The Return of the EX-Class Wizard - Chapter 88

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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 088
All that remained for the North Korean Infiltration Unit was a single thing.
Rage, hatred, resentment, malice, and wounded pride bursting at the seams.
Their homeland had fallen into enemy hands in an instant, and those once deemed obsolete were now strutting about as the enemy’s lackeys.
How could they simply let this pass?
‘It is time to demonstrate the spirit of resistance of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.’
Approval had come from Shenyang as well.
If they could only inflict damage upon this research institute, it mattered not if they perished here.
…That was what they believed. Truly.
They did not know.
About the ‘professor-class’ mage who had come from another dimension, nor that Choi Kang-mok had already sensed it all.
“Director, I suspect you must have felt it as well.”
“Yes, I felt it too.”
Choi Kang-mok glanced subtly at Mayo, who floated weightlessly in the empty air.
That gaze alone was enough to impress Raymond.
“It is remarkable that such a conceptual entity exists in the Earth dimension. It appears there may be some bugs in the system’s balance adjustment capabilities.”
Raymond steeled his resolve and paid little attention to the approaching North Korean Infiltration Unit.
An Abyssal Abyss? Compared to the mythic-grade artifact Mayo, it was utterly insignificant.
“Is Mayo truly of that caliber?”
“Surely you, as its user, know better than I?”
Choi Kang-mok nodded in agreement.
‘Mayo is indeed broken.’
Honestly, if this were a game, Mayo should have already been nerfed.
The current top-tier players on Earth were around level 100, yet Mayo’s performance was calibrated at level 250 standards.
“Might I borrow it sometime?”
-Observation complete. Orbital calculation response detected from subject’s eye movement patterns. Gaze fixation velocity is abnormal.
-Probability of designation as experimental subject A upon magical contact: 98.3%.
-…Fascinating data to collect. Just a moment more. Just a brief, brief moment. If only I could experience dissection once.
Raymond’s presence.
That had awakened the ‘us’ within Mayo.
“…That would be rather difficult.”
“The conceptual entity’s ego does not welcome me, does it?”
Choi Kang-mok flinched.
No matter how professor-class he was, he shouldn’t be able to hear Mayo’s voice.
“Are you perhaps using some form of magic to eavesdrop on the artifact’s words?”
“No. It is simply… peculiar. Whenever such conceptual entities see me, they either have seizures or become obsessed. It is always one or the other.”
…It was strangely convincing.
“When the opportunity arises, I shall steal and study it. Do not worry.”
….
The ‘us’ within would not settle down.
He continues to spiral further into madness.
-Good, good, good, so good, the best.
-Let’s experiment together. Let’s break together.
-You’re a mad mage. Do you want to
become one of
us?
-We’ll hoard the data, mix the blood, and share the mind. Let’s research together, go mad together. Together, together, together…!
Raymond, his expression turning quite serious, continued speaking.
“By the way, it seems they’re installing explosives infused with a Pocket Dimension.”
“How are you discerning that?”
A professor-level mage’s scrying magic?
“Spirits. The ones I’ve contracted with are patrolling.”
“Can a mage even contract with spirits?”
By Earth standards, this made no sense whatsoever.
Spirits are natural entities. Mages wield artificial power.
Fundamentally, they are beings that don’t mix (or are despised by spirits’ standards).
Throughout history, there had never been a single case of a mage contracting with a spirit.
“Of course it’s possible.”
“Did you perhaps persuade them with great knowledge and magic?”
“No. I beat them with magic.”
“…Pardon?”
“You can’t just hit them moderately. They’ll bring their friends and come for revenge.”
“…Then how?”
“Precisely. I beat them until they were on the verge of losing consciousness, and then they contracted.”
“…Do spirits contracted that way actually follow orders well?”
“You have to command them. They won’t listen to requests.”
Something was fundamentally wrong here.
Spirits are typically classified as sentient beings.
