Chapter 1: An Unexpected Transfer
The cries of demons tore through the air from every direction.
Black-armored legionnaires choked the corridor, while countless bat-winged abominations dangled from the ceiling.
Beneath my boots, the floor was already a squelching sludge of blood and crushed bone.
The Demon Lord was down on one knee atop his crumbling throne.
He was still breathing.
That was the single biggest problem.
"Focus your fire on the rear!"
The moment I shouted, the elf archer's glowing arrow shot forward.
Without missing a beat, I cut my chant short.
Seca [Sever]
Space warped as if folding in on itself.
The horde of demons split apart.
Red blood and black flesh splattered against the walls, opening a narrow path forward.
It was only for a split second, but…
"Run!"
That was more than enough.
The hero turned, gripping his holy sword tightly.
The elf archer scooped up the gnome saintess without breaking stride.
Healing light still radiated from the saintess's bloodstained hands, but her face was deathly pale.
Everyone ran.
Except for one person.
"?"
Sensing something was wrong, the hero looked back.
His eyes met mine.
"Kael!"
I chuckled at the uncharacteristic tremor in his voice.
I could only laugh.
Otherwise, I'd look like I'd actually stayed behind to die.
"Go."
"What are you doing?!"
"Trust me."
I slammed my staff into the ground.
The mana formula I'd hidden beneath the black marble floor spread out.
Blue lines expanded like a spiderweb, wrapping around the entire throne room.
"We've somehow survived this long, haven't we?"
"Kael!"
"I don't plan on dying this time, either."
The hero's face contorted.
Just as he took a step toward me—
"If you stay, everyone dies."
I spoke with deliberate coldness.
That stopped him in his tracks, if only for a moment.
But it seemed my words had worked.
The hero gritted his teeth.
His hand trembled around the hilt of his holy sword as he finally turned away.
"You better follow us!"
"Don't order me around. Since when were you my superior?"
The hero didn't answer.
He just kept running with his head down.
Their figures disappeared beyond the ruined hallway.
Only then did I let out a long breath.
"…Now."
The demons swarmed in.
Wounded demonic beasts closed in on me like scavengers scenting their final prey.
The Demon Lord raised his head.
A smile spread across his bloodstained face.
"Mage… What can you possibly do all by yourself?"
I looked at him.
How many people had died just trying to kill this monster?
The soldiers at the northern fortress who refused to close the gates until the end.
The priests who burned alive after evacuating the children first.
The combat engineers who blew the bridge and were buried alive—all to buy a single day against the Demon Lord's army.
And even my master.
That foolish, kind old man who told me to survive until the end was dead, too.
This was my only chance.
The Demon Lord was on his last breath.
But he was still breathing.
A moment like this would never come again.
Even if it did, how many more sacrifices would it cost?
The demons would appoint a temporary ruler, until the Demon Lord recovered.
The war wouldn't end.
The continent would be soaked in blood for another few decades.
Rather than watch the cycle repeat, I'd gladly take my place at the center of the magic circle.
"What can I do alone, you ask?"
Snap.
As I snapped my fingers, the entire throne room lit up—the floor, pillars, ceiling, the throne, and even the ground beneath the demons' feet.
Every magic spell I had carved since entering this castle awakened all at once.
"Mages are meant to turn the battlefield upside down on their own."
The Demon Lord's expression twisted.
"Don't tell me…"
"That's right."
I pulled a small crystal from my coat.
A teleport stone.
It was linked in advance to an escape point outside.
Theoretically, the plan was perfect.
Right before the blast triggered, I'd warp out with the teleport stone.
The Demon Lord and his army would vaporize alongside the hall.
The hero's party survives.
The war ends.
It was a clean plan.
"Incineration formula, activate."
Blue flames erupted around me.
Starting deep near my heart, mana surged wildly through my circuits.
Then into my arms, my legs, and right up to the top of my head.
The mana circuits carved across my entire body began to open one by one.
It was a reckless move—nothing short of a desperate gamble.
I knew that better than anyone.
But right now, I had no choice.
This was my only chance to kill the Demon Lord once and for all.
If I allowed that bastard to get away, the war would start all over again.
Countless more would fall, writhing in agony.
So…
I will make sure he dies right here.
Even if it means I can never use magic again.
No.
Even if my mana circuits burn to ashes on the spot.
