**Chapter 52**
—
Three magic circles coiled around Leonard’s heart began to spin. Watching the torrent of crimson mana erupting from his body, Dale involuntarily drew in a sharp breath.
It was like a dam bursting apart—an overwhelming cascade of red energy. This was no level of power that a 3rd-circle mage should ever be capable of producing.
At least, not unless one possessed talent on par with Dale.
*Overclock…*
A mage’s act of forcing their mana circuits to spin beyond their natural threshold—a desperate move with no turning back.
And then, there was the ruby crystal bracelet gleaming on Leonard’s wrist. Dale couldn’t quite identify its origin, but one thing was certain: Leonard Walter did not have the ability to handle that artifact.
*The artifact’s rampage has driven him mad.*
From the start, Leonard’s erratic behavior likely stemmed from that cursed object.
Clicking his tongue, Dale accelerated the spin of his own heart’s circles. The black-and-blue mana merged and swirled beneath his feet, like a vortex devouring the air itself—overwhelming the raging flood of Leonard’s red mana that had surpassed all safe limits through his own overclock.
“How can this be…!”
The professors and students witnessing the duel could not hide their shock.
For magicians, it wasn’t difficult to estimate the RPM—the revolutions per minute—of another’s mana circles, simply by observing the quantity of mana they emitted.
Was the Duke of Saxen’s heir truly a 3rd-circle mage? Even if he was, had he actually built that power through honest study and mastery? Could his circle’s rotation possibly exceed 100 RPM?
All such doubts—lingering before this “abnormal prodigy”—were finally silenced by what they saw before them.
The average magician’s circle rotated at around 300 RPM.
Those deemed “gifted,” like Leonard, could reach roughly 1,000 RPM. Even when recklessly overclocking, few could exceed 2,000.
And yet—
Dale’s *first* circle was rotating at **3,000 RPM.**
A truly impossible surge of mana whirled at his feet—dual-colored energy of blue and black intertwining into a dark azure radiance.
Chilling frost. Refined darkness.
Everyone watching finally understood.
The fame of the Duke of Saxen’s eldest son, Dale—was no exaggeration.
“H-how could anyone…”
As his own overclock pushed him to the brink, Leonard gave a hollow laugh. No matter how hard he struggled, an insurmountable wall stood before him.
“Give up,” Dale said coldly. “Abandon that artifact while you still can. Any further, and you’ll never come back.”
That look—of someone looking *down* on him—was unbearable.
“There’s nothing left that can be undone!” Leonard screamed.
He was the son of the Imperial Court Count, *Walter the Bloodflame*, heir of a Red Tower Elder. Everyone around him had praised him as the Empire’s most gifted mage.
*Ah, how promising! You’ll be a marvel among mages!*
Even the famed Marquis Yuris—*the Crimson Duke* himself—had spoken those words of praise. The master of the Red Tower, the Crimson Marquis, had expectations for *him*! That had been Leonard’s pride, his confidence—his very sense of self.
In the Red Tower, only strength mattered—and Leonard *had* strength. It was that strength that made him king of the Academy, that guaranteed his rise among the Red Tower’s elite.
—At least, it *should have.*
The world was unfair and absurd, but Leonard had always been one of its victors.
Until the day the “young son of House Saxen” appeared before him.
The incarnation of unfairness itself.
“Don’t you dare mock me!”
Leonard poured his violently overproduced mana into his bracelet. The Artifact of the Bloodflame House—*Chains of the Inferno.*
“It’s me! I’m the Empire’s greatest genius!”
His voice trembled with emotion as the bracelet flared. Red mana swelled outward, finally taking *form*—
Chains of fire, whipping through the air like living serpents.
Burning chains of flame—searing enough to make his own heart feel as though it would burst. But Leonard didn’t care. *I have talent. I can control this artifact. I won’t be the one to fall here.*
Self-delusion became his resolve as the fiery chains lashed out from all directions—
Only to vanish into nothing.
The black-blue vortex at Dale’s feet devoured them effortlessly.
“A red mage who can’t even keep his own fire alive—what use is that?”
“…!”
Dale’s tone was casual, mocking.
He had frozen the *molecular motion* of the air itself—locking it in near stasis, sealing off the very precondition that allowed fire to exist.
But even the most gifted blue mage would find it nearly impossible to extinguish a red mage’s flame. Only Dale—armed with “knowledge from another world” and an ironclad image of its principles—could achieve such a feat.
