The Banished Mage
Yeah.
I mean, I felt like I ought to offer an apology, but still…
“Guh-ack—!”
“Khurk…!”
“Urp—!”
Two full days had passed since I took to knocking Selena unconscious on repeat.
As the concussions piled up, I came to realize that the human body can actually build a tolerance to blunt-force trauma. At the exact same time, the light of raw, unhinged mania finally began to drain from the adventurers' glazed eyes. Sanity returned to the ranks. Every single person regained the faculty of rational thought.
And sitting right in their midst as the sole, genuinely sane(?) survivor, a stray thought crossed my mind.
Wouldn't it have been way easier to clear the boss if they were all still barking mad? Truth be told, that was probably dead accurate. Still, watching them get slaughtered because of my negligence would have left a foul taste in my mouth at night. No regrets.
“Doing alright, little brother? Your companion has been dead to the world for two straight days now…”
“She’ll be fine… probably. Most likely… I think.”
“Well, if you say so. Regardless, that is not our most pressing concern.”
Wait, what?
Had something else gone sideways?
Over the past few days of roughing it together in the dirt, Leo and I had forged a pretty solid bond. The deadpan gravity in his tone snapped my wandering brain right back into focus.
He exhaled a long, measured sigh before continuing.
“Perhaps it is the sudden purging of the miasma, but all the ugliness that should have unfolded naturally is erupting at once. If I were to name the biggest problem… it would be infighting. No matter if men can eat and sleep, the psychological poison still festers beneath the surface.”
“Internal strife. Yeah, bound to happen.”
“Sh-sh-sh. Then I shall leave it in your capable hands. I have matters to attend to, so mind the fort for a while.”
With those parting words, the maddeningly elusive Leo melted into thin air once again.
I clutched my temples, seized by a massive headache from an angle I hadn't anticipated in the slightest.
Seriously, I hadn't given this a second thought. As far as I was concerned, as long as Selena and I made it through in one piece, nothing else mattered. Why should I babysit a bunch of strangers? Except…
“It seems the mage you often converse with is their target.”
“……”
Dammit all. If she were a total stranger, I would have shrugged and said, What’s that got to do with me? But having spent the last few days taking mana manipulation lessons from her, turning a completely blind eye felt cheap.
I triggered Stealth and crept closer to read the room.
“……”
The situation was far worse than I'd imagined.
Her hair was a rat's nest of tangled strands, and her clothes were splattered with foul-smelling filth. What on earth had these bastards done to reduce a person to this state?
Beneath the dirt, she looked barely older than a high school kid.
Her personality was… a little eccentric, sure, but completely harmless.
If you really had to nitpick, you could say she was unnaturally quiet. That was about it.
Actually, back when I was in high school myself, something similar happened.
“Is this punk a mute or what? A whole week since orientation and he hasn't uttered a single syllable.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’m bored. Wanna hear what his voice sounds like?”
“Sounds fun.”
Let’s just call them Delinquent 1 and Delinquent 2. Purely to hear my voice, those two strolled up behind my desk.
“Heave—ho!”
Delinquent 1 yanked my chair backward. I crashed onto the floorboards. Even then, I intended to let it slide. I figured it was just reckless teenage stupidity.
Then they crossed the line.
“Saw your older sister the other day. Damn, her body is smoking hot. Really makes a guy wanna—”
CRUNCH—!!
I drove the sharp graphite tip of my pencil straight into Delinquent 1's thigh.
“GYAAAAAHHH—!!”
As the punk shrieked his lungs out, I grabbed him by the scalp, shoved two fingers deep into his nostrils, and wrenched sideways without a microsecond of hesitation.
With the sickening squelch of tearing cartilage, his nose ripped wide open.
A mutilation no plastic surgeon or modern medicine could ever piece back together. Turning my gaze to Delinquent 2, who was watching in sheer, petrified terror, I walked up and planted my foot directly between his legs.
SQUELCH—!
Revoking his biological privileges of fathering a child forever.
The bystanders who had spent the whole time watching the show finally realized what was happening. They scrambled in from every angle, doing whatever they could to pin me down… though if memory serves, I broke both of Delinquent 2's legs before they pulled me off.
After that… there was an absolute circus about school violence and expulsions.
How did that wrap up again?
Looking back now, the specifics were hazy. But one way or another, it got sorted out, and I made it to college in the end, so it must have ended fine. Yep.
Which brought me back to the core issue at hand.
There was only one proven method to deal with pieces of human garbage like this.
“S-Spare me…!”
Overwhelming, unforgettable terror that ensured they would never dare step out of line again.
Whether she actually wanted my help or not, I owed her for the mana lessons. I slowly began drafting a plan to pay that debt in full. By the time another day rolled around, however…
“You’re expelled.”
“……”
“A half-baked failure who can only cast debuffs has no place in our guild.”
Whoaaaa…
The legendary Party Banished trope has arrived in the flesh…!
Meanwhile, Elena—teleported away by Merlin and stranded alone in Zarbnok—spared no expense.
