Never Die Villain

In the context of mages, what exactly did talent mean?

Was it measured by how many spells a mage had mastered, how quickly they could learn new ones, or how rapidly they ascended through the Circles?

Perhaps it was their control over mana, the amount they possessed, or even how easily they understood principles of magic that others might spend years struggling to comprehend.

Or was it simply... determined by how far they could go?

There were countless ways to judge whether someone was talented in magic, but Circle potential remained the simplest and most widely accepted standard.

A mage who learned spells quickly could certainly be called talented, and someone with exceptional mana control might outperform another mage of the same Circle, but those qualities meant little to the wider magical world if that person eventually reached a wall they could never overcome.

According to statistics recorded throughout the Empire, most mages would never progress beyond the Third Circle in their entire lives.

This wasn’t because they simply stopped studying. Advancing to the next Circle wasn’t merely a matter of accumulating enough mana over time.

Every mage eventually approached the limit of what their body and mana circulation could sustain, and for the overwhelming majority, that limit came much earlier than they would have liked.

The First Circle was where almost every formally trained mage began, and reaching the Second was considered an ordinary achievement for anyone who continued practicing magic seriously.

The Third Circle was different, as reaching it already placed a mage above a considerable portion of those who had received magical education, while progressing any further became increasingly dependent on qualities that couldn’t easily be gained through effort alone.

That was where talent began separating people.

And those in the Magic Department who knew what to look for had already begun to recognize that kind of talent in the newcomer from the Knight Department.

Ilya Valentinovich Belozersky.

By the standards of most aspiring mages, who began receiving some form of magical education years before entering the academy, he had started ridiculously late.

Yet Ilya had reached the First Circle after less than a year of learning magic.

Whether that meant Ilya possessed the potential to reach the Fourth Circle, the Fifth, or something even higher was impossible to know.

Less than a year of magical education was nowhere near enough to determine the eventual limits of a mage, and history had seen plenty of talented children race through the lower Circles before reaching a barrier they could never overcome.

For now, however, there was one much easier way to measure how far Ilya had come.

He could fight.

Boom——!

Fire burst through the forest floor as Ilya hurled himself backward through the blizzard, putting several meters between himself and the explosion before the flames could reach him.

He had barely regained his balance when another spell followed, forcing him to twist in the opposite direction as a concentrated beam of fire passed close enough to his shoulder that he could feel the heat through his uniform.

Tristan was fast.

Not just in how quickly he could cast, but in how little time he wasted between one spell and the next.

Every attack seemed prepared with the assumption that Ilya would avoid the one before it, and rather than throwing magic directly at wherever Ilya happened to be standing, Tristan kept aiming for the places he was most likely to move toward.

"Tsk."

Ilya changed direction again.

He couldn’t keep reacting forever.

The other students were still somewhere behind him, and although breaking through their encirclement had bought him some time, Cold Sense was already telling him that several of them were closing the distance.

If he allowed Tristan to keep him occupied until they arrived, he would end up surrounded again, except this time the person who had organized the entire attack would be standing inside the formation with them.

Ilya needed to deal with Tristan quickly, or at the very least force his way past him before the others could restore the encirclement.

Another spell began forming in Tristan’s hand.

Ilya didn’t cast anything.

He took control of the blizzard surrounding Tristan and began drawing it together, concentrating more and more of its force around a single point.

The movement was completely imperceptible to Tristan, who could neither see nor feel the force gathering around him, and by the time he noticed that Ilya hadn’t bothered preparing a spell of his own, there was already enough force concentrated beside him.

Avalanche.

The blizzard crashed all at once.

"Ah—"

Tristan’s spell never left his hand as the accumulated force slammed into him from the side, ripping him off his feet and sending him flying several meters through the forest.

His body struck the ground hard enough to bounce once before rolling across the dirt, and although he quickly managed to stop himself and push himself back to his feet, the confusion on his face was obvious.

"Ugh...?"

Tristan immediately looked toward the direction the attack had come from, but there was nothing there.

He hadn’t seen a projectile, hadn’t sensed a spell being formed beside him, and Ilya himself had remained several meters away without so much as an incantation or hand sign before something invisible suddenly sent him flying.

His attention returned to Ilya.

"Telekinesis...?"

Ilya heard him, but made no effort to correct the misunderstanding.

From Tristan’s perspective, telekinesis was probably the only explanation that made any sense.

He couldn’t perceive the blizzard surrounding them, and with Ilya having already spent most of the examination moving through the air as though an invisible force were carrying him, it wasn’t difficult to understand how Tristan had reached that conclusion.

That misunderstanding was useful.

If Tristan believed it was telekinesis, then he would try to defend himself against telekinesis.

———!

Ilya took control of the blizzard again, but rather than sending it toward Tristan, he turned his attention to the students closing in around them.

Cold Sense picked out their positions through the Whiteout, allowing him to feel several approaching from behind while others moved in from either side.

"Not this again."

The blizzard swept outward.

Several students were caught before they could finish preparing their spells, the invisible force knocking them off their feet and sending them crashing through the undergrowth.

Another group tried to advance from the opposite direction, only for Ilya to swing the blizzard toward them as well and scatter them before they could restore the encirclement.

"What the hell?!"

"Is that telekinesis?!"

Ilya wasn’t particularly interested in correcting them.

Within seconds, the students Tristan had gathered were scattered throughout the forest again, and although none of them had been seriously injured, their attempt to surround Ilya had completely fallen apart.

With that problem temporarily dealt with, Ilya turned his attention back toward the person who had organized all of this in the first place.

"Southern Duchy heir, huh?"

"Ironic, isn’t it? Two polar opposites."

Tristan was already looking at him.

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