A proper spirit summoner would politely make requests as standard practice, wouldn’t they?
But this person had no such concept.
“Isn’t that still problematic?”
“They do rebel periodically, but there’s nothing particularly troublesome about it. I just suppress them when needed.”
Choi Kang-mok reflected on this.
Ah, there’s truly so much to learn from this person. Of course, not through normal methods, but the new perspectives and ways of thinking were undeniably valuable.
Meanwhile, Kang Hye bounced on her heels anxiously.
‘…They said there was danger outside. But why are these two so excited?’
This was supposed to be a moment requiring caution, yet Professor Raymond’s eyes sparkled with excitement, and Christine’s eyes gleamed with enthusiasm as she waited for an opening to jump into the conversation.
Was I the only one feeling anxious?
Unable to hold back any longer, she cried out.
“Kang-mok, this isn’t the time to be leisurely chatting like this, is it?”
Her intuition.
An explorer’s instinct was screaming within her.
Something… was flowing in an enormously wrong direction.
“It’s nothing serious. They’re installing demolition charges for the outpost.”
Choi Kang-mok had attempted to grant the research institute Mayo’s abilities, but Professor Raymond had politely refused.
Mayo’s power to manifest the authority of the Small World—that is, ‘artificial laws’—was unsuitable for this place, he had said.
The Ayla Research Institute was a place where delicate experiments and research among NPCs were conducted.
If the Small World were introduced, there was a risk that experimental results would be distorted.
“Then… how do we stop that explosion?”
When Choi Kang-mok asked, Raymond grew serious as if he had been waiting for the question.
“That’s not the way a mage should think.”
Boom!
Before he could finish speaking, a deafening roar erupted from somewhere underground.
Windows shattered into fragments, and heat and vibrations hammered against the walls.
The floor trembled, and screams and dust cascaded down from the upper levels.
At that moment, Professor Raymond murmured.
“Reverte Minutum.”
Reality began to twist.
Choi Kang-mok instinctively understood.
Something impossible was happening right now.
‘The space. Time itself is flowing… backwards?’
The heat and impact of the explosion ceased.
And like rewinding film, the space began to reverse.
The shattered walls were restored, and the fragmented glass shards returned to their places, merging into a single window.
‘This isn’t simple restoration. It’s reversing time itself. But the targets are limited to things changed by the explosion.’
In other words, it wasn’t a perfect ‘complete’ temporal reversal, but an advanced technique that selectively rewound only the altered materials within that domain.
The flying flames vanished as if being sucked back in, and people who had been thrown far away returned to their original positions.
The pillars that had been shattered to pieces stood intact as if they had always been that way.
Raymond trembled all over with joy.
“Success! We succeeded!! Hahahaha!”
“….”
“….”
Choi Kang-mok and Christine didn’t know what to say.
Then, uniquely, one person.
Kang Hye burst in with wide eyes.
And she grabbed Raymond by the collar.
“You crazy bastard! You didn’t even know if it would succeed or fail!”
What if the research institute had actually been destroyed?
What if there had been casualties?
‘No. This isn’t the time for me to be like this.’
I had to go downstairs immediately and check if there were any casualties.
Confirming the victims came first.
I needed to descend to the lower floors right now.
However, Raymond blinked and spoke.
“You speak in a manner most unbecoming of a mage’s sibling. Magic does not always succeed, you see. Failure is merely part of the process.”
His words carried an undertone of boasting.
“Moreover, the spell I just cast was magic that reverses the flow of time itself.”
Magic that manipulates time.
That, along with magic that creates life, is classified as the ‘highest-grade forbidden magic’ in the magical world.
“This feat was only possible because this lower dimension is so simple and primitive. I deserve commendation.

* * *
The shock of the time magic had not yet faded.
Choi Kang-mok stared blankly into the distance before finally regaining his senses.
‘So this is the true world of mages.’
Merely ten seconds or so.
