Lencar left the ruins of the demon skull with the sunset burning his back. Ahead of him, the voices of Asta and Yuno drifted through the cooling air—one shouting about becoming the Wizard King, the other replying in that cool, infuriatingly calm drone. Their rivalry had reignited, hotter than ever now that they both held their grimoires.
Lencar took the long way home. He didn't want to catch up to them. He needed the walk. He needed the silence.
His body felt... wrong. It was buzzing. He was currently in what he called "Mage Mode." Inside him, the mana pool he had replicated from Yuno was sloshing around like water in a tank that was too big for the truck carrying it. It was exhilarating, a rush of power that made his fingertips tingle, but it was also alien. It felt like wearing a suit of armor that didn't fit—powerful, but heavy.
He stopped by the trunk of an ancient, gnarled oak tree on the outskirts of the village. He needed to test the limits before he faced his parents.
Just to be sure, he thought, taking a shaky breath.
He focused on the very back of his mental library, on that dark, shadowed page that Asta's sword had unlocked.
Switch.
The world went mute.
The heavy, electric hum of mana vanished instantly. It was like stepping out of a noisy factory into a soundproof room. The wind didn't feel magical anymore; it was just moving air. He felt impossibly light, yet utterly powerless. His grimoire was dead weight in his pouch. All that remained was his own body—the muscle and bone he had forged over ten years of sweat and grit.
For a moment, it was peaceful. Then, the terror set in. He was a normal human in a world of monsters.
Switch back.
The return was a tsunami.
The sudden surge of Yuno's mana flooded his system with such violence that Lencar's knees actually buckled. He grabbed the tree trunk to steady himself, digging his fingernails into the bark. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs, skipping a beat before slamming back into cadence.
He retched, dry heaving into the grass.
"Two seconds," Lencar gasped, wiping sweat from his forehead. "It takes two seconds for my body to reboot. In a fight, that's an eternity. That's enough time to die three times over."
He leaned his head against the tree, closing his eyes. He understood his reality now. He wasn't just a mage. He was a hybrid engine.
Mage Mode: High power, static spells, borrowed talent.
Heretic Mode: No magic, pure physical force, anti-magic negation.
He had to master both, or the switch would kill him.
He gathered himself and continued walking. He finally reached his family's farmhouse as the first stars pricked the twilight. He took a deep breath, smoothing out his expression. He focused on his grimoire's cover, willing the "lie" to settle into place. The blank leather shimmered, a faint illusion settling over it to show a simple, unassuming three-leaf clover.
He opened the door.
"Lencar! You're back!" his mother, Marta, cried.
She rushed from the hearth, wiping her hands on her apron. Her own meager mana fluttered around her like a nervous bird. "The ceremony... how did it go? Did you...?"
She trailed off, too afraid to ask the question. Behind her, his father, Rion, stood up from the table, his face tight with anxiety.
Her eyes were so full of hope—desperate, fragile hope—that it made Lencar's chest ache. He wasn't Kenji Tanaka in this moment. He was their son. He knew how much they worried that he would end up like Asta—magicless and pitied.
He gave them the small, calm smile he had perfected over fifteen years.
"I did," he said, holding up the book.
Rion let out a breath that sounded like a sob. He rushed over, his eyes widening as he stared at the illusion. "A three-leaf clover... Lencar, that's wonderful! Just like us! Oh, thank the gods. You aren't... well, you know."
He didn't say "defective," but Lencar heard it.
"We'll have a special stew tonight to celebrate," Marta said, tearing up as she hugged him tight. "My boy. A mage."
Lencar hugged her back, feeling the warmth of the kitchen. "Yeah, Mom. A mage."
They ate dinner together. Lencar ate the warm, simple stew, listening to his father crack bad jokes about the village elder and his mother talk about the potato harvest. He laughed when he was supposed to. He smiled when they toasted him.
But inside, he felt a sharp, cold pang of guilt. This was the biggest lie he had ever told. If they knew what his grimoire really was—a blank, parasitic thing that stole souls, a book that held a power more terrifying than a devils—they wouldn't be celebrating. They would be terrified of their own son.
I'm protecting them, he told himself, gripping his spoon a little too tight. Ignorance is safety. And in doing so, I'm completely alone.
Later that night, the farmhouse settled into the deep, heavy silence of the Forsaken Realm. The wind rattled the windowpane, a lonely sound.
In his small room upstairs, Lencar sat at his scarred wooden desk. A single tallow candle flickered, casting long, dancing shadows against the walls.
On the desk lay the book. To anyone else, it was a diary. To Lencar, it was a weapon he barely knew how to hold.