"Compress."
Mana was sucked into the center of the throne room.
At the same time, I felt something tear inside me.
Parts of my mana circuits were pushed past their limit.
A searing agony ripped through me, like liquid fire poured straight into my veins.
My hands shook.
Darkness crept into the edges of my vision.
Red blood trickled slowly from my eyes and mouth.
I gritted my teeth.
Without stopping, I opened the sealed circuits one by one.
First circuit.
Second circuit.
Third circuit.
I forcibly dragged up even the deep circuits that I normally kept sealed.
The blue flames flared with an oppressive intensity.
One by one, the magic circles covering the throne room roared back to life.
Glowing lines spread from the floor to the pillars, then swept across the ceiling.
The entire hall began to pulse.
The demons screamed.
Before their bodies could even touch the flames, they crumbled into ash.
The mana structure maintaining their existence collapsed from within.
The Demon Lord tried to push himself up, but it was already too late.
The spell reached beneath his feet as well.
Every line and mark I'd set up from the moment I entered the castle—
—Every single one was now converging toward a single purpose.
To erase every living thing in this room.
To leave nothing behind.
"Do you intend to die with us?!"
The Demon Lord roared.
For the first time, fear laced his voice.
I gripped the teleport stone in my tunic, but my fingers barely had the strength to hold it.
I had opened too many mana circuits, so I wasn't sure if I had enough power left to activate the stone.
Laughter escaped me.
And here I thought it was a theoretically perfect plan.
"No."
I rasped, exhaling a breath laced with blood.
"You're the only ones who need to die."
The Demon Lord's eyes blazed with fury.
"Kael Arvent!"
The moment he shouted my name—
I unsealed the final lock.
The core circuit bound deep beneath my heart—the final pathway even my master had warned me never to touch.
Once it opened, time itself seemed to stand still.
Sound.
Heat.
Screams.
Everything faded away.
Instead, light surged within me.
All the mana I had gathered up until then.
Every bit of it flowed into a single magic formula.
I completed the spell with my final chant.
Confringo [Explosion]
The world turned completely white.
Even the sound vanished.
Heat, pain, light, and darkness all blurred together in an instant.
* * *
"…"
I awoke to an indescribable stench.
My head throbbed, probably due to the aftereffects of mana depletion.
But what is this smell…?
It didn't smell like blood or gunpowder—it was just downright foul.
Not even the sulfur and rotting flesh clogging the Demon Lord's catacombs came close.
Rotten food, grease, stale sewage, and unfamiliar odors mixed together to violate my nose.
I gagged on a stench so vile I would've believed it was the Demon Lord's curse.
I managed to pry my eyes open.
As my blurry vision slowly cleared, my surroundings came into focus.
"?"
I was at a loss for words.
My body was crammed inside a metal container, its rusty lid propped halfway open above me.
I felt something damp squish and burst behind my back.
Slowly, I raised my hand.
An unidentified brown liquid dripped from between my fingers.
"Ugh…"
I quickly shook off the disgustingly sticky liquid.
"Where am I…?"
The coordinates I had specified were definitely a small village on the outskirts of the Demon Lord's castle.
A place with low stone walls, a windmill, and an old well at the entrance.
The safe zone where Leon, Eileen, and Miria were supposed to arrive.
But this wasn't that place.
Nothing like it.
I grabbed the edge of the metal container and hauled myself up.
A sudden wave of nausea swept through me.
My legs buckled, almost sending me right back down, but I managed to catch my balance just in time.
First, breathe.
Next, check senses—sight, hearing, touch, and mana perception.
A mage who lost control of their emotions always died.
I immediately sank my consciousness deep within myself.
I needed to verify if anything remained of my mana circuits—the pure pathways of energy I'd spent a lifetime honing.
Moments later, I let out a brief breath.
They were still there.
But obviously, they weren't in good shape.
"…At least it's not the worst-case scenario."
I muttered softly.
The circuits hadn't completely burned out, which meant I could recover.
Having dodged one crisis, I focused on my current situation.
Coordinate error.
Possibility one.
The mana turbulence right before the massive explosion distorted the teleportation coordinates.
Spatial interference.
Possibility two.
A residual barrier from the Demon Lord—or the castle itself—interfered with the teleport spell.
Time axis deviation.
