Magus Reborn

As soon as Kai heard those words, he turned around.

A man in dark robes floated in the sky a short distance away from him.

Ironically, the first thought that came to Kai’s mind was how unremarkable the man looked. He wore a pair of glasses and had the sort of face that would disappear in a crowd. Nothing about him stood out. If Kai had seen him on the ground, he might have mistaken him for a peasant or a clerk.

That, by itself, was strange.

Powerful Mages and other beings did not always become beautiful, but their bodies usually changed as they grew stronger. Their features sharpened, their presence deepened and their mana shaped them closer to the best version of themselves, even if only slightly.

This man had none of that. And yet he was floating in the sky.

The second thing Kai noticed was worse.

The man gave off no mana at all—not even a small amount.

It was not a level of control Kai had seen from any Mage of this era. Even the strongest still left something behind, some ripple or pressure in the air. This man stood there as if he had no mana for Kai to sense.

Kai’s eyes narrowed.

How had he gotten so close? He hadn’t sensed anyone else in the corruption zone, and yet this man had appeared close enough to speak.

Everything about him screamed danger. Maybe even more than Regina and Selenia.

Kai kept his expression steady. “Who are you now?”

The man smiled, as if the question pleased him. “At least you have some manners. My name is Victor, and as you might have guessed, I serve the Great Lord. I’m sure you met it not long ago.”

Kai stayed silent for a few seconds, knowing he was talking about the dragon.

Just hearing the connection made his mood sink further. He had expected more enemies to come eventually, but he had hoped they would at least stop appearing in the middle of disasters.

His frown deepened. “If you’re here to fight me, then let’s battle. I don’t want to waste time.”

Victor clicked his tongue. “I’m not here to fight,” he said. “I’m only here to give you a warning.”

Something in Kai’s mind nearly cracked. For a moment, he could only stare at the man.

He had no idea why every member of the Maleficia seemed so determined to warn him before doing anything else. Even Malefic himself had done the same. They were enemies, yet all of them spoke as if they were delivering advice he should be grateful for.

Did they truly believe he would hear a warning and give up? Did they expect him to kill himself? Surrender? Step aside and let them do whatever they wanted? Or was there something else going on?

Kai didn’t know, and at this point, he was more than tired of it.

Before Victor could open his mouth again, Kai raised his hand. Blades of wind burst into existence around him and shot forward, slicing through the air toward the man in dark robes. At the same time, Kai began forming a stronger spell behind the attack, using the blades only as a distraction.

The blades struck Victor’s body. Or they should have.

Instead, the man broke apart into smoke.

His figure scattered in the air, dissolving so suddenly that Kai’s eyes widened. One moment, Victor was there. The next, there was nothing but fading wisps of dark smoke.

Kai stopped the spell he had been building and raised his guard at once. He expected an attack—a strike from behind, a spell from below, or some hidden trap that would activate the moment he thought Victor was gone.

Nothing came.

Kai remained in the air, his mana ready, his eyes moving across the ruined town. Two full minutes passed, but the sky stayed silent. The streets below were still filled with the distant movements of weavers and fiends, yet there was no sign of Victor.

Still, Kai did not relax.

It could have been a tactic. A way to make him lower his guard before the real attack began.

He pushed a wave of mana outward.

It spread through the entire town in an instant, washing over broken buildings, ruined streets, collapsed houses, and the corrupted creatures still moving below. Information rushed back to him from every direction. He felt the mutated weavers crawling through the alleys. He felt fiends shifting between buildings. He felt Killian and his party on the rooftop.

But there was no one else.

Kai frowned. From the rooftop, Killian called out, “What’s going on, Lord Arzan? Where’s that man?”

Kai turned slightly toward him. “I don’t know. He just disappeared.”

“Was he an illusion?”

Kai went quiet. He had been wondering the same thing.

His gaze moved across the area again, searching for anything he might have missed. At first, he saw only the ruined street and the broken remains of the golem. But as his eyes passed over the space below where Victor had been floating, he noticed something lying on the ground.

A note.

It had not been there before. Kai was certain of that. It had not been there when he fought the golem, and it had not been there when Victor first appeared.

His frown deepened. Without another word, he descended toward it, and picked up the note.

There was a message written across it in neat, calm handwriting.

I had a feeling you would try to kill me before I got to say what I wanted, but that gave me the opportunity to learn a little more about you. This note is only here to tell you that after the warning, I actually wanted to say I hope you do not kill yourself. I want to do that myself.

I give warnings to everyone I fight, so they cannot complain later that they had no choice but to face me.

Anyway, congratulations on killing Dravros. I am sure you can deal with the plague too, but make sure you do not do it alone.

As for you and me, we will meet again. When that time comes, we will definitely battle… Quite exciting.

I have not faced another Sixth-Circle Mage in a long time.

Kai’s eyes widened the more he read.

