The Return of the EX-Class Wizard - Chapter 70

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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 070
There were three bosses in total for the Floor 30 optional boss battle.
The red door’s fire-attribute Hydra.
The blue door’s water-attribute Hydra.
The yellow door’s earth-attribute Hydra.
Choi Kang-mok chose the yellow door. In other words, the earth-attribute Hydra.
Kang Hye’s voice reached me.
“You madman!”
Choi Kang-mok waved his hand lightly in response.
In truth, until the moment before entering, I had intended to go through the red door.
But once I arrived at the scene, my thoughts changed.
That’s simply how the Tower works.
There are times when intuition is necessary. Like now.
It would certainly be bewildering from Kang Hye’s perspective.
‘I’ll explain later.’
A mage proves themselves through results.
[Entering the Boss Room.]
In the distance, an enormous serpent suffused with golden light coiled upon itself.
Three heads. The overwhelming presence was more intense than any entity I had faced thus far.
‘About the size of a small building.’
I felt the weight of its savage gaze.
[!Boss Battle Starting in 60 Seconds!]
‘The chest. That mana stone where light begins to seep in—that’s the weak point.’
I had to destroy it within a minute.
Let me trust in the power of this gleaming staff.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to resort to magic to shatter it.
‘Clearing at EX-rank takes priority over the job reversal gimmick anyway.’
Since Kang Hye, the promoted explorer, had entered with me, even SSS+ would have been acceptable.
‘I will succeed.’
Twenty-nine consecutive clears and thirty consecutive clears have a different ring to them.
It’s a number impossible not to covet.
–
Master,
you must have a plan 🙂
Mayo displayed infinite trust.
“Actually, my agility is higher.”
The impact from tearing off the blast door and winning the arm-wrestling exhibition match against Lee Kang-nam was simply too great.
In truth, my agility surpasses my strength.
[!Boss Battle Starting in 40 Seconds!]
‘My strength naturally accumulated during my years of magic use.’
In other words, passive evolution.
Agility, on the other hand, was the result of daily refinement born from the necessity to survive.
Every single day, I dodged magical shards and wove through a deadly barrage of attacks.
That was active training.
It was only natural that an ability honed through active cultivation surpassed one that developed passively.
[!Boss battle begins in 30 seconds!]
“The earth-attribute Hydra is slow, isn’t it?”
-Yes. It’s noticeably slower than the fire and water variants. However, it possesses far superior attack power and defense.
The Hydra spits venom simultaneously from all three of its heads.
Calling it spit was generous—it was essentially magic.
‘Each strike is a fatal blow.’
Frightened?
After dodging Dil-jjik-nu’s magical shards, something like this hardly registered as threatening.
Friend-foe identification, shield, invulnerability.
The mage was already battle-hardened.
-It also possesses special abilities to compensate for its slow attack speed. You’re already aware of this, naturally.
Choi Kang-mok nodded.
When earth-attribute attacks struck the Boss Room’s walls or floor, they ricocheted upward.
They transformed into boulders the size of a human head, scattering in all directions to assault the players.
It was a wide-area attack difficult to evade.
“Right.”
But was it truly more troublesome than Dil-jjik-nu’s magical shards?
My answer was no.
The magical shards were invisible, far more numerous, and infinitely more lethal.
‘Another day of reverse difficulty, it seems.’
Its formidable defense?
Dil-jjik-nu’s magic conversion rate of 1%.
I decided to trust in that.
‘If it doesn’t work, I’ll just crush it with magic.’
As befits a mage.
[!Boss battle commences!]

