Casting wide-area magic was the act of gazing clearly at the world painted in one's mind and breathing all the mana one had accumulated thus far into it to manifest it into reality.
It was also an arduous process in which one had to accomplish everything alone.
How much mana had one accumulated with one's innate talent?
And how quickly and delicately could one construct the mental world into reality using that accumulated mana?
Since a mage's grade was determined by that very level, Norpin was at the intermediate grade—having moved past a novice's foundation and just crossed the threshold of proficiency.
In a mage's life, it was also the period when all manner of worldly temptations reached out their hands.
'The master of the world of water sources must be none other than me, Norpin.'
To Norpin, who wished to weave every water source on the continent into his mental world and rule over them, the temptation held out by the Empire could not have been sweeter.
"So long as the territory of the Azrion Kingdom is annexed by the Empire, every river within it shall belong to you."
He could not refuse the offer from Marquis Bueno Arjen, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Army.
It meant gaining authority over the water sources of Azrion, which boasted an abundant volume of water.
Without needing to ask anyone's permission or mind anyone's gaze, he could draw all of Azrion's rivers into his mental world to dry them up, or release the water sources to cause floods whenever he pleased.
It was tantamount to gaining the power to manipulate drought and abundance at will.
Therefore, taking the hand held out by the Empire to achieve his goal was only natural.
'Did he say I was pitiful for being arrogant?'
Recalling the words the Tower Master of the Ruslan Magic Tower—where he had belonged—had spoken while clicking his tongue before Norpin departed for this place, Norpin wore a fishy smile.
'That's just the petty jealousy of an old man trying to hold back a disciple who's about to pull ahead of him.'
Whether in empires or kingdoms, were the mages who seized the hand of opportunity not expanding their mental worlds and making names for themselves even now?
A premature judgment, he said?
That chasing a dream without a sense of distance would lead to a fall?
"Damned old geezer. If he saw this result, he'd never be able to say something like that."
What had become of the river water that was supposedly too fast-flowing and voluminous to bind with magic?
He had turned it into a stepping stone for the soldiers of the Empire to trample the soldiers of Azrion.
'Besides, I was even able to obtain equipment like this....... Hehe.'
The wave-colored robe gifted by the Empire was reducing the mental consumption caused by manifesting magic.
And what about the staff embedded with a blue jewel?
Did it not amplify the mana needed to draw the bitter cold manifested in his mental world into reality, heightening its power?
Had he stayed cooped up in the Magic Tower, he would only have been able to obtain items like these ten years later.
'Right now I'm only at the level of freezing a portion of it, but if I can lead the Empire to victory, gain authority over the water sources, and expand my mental world...'
He would surpass the high grade and become a Tower Master-grade mage.
The youngest Magic Tower Master, Norpin!
The day he would be called by that title was no longer far off!!
'Wait, why is it so noisy out there?!'
Unpleasant sounds of tearing flesh tickled his ears. However, he could not focus on that direction.
He could not afford to break his concentration and immersion any further. He even had to set aside the future he had briefly pictured.
He was still an intermediate-grade mage.
While exercising wide-area magic like this, he had no leeway to pay attention to anything else.
HUMMMM—!
If he did not want to drown the Imperial Army standing out on the ice, he had to go beyond concentration and immersion and reach a state of complete selflessness.
Because of that, the melody of death slowly approaching no longer reached Norpin's ears.
"Fuck!! Stop him!!"
"Master Norpin!! You must dodge!!"
"Snap out of it, you crazy mage!!"
***
"I told you, we're on the same side... Cough!"
Rian vomited blood as he pulled out the sword that had pierced the abdomen of the elite soldier lunging at him.
"What the hell......."
"How is he still standing?"
"No way......."
Every single one of them stared at Rian as though they were looking at a ghost.
Their comrade's sword had definitely been half a beat faster. It had been the same for the ones who went before him.
They had stabbed and slashed first, overwhelming the black-haired, dark-eyed spy.
'Were we arrogant? Did we let our guard down?'
Perhaps they had.
After all, their opponent's movements were neither agile enough nor forceful enough to keep them on high alert.