Marshalling her vast wealth and personal network, she launched a covert manhunt to locate him. Only then did the cryptic words Merlin had spoken finally dawn on her.
“If it’s that adventurer you seek… he is likely trapped inside the dungeon as we speak. Given the registry logs, it is virtually a hundred percent certainty…”
CRACK—!
Without realizing it, she squeezed her staff so hard that hairline fractures spiderwebbed across the wood.
An unprecedented crisis, something that hadn't occurred even once since the dawn of this realm. Why, of all the wretched coincidences, did it have to break out the moment the Captain stepped inside…!
Whirrrr—!
The structural blueprints of dungeons—something she had previously dismissed as worthless trivia and never bothered to analyze.
Examining them now, backed by the immense power she had cultivated since the past, she realized what a 'dungeon' truly was: an artificial nexus woven from divine authority, primal mana, and an alien Will.
She had grasped only a fleeting fraction of its truth, but…
If all she needed was to bore a hole straight through this prison, two weeks would do. No, one week would suffice.
Without a single hesitation, she threw herself into her research, ready to incinerate her very soul if that was what it took.
Beside her, a rabid dog—having caught wind of the same revelation—battered the wall in a berserk frenzy. Elena tuned out the noise entirely and kept writing.
“Even if it claims my life, I will tear you free.”
Her posture resembled that of an unhinged zealot.
Meanwhile, having left those two to their own devices while I enjoyed an impromptu vacation deep inside the dungeon…
Man, isn't this taking it a bit too far…?
I was watching a banished-protagonist drama play out before my very eyes.
Covered from head to toe in foul slop, she stared vacantly into the empty air with dead, hollow eyes that had clearly grown numb to this treatment. Yet beneath those tranquil pupils, a venomous, suffocating thirst for vengeance roiled like magma.
At first, I thought she was being ostracized purely because of her antisocial demeanor. Turns out there was another reason entirely.
Namely, her complete inability to cast proper 'magic.'
Why though…?
Her theoretical explanations and basic fundamentals had seemed remarkably sharp to me.
Curiosity getting the better of me, I propped Selena—who had regained a shred of consciousness—up as a vanguard decoy, then suppressed my presence with Stealth to observe from behind.
Strength
Haste
Curse Bind
Slow
“She really can’t cast anything besides buffs and debuffs?”
After being kicked out of her main guild, she was currently assigned to rear-guard support for Party 5. To be fair, in an elite, high-tier guild, dedicated buffers and debuffers were prized specialists. But in low-to-mid-tier ragtag parties and backwater guilds, demand for such a role was virtually nonexistent.
A mage incapable of unleashing raw firepower or physical support…
Wondering where the hitch was, I opened my status window on her.
“Ah. Now I see the problem.”
The root cause behind this bizarre defect was laid bare.
Name:Silpa Ataraxia
Age:18
Level:30
Rank:5-Star (★★★★★)
Unique Skill:Ataraxia (SS)
[Details]
An illegitimate child of an illustrious noble house. Entangled in political strife and internal power struggles, she was stripped of her aristocratic status. Concurrently afflicted by a 'curse' that restricts her spellcasting exclusively to buffs and debuffs, rendering her a half-baked mage. Recently banished from the guild where she took refuge.
A curse. A curse, huh…
Perhaps because I was a seasoned trash-novel connoisseur who had inhaled thousands of web novels and manhwas, her entire tragic backstory pieced itself together in my mind instantly.
“Lost the succession war, ate a nasty curse, and got tossed out into the gutter.”
If she were the main character, she’d already have three volumes of a revenge web novel written. A 5-star mage packing an SS-rank skill… If she didn't have that glaring defect, I would have recruited her on the spot without a second thought.
Recruiting her now, however, carried way too much baggage.
A murky aristocratic family she hadn't named, and talent that wasn't overwhelmingly broken enough to ignore the political fallout. An awkward, borderline liability.
A shame, but the smartest play was to cut my losses and walk away…
Just as I pivoted on my heel to pretend I hadn't seen anything.
“Pitiable. Intending to look away?”
Khali materialized out of nowhere behind me. Wearing the same inscrutable expression as before, she watched the young mage endure the vile insults hurled at her.
Wait, how did this girl detect me while Stealth was up?
Before I could ask, Khali pressed on in her flat, clipped tone.
“Think carefully. Standing by as bystander. Genuinely fine with that?”
“……”
“Choice belongs to you.”
Having unloaded her piece, Khali pattered off, her footsteps fading into the gloom. The question I'd been about to ask evaporated entirely.
Instead, the girl standing before me began to blur with the phantom of my own past self.
“……”
For reasons unknown, those words my sister had tossed at me echoed in the recesses of my mind. A single phrase offered back when my pride, my temper, and my view of the world were entirely twisted inside out.
How long did I stand there, staring blankly at the lone mage?
Having arrived at his decision, he deactivated Stealth and stepped forward into the light.