* * *
I rushed toward the Hydra at full speed.
‘Am I really this fast?’
In the chaos of battle, it’s difficult to even perceive one’s own mobility.
But now it was undeniable.
My body, sprinting at maximum velocity, felt impossibly light.
In an instant, I reached the Hydra.
One of its three heads moved faster than anticipated.
‘The pattern’s changed.’
Before it could spit, the Hydra’s maw gaped wide and
its neck stretched forth to swallow me whole. An unscripted attack. An improvised response.
Yet Choi Kang-mok remained unruffled.
‘Slow.’
A reversal of perception. Better than expected.
It felt like a sluggish club approaching.
Like a lethargic bludgeon hurtling through the air.
I twisted my body to evade, then kicked off the creature’s snout and launched skyward.
Graceful and fluid, like an archer in flight.
My trajectory aimed for the chest—the magical core.
The spot where the magical stone glowed faintly crimson.
‘Now!’
I swung the gleaming golden spear in a brilliant arc.
Crack!
The sound rang out before the impact registered.
‘What?’
The golden spear crumbled to dust and vanished.
“….”
As I landed, I stared into empty space.
The spear that had gleamed so brilliantly was now nothing but dispersing particles.
“It shattered just like that?”
The Hydra snarled.
The spear’s destruction meant one thing: my one-shot strategy had failed.
‘It’s going to spit.’
The Hydra opened its maw wide.
Whoooosh—!
I felt a faint surge of magical pressure.
‘Huh?’
The magical pressure from the Floor 30 boss was weak.
The venom sprayed forth.
Since it had come to this.
‘I’ll block this with Mayo and use Energy Bolt to destroy the magic stone.’
Blocking with Mayo succeeded.
More precisely, the Hydra’s saliva attack couldn’t even penetrate ‘Friend-or-Foe Identification’.
The saliva that splattered across the Boss Room transformed into rocks and flew at me, but as expected, it was useless within Choi Kang-mok’s ‘Domain’.
-So this is the extent of Mayo’s true power.
-Truly moving. I am filled with admiration and awe.
Mayo was deeply moved.
Myself, who had always failed to protect my master.
My defenses, perpetually breached and powerless.
But today, from beginning to end, I was perfect.
And just one timing too late.
A sharp crackling sound echoed.
It wasn’t an instant-death judgment, but the magic stone was destroyed nonetheless.
[Hydra (Earth) has been defeated!]
‘Huh?’
Choi Kang-mok was slightly flustered.
The Energy Bolt was already charged, and this was a relatively cramped Boss Room.
If it detonated, this would be catastrophic.
‘Why isn’t the exit notification appearing!’
If I couldn’t exit, I’d have no choice but to fire it.
“Mayo, brace yourself.”
I fired it as far away as possible.
I imbued it with maximum penetration properties, driving the magic deep into the wall.
With the bolt still charged, I moved as close to the door as I could.
My heart began to race.
[!Hidden Condition Satisfied!]
[You have defeated the boss in a manner severely lacking in correlation with your job class!]
A notification followed confirming I’d satisfied the job-reversal gimmick.
‘Damn it.’
After firing it as far as I could,
I pulled the Boss Room door shut.
It was heavy. Far heavier than I’d imagined.
Without my strengthened body, I might have failed to close it.
Slam!
The door was sealed.
“Kang Hye! Run!”
Just in case the magical fragments pierced through the door.
Without hesitation, I scooped up my younger sister in my arms.
Boom boom boom boom!
We sprinted toward the End Point.
Even carrying an adult woman, my speed didn’t diminish in the slightest.
“Oppa.”
“I’ll explain everything later.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
Kang Hye was bewildered.
“…You were this fast?”
That speed exceeded her expectations.
No weapons, no magic, yet moving without a single tremor while carrying an adult.
‘So it was agility, not raw strength.’
“If I’d known this, I wouldn’t have planned the strategy this way….”

* * *
Choi Kang-mok sat leaning against the stone wall, wiping the sweat from his brow.
‘People tend to let their guard down so easily.’
The more accustomed one becomes to magic, the more small oversights accumulate.
I thought I’d be able to exit the Tower immediately after defeating the boss.
Since that had always been the case until now, I loaded the energy bolt without hesitation.
If it didn’t work, I could always fire it at the boss.
I’d nearly made a grave mistake.
‘Don’t lose sight of your original purpose.’
Kang Hye glanced around the surroundings.
“I received the boss defeat notification. And the hidden condition satisfaction notification too.”
But the progress was taking far too long.
She checked the notification window.
[Notice updating…]
“As far as I know, it’s never taken this long before.”
Normally, Tower clearance is confirmed along with notifications stating ‘has a positive effect on Tower and Gate generation’ and ‘hidden rewards, random boxes will be granted’.
Kang Hye reached a conclusion.
“In other words, you must have satisfied an EX-rank hidden condition. Timing-wise…you defeated it in one hit, right?”
“It was more of an ambiguous one hit though….”
Hearing the explanation, it was indeed one hit.
“That counts as one hit, oppa. Get your head straight.”
“….”
“One hit isn’t when a monster turns to powder in a single attack.”
Dil-jjik-nu’s standards were oddly skewed.
Normally, monsters don’t scatter like powder.
They simply collapse ordinarily.
“If you defeat it in one attack, it’s one hit. Understand?”
[Update complete.]
[!Nationwide Notice for South Korea!]
“Hm?”
A nationwide notification for South Korea appeared.
[Multiple ■■ Gates have been generated due to satisfying hidden conditions on Floor 30.]
[Generation Zone: Seoul]
And Choi Kang-mok received a personal reward as well.
A golden box materialized before my eyes.
───────
[Random Box]
A mysterious box that grants rewards at random
※ The faster you open it, the greater your fortune!
───────
I opened it without hesitation.
Gleam!
Golden light flashed brilliantly.
───────
[■■ Key]
A key whose purpose remains unknown
───────
Choi Kang-mok intuited it immediately.
“This is a linked item, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It seems like it.”
The simultaneous appearance of the ‘■■ Gate’ and ‘■■ Key’ was no coincidence.
Only then did the clear notification follow.
[Clear Rank: SSS+]
Choi Kang-mok exhaled a sigh.
SSS+, not EX.
“It really wasn’t a one-shot after all.”
It would have needed to be a true one-shot to earn an EX rank.
Still, with the promoted explorer Kang Hye on my side, the outcome wasn’t bad in the end.
The clear rank was adjusted upward and recognized as EX.
‘I’ll need to be more careful with mechanics like this going forward.’
An EX clear is more important than achieving the mechanic anyway.
I learned one lesson from the boss floor.
Without a true one-shot, EX rank is difficult to obtain.
───────
[Hall of Fame – Floor 30]
[World] [Personal]
1. -(EX, South Korea)
2. Supernovasuper(SS, South Korea)
…
───────
[Exiting the Tower.]
Upon exiting the Tower, I found myself in the midst of absolute chaos.

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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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