A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special - Chapter 31

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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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Episode 31. The Magic Tower, Time, Chess (3)

Back to the present moment.
Dezir Armang was playing Chess against Jord from thirteen years in the past. Yet even before reaching a hundred moves, he found himself in dire straits.
Part of it stemmed from the fact that Jord’s skill hadn’t changed much between past and future, but from Dezir’s perspective, the true culprit was something else entirely: temperament.
The future Jord had lived on battlefields, and his moves were somewhat aggressive and audacious by nature, whereas the present Jord’s play was deliberate and conservative, focused on counterattack. For Dezir, who had been analyzing and moving pieces based on the frame of reference that was “future Jord,” this was a bitter reversal—he could no longer read his opponent’s moves as he once had. So Dezir continued to sacrifice pieces, all the while dissecting Jord’s strategy.
He probed in all directions, testing how Jord would respond.
By watching the pattern of Jord’s piece movements, he discerned the biases embedded in his thinking.
Surrendering pieces meant nothing to him.
He kept only the bare minimum needed for a comeback, and freely sacrificed pieces to test various stratagems.
His thought patterns.
The unique techniques that only he possessed in this era.
The habitual quirks of his mind that remained unchanged between past and future.
If Dezir could uncover those, it mattered little how dire his position became. If he could only predict Jord’s next move, such losses would be well worth the price.
‘I did figure it out in the end, but…….’
Unfortunately, he’d come to his realization far too late. Only after his last knight fell did he manage to get even a half-step ahead of the trajectory of Jord’s thinking.
‘Pressed into this much of a disadvantage, no amount of reading the moves ahead would allow for a reversal.’
Under ordinary circumstances, that would have been true.
But this match had one ‘variable’ that made it anything but ordinary.
“Your turn.”
At Jord’s prompting, Dezir moved a piece. A Rook advanced to block the only path leading to Jord’s King.
Jord understood why Dezir had withdrawn his Rook to the rear, even at the cost of abandoning other pieces. The Rook’s defensive power was the strongest of all Chess Pieces. In a frontal confrontation, the Rook alone possessed the remarkable ability to establish an entire line of defense.
“Persistent. The game should have been decided by now.”
“I have to hold on as long as I can.”
“……I don’t see how any of this will change anything in the end.”
“Not until I see it through to the finish.”
“If that’s what you believe.”
Now it was Jord’s turn. He reached across and tapped one of the many Chess Pieces stacked beside him—those he’d captured from Dezir.
‘If I pull the knight back, reunite with my main force, and methodically press forward, even a Rook will eventually crumble. Once the Rook falls, the game ends.’
The problem was that executing this strategy would require roughly thirty moves.
Thirty moves.
And therein lay the crisis.
‘There’s no time.’
Jord fidgeted with the Chess Pieces, his eyes drifting to his wristwatch.
The current time was 4:22. The meeting would begin at 4:27. Less than five minutes remained.
Five minutes.
Far too little time to execute all thirty moves.
‘Then I need to end this quickly.’
His King stood mere squares away from Dezir’s knight—not even three squares between them. If he could advance from here and capture the King, the game would end immediately.
‘Why retreat to regroup? Why not settle this with just the knights?’
If successful, there’d be no need to reach thirty moves.
‘I’ll have two knights handle the Rook while the remaining two Knights finish the King.’
With that thought, Jord pushed his knight forward aggressively.
Dezir smiled—a smile of vindication.
‘There it is. Greed.’
The worst move born of haste.
This was precisely the situation Dezir had been angling for.
‘The moment you mentioned you had only twenty-seven minutes to play, the outcome was already sealed.’
To any ordinary observer, it would look nothing but reckless—gambling with a King whose death seemed imminent.
Most mortals would have voiced their doubts, but Jord, to his credit, perceived Dezir’s intention with chilling precision.
‘He’s trying to shift his formation.’
Until now, Dezir’s formation had been ambiguous—neither purely offensive nor purely defensive. His pieces stood scattered, placed almost at random.
It was precisely because the formation was so disjointed that Jord had been able to breach Dezir’s defense.
‘The decision itself to shift formation is sound enough, but…….’
Where Jord’s reasoning stopped was exactly here—at the moment he dismissed Dezir as an amateur.