There were too many implications hidden inside the message. Victor knew about Dravros. He knew about the plague. He knew enough about Kai to expect how he would react, and somehow, he had left this note behind without being sensed.

But more than anything else, the last line made Kai go still. Victor was a Sixth-Circle Mage.

By this point, most of the high-ranking members of the Maleficia he had encountered had been from other races. Some, like Selenia, were rare beings Kai had barely known existed. He had expected Malefic to have powerful subordinates, but he had not expected one of them to be a human Mage at the sixth circle.

Especially not one he knew nothing about.

And yet, after what Victor had just done in this town, Kai couldn't dismiss the possibility that the man was the strongest Mage in the world other than Kai himself.

There was one reason for that—the illusion.

Kai hadn’t sensed anyone else in the town. He had searched for mana, and when that was not enough, he had checked for life force too. There had been nothing.

Which meant there was a good chance Victor had never been here at all.

He had projected the illusion from miles away.

For an ordinary Mage, that would have been impossible. Even for a Sixth-Circle Mage, it should have been close to impossible. An illusion that could speak, react, leave behind a note, and fool Kai’s senses long enough to hold a conversation was not something that should exist in this era.

Kai looked down at the note again, his fingers tightening around the edge of the paper.

Victor was far more dangerous than he had first thought.

Only after a Mage reached the seventh circle did long-distance projections like that become possible. At least, that was what Kai knew.

Even if Victor had shadow as an element, it was hard to understand how he had pulled it off. The man had not simply sent a message or cast an image into the distance. His illusion had spoken, reacted, and stood in the air as if he had truly been there. It had even left behind a note.

Everything about Victor screamed mystery and danger.

Kai looked at the letter one more time before folding it and tucking it into his robes. He would examine it properly later, once he was back in his room and had enough time to think through every word. For now, this was not the place.

He turned toward the others.

Killian, the Mages, and the Enforcers were still standing on the rooftop, all of them watching him with clear confusion. None of them seemed to know what had just happened, and Kai did not blame them. Even he was still trying to understand it.

He approached them and said, “We should get out of here.”

One of the Enforcers glanced toward the place where Victor had been floating, his grip tightening around his weapon. “But what about that man, Your Majesty?”

“He was an illusion in the end,” Kai said. “There’s nothing to fear from him right now. And I think all of you need rest more than anything.”

As he said that, Kai looked over the group properly.

They were still standing, but only barely. Most of them looked as if they were using the last of their willpower just to keep their weapons in hand. Their faces were pale, their breathing uneven, and the shock of what they had faced had not fully left their eyes.

They were tired… and traumatised. In need of a proper bed, warm food, and enough safety to let their bodies remember they were still alive.

There were probably a few dozen mutated weavers and fiends left somewhere inside the corruption zone, but they could return to deal with them later. Kai doubted anything remaining here would be strong enough to cause real trouble, especially with the golem dead.

As he thought that, Killian looked at him.

“But what are we going to do about the corruption zones, Lord Arzan?” he asked. “We can’t return to Veralt without purging everything inside them.”

Kai was quiet for a moment. He had been thinking about the same thing.

The zones had changed. The information they had was no longer reliable, and sending normal parties inside would only lead to more deaths. If there were more creatures like the rhinoceros fiend or the golem waiting in the other zones, then even capable teams would be overwhelmed before they understood what had gone wrong.

In the end, there was only one answer.

“I’ll handle them myself,” Kai said. “But for now, we’re going back to Veralt. A lot has happened, and you need to hear all of it.”

***

Elias had not gone a single day without a headache since returning to Vanderfall.

Even the Earth Plane had been better than this. It had been dangerous, yes, but at least there he had been surrounded by his element. The mana itself had felt familiar and pressing against him in a way that made him believe he could grow stronger just by living there for a few months.

Vanderfall should have felt like home.

Instead, it felt like he was standing inside a great kingdom and watching it slowly fall into oblivion.

History was full of kingdoms that had risen and ended. Some lasted for centuries. Some burned bright and vanished within a few generations. But more often than not, their fall could be traced back to those who ruled them.

Countries rarely died natural deaths. It was almost never just an earthquake, a famine, or a calamity that ended them. Even when disaster struck, the ruling family was usually responsible in one way or another. They ignored the signs. They fought among themselves. They bled the people dry. They mistook the throne for a birthright instead of a burden.

And when the end finally came, all that remained of them were a few lines in some dusty record, footnotes in a history most people wouldn't even bother to remember.

That was the way of the world, Elias supposed.

But knowing it and seeing it happen in front of him were two different things.

He had always known there was rot in the royal family, even if they dressed it in silk and ceremony. The smiles, the titles, the polished speeches, all of it had only hidden the decay underneath. But after the deaths of the king and the crown prince, that rot had finally risen to the surface where everyone could see it.