Yet including the five unit members before him and the one who had just toppled over with a hole through his stomach, six of them in total had met their deaths in an instant.
Each had landed a single blow and received death in return.
"What are you......."
An elite soldier darkened by the shadow of defeat asked, but Rian simply repeated the same words.
"I told you, we're on the same side."
As he spoke, he wiped the blood from his mouth. With not a single part of his arms, thighs, or flanks left unscathed, he was holding up remarkably well.
One life for every blade he took.
Rian gave up his own flesh and took his opponents' lives.
It was a result born of his enemies' arrogance and carelessness.
Sparing an enemy who was charging in to fight to the death on a battlefield of mutual slaughter?
It truly was arrogance and carelessness.
They were elites who had been trained solely for slaughter and had roamed the battlefields doing just that.
Unable to use what they had learned and mastered thus far, holding back to take their opponent alive was unfamiliar to their movements.
Thus, they had no choice but to fall before Rian, who was armed with the single-minded determination to kill.
It was the same after that as well.
Two more looked down on the profusely bleeding Rian and rushed him, only to die with holes punched through their necks.
And three more failed to hide their agitation over their comrades' deaths and charged in, only for Rian to sever their heads or shatter their ribs and puncture their lungs.
Moreover, because he kept insisting they were on the same side every time he killed and felled another one of them, the remaining scum wore twisted expressions and showed hesitation in their movements, as though wondering if he might actually be on their side.
Even so, would they admit he was on the same side at this point?
'There's no way in hell.'
He had sent eleven out of thirty men to their graves. They must never think of him as being on the same side, nor could they ever let that be the case.
On the off chance that son of a bitch really turned out to be an ally, it would prove they had lost eleven elite troops to a mere regular soldier.
That also meant a disaster would unfold in which every surviving one of them would be ordered to commit suicide or be sent to the execution block.
Therefore, he could never be acknowledged as an ally; he had to be a spy through and through, tied in league with Gerard.
That was what every single elite soldier guarding the mage was thinking.
"Was one of your parents a ghoul? This dog of a bastard just won't die."
Since they could not kill him in a single stroke, one of the elite soldiers resorted to cheap provocation. His intention was to rile Rian up and capture him the moment he let his guard down.
"......"
It was quite an insulting remark, yet Rian showed no particular agitation and did not rise to the bait.
Creep, creep—.
Crunch, crunch—.
He simply waited for the bones and severed nerve bundles of his left arm—which he had used as a makeshift shield—to knit back together, and for the ruptured organs in his flank to recover enough to function again.
At the same time, he dragged his hacked, slashed, wound-riddled right thigh across the ground, disguising himself as a man so gravely injured that he was about to collapse at any moment.
Therefore, so that his disguise would not be seen through at this juncture, he decided to provoke the elite soldiers instead.
"Going by faces, you look more like a ghoul than I do."
"Crazy bastard. I'll start by cutting out that tongue of yours."
It worked like a charm.
"Didn't you say you were going to tie me to Sir Gerard and do something with that? Wouldn't it be a bit inconvenient if I didn't have a tongue?"
If they cut out his tongue, he would not be able to speak.
As if to remind him of that fact, Rian tapped his temple with his index finger to jog the man's memory.
"You fucking bas......."
The red-faced elite soldier clenched his molars tightly.
Then, as if he did not care about testimony or anything else, he exuded murderous intent and tried to close the distance, yet—
"Graul. Seeing the way that bastard's acting, don't you think there really is something going on between him and Gerard?"
"We all want to tear him to pieces, but capturing him alive comes first."
"Yeah. If we want to drag Gerard down and get out of the lower ranks, we need that scum."
The surrounding unit members held the scum back.
Then, as if wiping away their arrogance and carelessness, they hardened their expressions and prepared to engage in battle with dead seriousness.
Slide—. Shuffle—.
As if to prove it, the scum who had been deployed in a double and triple defensive formation around the mage shifted their formation, drawing an arc like a net.
'Hmm. Definitely.'
Just like the scum he had faced earlier, both their brains and their skills were far below Gerard's.
