Magus Reborn

Kai cut through the air, heading straight for the corruption zone Killian had taken on.

He moved as fast as he could, but the weight in his chest didn’t ease. If anything, it only grew heavier the closer he got. He tried not to think too much about it. There was no point letting his mind run ahead of him when he still did not know what he would find.

But he couldn’t fully stop himself either. The corruption zones were far worse than he had expected.

The information he had read from the Watchers had made them sound dangerous, but manageable with the right party and preparation. Maybe that had once been true. Maybe the zones had changed recently, growing stronger while the reports stayed the same.

It didn’t matter much now. The truth was simple. They had become too dangerous.

Kai had already seen that for himself the moment he reached Lancephil. One of the corruption zones had been on his path, and from what he remembered, it was supposed to be handled by a party led by Klan. Since he was already close, Kai had gone to check on them.

What he found was not a battle. It was despair.

Half of Klan’s party had been wiped out by the time Kai arrived. Mutated weavers crawled through the streets, joined by larger fiends with thicker bodies and tougher hides.

The whole area had turned into a hunting ground.

Klan had only survived because he had found a cellar in an inn and hidden there with the few others who were still alive.

Kai found them by following the faint trail of mana they had left behind.

Even that had not been easy.

He had to cut through nearly a hundred mutated weavers and several fiends before he reached the inn. By the time he pulled Klan and the others out of that cellar, they looked like people who had already accepted death.

What they told him after that made Kai get them out of the corruption zone as quickly as possible.

At first, the mission had been difficult but not impossible. The mutated weavers were strong, but the party had still been holding their ground. They had fought carefully, moved together, and tried to clear the zone the way the Watchers’ information had instructed.

Then the ground had broken open beneath them. A huge rhinoceros-like monster had burst out without warning. It killed half the party before any of them could react.

They had run.

There had been no plan after that. No attempt to reassess and continue the mission. The moment that rhinoceros-like fiend burst out of the ground, they knew they had become prey. Staying would have only meant dying one after another.

Kai could understand that.

Knowing when to give up was also a necessary skill. Too many people mistook stubbornness for courage and died because of it.

As he moved through the corruption zone, he did find the place they had spoken about. A huge hole had been torn open in the ground, wide enough to swallow part of the street around it.

The edges were cracked and uneven, with a large amount of dead mana still clinging to the broken stone. But the fiend itself was gone.

Or at least, it was too deep underground for Kai to sense properly.

He stood near the edge for a moment, looking down into the darkness, before deciding to leave it for later. If one creature like that had appeared here, there was a chance others had appeared in the other zones too.

That mattered more.

After getting Klan and the survivors out, Kai told them to reach safety and tell Francis his new commands. The order was simple. The corruption zones were no longer to be handled by ordinary parties. Kai would clear them himself.

Once that was done, he returned to the sky and flew toward the zone Killian had ventured into.

He pushed himself as fast as he could.

The land blurred beneath him. Forests, roads, and broken stretches of stone passed in quick flashes, but Kai barely paid attention to any of it. His thoughts stayed on Killian and the others, and on the possibility that their situation might be even worse than Klan’s.

Before long, he saw it.

A black stain spread across the greenery ahead, eating into the land like rot. The corruption zone sat in the middle of it, dark and unnatural against the living world around it.

Kai dropped lower as he approached.

For a brief second, he wondered how he was going to find Killian and his party inside the zone.

But he didn’t have to wonder for long. On the north side of the town, a battle was already underway.

The sight made Kai slow in the air. A giant golem stood in the middle of the ruined street.

At first glance, its frame reminded him of Sentinel. It had the same towering shape, the same heavy limbs, but it was way bigger, so much so that it made the buildings around it look small.

Also, this thing was uglier.

Its body looked as if stones, bones, and hardened earth had been forced together into a rough shape. There was no proper face, only a misshapen slab of rock where its head should have been. Dark cracks ran through its body, leaking dead mana in slow, heavy waves that rolled down its legs and spread across the ground like smoke.

Each time it moved, its limbs dragged against themselves with a hollow creaking sound.

Kai stared at it for a few seconds, his expression tightening. He had seen monsters, fiends, constructs, and corrupted beasts before.

But he had never seen anything like this.

He could also tell that the fiend was not native to Lancephil. And if it was, then it had certainly not been living anywhere near this town.

There was no way something like this could exist close to civilization without everyone knowing about it. No sane person would build a town beside a beast that could destroy a quarter of it with a single swing of its arm. The area around the town didn’t even have dense forests or deep mountain ranges where such a creature could have hidden for years.

Which left Kai with another question. How had something this large been brought here?

He didn’t get the chance to think about it for long.

His gaze shifted toward Killian.

Relief passed through him the moment he saw that Killian was still alive, but it didn’t last. The Knight was on the golem itself, moving across its lower body with lightning flickering around his limbs. He used the cracks in its stone-like frame as footholds, climbing higher and higher as if he meant to reach the thing’s head.