Possibility three.
The hypothesis I wanted to avoid the most.
I raised my head and scanned my surroundings.
It was a narrow alleyway.
The walls looked like they were made of stone, but they weren't natural stone.
Tapping them lightly with my hand brought back a hollow echo.
I didn't know the exact name, but I could guess their purpose.
Cheap, lightweight, and easy to stack in a hurry.
Not good enough to be used for the outer wall of a Magic Tower, but suitable for mass-producing an entire city.
Glowing blue characters floated up and vanished across the walls outside the alleyway.
Runic characters?
No, they were different.
They looked like runes, but the flow of mana was shallow.
It was more like a device continuously projecting information using light.
A display-type illusion formula?
Whatever it was, I could see the principle behind it.
The magic of this city was different from what I knew.
I placed my hand against the wall.
Cold.
I felt a faint vibration humming within.
Mana was flowing.
Though it wasn't the natural flow of mana I was used to.
The mana was refined and broken down into standardized units.
It felt as if someone had taken the mana and pumped it through pipes like water.
Is the entire city one gigantic magic circle?
Right then, a low roar echoed from high above the alley.
Vrooong.
I instinctively snapped my head up.
And once again, I was rendered speechless.
The sky was nowhere to be seen.
No, to be exact, there were too many things blocking the sky.
Buildings towering on both sides of the alley pierced the clouds.
They couldn't even be compared to castle towers.
Monolithic towers—resembling dozens of royal spires stacked on top of each other—stretched toward the dark sky as if in a race to scrape the heavens.
It wasn't an impossible construction.
In theory, it was possible with an anti-gravity formula and load distribution circuits.
The problem was that they had applied it not just to a single building, but to the entire city.
There must be a separate mana source.
This was far beyond the scale of an individual mage or noble house.
This city received power centrally.
Some buildings sparkled entirely like giant crystal pillars.
Other buildings were covered in black metal, with golden circuits spinning endlessly along their surfaces.
At the very top, unfamiliar crests floated.
A winged gear.
A crystal eye.
A staff entwined by a snake.
Each looked like the coat of arms of a different noble family.
But it was weird.
They weren't flags.
The crests hovered in midair.
Illusion magic?
I frowned.
Then who on earth is wasting power like this—running a continuous illusion spell just to show off a noble house's crest?
Are they flaunting their wealth?
Inside a track resembling a transparent tube, a silver monster glided along seamlessly.
I instinctively ducked—unable to tell if that thing was a creature, a golem, or a siege weapon.
But I saw people inside that silver monster.
Dozens… no, hundreds.
They sat there casually.
Is it a military transport propelled by levitation magic?
Beneath it, flying carriages—no, lumps of metal too ridiculous to even call carriages—zipped back and forth through the air.
Characters glowed on the side of the vehicles too.
[Archeon Genetics]
[Lumendyn Fuel]
[Seraph Industries]
I stared at them blankly.
A giant woman floated between the buildings.
To be exact, the translucent upper half of one.
Her figure was half-human, half-mechanical device.
Smiling, she held a tiny crystal bottle levitating over her palm.
Beneath her, text flashed brightly.
[Suffer no longer from mana depletion.]
[Legal awakening supplement, Etherlyn.]
I pressed my lips together.
Solving mana depletion with drugs?
Nonsense.
Insufficient mana wasn't the only cause of mana depletion.
Because multiple complex factors were intertwined, recklessly meddling with it was a taboo no one dared to break.
But even so, it wasn't a completely impossible concept.
If it wasn't a potion that restored mana, but a stimulant that forcibly squeezed out the residual mana left in the circuits, it might have a temporary effect.
Of course, the user's circuits would be ruined.
I stared at the smile on the illusion's face.
That's not a cure, it's poison.
I let out a dry laugh.
"What a crazy place."
But there was no time to marvel.
First.
This was not the village I had designated.
Second.
The surrounding environment was completely unlike any city on the continent where I had lived.
Third.
The level of magitech was abnormally high.
Fourth.
The mana concentration in the air was high, but its flow was artificially controlled.
Based on the facts verified so far, no place existed that matched these observations.
At least, not in my mind.
And so…
This was not the world I used to know.
It took a day to accept that fact.
A month to accept the fact that I might never be able to return.
Finally…
A year to give up struggling to go back.
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