Chapter 3
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 3
Chapter Title: One-Shot Mage
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Behind the guards clad in heavy armor reeking of blood, a massive bolt of lightning suddenly struck the ground.
Even though the lightning erupted behind them, its light was so intense that it momentarily blinded the guards facing forward.
“…”
Hans, the guard captain who had been delivering a final speech at the rear of the formation, stared with a dumbfounded expression at the spot where the lightning had struck, his vision barely returned.
There stood the white-haired boy to whom he had given bread.
The boy, dressed in what were little more than rags, had taken a direct lightning strike, yet his limbs were still intact.
…No, it was more than just his limbs being intact.
A blue light was flowing from his entire body.
Soon, with every step he took, small sparks of lightning erupted, scorching the ground.
“Would you mind stepping aside?”
The boy spoke in a calm and composed voice as he walked slowly toward the center of the battlefield.
Not a single one of the guards dared to even think of blocking his path.
The boy’s expression was as serene and cold as that of a sage who had mastered all things.
The very air around them churned violently with each of the boy's small steps. The dark clouds blanketing the sky rumbled as if ready to unleash a torrent of lightning at any moment.
“This is something I’ve always wanted to try.”
The boy uttered words that Hans and the other guards couldn't comprehend as he walked with noble bearing toward the heart of the battlefield.
“…Are you a mage?”
Captain Hans asked, staring blankly at the boy’s back with a bewildered look on his face.
“Well, for now, yes.”
The boy said leisurely, smoothing down his perpetually rising hair with both hands.
“What are you? There shouldn’t be a mage residing in a small city like this.”
The Mazoku standing at the center of the mutants slowly emerged from the gaps between the massive piles of flesh and looked at the boy as he asked.
The Mazoku, its skin a mix of green and red, couldn’t hide its bewilderment.
“Where did you come from…? There should still be several days before reinforcements arrive.”
As he said, it was true that until just an hour or two ago, no mage existed in this city.
“I’m curious about that myself. I was just born, and I found myself in this city.”
The boy spoke in a cold, curt tone, as if he had no intention of explaining himself in detail.
“Is that a joke? It’s not very funny.”
“…I was being sincere, for what it’s worth.”
The Mazoku gave up on getting information from the boy. It seemed he had no intention of engaging in a proper conversation.
Instead, the Mazoku began to observe the boy quietly.
The boy was young. He looked to be sixteen or seventeen at most.
‘At that age, he couldn't have received proper training from a mage tower. He’d barely qualify as an apprentice… What’s more, judging by his attire, he’s clearly one of the street urchins.’
As far as he knew, most of those humans called vagrants were of such low intelligence that they couldn’t even learn to read properly, let alone use magic.
“…Strange.”
And yet, the boy before him was unmistakably a mage who wielded lightning.
An unidentifiable sense of unease crawled over the Mazoku’s red skin.
The Mazoku began to assess the amount of mana within the boy’s body using its unique eyes, which could perceive magical energy. It had to identify the source of this unease.
‘He’s not an incredibly powerful mage…’
The amount of mana the boy possessed was only at the level of a mid-tier, 4th-circle mage.
It was an impressive level considering his age and apparent social status, but it was still not enough to face him and his mutant army alone.
‘…But.’
*CRACK!*
Finally, a massive bolt of lightning descended from the dark clouds, striking the ground next to the boy.
The billion-volt blast connected the ionized pockets in the atmosphere, carving a huge crater in the earth, which was already covered in blood and flesh.
The boy showed no sign of surprise, even though the lightning had struck right beside him.
His blue eyes held an inexplicable madness and obsession, a clear intent that he would not let the Mazoku before him leave alive.
‘Compared to his mana reserves, the perfection of that magic is abnormally high. On top of that, he possesses a fighting spirit unbefitting his young age. There are too many oddities for him to be a simple 4th-circle mage.’
Faced with an irregular who completely defied all the data he had accumulated, the Mazoku took a deep, tense breath and cautiously assumed a stance.
“First, let’s test the waters.”
The Mazoku glanced at the horde of mutants surrounding him, then raised a finger toward the lone, white-haired boy.
“Save…”
“Mama! Ma-ma! Mamaaaa!”
“Lady Astella is watching over me, so please lead them to the light…”
“Kill… me. Kill. Kill. Kill me…!”