Jord shook his head.
‘It’s far too late now to shift my formation.’
At the same moment, Dezir was thinking.
‘He’ll assume it’s too late. And that would be a grave miscalculation.’
On Dezir’s next turn, he swapped the positions of his Rooks and Knights in the center. Suddenly, his pieces surrounded Jord’s Knight from three sides.
The haphazard formation transformed in an instant into an encirclement. A tight, impenetrable defense crystallized before his eyes.
The formation that had seemed neither one thing nor another was, in fact, a calculated design—one that would allow Jord, pressed for time and searching for an opening, to pivot fluidly between attack and defense as circumstances demanded.
“Hmm?”
A concentrated assault of Pawns and Rooks from a single point. And then the Battleship, serving as the spearhead. All forces converging at once.
He had concentrated his entire army against the Knight alone. Even in a dire position, it was impossible to hold back a full assault with the Knight by itself.
“This—this can’t be!”
The counterattack had begun.
Dezir methodically dispersed the Knight’s assault with his Pawns, while his Battleship unleashed barrages from a distance. The Rook, having conquered the Supply Line, joined the fray.
In moments, all of Jord’s Knights lay destroyed.
‘Recognizing the mistake won’t change a thing now.’
Then Dezir shifted his formation again.
Before Jord’s third turn could even arrive, Dezir’s formation had transformed into an offensive posture.
Every remaining piece Dezir commanded surged toward Jord.
Jord gathered his center forces to meet the assault head-on, intending to clash with Dezir’s advancing army directly.
‘It stings to have lost the Knights, but with superior numbers I can still push through.’
As if to mock that very judgment, an instant before the two armies collided, Dezir wheeled his forces westward without hesitation.
And the direction they moved toward was… the isolated Battleship, separated from the main body that had pushed forward.
‘Jord doesn’t use his Battleship in offense. That’s been proven from the start—throughout the entire game until he claimed the advantage, he never moved that Battleship.’
“…!”
Jord’s Battleship, struck by concentrated fire, shattered.
The player who destroys a Battleship gains an additional turn. With that bonus, Dezir seized the Supply Line.
The Supply Line that Jord had established was turned against him, becoming Dezir’s own.
‘The western flank, once breached, is comparatively weak in defense. That’s where I press the advantage.’
Beginning with the Battleship’s destruction, Dezir’s forces launched a concentrated assault on Jord’s left flank—the west.
Jord attempted to redirect his center forces to counter the maneuver, but having exhausted his Knights, he couldn’t respond swiftly enough to Dezir’s onslaught.
Ultimately, Jord’s left wing crumbled completely.
Jord pulled forces from his eastern front to destroy Dezir’s Supply Line, but there a Battleship stood guardian—one that had advanced so far that the King’s defense had been abandoned entirely. Dezir had not overlooked Jord’s habit of always hunting Supply Lines.
‘I’ve been read.’
A chill ran down Jord’s spine.
He scrambled to redirect his forces away from the Supply Line, back to reinforce the main army, but too many turns had already been wasted. In that time, the Pawns—the fundamental unit of Chess troop deployment—had been utterly annihilated.
There was no room for hesitation now.
Jord, belatedly, mobilized not just his center forces but every piece he had left to meet Dezir’s assault.
Watching those numbers, Dezir knew with certainty that victory was his.
‘He’s too hurried. Rushing like this, his units lack proper coordination.’
For Jord, who prized perfection, this was an unusual sight. His panic had stripped away his composure.
The end of the match came into view.
Scattered by Dezir’s forces, Jord’s army was picked apart, unit by unit.
Though Jord had maintained an overwhelming numerical advantage in raw troop count, that disparity narrowed until it was nearly gone.
Finally, even Jord’s last remaining Battleship fell.
“Checkmate.”
4:25.
Jord withdrew his hand from the board.
“I’ve lost.”

* * *

Jord’s Pad vibrated. He checked the screen and spoke to Dezir.
“It’s the Secretary.”
“Ah, feel free to take it.”
“Thank you.”
When Jord pressed the button on his Pad, a refined woman’s voice came through.
-Master of the Magic Tower, there isn’t much time left before the meeting begins. You should start heading down soon.
“Give me a moment, please.”
After speaking, Jord pressed the button to end the call and rested his interlaced hands on the desktop. When he spoke again, there was a note of admiration in his voice.
“I never thought I’d lose this one.”
“Had there been no time limit, you would have won, Master of the Magic Tower.”
“I’ve no interest in hearing such flattery.”
He pushed the Chess Board aside.
“Well then, it seems the time has come to hear it. What is your request?”
“I wish to propose a trade.”
“……What are the terms?”
“An idea I possess, and sponsorship-level support from the Magic Tower. I wish to exchange these two things.”
Jord raised an eyebrow.
“That’s troublesome. I find that request difficult to accept.”
“You lost our wager, Master of the Magic Tower.”
“True. And so I must hear your request. But what you’re calling a trade is not quite that. What is a trade, after all? It is the exchange of things or value that each party needs from the other. But in this case…… think about it, Dezir Armang.”
He continued speaking with measured calm.
“Trading the idea of a mere student for the support of the greatest institution? By any reasonable standard, that cannot be called a trade.”
“Even if the terms are somewhat unbalanced, you have an obligation to accept my proposal, Master of the Magic Tower.”
“By that logic, is exchanging a single peanut for a gold ingot also a trade? What you’re asking is no different from demanding support under the guise of trading.”
“In other words, it’s not that you refuse the very concept of a trade, but rather that it cannot proceed because the terms are unfair. Is that correct?”
Strictly speaking, he was right.
“Then it follows that if this trade were equitable for both sides, you would accept it.”

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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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