A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special - Chapter 76

Episode 76. At the End of a Nightmare (3)

[Dimension Burst.]

A 4-Circle Spatial Magic.
Crack.
With a sound like shattering glass, the space before Dezir began to fracture. The endless explosions that followed surged toward him in succession.

[Raise Earth.]

A 3-Circle earth-attribute magic.
He lifted the fractured ground to construct a barrier.
But the barrier crumbled under the onslaught, shattering completely.
Crash.
When debris from the broken barrier struck his arm, the defensive magic woven into his Clothesline activated in response.
Dezir rubbed the impact site without thinking. Without the Clothesline, his arm would have been severed clean through.
Raven Mask belonged to the highest tier of 6-Circle mages, while Dezir—drawing on the power of an Artifact—had barely scraped together the capacity of a 3-Circle mage.
All he could do now was scrape together every scrap of Mana from the depths of his reserves and endure.
‘Just a little longer. Just a little more…….’
Boom!
One side unleashed a barrage of attacks; the other desperately blocked. This exchange bore no resemblance to a fair contest.
Head-to-head, Dezir had no chance of victory.
Knowing this well, Dezir’s only goal was to hold his ground—to keep Raven Mask from turning on Jord.
Crack-crack-crack!

[Destruction Area.]

A 4-Circle Spatial Magic.
As Raven Mask unfurled the spell, tremendous energy began to concentrate around him.
The magic that unfolded obliterated the road, snapped buildings like stalks of straw, and consumed all in its path.
And then, just as it was about to swallow Dezir—
Pop.
The incantation unfolding before Raven Mask dissipated without a trace.
Counter-Analysis.
The flow reversed.
‘He already performed Counter-Analysis……?’
No matter how skilled one’s Counter-Analysis might be, dismantling a higher-tier spell in such a short span should have been impossible.
Yet the boy before him was capable of the impossible.
“……So you’ve been analyzing the structure of my incantations from the moment you first saw them.”
From the instant Raven Mask appeared in the Assembly Hall to duel with Jord, Dezir had been decoding his magical formulas.
He had prepared for this scenario from the very beginning.
Raven Mask quickly shifted the incantation he was unfolding. He altered the flow of the spell mid-cast and pivoted to a new sequence of calculations.
In that moment, not even Dezir could respond with Counter-Analysis. A 6-Circle spell was not the sort of magic one could reverse upon sight alone.
But it was only a reprieve.
His magic was reversed again mere moments later.
‘The Counter-Analysis speed is accelerating……!’
This time, despite not having pre-analyzed the incantation’s structure, Dezir completed the reversal in an impossibly short window.
He had read the flow of thought itself—a fundamental pattern of reasoning that any human possessed. No matter how Raven Mask altered his magical formula, the broad strokes of his thinking remained unchanged.
The structure of the incantation.
The mage’s conceptual approach.
The manner of unfolding.
With each passing second, these elements became more and more familiar to Dezir. His Counter-Analysis grew faster in turn.
They say battles between superior mages are like chess—each reading the other’s moves, anticipating them, and winning by foresight alone.
A duel of spells.
Though Dezir possessed a pittance of Mana compared to Raven Mask, he was responding to the higher-tier magic with composed precision.
The window in which Raven Mask could dominate and deploy his spells was shrinking by the moment. His moves were being read. His pattern of thought was being caught.
‘At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before every spell I cast gets blocked.’
Cold sweat beaded on his skin.
He felt himself slipping into disadvantage with each passing moment.
‘I’ve never fought a mage like this before.’
His previous duel with Jord had hinged on who could deploy magic more efficiently, whose destructive force proved stronger.
But this confrontation unfolded along entirely different lines.
A battle fought solely on computational power. No matter how devastating the spell he conjured, the moment it was counter-analyzed, he had no recourse.
Like watching ground crumble beneath him, one piece at a time.
When every formula he devised had been counter-analyzed by his opponent, he would lose.
Raven Mask adjusted his assessment of Dezir Armang.
‘A warrior on par with Jord.’
His mana reserves were limited.
His Circle rank was low.
His physical abilities were laughably poor.
Crack!
Yet he bridged that gap through computational prowess, through judgment, through experience. He closed an enormous gulf in raw power as though possessed of foresight itself, and even managed counterattacks.
Moreover, he wielded magic of every attribute with ease. In a mage duel, that alone demonstrated prowess of the Sixth Circle or beyond.

[Divao la Gravitia.]

Boom!
The spell went wide, slamming into a fountain. From the shattered basin, water geysered upward, drenching Raven Mask’s robes and feet.
Dezir did not miss the opening.

[Freezing Field.]

The water-logged ground began to crystallize white with ice. The puddles hardened around Raven Mask’s shoes and the hem of his robes, locking them solid.
Dezir pressed forward with his next spell, channeling maximum mana into it. The runes on his Gloves flashed brilliant white.

[Ice Orb.]