The three remaining princes had not even attended the funerals. They had skipped the private rites, and the public mourning—and even the ceremony the commoners themselves had arranged for the late king and crown prince.

Their excuse had been fear.

According to them, attending the funeral could have been a ploy to kill them. All three had used that reason to stay away, refusing to even look upon the bodies of their own father and brother one last time.

Once the princes refused to attend, the nobles followed.

Some claimed security concerns. Others said it was improper to appear when the royal heirs themselves had chosen absence. A few did not bother making excuses at all.

In the end, the funerals of Vanderfall’s king and crown prince had been carried on the backs of commoners.

And Elias had learnt about it all with a headache that only grew worse.

He hadn’t liked the old king or the crown prince.

But dislike didn’t erase respect for the dead. Whatever flaws they had carried in life, they had still ruled Vanderfall. They had still been father and son, king and heir, and seeing them treated as if even their bodies were a political inconvenience was enough to kill whatever small amount of hope Elias had left for the remaining princes.

In that sense, it was good he had not returned to Vanderfall with any real intention of supporting one of them.

He had to act as if he might. That was part of the role. But Elias had already seen enough to know that none of the princes should be allowed to inherit the kingdom.

Arzan had given him a plan, and it was a good one. More than that, it was one that could allow Vanderfall to survive and eventually become prosperous again. The problem was that such a future couldn't happen under any of the remaining princes.

If not for the oath Elias had made, he might have ended them himself. But he couldn't do that now.

Not directly.

And even if the oath had not existed, there was another problem moving beneath the surface. The Maleficia were also after the princes, and Elias had received confirmation of that almost as soon as he returned to Vanderfall.

He still had a few useful connections in the kingdom. People who listened, watched, and passed along information when asked the right way. Through them, Elias learned that Prince Marcell had been acting the strangest of the three.

The youngest remaining prince had begun speaking openly about marching into the territories controlled by his brothers and ending them all at once.

That alone told Elias enough.

This was the same prince who had always been the most afraid. The same prince who used to hesitate before taking even a small step without someone stronger beside him. There was no way a man like that would suddenly speak of wiping out his brothers while barely having an army of his own.

Not unless he had powerful backing behind him.

And there were very few forces in the world that could make a coward speak like a conqueror. Maleficia had chosen him.

It also explained the letter Elias had received. Of the three princes, Prince Marcell had been the harshest in demanding that Elias return and serve him. At first, Elias had thought it was arrogance born from desperation. But after understanding the Maleficia connection, the meaning behind it became much clearer.

There was no way Elias was going to place himself under that prince. Not even as an act.

The oath still bound Elias, but not as tightly as the princes likely believed.

It had been made under the late king, and its wording mattered. Elias had sworn to serve the royal family until his last breath, but the oath had not named any specific prince. The only person with true authority over it had been the king, and the king was dead.

With his death, the oath had weakened.

Not broken. Elias could still feel its weight inside him, a quiet pressure that reminded him he was tied to Vanderfall’s royal blood whether he liked it or not. But the remaining princes couldn’t simply order him around and expect the oath to force his obedience.

Even so, he did have to report to one of them in the end.

Arzan’s plan depended on it.

That didn’t mean Elias could choose carelessly. Of the three princes, one was already too deeply tied to the Maleficia to be useful. That left the other two, and Elias had spent the past few days deciding which of them was more likely to accept the path Arzan had laid out.

In the end, he chose Prince Cassian.

The prince was the second oldest, and after the first prince, he had always been the most ambitious. That ambition came with the same rotten personality Elias had come to expect from the royal family, but that was acceptable. He did not need the man to be good.

He only needed him to be useful. More importantly, he needed the prince to believe that Elias was useful.

So when Elias finally stood before him in a private audience, he did not waste time with empty courtesies. He bowed, gave the necessary greetings, and moved straight into the matter.

He spoke for over half an hour.

He explained the threat. The movements of the youngest prince. The possibility of outside support. He didn’t reveal everything, of course. Some truths were too dangerous to hand to a man like this. But he gave enough for the prince to understand that the balance between the brothers had already shifted.

When Elias finished, Prince Cassian leaned back in his chair.

His eyes narrowed.

“So,” the prince said slowly, “my brother has gained the support of an organisation of Mages and other races, one powerful enough to help him take over our glorious kingdom.”

Elias lowered his head slightly. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Prince Cassian tapped his finger against the arm of his chair. “And what is your solution to this problem?”

Elias smiled. That was the question he had been waiting for.

“It is simple, Your Highness. King Arzan of Lancephil has agreed to support you. He will arrange a meeting between the princes, under the pretence of deciding what is to happen to Vanderfall.”

The prince’s gaze sharpened, but Elias continued before he could interrupt.

“And during that meeting,” Elias said, his voice calm, “we are going to decide the fate of the kingdom.”

***

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