He leaned back in his creaking chair, closing his eyes. In his past life, he had dealt with market crashes and data corruption. He solved problems by breaking them down into variables. He had lived in a world of logic. Now, faced with magic, he grabbed onto that logic like a lifeline. It was the only way to keep the fear at bay.
"The system is unstable," he whispered to the empty room. "I have the hardware—my body. I have the software—the spells. But the interface is a mess. If I go to the Exam like this, I'm a glass cannon with a slow trigger."
He pulled a stack of scrap parchment toward him and picked up a charcoal stick. He didn't write a diary entry. He began to draw a blueprint.
Variable 1: The Biological Chassis (Heretic Mode)
Lencar looked at his hands in the candlelight. They were calloused, the knuckles thick from punching stone. But until today, his training had been limited by his own weak mana. He had reached a plateau.
Now, he had a nuclear reactor inside him.
"Progressive Overload," he muttered, writing it down.
For the next six months, he would redefine what his body could do. He wouldn't just exercise; he would use his siphoned mana against himself. He would flood his muscles with magic, commanding it to push down like a lead weight, while his physical muscles fought to push up.
It was internal warfare. By using his own magic as the resistance, his training would always scale perfectly to his power level.
The goal was simple: He needed to be fast enough to kill a mage without using magic at all. Because when he switched to Anti-Magic, he was just a human. He needed to be a human who hit like a truck.
Variable 2: The Logic of the Inflexible (Mage Mode)
He turned to the first page of his grimoire.
[Wind Creation Magic: Towering Tornado]
"It's static," he noted, frustration creeping into his voice. "I can't curve it. I can't shrink it. It's a dumb fire-and-forget missile."
Real mages spent years learning to shape their magic. Yuno could probably turn that tornado into a gentle breeze or a razor blade. Lencar didn't have that luxury. He was a copycat. He had the executable file, but not the source code.
"If I can't be flexible with one spell," he decided, the charcoal scratching loudly on the paper, "I'll be flexible with ten."
He dubbed it "Combo Logic."
He wouldn't try to master the Tornado. Instead, he would master the sequence.
Step 1: Use [Magic-Sealing Chain] to bind the target.
Step 2: Immediately fire [Towering Tornado] for the finish.
He needed to treat his spells like tools in a belt. You don't try to use a hammer as a screwdriver. You just learn to switch tools fast. He would practice these combinations until his muscle memory took over, until casting a sequence was as natural as typing a command.
Variable 3: The Switch (The Latency Problem)
This was the dangerous part. This was the variable that kept him awake.
"Two seconds," Lencar wrote, circling the number heavily until the charcoal snapped. "In a fight, two seconds is death."
The shock of switching from High Mana to Zero Mana caused his body to seize up. It was a biological reboot. He needed to train that reflex out of his system.
He would build a gauntlet in the woods. Traps. Falling logs. Swinging stones.
He would block one trap with Wind Magic.
Then, a split second later, he would have to Switch to Anti-Magic to negate a magical trigger.
He needed to get that latency down. From 2.2 seconds to 0.1 seconds. He wanted the Switch to be faster than a blink. If he could do that, he could become a nightmare to fight—a mage who could block a fireball with magic, then cut through a barrier with anti-magic in the same breath.
Variable 4: Expansion
Lencar looked at the hundreds of empty pages in his book.
"Yuno and Revchi are a good start," he mused. "But it's not enough. To stand in the Capital, to face the Captains... I need more."
He wouldn't stay in Hage. Every few weeks, he would travel to nearby villages. He would be the helpful boy, catching a falling book for a merchant, steadying a stumbling guard.
Every touch was a download. (Well he uses [Replica Magic]: [Replication])
Healing Magic.
Sensor Magic.
Movement Magic.
He didn't need nukes. He needed utility. He needed a toolbox that could handle any situation. He needed to be the mage who had an answer for everything.
The Goal: The Exam
Lencar leaned back, his charcoal-stained fingers tapping on the desk. He looked at the final section of his plan.
Day 180: The Royal Capital.
"The Captains expect a show," he whispered, a small, cold smile touching his lips. "They expect loud, flashy magic. They expect nobles preening like peacocks."
He blew out the candle, plunging the room into darkness. The smell of smoke filled the small space.
"I won't give them a show. I'm going to give them a system error."
He lay down, tucking the grimoire under his pillow. It wasn't just a book anymore. It was the key to the kingdom.
"Six months," he thought as sleep finally pulled at him, his mind still racing with calculations. "180 days. Let's see how much I can steal."