An offensive spell that unleashed countless frozen projectiles.
A torrent of ice bolts erupted outward, embedding themselves in Raven Mask’s body.
Crack, crack!
Ice bolts pierced into the figure, now entombed in pristine frost and unable to cast.
One bolt, two, three, dozens more.
Standing motionless with arrows of ice bristling from every limb, the form hardly resembled anything human anymore. It had transformed into something halfway between a man and a snowman.
“……All for nothing.”
The heap of snow detonated.
In the next instant, crushing agony enveloped Dezir.
“Urgh!”
Shatter!
A torrent of pain seized control of every nerve in his body.
The defensive magic of the Clothesline shattered, fragments scattering in all directions.
A terrible sensation burrowed through him, racing along every nerve, turning his vision white.
At the same time, his sight began to blacken.
The world inverted. Dezir’s body was flung backward, crashing into the corner of a building.
Crunch.
A sickening sound of bones cracking echoed through the courtyard.
Blood mixed with fragments of organs spilled from his lips as Dezir collapsed on the cold stone.
The Clothesline issued a dull warning chime.

-Warning. Clothesline mana reserves have fallen below ten percent. Defensive function severely compromised.

The blow had been powerful enough to nearly disable the Clothesline entirely in an instant.
“I never thought I’d need to resort to this.”
Hot flame flickered from within Raven Mask’s robes, melting the ice away. He stepped across the puddles, brushing snow from his garments. In that moment, Dezir caught sight of the formula taking shape in his hands.
The formula blooming in his palms was of a strange form never before seen. Formulas unfolded in three dimensions, their geometry intricate and boundless, rotating endlessly in calculated rotation.
A tesseract.
The formula was transforming in real time.
“Someone like you—a half-baked mage—isn’t worth my time.”
Dezir wiped the blood from his lips and got to his feet. A sharp ache ran through his bones, as if they’d cracked under the impact. Even so, his mind never stopped working.
‘What in the world was that…?’
Thud.
Something fell onto Dezir’s shoulder. A chunk of stone.
He turned to look behind him. The upper floors of the building he’d been driven into were collapsing, raining debris down around him. The structure was ruined beyond any hope of repair. And at the very edge of that devastation stood Dezir.
‘There wasn’t time to cast a high-Circle spell….’
Even if he’d managed to cast while taking the hit, the casting window would have been barely ten seconds.
Yet the power of the deployed magic exceeded the fifth Circle. The building had been obliterated, and he—caught in the blast—not only had his Clothesline’s defensive magic shattered but suffered severe trauma in the process.
Dezir bit his lip.
‘…Is it Secret Magic?’
It was a spell whose very principles eluded him.
Raven Mask reached out toward Dezir. The Tesseract trembled again.
“…!”
But suddenly he sensed something and hastily deployed a defensive spell.
In that instant, a tremendous impact echoed through the air.
It was a sniper spell.
The moment Raven Mask’s gaze fixed on the direction it had come from, a murderous presence flooded that space.
Shrieeeek!
A sound that might tear eardrums apart.
It was a blade swift as light itself.
“Get away from Dezir—nooooow!”
Fram’s sword cut through the air at a speed that had entered the realm of supersonic velocity.
Raven Mask deployed a fourth-Circle spell, but Fram tore through the wall of flame without hesitation.
There was no escape. Without time even to react, his side was slashed open by that razor-sharp edge.
‘This is dangerous.’
He deployed Spatial Displacement Magic without any incantation. His form seemed to scatter into particles in an instant.
In that moment, Dezir’s Counter-Analysis activated. The spatial shift was disrupted.
Raven Mask’s body reformed only a short distance away.
And in that place, an Ice Palace bloomed into existence.
The Ice Palace.
“…!”
Hundreds of ice spells rained down upon him.
Boom! Boom-boom-boom!
The surrounding area was utterly laid waste. But it didn’t matter—there was no one else nearby.
Dezir lifted his head.
Azest and Fram stood with their backs to him, facing outward.
“You two… how did you…?”
“We tracked you using the Pad’s location marker.”
The Pad had a party-member tracking function.
Fram gripped his sword. Though his expression trembled, the sharp angle of his eyes made his fury unmistakable.
“…Was our power not enough? Is that why you left us behind, Dezir?”
Fram’s question came without relaxing his guard against Raven Mask. His breathing was ragged, his face flushed with heat. His rage was palpable.
It was the first time Dezir had ever seen Fram this angry.
“I thought… you couldn’t handle it.”
“B-but! Do you have any idea how worried we were?”
Azest turned her gaze toward him, speaking through the blood that soaked her frame.
“You’re right that facing a demon would be too much for us. I’ll grant you that. But Dezir—look at the state you’re in. That hardly seems like a problem unique to us.”
“That’s….”
“No excuses needed.”
Ding.
Just then, a message arrived from Romantica, who was somewhere above, preparing a sniper shot.
—You’re not thinking of leaving us out this time too, are you, Dezir? Because I’d be genuinely disappointed.
Everyone in the party was worried about him.
“We set things up exactly as you taught us. Deployed a sniper, and Fram and I took the front line.”
Azest continued.
“We’re the party you trained. Can’t you trust us—even just this once?”
Dezir met their eyes.
They held a light that leaned on him, yes—but also burned with a desire to be of aid to him, however they could.

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