It was not a bad strategy, despite the dead mana falling around him.

After all, there was no way Killian could face a creature like this head-on. One clean hit from that massive arm would be enough to crush him. Even with the Mages and Enforcers helping, the difference in size and strength was too large to ignore.

Looking around, Kai saw the Mages had taken positions around the ruined buildings, firing spells whenever they had a clear shot. The Enforcers held the ground, cutting down the mutated weavers that still crawled through the streets and tried to reach them. Everyone was fighting, but none of them could do much to the golem itself.

That was probably why Killian had chosen to climb it.

Brave, but stupid.

His party’s attacks would barely do anything against the golem, yet Killian was risking too much by staying on its body. He moved quickly, lightning pushing through his muscles as he leapt from one crack to another. At times, he pulled himself upward with only the strength of his arms, using the momentum to clear impossible distances.

For a while, it worked. But Kai could already see the danger.

The golem was slow, but it was not mindless. Every movement of its body shifted the cracks Killian was using. Every swing of its arm forced him to change direction. The higher he climbed, the fewer places he had to escape.

It was only a matter of time before he was trapped.

And as Kai watched, that was exactly what happened.

The golem swung its arm toward its own chest, right where Killian was still climbing.

Killian tried to move, but his leg caught in one of the smaller cracks running through the golem’s body. For a brief second, he was stuck. He looked back, and even from the sky, Kai saw the exact moment Killian understood what was coming.

The golem’s hand was descending toward him, large enough to crush him into paste against its own body.

Kai moved before that could happen.

He raised his left hand, and a spell structure formed in front of his palm. Fire burst through it, twisting into chains that shot across the air and wrapped around the golem’s fingers.

The chains tightened at once, burning bright as Kai flew backward and pulled with all the force he could gather.

The golem’s arm slowed slightly, but it was enough.

Kai watched Killian tear his leg free and started moving again. As the man climbed, he glanced back and finally saw him hovering in the sky.

His expression shifted, surprise flashing across his face before Kai gave him a single nod.

Killian understood what he wanted of him immediately.

Instead of continuing toward the head, he pushed lightning through his blade and leapt downward. The weapon sank into the dead mana-infested stone that made up the golem’s body, and as Killian fell, the blade carved a bright line all the way down its chest and toward its legs.

The golem let out a hollow cry.

It was already using its other hand to tear at the fire chains wrapped around its fingers, and m Killian’s attack forced its whole body to jerk.

Killian hit the ground and rolled away just as the golem looked down.

One of its legs rose, casting a heavy shadow over Killian before coming down to crush him. The Knight ran faster than Kai had ever seen him move, lightning still flickering around his body as he shot out of the attack’s range.

That gave Kai the opening he needed.

He released the chains and formed another spell.

A fifth-circle structure opened above the golem, glowing with a heavy red light. Heat gathered in the air, thick and suffocating, before dozens of magma spheres dropped from the sky.

They slammed into the golem one after another.

Explosions rolled across its body and molten rock splashed over its stone hide, burning into the dead mana and melting through the surface layer. The golem cried out again, louder this time, its massive frame shaking under the barrage.

It swung both arms toward Kai in rage.

Kai moved aside with ease.

Compared to the creature’s size, he was far too fast. Its attacks were heavy, but slow, and each swing gave him more time to read its movement. As Kai circled higher in the air, watching the magma eat into the golem’s body, one thing became very clear.

This battle would not be difficult.

But again, huge creatures were always terrifying in their own way.

Their bodies were difficult to break, and their organs were buried beneath layers of muscle, flesh, stone, or whatever else made up their monstrous forms. A single hit from something that size could tear through a Mage’s defence without much effort. Even a proper barrier might not hold if the force behind the attack was heavy enough.

But size had a weakness too.

A creature that large was almost impossible to miss.

For most Mages, that only helped a little. They still needed power, and enough time to cast without being crushed. But for someone like Kai, who could fill the sky with spells, a giant target was almost too convenient.

So he did exactly that.

The golem reached for him again, dead mana crawling around its arm in thick, dark waves. Kai moved higher, keeping just outside its reach as a spell structure formed before him. A heartbeat later, the sky brightened.

Hundreds of flaming orbs appeared above the ruined town.

Kai let them fall all at once.

The barrage struck the golem like a burning storm. Fire exploded across its shoulders, chest, and arms, forcing its massive body to stagger back. Dead mana splashed away from the impact, hissing and burning where the flames touched it.

Still, he knew it wouldn't be enough.

The golem was damaged, but not finished. Even as the flames tore into it, the dead mana around its body shifted, trying to crawl back over the broken places and close the wounds.

Though it was still losing, and before ending the fight, Kai decided to test something else.

The mana hands.

He began building the spell structure carefully, keeping part of his attention on the golem below. The last thing he wanted was for the spell to collapse on him because the thing was trying to swat him out of the sky.

The structure trembled for a second, but it held.