The mutants kicked off the ground with staggering legs and charged at the boy.
Each of the mutants had lost its human form.
One had its arm completely severed, replaced by a sharp blade. Another’s head was compressed as if by a hydraulic press, its face stretched horizontally. Still another had lost all the bones that should have supported its body, becoming little more than a living mass of flesh.
All of them possessed a faint consciousness.
This was because the cunning Mazoku, when they captured intelligent beings like humans or elves to turn them into mutants, deliberately did not take away their consciousness completely.
They knew all too well that the screams of the mutants planted hesitation in the hearts of the warriors who fought them.
The boy’s cold, frozen face wrinkled. A physiological disgust that any human would feel welled up from deep within his chest.
*Fzzt…!*
To send them off with as little pain as possible, the boy carefully raised his left arm.
A thin, sharp flash of light descended upon the battlefield, incinerating all the mutants rushing toward him into piles of white ash.
“This is preposterous.”
Watching his meticulously crafted mutants turn to ash in a single blow, the Mazoku was now certain.
“…No matter how I look at it, the only conclusion is that you’re hiding your true mana.”
The magic the boy had displayed possessed a precision and power that was unbelievable for a mid-tier, 4th-circle mage.
On top of that, the boy had been glaring at the Mazoku with an intense gaze that seemed to radiate absolute confidence in his victory.
The boy’s gaze was too intense to be described as mere fighting spirit.
It was a chaotic mixture of frenzied obsession and a deep-seated revulsion.
‘Most young mages are terrified when they see Mazoku and mutants. But those eyes… they’re like those of a predator stalking its prey.’
Dangerous.
Through deep observation and a touch of instinct, the Mazoku realized that this boy was not someone he could handle with his own power.
“No need to see any more. I must retreat.”
The Mazoku quickly chose to flee. There wasn't a Mazoku in this world foolish enough to pick a fight with a superior foe whose strength couldn't even be gauged.
Having made his decision, he unfurled the wings hidden on his back. As he rose into the air, he gestured, and the countless mutants that had appeared with him on the battlefield began to charge the boy all at once.
Losing his entire army like this was a bit of a waste, but it was a hundred times better than losing his own life.
After all, he could always make more mutants.
A mutant that was a mix of a pig and a deer with eight legs; a mutant that was a mix of a human and a dwarf with four eyes. Each mutant had a different form, but all were covered in potent toxic substances.
The deer’s sharply honed hooves were coated in a strong acid that could melt skin on contact. The dwarf’s thick tendons released a gas that could paralyze the entire body upon inhalation. The human’s exposed organs leaked waste that carried a stench so vile it couldn't be described in a few mere words.
The misshapen mutants stumbled as they rushed the boy, tripping over one another, trampling each other, and tumbling into a tangled mess. The sight was like a great tsunami of flesh.
The boy.
He stood perfectly still before the great tsunami of flesh and lightly flicked his finger.
*Click.*
That was the only sound those on the battlefield could hear.
Immediately after.
An overwhelming flash of light, incomparable to the lightning that had struck near the boy earlier, descended upon the battlefield.
A single line of electricity, released from the boy’s fingertip, scattered in all directions upon meeting the massive tsunami of flesh, incinerating everything in its path.
The Mazoku, who had risen into the air to escape, was engulfed by the white flash without a chance to resist and vanished without a trace.
The masses of flesh that had been swarming the boy were also caught in the immense electrical energy and were instantly reduced to white ash.
In less than an instant, the tens of thousands of flesh mounds that had covered the battlefield were cleanly wiped away.
Just then, the sky, which had been filled with black storm clouds, parted, and a faint ray of sunlight pierced through the gap.
The immense amount of ash created from the burning of thousands of tons of flesh, along with the mist, painted the battlefield white.
The tremendous shockwave had temporarily blinded and deafened most of the guards on the battlefield.
It took a long time for their senses to return.
“…”
When their vision finally recovered after a long while, the guards who looked upon the silent battlefield couldn’t believe what they were seeing was real.
The once-red battlefield had been transformed into a sea of white by a single flash of light.
In that battlefield, only a single boy stood with noble bearing, electricity arcing from his body.
Blood, flesh, and all traces of battle had been wiped clean, leaving only a vast, open field and scorched white earth.
