A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special - Chapter 80

Episode 80. He Makes a Resolution (2)

Whooooosh.
The ship’s horn sounded. It was the signal that departure was imminent. Romantika’s heart had sunk.
“That idiot! Where the hell did he go?”
Romantika powered on her Pad.
The Pad had a function that allowed party members to search each other’s locations. It was the same feature she’d used when tracking Dezir Armang after he’d donned the raven mask and teleported.
She searched for Dezir’s position. The result came back shortly.
Dezir was inside the ship. In one of the cabins.
Romantika bolted toward the cabins like a madwoman.
She vaulted up the stairs four steps at a time, shouldering her way through the throng of people cramming the corridor.
She offered half-hearted apologies to those she bumped into as she made her way toward the location her Pad indicated.
In that moment, she truly cursed the sheer scale of the Eru merchant fleet. The cabins stretched on endlessly, a labyrinth of wooden doors.
The Pad’s location function didn’t provide a precise room number. That meant the only way to find Dezir was to open every cabin door.
Romantika didn’t hesitate.
She wrenched open the first cabin door. A young couple stared at her with startled eyes. Dezir wasn’t there.
“My apologies.”
Bang.
The first cabin door slammed shut.
The second cabin proved no different.
Bang.
The second cabin door closed.
One by one, Romantika threw open cabin doors in her search for Dezir.
Through a porthole, she caught glimpses of the harbor slowly receding. Her pace quickened.
And then…….
The last cabin remained.
Before opening it, Romantika forced her excited breathing to calm. She needed to compose herself so she could properly lecture him.
“Listen, Dezir! Are you trying to play some kind of hide-and-seek game with……!”
The last door opened. The cabin was empty. Very slowly, Romantika stepped inside. There was no sign anyone had been here. This room alone was pristine.
As she examined the vacant cabin, she noticed a Pad—the kind issued by Hebrion Academy—sitting on the desk.
“…….”
Romantika picked it up, then retrieved her own Pad. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them.
And she sent a message to Dezir from her own Pad.

-Please don’t ring.

Ding.
The Pad in her other hand let out its notification tone without mercy.
“…….”
For a moment, Romantika barely kept the surging emotions at bay.
As she left the cabin and made her way back to the deck, fury burned in her every step.
While she’d been searching the cabins, the ship had already left the harbor.
Romantika approached the Butler. Upon seeing her twisted expression, he went pale.
“Ah, Miss, what’s the matter?”
“Shut up.”
Romantika said coldly.
“From now on, answer my questions directly. And answer as quickly as you can.”
“Y-yes, Miss.”
“How did you know I was in that refugee column!”
“I, I went down and continued searching.”
“Don’t lie! It’s impossible you only questioned someone to that extent—someone who was supposedly outside the whole time!”
Volcanic ash.
Ash continued to fall from the sky. Romantika, Azest, Fram, and all the refugees had been dusted with it the entire time they were outside. But the Butler’s clothes were immaculate. There was no way he’d been wandering about in those conditions.
His attire was far too clean.
In other words, he’d been inside the ship all along.
As the Eru Family’s servant, he would have evacuated first with the rest of the household.
The Butler lost his words at Romantika’s sharp observation.
“Tell me the truth! Right now! If you don’t answer me this instant, I’m jumping off this ship!”
At Romantika’s tone—one that genuinely seemed as though she might throw herself overboard—the Butler found himself unable to keep the strict silence he’d been commanded to maintain.
“At that time, the black-haired friend you asked me to attend to informed me that you were in that place. But miss, I swear——”
Romantika didn’t need to hear another word. She pushed past the Butler and climbed over the ship’s railing.
“Ah, miss!”
A scream.
Just before Romantika’s body plummeted into the sea, Azest caught her by the collar.
Romantika tried to wrench free of the Clothesline, but Azest was faster, hauling her back.
The two of them tumbled to the deck in a tangle of limbs.
“Let go!”
“Regain your senses, Romantika.”
Romantika struggled to break free from Azest’s grip, while Azest worked to pin her down. They rolled across the deck several times.
“Release me this instant!”
“I’ll let you go once you promise to stay calm.”
“There’s no way I’d make such a promise!”
Romantika strained with all her might to shake Azest off, but she was utterly outmatched in strength.
Azest refused to let her move.
Romantika gritted her teeth and turned to face her.
“You knew, didn’t you?”
Azest spoke.
“Yes.”
“Since when did you know!”
“Since the moment Dezir started that fight and delayed our procession.”
The fight.
Romantika felt as though someone had struck her skull with a hammer.
The skirmish that had broken out in the middle of the procession—that too had been Dezir’s doing. A distraction to buy time to hide the Pad.
And while Romantika had been tracking that Pad, she’d wasted the very hours she needed until the ship set sail.
‘Fool.’
She berated herself. She couldn’t forgive the version of herself that had fallen for Dezir’s scheme.
She cried out at Azest, her voice breaking with anguish.
“You noticed! You caught on far faster than this idiot! So why didn’t you stop him! Why!”
Azest’s tone was calm—a stark contrast to Romantika’s fury.
“I didn’t notice. He asked me to do this.”
“What?”
Romantika’s struggles ceased for a moment.
Azest continued.
“He asked me not to let you and Fram go.”

