Chapter 18
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 18
Chapter Title: The Octahedron
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“…Ah! The artifact.”
As soon as Samael vanished, I dashed straight to the deepest part of the dragon's nest.
Taking the Akilliptus Forest Zone from him without a fight was certainly something to celebrate, but I couldn't forget the real reason I came here.
I hastily conjured a bolt of lightning to turn the dragon's corpse to ash, then began rummaging through the countless treasures and magical ingredients buried beneath it.
There was a reason for my frantic haste.
The duration of [Blooming] had less than a minute left…
I had to prevent the catastrophe of the artifact binding to the wrong person while moving about to load the treasures.
The countless treasures shimmering in the starlight were nothing more than rocks to me right now.
‘Found it!’
Among the uselessly glittering mounds of gold, I spotted a red-yellow crystal exuding an otherworldly aura and rejoiced inwardly.
The red-yellow crystal, spotless as if just finished by a master craftsman, was a perfect octahedron. And in truth, among the artifacts in this game, this one was rather bland in terms of power.
[Fires a magical attack proportional to the character's Mana stat.]
Compared to artifacts that could summon massive pillars of fire, grant resurrection, or allow one to peer into another's memories, its impact was severely lacking.
For an ordinary mage, its performance was the sort that would make them say, ‘It just feels like a bit of extra damage on my bolt… Kinda disappointing for an artifact, huh?’
For an ordinary mage, that is…
‘Now I can deal with mobs too…!’
A One-Shot Mage has no basic attack to deal with the countless mobs scattered throughout this world. This is because every spell in existence, except for Blooming, is unusable.
With physical stats like Strength, Agility, and Stamina all set to 1, even incapacitating an opponent by smacking them with a staff was impossible.
Therefore, in my bizarrely twisted mage build, the importance of this artifact, a reward for slaying the young dragon, was on a completely different level compared to other ordinary mages.
They could just shoot a normal bolt when they encountered mobs, but all I could do was sit back and cheer for my team to win.
“But now, that's all in the past…!”
I plunged my thin arm into the pile of treasure and tightly grasped the red-yellow, octahedral crystal.
The crystal instantly shattered into tiny fragments, which then traveled up my arm and began to hover near my heart.
The crystal fragments shimmered before my chest as if preparing for something, then suddenly pierced through my clothes and seeped into my skin.
“Huh? Uh, what the hell.”
In the game, it just entered my inventory with the text (Bound), so I never predicted an event like this would happen.
Thousands of crystal shards burrowed under my skin, but I felt no pain.
However, I did feel one thing: an unfamiliar sensation I had never experienced before.
A feeling as if something that wasn't a part of my body was lodged somewhere in my heart.
I focused on this sensation.
It didn't feel harmful to my body. No, on the contrary, focusing on it seemed to clear my mind and calm my heart.
“Uh… Manifest?”
My instincts told me.
That I just had to focus my attention on this unfamiliar sensation and say the word.
As I muttered the word, the red fragments hidden beneath my skin began to rise into the air.
They clumped together, reassembling themselves until they returned to the form of a perfect octahedral crystal.
The crystal floated gently above my left shoulder.
‘Oh, it works. So from now on, I can leave the mobs I encounter to this thing…’
The moment I reached for the crystal floating above my shoulder, about to smile in satisfaction, my consciousness was once again dragged away to that familiar place.
As my body lost its balance and collapsed weakly onto the pile of gold, I felt the crystal also shatter and retreat back under my skin.
…It seems the five minutes are up.
***
“My word…”
Alter Haindel stared down at the boy sleeping soundly atop the gold and jewels, his expression one of utter astonishment.
Five minutes.
In a mere five minutes, this boy had proven his worth and demonstrated that he was a genius who would become the future of humanity.
When the boy first walked confidently toward the dragon's nest, Alter had simply watched his back, his eyes filled with anticipation.
