The Return of the EX-Class Wizard - Chapter 292

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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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The Return of an EX-Rank Mage Episode 292
Ever since EX-rank Awakener Choi Kang-mok appeared, the System had been displaying an unusually high number of ‘Universal Announcements.’
[!Universal Announcement!]
[The journey of the ‘Great Mage’ is now publicly revealed.]
[The exclusive streaming contract with Streamer Kang■■ is temporarily terminated.]
Kang Pal-do’s broadcast monopoly had been revoked.
Instead, the Tower took the initiative and streamed Choi Kang-mok’s boss battle directly.
[Now, denizens of the Universe, let us praise the magic of EX-rank…]
The System corrected itself.
[Revere…]
Bzzt—
A faint static crackled across the Tower’s surface.
[Respect…]
After several iterations of noise, it finally settled on neutral phrasing.
[You may now witness the magical battle of the ‘Great Mage.’]
The walls of the Universe’s Tower became one colossal ‘display screen.’
It was the first time such a thing had ever occurred on a universal scale.
-But isn’t the 100th Floor boss a bit much?
-Sure, EX-rank Awakeners are geniuses, but he’s still a rookie, right?
-Experience-wise, he shouldn’t stand a chance?
A veteran magical creature.
A holy mage.
The clash between these two madmen captivated the Universe’s inhabitants.
It was the hottest topic across all existence.
In the meantime, the disciple is lol
-Obsessed maniac for real;
-I’d be tempted by EX-rank too tbh
-What’s Raymond doing? Pease is dominating
From a third-party perspective, the magical creature-mage battle seemed to favor the magical creature slightly.
Pease appeared to be reading Choi Kang-mok’s entire combat pattern.
-Combat is always relative anyway
-No matter how skilled, getting crushed by someone more skilled is inevitable
However, the reality was somewhat different.
Choi Kang-mok responded.
“There doesn’t seem to be much to learn here.”
Though I hate to admit it, Professor Raymond truly is a genius at teaching.
Even though he hadn’t explicitly taught me much, I had still learned a great deal.
That was the end result.
But Pease was a different story.
There was little to learn.
Choi Kang-mok had never truly believed it was a genuine magical exchange.
He had merely pretended to trust.
It was a form of misdirection.
“I anticipated that assassination magic would follow.”
Choi Kang-mok twisted his body and deployed a defensive spell.
It was an internal defense magic he had long conceived of only in his mind.
‘I can do this.’
Faith performs miracles.
What seemed utterly impossible through calculation alone—constructing defensive magic within his own body—had finally become possible.
A small explosion erupted within his body.
The collision between assassination magic and defensive magic.
“Ugh.”
There was a slight impact.
A black hole appeared in Choi Kang-mok’s right chest.
‘Healing magic.’
His healing magic was creation magic recorded in the Magic Archive.
It swiftly filled the wound and restored his body.
On the surface, Choi Kang-mok appeared to have suffered grievous damage, but it was Pease who had sustained the greater injury.
-Wait? What is this?
-Cracks are forming on Pease’s body?
-Did he counterattack?
-No, that’s a side effect of time magic.
Choi Kang-mok and Pease entered a standoff.
Both understood.
The smallest gap and a single mistake would determine victory and defeat.
Both were mages capable of delivering fatal blows to one another.
“Pease. Do not assume you alone can wield misdirection magic.”
Pease gazed down at the spider-web-like cracks that had formed across his body.
He too deployed healing magic to prevent the cracks from spreading.
Pease was not suffering. Rather, he was delighted.
“So that’s what it was!”
A System AI more refined than Kang Pal-do’s own interpreted the situation in real time.
[The ‘wide-range light’ that appeared to be neutralized seems not to have been neutralized after all.]
Past footage played back briefly in real time.
-Mere damage does not affect me, my student.
But that was not the case.
Sometimes, certain simple damage transcended all technique.
“You neutralized my defensive magic with damage that far exceeded my calculations!”
He had prepared sufficiently.
He knew better than anyone how terrifying a mage’s destructive power could be.
That’s why I prepared and made ready more thoroughly than anyone else.
Yet even that proved insufficient.
Choi Kang-mok let out a soft chuckle.
“You truly lack the qualifications to be a master.”
“?”
“I’ll give you a hint. Examine your body once more.”
Pease didn’t entirely trust Choi Kang-mok’s words.
Yet in this moment, academic curiosity overwhelmed all resistance.
“I must have misunderstood something… Ah…!”
Choi Kang-mok’s words were truth.
Pease trembled.
“The entire Light magic was an illusion!”
Light filling the space?
Destruction through it?
All of it was false!
“The real weapon was time!”
I thought I had countered with time magic.
I had chanted the incantation ‘Slow Progression’.
I thought I had slowed time to defend against the Meteor Blade!
But none of it was true.
“You dealt damage to time itself…!”
Pease shuddered once more.
There was nothing physical about it.
It simply existed.
Time merely flowed forward.
Yet that very flow had become a devastating destructive force, gnawing away at me.
Nullifying all my defensive magic in the process.