Mana gathered behind him, twisting into shape until two large hands formed near his back. The moment the spell came alive, Kai felt them connect to him, like it was a part of his body.

The hands were attached to his mana, tied into him through a network of mana veins. He could feel them in the back of his mind.

They were not perfect yet.

He could not cast any spell he wanted through them. The mana veins had not been properly extended into the fingers, which meant the control was still limited. But he had already imprinted one spell into the structure, and that was enough for now.

Kai focused, forcing the mana hands to rise. Both hands lifted behind him.

A moment later, twin beams of ice shot out from their palms and struck the golem directly where the dead mana was trying to repair its body.

The ice spread fast, crawling over the damaged stone and locking the healing patches in place.

The golem raised its hands to block the beams.

Kai shifted to the side at once, guiding the mana hands with him. The ice beams changed direction and struck the golem’s chest instead, spreading over the cracked stone in a thick layer of frost. The dead mana crawling beneath the surface slowed, trapped under the ice before it could gather properly.

Kai smiled.

That part worked.

He checked the mana cost as the beams continued to burn through his reserves and found that his calculations had been mostly correct. There was a one percent difference here and there, but that much of a margin was completely normal for an experimental spell. For something he had only recently built, it was performing better than he had expected.

He would have liked to test it further, but the golem suddenly moved faster than before.

Its massive body lurched forward, and one of its arms swept toward him with enough force to crush a building. Kai rose immediately, gliding around the side of its head as the attack tore through the space he had just occupied.

The movement made Kai decide to end the fight.

If he kept testing the spell, the golem might start targeting the Mages and Enforcers positioned around the nearby buildings. Some of them were still dealing with mutated weavers below, and they would not survive if the golem decided to turn its attention toward them.

Hence, he raised his left hand, and another chain formed in the air. This one was larger than the first, thicker and brighter, with white flames burning along every link. The fire was meant to purge more of the dead mana clinging to the golem’s body, and the moment the chain finished forming, Kai sent it forward.

The golem hadn’t fully turned when the chain wrapped around its neck.

Its hands moved up at once, trying to tear the chain away, but Kai was already casting another spell through his legs. Two massive wind hands formed beneath him, their shapes almost invisible except for the pressure they pushed into the air.

At the same time, the mana hands behind him fired again.

Twin beams of ice struck one of the golem’s arms, freezing over the joints and slowing its movement before it could reach the chain.

Kai pushed the burning chain toward the wind hands, and they caught it. Then, he gave the command, and the wind hands pulled with all their strength.

The golem resisted.

Its feet dug into the street, cracking the ground beneath it as dead mana surged around its body. For a few seconds, it felt as if the creature might simply tear free and keep moving.

Kai poured more mana into the spell. A lot more than he would have liked.

Moving something that large was not easy, even with the wind hands doing most of the work. The strain bit into his reserves, and the pressure pushed back through the spell structure, making his control tremble.

But in the end, the golem moved.

The chain tightened around its neck, the wind hands dragged harder, and the massive creature was pulled off balance before it could tear itself free.

The golem lost its balance.

Its massive body tilted to the side before crashing down onto the broken mansion. The remains of the structure shattered beneath its weight, and jagged beams tore across its back as stone and dust burst into the air. The golem cried out, but Kai doubted any of the broken pieces had actually pierced through its body.

That didn’t matter anymore because it had fallen. Kai built another spell.

White fire erupted around him, burning so hot that the air twisted from the heat. In the next breath, his whole body was swallowed in flame, turning him into something like a falling meteor above the ruined town.

He dropped from the sky with all the speed he could gather.

The fire around him stretched forward, shaping into a long spear of white-hot flame. Kai drove it down with both hands, aiming straight for the golem’s neck.

The spear struck.

The golem screamed as the stone around its neck cracked apart. The white flames dug deeper with every second, melting through the rough surface and burning away the dead mana that rushed up to protect it. The dark energy tried to gather around the wound, but the flames purged it before it could take shape.

Kai pushed harder.

The heat spread through the creature’s neck, widening the crack into a deep, burning hole. The golem thrashed beneath him, its arms dragging through the remains of the mansion as it tried to rise again, but the damage was too much.

A few seconds later, its movements slowed. The hollow cries faded.

The dead mana around its body stopped moving.

Kai kept the flames burning for a moment longer, making sure there was no sign of life left in the creature. Only after he was certain did he extinguish the spell and let out a slow breath.

The golem was finally dead.

He rose back into the sky and looked toward the others.

Killian and his group had gathered on one of the nearby rooftops. The Enforcers and Mages looked as if they were only seconds away from cheering, their faces pale but alive. Killian stood at the front of them, sword still in hand, and gave Kai a single nod.

Kai returned it and started moving toward him.

But before he could reach the rooftop, a voice spoke from somewhere nearby. “You know, I wanted to see what the fuss was about. The others were not able to kill you, and now I see why.”

Kai went still as the voice continued, calm and almost amused.

“It truly seems like you are worthy of being the biggest thorn in the Great Lord’s side.”

***

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