In that brief moment, time itself had been reversed.
An impossible miracle had unfolded before my eyes.
Raymond lay unconscious, his lips curved in a smile.
Choi Kang-mok steadied his breathing and began organizing his thoughts.
“Mayo, I’m counting on you.”
-Beginning coordinate extraction.
-The route will be organized shortly. I’ll guide you 🙂
Pink guidance lines rose from Mayo’s form.
The lines stretched through the empty air like tears in space, unfolding in my mind like a map.
It felt exactly like a real-time minimap being deployed.
‘This feels much clearer than last time.’
Thanks to the increased mental power that rose the moment I entered the research institute.
I thought only destructive power had increased, but my senses had been upgraded as well.
‘Pyongyang, Nampo, Chongjin….’
The guidance lines extended mostly toward Tower regions within North Korea.
The ash-gray lines that had been tangled converged into one, pointing in a single direction.
China. More precisely, Shenyang.
Mayo’s tracking line locked precisely onto Shenyang Tower.
A red exclamation mark even appeared on the map.
-Origin marking has been completed.
-Oh my, so we’re expanding the world line to the international stage now. I’m quite looking forward to this.
Choi Kang-mok let out a quiet laugh.
“So the origin point was Shenyang.”
Choi Kang-mok shared this finding with the Seoul Guild.
Seoul officially released a statement condemning Shenyang.
Naturally, Shenyang countered with claims of slander.
Choi Kang-mok leveraged the Seoul Guild’s voice to issue a declaration of war.
[Lmaooo an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth declaration]
└They destroyed my research institute, so we’ll destroy your school too
└But honestly, isn’t the evidence lacking?
└That guiding spell can be manipulated too, you know
└Would they really attack the Magic School though?
└There are students there, aren’t there? Seems like they’re crossing the line
The Tower remains unharmed even against fighter jets and missiles.
What if their bases were the same?
[Honestly, this is just the Seoul Guild flexing its power]
└The rich always have it easier, I guess
└LOL Isn’t this too much?
└I do feel a bit bad for Shenyang getting hit so hard
But in the very next moment, another decisive piece of information surfaced.
[There exists a special artifact called ‘Bottomless Pit.’ It’s dedicated base-destruction equipment.]
└Professor Raymond confiscated it
└Plus it’s Chinese-made. It’s been authenticated.
└If a professor-level mage notarized it, that’s fact
The conclusion was unmistakable.
Now it was no longer a question of ‘whether to attack’ but ‘when to attack.’

* * *
The Seoul safe house—no longer deserving of the name “secret” in any meaningful sense.
Still, it was comfortable enough.
After a deep sleep, I stretched luxuriously and greeted the day with renewed vitality.
Kang Hye, who had been dozing half-reclined on the sofa, asked a question.
“Are you heading to China now?”
“No.”
An unexpected answer.
But I remained composed.
“They’re probably preparing extensively as we speak. The urgency lies with them, not us.”
As Kang Hye tilted her head in confusion, I concluded in my usual manner.
“I’m going to trap them and beat them down.”
“…Trap them?”
“Slowly suffocating them sounds far more entertaining than just striking them outright.”
Kang Hye was momentarily at a loss for words.
Strangely enough, the fact that this madman was her brother somehow put her at ease.
“First, I’ll enter the Golden Labyrinth.”
“…Brother, you seem so alive lately.”
“Yeah. I’ve witnessed higher-dimensional magic. I’ve gained inspiration, learned invaluable lessons, and successfully executed buff magic.”
Meeting the Professor was undoubtedly a stroke of fate.
It felt as though I’d been given a signpost.
A concrete, tangible objective had materialized before me.
As a mage, I could hardly contain my exhilaration.
I made no effort to hide the smile spreading across my face as I stepped into the Golden Labyrinth.
Kang Hye suddenly found herself wondering.
‘Could it be possible to skip this one too?’

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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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