* * *

Dezir ran without pause along the Coastline.
The entire vicinity of Deltaheim lay shrouded in volcanic ash, as though wrapped in fog.
He ran on, his mouth and nose covered, coughing repeatedly from the acrid smoke that made each breath a struggle.
In his field of vision appeared a corpse with eyes wide open. Shattered rock lay strewn about the body—the victim had likely been killed in a single blow without even registering what hit them.
At the sight of such devastation, Dezir’s pace slowed, then stopped altogether.
“…….”
Dezir had no words. The scene was utterly appalling. Yet at the same time, it was profoundly familiar to him.
He had once lived a life that brushed against death itself. And all this time, he had witnessed countless deaths.
The friends who had shared his school years. The juniors who had followed him with particular devotion.
And Romantika.
Among all those deaths, Dezir could not forget Romantika’s in particular.
Perhaps it was because their fates had been oddly similar.
A story that ended in a Sad Ending.
Romantika Eru had possessed a brilliance that outshone almost everyone.
And as the daughter of a marquis, she had entered Hebrion Academy without any difficulty, gaining admission to the Alpha Class—and had been accepted into the Blue Moon Party, deemed the finest circle within the academy.
But it wasn’t long before the truth emerged: that Romantika’s father had purchased his title with gold. The aristocrats of the Alpha Class rejected her outright.
Unable to endure the humiliation heaped upon her by the Alpha Class, Romantika eventually fled to the Beta Class, but she found no welcome there either.
There was no place left for her in the world.
In the cage of the Beta Class, Romantika’s talent withered gradually away. By the time she graduated, she had reached only the Third Circle.
And so came the Shadow Labyrinth.
Romantika entered the Shadow Labyrinth as a member of the Western Kingdom Alliance, and there she reunited with Dezir Armang, who had also emerged from the Beta Class.
That Dezir and she should grow close, bound by similar circumstances, was perhaps inevitable.
On that terrible battlefield, they became each other’s anchor.
They kept each other alive for each other’s sake.
And six years after the Shadow Labyrinth’s arrival.
In the end, Dezir could not save Romantika.
‘I won’t repeat that mistake again.’
Dezir’s resolve, returned to the past.
It was not only her.
Azest and Fram.
Jord and Priscilla.
The inhabitants of Deltaheim and tourists from every nation.
And the leaders of the Western Kingdom Alliance gathered for the grand conference.
If Dadeunuf could not be stopped, none of them could escape death.
The situation spiraled toward catastrophe.
‘I have to stop it.’
To eliminate a demon, one need only destroy the core at its heart.
When he had faced Dadeunuf in the Shadow Labyrinth, armies of mages had deployed Freezing Magic to weaken Dadeunuf’s power, while knights equipped with Blangsium Swords had torn through its body piece by piece until they located the core.
Fortunately, this time Dezir knew the approximate location of the core, but the problem was that he lacked the sheer power needed to pierce through Dadeunuf’s body.
Dezir looked down at his palm.
‘I will stop it.’
He would stop it.
Dezir clenched his fist. At last, he resolved to employ the final method he had held in reserve all this time.

Dragon Language.

Magic that unfolds through a system divorced from the framework used by modern humanity.
It possessed a power of such magnitude that it transcended ordinary magic entirely.
At the climax of the Shadow Labyrinth, Dezir Armang had reverse-engineered the Dragon Magic of Boromier Neapolitan, a Meteor-rank Calamity Dragon, and so understood its formula.
It was a spell of truly immense power.
But with such power came countless dangers.
Whether his body could withstand the deployment of Dragon Language, which broke the laws of nature itself, was uncertain—but now was not the time to concern himself with such things.
‘I’ll finish this. Cleanly.’
A deep rumble echoed.
As Dadeunuf drew closer inch by inch, the heat intensified and the smoke grew thicker and more acrid.
Dezir gritted his teeth.

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