Chapter 170.1: Zero Class (1)
170 Part 1
Return of the 8th Class Mage 170 Zero Class (1)
“Let’s get rid of this dangerous thing first.”
Ian took out the explosives from Ledio’s coat with light magic and put them in a dimensional pocket.
“Ian..!”
“Step back. I’ll continue from here.”
Ian stood in front of Ledio and stared at Fran with quiet eyes. This was the beginning of the second battle and the end of a long war.
“You’ll take care of me alone?”
“Yes, me alone, you.”
The atmosphere cooled down amidst light talk.
“Where did the lizards go?”
“Stop faking nonsense.”
Fran smiled coldly at Ian’s growl.
“You got out of that mess.”
Fran had not just transported but tried to slow down Ian and the dragons’ tracking by using an antimagic spell as he got out of the violet space.
“Honestly, I was surprised. I thought you would be tied up in the obstructing current, let alone the dragons who had shown no development all their lives…”
Fran had grounds to be confident. He had thought that dragons and Ian would take at least a half-day to come here and had not expected that it would not last even a few minutes.
“It would have been impossible even right after we had taken off your seal.”
“How much time do you think has passed? Are you saying that you got something new in that short period?”
“…You. You seem to know nothing about fragmented worlds and only know how to turn back time.”
Ian’s voice was filled with certainty. Fran Page was the cause of the dimension fractures, and there would not be a Fran per dimension. The two were different from the beginning.
“What do you mean I don’t know? Hadn’t I sent you to a world where you were living in ideal peace as a failure and human being?”
It had been so, and Fran had transported Ian there as a present. However, Ian did not mean that, as he and Fran had a fundamental difference between them.
“Fragmented dimensions meant places you could take a walk in without any time lag, worry, and confusion, right?”
“You’re not wrong.”
“I was different.”
Ian’s eyes took on a strange light, and they looked way older than his face.
“Unlike you, I wandered about many dimensions I returned here, and it took me more time than you can imagine.”
Fran looked surprised, but he had not understood Ian’s meaning. It was just a response to something he had heard for the first time.
“You would think that I came back in an instant, but I did not. I wandered for a long time and thought things over. And…”
Ian stopped talking for a minute, and his hands shook. Why?
“I understood something.”
Fran became worried about the sentence since it did not seem like mere talk.
“What did you understand?”
“A higher plane than the power of language.”
“…What?”
“The pinnacle of magic.”
Fran’s caution loosened at Ian’s description, and he even smiled faintly. It was evidently a sneer.
“And I wondered what nonsense you were going to speak.”
Fran had plastered on a smile when something astonishing for Fran happened. With a loud bang, a magical explosion rang in front of Fran’s eyes. It would have killed only a bug at most and would not have been surprising in scale.
“……?”
However, Fran was flabbergasted for a simple and exact reason.
‘I did not feel a thing.’
Fran could feel mana. That is, he could feel the size and flow of mana his opponent used for spells. That was one of Fran Page’s special talents and a reason why he had not been afraid of Ian a bit.
‘It’s impossible.’
However, that talent, which was one of the highest blessings a mage could have, did not work. Fran could not help but feel confused.
‘Is it a trick and not magic?’
Fran thought of another reason and tried to believe it was true. He was about to be certain of it. However, another explosion rang in front of Fran, which he could not feel. They rang in a sequence and were far and close near Fran’s face, ears, back of his head, and on top of his hair.
“The power of language has its limits since one needs to borrow magic. However, my understanding is different. I do not need magic and base my powers on nature and can act freely upon my thoughts.”
Fran could not believe Ian’s words but understood something anew. He remembered something he had passed by before.