* * *
Choi Kang-mok smiled faintly.
He had already experienced the recognition phase, and now stood in a state where he had acknowledged his own essence.
He had become a completely different ‘mage’ than before.
He murmured the insights he had gained thus far as if entranced.
“In truth, my unlocking was never unlocking at all—it was closer to destruction.”
It wasn’t only unlocking that was this way.
Haeju was the same.
I had firmly believed it was Haeju, but in reality it was destruction.
“Sniping is the same.”
If you destroy everything, it becomes sniping.
I rationalized it that way, but strictly speaking it was destruction.
No matter what magic I wielded, the essence was always destruction.
“My mana is fundamentally the power to destroy all things.”
I hated admitting it, but I had no choice.
Before acknowledgment, this ‘destruction’ had been a side effect.
But now everything changed completely.
“Destruction and damage are primary.”
Everything else was merely a secondary effect derived from that destruction.
This applies universally to all magic.
Even time magic born from faith is ultimately magic that Choi Kang-mok wields.
My essence inevitably bleeds through.
Pease, moved by this realization, nodded his head.
“I see. So damage seeps into the time magic as well.”
My disciple
had grown by intentionally restricting this phenomenon.
But now he was actively exploiting it.
It meant he had entered the next stage.
“You deceived me with wide-area light so I wouldn’t notice. Hahaha!”
Fascinating. Delightful. A ‘mage’ can do such things!
Time magic is inherently a highly advanced form of magic.
It is difficult to layer something else onto it.
“Yet a mage who has acknowledged his essence naturally lets that essence bleed through! I see! I see! So that’s how it is! Ahahaha!”
Pease too had finally acknowledged it.
“In the end, this boss battle has become.”
Just as Choi Kang-mok had originally desired.
“A magical exchange.”
And Choi Kang-mok answered.
“I made you believe it would be.”
The transformation from a boss battle into a magical exchange.
In that moment of trust, Pease found an opening.
“Let me teach you, Pease. This isn’t a magical exchange—it’s a boss battle.”
The 100th Floor boss. The magical creature Pease.
Earth’s boss. The great mage Choi Kang-mok.
The boss battle was far from over.
In combat, the objective was to topple your opponent by any means necessary.
Choi Kang-mok adhered to that principle faithfully.
[Entering the Pocket Dimension, ‘Light World’.]
-(Light): Why now?
Light couldn’t comprehend it.
Through the Pocket Dimension, I could sense the user’s heart.
-(Light): Why are you trying to flee? Why? We are the Destruction King! Running doesn’t suit us! Let’s go! Charge forward! Fight!
The Light World was an ability born from the primordial beast ‘Light’.
Just as Choi Kang-mok’s essence was ‘destruction’, Light’s essence was ‘escape’.
It had survived by fleeing from countless poachers and mages.
In matters of escape, it was unrivaled across the universe.
What Choi Kang-mok chose was retreat.
“This isn’t a magical exchange match—it’s combat.”
A mage entering battle must be different.
Victory by any means was all that mattered.
“Time is my ally.”
Time magic continued to unfold relentlessly.
Without any physical constraints, it encompassed damage across this entire space.
It pierced through Pease’s defensive magic and continued assailing him.
Truly, time was on his side.
Then?
There was no need to face him head-on.
“I only need to buy time.”
“…An excellent judgment.”
Pease was impressed.
My disciple had grown far beyond my expectations.
“Your growth transcends imagination, my disciple.”
Pease gazed at Choi Kang-mok, who had deployed Baek-ik.
He was right before my eyes, yet unreachable.
He appeared as the very incarnation of evasion.
Rather than force an attack, Pease continued his own ‘magical exchange’.
As if it were his final pride.
“There is a vast gap even in healing magic.”
Choi Kang-mok’s healing was ‘natural regeneration’.
Recovery magic born from an extraordinarily developed physique.
It was akin to restoration occurring naturally and of its own accord.
But Pease’s approach was fundamentally different.
“If my disciple’s magic is natural recovery magic, then mine borders on forced recovery magic.”
He forcibly mends what is broken.
By wielding the subtleties of magic itself.
And he resists, preventing symptoms from deteriorating further.
It diverges entirely from Choi Kang-mok’s magic—the kind that simply lets things heal on their own.
“Typically, natural recovery magic is far too slow to be practical in combat situations.”
But my disciple is a different matter altogether.
“Natural recovery magic faster than forced recovery magic. Truly, it is wondrous!”
Choi Kang-mok, having unfurled Baek-ik, increased the distance between himself and Pease.
After all, distance was invariably safer than proximity.
[‘The Great Mage’ had eliminated every variable before engaging in combat.]
Now the magical creature Pease himself believed this was a ‘magical exchange.’
The mage’s magic was so captivating that it made him want to believe precisely that.
[He demonstrated that sometimes the most cunning form of retreat can become the wisest battle tactic.]
-AI ultimately abandoned neutrality?
Haha, but they still pretended to be neutral…
-But shouldn’t the Tower be on the boss’s side?
The 100th Floor boss.
Pease let out a low chuckle.
“But do not forget, my disciple.”
It is not over until it is over.
Fleeing?
“Try striking me if you can.”
In truth, his greatest confidence lay not in combat magic.
Ever since experiencing the ‘mage’ from another dimension long ago, his nature had transformed completely.
Pease’s eyes gleamed with intensity.
“You cannot escape from me.”
His greatest strength was not battle prowess, but obsession itself.
“You are my disciple alone.”
He had chosen strategic retreat?
All the better.

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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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