Having taught the boy for the past seven days and indirectly sensed his talent, he knew that a mere young dragon would be no match for him.
Indeed, the boy had silenced the young dragon in a single blow, a pinpoint strike that targeted only its vital point.
It was a beautiful strike.
Lightning naturally has the property of spreading in all directions through the surrounding air.
Suppressing that property of lightning was a crucial measure of a lightning mage's skill.
Even if one created 100 units of lightning with mana, what would be the point if only 60 reached the opponent while the other 40 dissipated into the air?
From that perspective, the boy's strike was nothing short of perfection itself.
A single bolt of lightning that pierced the dragon's hide as easily as tearing paper and shot straight forward.
Without a single branching tendril, the straight line, drawn as if on a canvas, left a stark white mark across the night sky before vanishing.
Not even the smallest spark had spread to the quiet wheat fields. Such precise control was something that even Alter, an 8th-Circle high mage, could not confidently say he could replicate.
‘And the Mazoku that appeared right after… what in the world was that?’
But his astonishment at the boy did not end there.
A high-ranking Mazoku had appeared out of nowhere above their heads.
Far from being flustered, the boy had toyed with the high-ranking Mazoku, wearing a relaxed smile like someone who had just found a pouch of gold coins on the street.
As if he were someone who could kill the Mazoku anytime he pleased.
Against a high-ranking Mazoku that even he could not guarantee victory over.
‘…It seems he has more power hidden away.’
Moreover, the boy even possessed the cool judgment not to wield that power recklessly, taking the battlefield into consideration.
The Enquer Highlands are a key breadbasket that supplies food to the entire continent.
If a lightning mage were to carelessly battle a high-ranking Mazoku here, the precious food supply would all be burned away by stray lightning.
Many possess power, but those who know when and how to wield it are exceedingly rare.
And the boy knew. His talents were not limited to magic alone.
The insight to coolly assess the surrounding terrain and the state of the war, the nerve to remain composed even against a high-ranking Mazoku, and on top of that, the skill to pressure his opponent and seize the strategic military point of the Akilliptus Forest Zone without bloodshed…
The boy's potential was so immense that even he, an 8th-Circle mage, could not fully fathom it.
“Gen… General! General Bin?! What's wrong!”
“…This is what happens when the duration of the spell 'Blooming' runs out. It's the backlash from expelling all the mana in his body in a short period.”
Alter explained as he calmed the platoon leader who was shouting while gripping the boy's small shoulders.
‘But why 'Blooming' of all things?’
Blooming was considered the least practical spell in the current system of lightning magic.
While its power was certainly immense, as it expelled all remaining mana over five minutes, few mages studied it deeply due to its significant backlash.
At best, it was learned as a sort of last resort.
And yet, the boy's Blooming displayed a level of perfection on a completely different plane from that of ordinary mages.
The boy's magic held a perfection comparable to the ‘Bolt’ that he himself had spent 80 years of his life honing.
It was a level of skill that made the rumor—that the Overlord had mistaken this young boy for a high mage and come to kill him personally—completely understandable.
‘Did he only study Blooming in depth? No, he said he'd never properly learned magic before…’
This was innate talent.
“To think he was born with a talent for Blooming, of all things…”
Every mage is born with a spell that suits them. For Alter, it was ‘Bolt’; for his prized disciple, Rireu, it was ‘Lightning Strike.’
The fact that the spell most suited to this prodigiously talented boy happened to be ‘Blooming’ was certainly an obstacle, but…
‘An obstacle of that degree is nothing compared to the scale of his talent.’
For a boy with such talent, it wouldn't take long to raise spells like ‘Bolt’ or ‘Lightning Strike’ to the same level as his current ‘Blooming.’
Alter smiled brightly, honored to be the master who would teach a genius mage destined to go down in human history, as he lifted the boy's slender body into his arms.
“Let's return. It seems our mission is complete.”
The boy's body was so light that even the old and frail Alter could lift him without difficulty.