They had said their top priority was supposed to be protecting the mage, yet right now they looked like they had no intention of doing that whatsoever.
Which was exactly what Rian had hoped for.
Thump—.
As if to bait the judgment of the Shadow Unit members slowly tightening the encirclement, Rian buckled one knee and pretended to lose his balance.
Perhaps that act looked quite natural, because—
"Now!! Punch holes through that ghoul-like bastard's arms and legs!"
At the same time Graul shouted, the Shadow Unit members rapidly tightened their net and lunged.
That coincided with the exact moment Rian's body finished regenerating and his physical enhancement kicked in.
'Just as I thought!'
Whenever he entered the process of dying from severe blood loss, his body unfailingly exhibited a rapid regenerative reaction and healed his wounds.
Following that process, a temporary physical enhancement spread throughout his entire body, enabling him to display physical abilities far superior to before.
With this, it became certain.
After meeting complete death where his heart was torn apart, he gained permanent physical enhancement.
And when driven to the brink of death by excessive blood loss while his heart remained intact, a temporary physical enhancement ability manifested.
Rian sprinted with his sights set on the mage.
"This crazy—!!"
"How the hell is he completely fine?!"
"S-Stop him!!"
The enemies charging in the lead gasped with flustered expressions and thrust the tips of their blades at him.
They were attacks whose trajectories—betrayed by panic, fear, and hesitation—were plain to see.
Skid—.
Sweeping low across the ground in a slide, he effortlessly dodged the attacks.
And then he broke into a sprint once more.
Keeping only the mage in his sights, he bolted straight ahead.
"Fuck!! Stop him!!"
"Master Norpin!! You must dodge!!"
"Snap out of it, you crazy mage!!"
Chasing after him, the scum bellowed cries bordering on screams.
Even so, the mage did not budge, as though completely entranced by his own magic.
'Is it a trap?'
That thought crossed his mind inwardly, yet right now, severing the mage's windpipe with the sword gripped in his hand had to come first.
SLASH—!!
Without hesitation, he struck the neck of the mage draped in the gold-trimmed, wave-colored robe.
Tearing through the slender skin and nerve bundles of the neck and cleaving cleanly between the vertebrae, the blood-spraying blade exited out the other side.
Thud—.
The head of a young man with brown hair and fair skin dropped to the ground.
Looking at the closed eyes on a face not yet thirty, he appeared so peaceful that he might not even have realized he had met his death while lost in his mental world.
Perhaps he had met a death in which an eternal dream seemed to continue forever.
In any case.
RUMBLE—!!
The sheet of ice stretching across the Trevor River began to crumble and collapse.
Since the master of the mana had breathed his last, it was only a natural outcome.
The Imperial troops out on the ice let out screams and shrieks as they plunged into the river water.
Some had already set foot on the opposite bank and were pressing the Kingdom Army hard, but their momentum was broken by the pandemonium erupting behind them, and in an instant they were dragged into the pit of death.
It was a reversal brought about by Rian Kade.
Of course, Rian, who had caused that reversal, had no leeway whatsoever to watch it unfold.
"Die! You ghoul-like, dog-fucking bastard!!"
"You crazy monster bastard!!"
He had to face the blades of the Shadow Claw Unit, who had chased him to within five paces.
He gave up an arm to pierce a neck, and took a blade through his flank in exchange for severing an opponent's head.
He took the flying blades with his entire body. Every single wound was fatal.
His arm was severed, and even his ankle was lopped off.
Even amidst that process, he desperately guarded against having his head taken off at all costs.
He did not rely on immortality, yet he could not help hoping for it.
Because that hope had stirred up his heroism and helped him kill the mage, it was an undeniable instinct.
Keeping the possibility of mortality in mind, that instinct stimulated his senses and drove him to desperately protect his neck.
Even so, he could not avoid the death that had come right up to his nose.
Even while suffering fatal wounds, he reaped the fates of five more elite soldiers.
And finally—
SQUELCH, SQUELCH! SQUELCH, SQUELCH!!
Skewered from front and back by six flying spearheads, he met his death.