Like an angel descended from the heavens, the boy turned his back to the white battlefield and began walking slowly toward the city guards with dignified steps.
“…L-Lady Astella has saved us!”
A guard with a broken leg shouted upon seeing the boy.
The other guards, who had been staring blankly at the white battlefield with dumbfounded expressions, also began to offer prayers of thanks to the god they believed in, almost unconsciously.
It seemed they regarded the boy as an apostle sent by their god.
It wasn't strange.
Though he had said it jokingly, the boy who introduced himself as having been ‘just born in the city’ had appeared like a savior and rescued the city from its crisis.
With the fatigue of battle, the relief of survival, and the exhilarating satisfaction of seeing the damned Mazoku die all jumbled in their minds, it was more than possible for them to mistake the boy for an apostle of god.
“…Well, thanking your god is all well and good. But shouldn’t you be thanking me first?”
“Oh, my apologies, Sir Mage! I was just so overwhelmed!”
The guard who had been the first to thank his god bowed his head deeply to the boy, as if he had just come to his senses.
“By the way, you must have had your reasons. For a mage of your caliber to be wandering a remote city like Stratus dressed as a vagrant.”
“…”
The boy, unable to answer, ‘I just started as a vagrant to increase my crit chance and ended up in this mess,’ maintained a meaningful silence.
“I won’t ask further. It wouldn’t be right to trouble the hero who saved our city. We may not have much, but we will treat you to the best food we have. Please, come inside the castle.”
“That’s right! If it weren’t for you, Sir Mage, we would never have seen food again anyway. Eat your fill and put some meat on those skinny bones!”
“Yes! Thanks to you, we get to live another day! While you’re at it, why don’t you crush all the Mazoku bastards living around here!”
The guards raised their splinted arms high, giving the boy a grand welcome.
The boy, feeling not so bad after all, let a faint smile grace his cold face.
“Come on in! We don’t have much left, but we have some wine for you, Sir Mage…”
Hans’s second-in-command approached the boy with a bright smile. The boy smiled even more brightly and reached out to take his hand when…
*Thud.*
“…?”
“Sir Mage?”
The boy’s body slumped forward powerlessly.
Five minutes was a much shorter time than the boy had thought.
* * *
Deep inside a dark cave where blood and chunks of flesh dripped to the floor, the wails of those who had not yet fully become mutants filled the air.
And deeper still, in the dampest, filthiest part of the cave, sat a Mazoku with long horns and jet-black skin.
The chair he sat on was a grotesque sculpture made by stitching together so many different skins that it was impossible to tell whose they had once been.
“Impressive.”
The highest-ranking Mazoku with jet-black skin, Overlord Maltiel, let out a low exclamation of admiration as he watched the white-haired boy and the immense electrical power he unleashed on a small, magically conjured screen.
“A mage of great skill.”
“We did not expect such a mage to be in that city. Reinforcements must have arrived.”
The two Mazoku bowing on either side of Overlord Maltiel added their comments as they watched the screen.
“And he’s young, too. If we leave a boy like that alone, he’ll become a great obstacle to us in the future.”
Maltiel agreed with his subordinates, a nasty smile on his face.
“Prepare the army. A monster’s bud must be plucked early.”
“An excellent decision. Which Mazoku will you send? Vinverde is already prepared… and Bellua will soon return from her mission.”
“I will go myself.”
“…You mean to say you will move personally, Overlord?”
The subordinates reacted with some surprise to Maltiel’s words.
“Yes. That mage, he clearly used only a single skill. And he turned all those mutants and my subordinate to ash in a ‘single strike.’ It doesn’t take much thought to understand what that implies.”
“…Are you saying that wasn’t his full power?”
“7th-circle. I estimate that monster is a heavyweight of that caliber. Considering his age… it won’t be long before he reaches the 9th-circle.”
Overlord Maltiel slowly rose from his throne of flesh, the same nasty smile still on his lips, as if he were looking forward to a long-awaited outing.
“On top of that, that boy… he has very dangerous eyes. The eyes of a man who will become a monster. That’s what they were.”
With each step Maltiel took, rotten chunks of flesh and skin that had been stuck to the throne fell to the cave floor with a soft thud.
“We must be sure to pull out the monster’s bud by the roots, wouldn’t you agree?”