaving behind a single droplet.
Now she understood it clearly. Azest realized she was losing ground.
It wasn’t a matter of raw power.
Azest possessed far more mana than Dezir.
Born with a talent so rare it appeared perhaps once in a century, Azest carried within her a reservoir of mana that no one could match.
Even with the same Fire Ball, Azest’s possessed twice the destructive force; with ice magic—her preferred element—she could exceed it threefold.
Yet a Magical Battle wasn’t decided simply by who wielded the stronger spell.
It was a fusion of circumstance and condition, speed and compatibility, judgment, and dozens of other external factors.
Reading the opponent’s moves, calculating the optimal response, and executing it at lightning speed—that was the art.
A Magical Battle was, in essence, a form of sophisticated psychological warfare.
Azest’s point of defeat lay precisely in that psychological arena.
She had been utterly, absolutely crushed in the contest of wills.
Though she had tried to deny it—for she hated losing—she could no longer refuse to acknowledge the truth.
This man, Dezir, could not be defeated through Magical Battle.
Her spells, dozens of times more powerful, were being dismantled with pathetic ease by his weaker magic. Simple incantations were nullified by counter-calculations; complex ones became displaced from their intended purpose in an instant.
Her moves were read before she could execute them, and patterns were woven to bind her in moments.
An overwhelming disparity in experience.
Such vast experience became, in itself, both spear and shield. It rose before her like a towering wall, an insurmountable barrier.
‘This makes no sense.’
No matter how she looked at him, Dezir appeared to be roughly her age.
What on earth could his identity be?
As Azest steadied her breathing, the combat paused. Doneta, who had been watching from the sidelines, stepped forward.
“Captain, let me join in!”
Azest shook her head.
“This is my fight. Don’t interfere.”
“But…!”
“Go help Percival.”
“Percival should have finished already…!”
But he hadn’t.
Contrary to expectations that Percival would end things swiftly, the duel had dragged on.
In fact, Percival was losing. Fram’s blade was ravaging his body repeatedly.
Azest spoke.
“Romantica has nearly exhausted her mana. She’s effectively out of commission. Go there and quickly eliminate those two.”
Faced with such cold-blooded instruction, Doneta had no room to protest and withdrew from Azest, joining Percival and Fram’s combat.
Fram and Romantica faced each other, as did Percival and Doneta.
Until then Fram had held the advantage, but with the relatively unscathed Doneta now intervening, the outcome became uncertain.
“Are you frustrated?”
“To be honest… yes.”
At Dezir’s words, Azest nodded.
“Being outmatched in a Magical Battle by someone with less than a thousandth of my mana isn’t pleasant, I’ll admit. It’s like an ant arm-wrestling with a human and winning—can you understand that feeling?”
“Well, I think I get the gist of it.”
“Since I’ve determined I can’t win through Magical Battle alone, I have no choice but to adapt.”
Azest shook the redness from her right arm and grasped the sword at her waist.
Shing—
The eerie sound of steel sang through the air. In a heartbeat, Azest closed the distance between them.
“You really do want to defeat me.”
Magical incantations arranged themselves before Dezir.

[Balance.]
[Strength.]

He then drew the Shortsword at his hip and deployed another spell.

[Magical Enchantment: Hardening.]

The reinforced Shortsword held firm against Azest’s slash without shattering.
Cracks spider-webbed beneath Dezir’s feet as if an earthquake had struck. Yet he stood his ground.
Azest’s eyes widened.
“You actually blocked it……?”
“Why? Did you think a mage would be weak in close combat?”

Azest’s lips twisted in barely concealed displeasure. She drove the locked blades apart with brutal force.
Crash!
Dezir Armang was hurled backward, slamming against the wall. Yet the impact left him unharmed. He rose slowly from the dust.

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