After all, *heat* was nothing more than the measure of molecular agitation within matter.
“You bastard… how dare you!”
A true red mage, seasoned in battle, would never allow their flame to be extinguished so easily. They instinctively maintained the heat that sustained their magic.
But Leonard was neither a formal Red Tower sorcerer nor a Purifier.
He was just a pampered prodigy—an arrogant youth inflated by empty praise within the shallow walls of the Academy.
And mages were never trained for *battle.* The act of studying magic and mastering it for war were two entirely separate paths.
In that regard, Leonard could never hope to match Dale.
“It’s not too late,” Dale said quietly.
“Stop now. Throw away the artifact.”
He didn’t actually expect Leonard to listen.
“It must be hurting by now, isn’t it?”
At that point, Leonard’s heart had to be writhing in agony from the overclock’s burn. He likely had no strength left to even cling to pride.
“Guh…!”
Indeed, Dale’s prediction was correct. Leonard’s heart was screaming, seared by unbearable pain.
Dale’s only miscalculation was underestimating the monstrous resilience of Leonard’s pride.
The Red Tower’s near-religious creed—its absolute belief in the rule of strength—was deeply ingrained. To lose strength was to lose existence itself.
And so, as his body reached its limit, his circles broke control. Mana spiraled out of order, devouring Leonard’s mind.
For an instant, the world froze.
“…!”
He looked around—he *knew* this place.
Every mage possessed an inner realm, a *world of thought* built from their ideology.
—This was *Leonard’s world.*
The realm of enlightenment. The abyss of thought.
“Hah… hahahaha…”
And in a situation like this, that could mean only one thing. Leonard began to laugh hysterically, clutching his chest as he felt a new ring of mana forming around his heart.
The *fourth* circle—proof of ascension.
“I did it! I finally did it!”
In his own world, Leonard burst into manic laughter. At twenty years of age, he had achieved the Fourth Circle! If that wasn’t the mark of the Empire’s greatest genius, what was?
He laughed and laughed—
Until flames consumed everything.
*Fwoosh!*
Leonard’s world was burning.
Hellfire swept through it, devouring his world as though it were the end of days.
—
—
“…!”
Dale gasped in shock.
Leonard Walter’s body was on fire. His newly-forged fourth circle burned along with him.
Even Dale hadn’t foreseen this.
When he had broken through to the Third Circle himself, it was by crashing headlong into the wall until it shattered. But Leonard lacked the strength for such a feat.
His forced leap to the Fourth Circle had caused his *inner world* to spiral into chaos.
Ironically, this disaster had come *because* Leonard was talented enough for it to happen.
Magic was the act of imposing imagination upon reality—and when that imagination lost control, there was only one result.
*Reality itself was being consumed by thought.*
The surroundings warped as Leonard’s *world of thought* merged with the real one.
The world was burning. It was as if they were all trapped within a closed barrier—students and professors of the Third Circle department alike.
*This has gotten troublesome,* Dale thought grimly.
*Still… nothing has really changed.*
His eyes flicked to the black overcoat that masked his *Cloak of Shadows.* The one running rampant here was Leonard; Dale’s actions were nothing but *self-defense.*
And then—
*I’ll show that damned brat.*
*I’ll show him that I—Leonard Walter—am the Empire’s true genius!*
Just as Dale once resonated with Sephia and the world itself, Leonard’s rampaging emotions poured directly into him.
The feeling of an unscalable wall before him—of suffocating despair. The crushing weight of facing “the Black Duke.”
It was the despair all of Dale’s past enemies had felt before him. And now, for the first time, *he* was on the receiving end.
Like Sephia before, Dale felt his composure waver, an unfamiliar tremor coursing through his mind.
A massive, invisible wall loomed before him—*his own wall,* seen from another’s eyes.
All the things he’d taken for granted now stabbed back at him like invisible knives.
And yet—
*So this is all?*
Before that crushing despair, Dale merely smirked coldly.
“So the so-called Black Duke isn’t as impressive as they thought.”
He recalled the foes he had defeated in his past life—monsters beyond human comprehension, the beings that words like *strong* could never describe.
He had hunted countless such creatures as the Empire’s hound.
Compared to those abominations, this paltry resonance was nothing.
Dale gazed upon the burning figure of Leonard Walter and his collapsing world.
Nothing had changed.
He looked on, indifferent, and murmured, almost to himself—
“Not my problem.”
