**Chapter 53**
—
It isn’t unheard of for a high-ranking magician to deliberately project their *inner world of thought* into reality.
That’s precisely why clashes between such magicians are often referred to as “the collision of worlds.”
However, that was not the case for **Leonard Walter**.
The four circles he had forcefully built up had gone out of control, and his consciousness was now in a frenzy—running wild on its own.
> “You… you wretch, what makes you think you’re so much better than me?!”
He had literally become a “god of flames” born from jealousy and inferiority.
> “Bow before me! Admire me! All of you—worship me!”
From every direction, infernal flames roared and raged.
A fiery world that perfectly mirrored the landscape of Leonard Walter’s mind.
This was the *World of Leonard Walter*—and within it, Leonard was its god.
The incarnation of jealousy and inferiority.
> “Dale of Saxen… the one who will vanish and fall is you!”
That incarnation spewed forth a distorted flame of malice toward Dale.
*What an irredeemable brat.*
Dale shook his head in disbelief.
After brushing back his fluttering shadow cloak, he steadied his mind.
> “Don’t you dare look down on me, Dale of Saxen!”
The flames coiling around Leonard exploded toward Dale.
**KWAANG!**
> “Hiiik!”
Even the professor supervising the fourth-circle students could not stop Leonard’s rampaging assault within the world of thought.
*He’s useless, that much is obvious.*
As for the mere third-circle students—there was no need to mention them.
The situation was becoming more complicated than expected, and Dale clicked his tongue.
*Not that I’m responsible for any of this.*
At that moment, a shield of frost made from blue mana intercepted Leonard’s strike.
> “Everyone, stand behind me.”
From beneath Dale’s feet, a horizon of freezing cold and darkness began to unfold—
the world of a winter night, harboring boundless emptiness and nihilism.
> “──This is my domain.”
Every magician possesses a world that reflects their inner image.
That world serves as the foundation upon which their *thought*—and thus their magic—is built.
Leonard Walter’s world was filled with blazing flames of jealousy,
burning like the very fires of hell.
Against that, Dale unfolded his own *world of thought*.
Unlike Leonard’s wild frenzy, his projection was calm and precise—
the controlled projection of a true high magician.
It was a clash of thoughts.
A collision of worlds.
Dale advanced toward Leonard, who burned like a living torch—
with the pale and shadowed world of the winter night spreading behind him.
The icy cold and the world of darkness collided with the world of flames.
Two worlds intertwined.
And upon their border, Dale’s foot struck the ground.
The circles within his heart accelerated, generating blue mana.
He scattered frost to drain away the searing heat.
White rime spread outward—
the freezing air absorbing heat from the surroundings, establishing equilibrium,
like a firefighter extinguishing a blaze.
He walked through the storm of ice toward the rampaging Leonard Walter.
> “Leonard Walter.”
Dale called out as he approached.
> “Look around you.”
Leonard, now a shadow of fire bereft of reason,
stood before Dale, who was cloaked in the dark and cold of a winter’s night.
The world of the *Black Prince* unfolded before him.
“……”
Before long, Dale’s void had begun devouring Leonard’s world.
The hellish inferno of jealousy and inferiority was swallowed by the freezing darkness of a winter’s night.
In the end, a magician’s battle is a clash of thought against thought,
a collision of world against world.
And no matter how violently Leonard raged,
there was little a false genius could do before a *true one*.
> “Aaaaaaahhhh!”
Leonard screamed.
The flames of jealousy dancing over his body lunged toward Dale.
They were the embodiment of his ideology—his very concept as a magician.
But the raging flames froze solid in midair.
They could not melt the *winter’s frost* Dale commanded.
Leonard’s fiery world was freezing over.
The flames died,
and darkness descended—
a bottomless abyss like the depths of the void.
> “This is my world.”
Dale’s voice echoed through the darkness.
Behind him stretched the *world of Dale*, pitted against Leonard Walter.
> “Do you have the resolve to shoulder this world?”
That night, he projected the landscape of an endless, empty winter’s night.
> “Do you still think my ‘talent’ shines like a jewel worth coveting?”
The flames of jealousy consuming Leonard dwindled and faded.
> “Ah… ahhh…”
Dale stepped forward.
Leonard stumbled back, retreating from the white, shadowed horizon behind Dale.
> “D-Don’t… don’t come any closer!”
He shrank back as if fleeing from the cold and darkness.
> “Why not?”
Dale asked calmly.
> “Everything you wanted is right here.”
The source of Dale’s talent—
the *world of the Black Prince*, a desolate horizon of frost and shadow.
> “You were so desperate for my talent, drowning in jealousy and inferiority, weren’t you?”
It wasn’t something as trivial as “talent.”
The so-called incarnation of absurdity? What a laugh.
> “I’ve already paid the price for it.”
He remembered the sacred sword that had once pierced his chest.
> “Are you prepared to pay that price yourself?”
Dale’s voice was almost pitying.
> “Everything you desire is here. So why do you flee?”
Leonard could not answer.
> “Do you still think what I have is a blessing?”
Dale asked again.
> “P-Please…! Don’t come any closer… no more, please…!”
Terrified, Leonard trembled and begged on his knees—
too pitiful to even meet the gaze of the world Dale carried on his back.
The flames of jealousy that had once engulfed the area had completely vanished.
The last sparks had died out.
Only the bone-chilling frost and biting cold remained.
Within the darkness that seemed to swallow the world,
Leonard could do nothing but shiver in terror.
His heart and the fourth circle, once burning out of control,
were frozen solid.
**Tock.**
Dale snapped his fingers.
The winter night vanished.
When they came to, they were back inside the grand auditorium of the Imperial Academy,
where the magic practicals were being held.
> “We… we’re back…”
The professor murmured in shock.
Dale lowered his gaze.
> “A-ah… ahhh…”
Leonard Walter was there—
trembling like a madman trapped in paranoia,
muttering incoherent nonsense.
He still hadn’t escaped the aftereffects of contact with Dale’s world.
Even a sixth-circle elven magician could not remain calm when exposed to that darkness—
the darkness of that winter’s night.
Those not directly touched by it—professors and students alike—were unharmed.
But Leonard Walter was different.
The *world of the Black Prince* was not something a mere prodigy could withstand.
He would likely never recover,
spending the rest of his life a lunatic.
No, that was certain. Dale had known it from the start.
*Not my problem.*
Dale turned away, indifferent.
Leonard had brought this upon himself.
Dale had simply ensured he paid the price.
—
—
In the end,
the rampage at the academy was contained and buried.
It was as though nothing had ever happened.
Those who knew the truth were silenced under the Red Tower’s strict gag order.
Rumor spread among the students that Leonard Walter had voluntarily withdrawn,
his mind broken for some unknown reason.
> “They say he picked a fight with the Duke of Saxen’s heir and lost—went insane afterward.”
> “Leonard? Lost to that eleven-year-old kid?”
> “So the rumors were true, huh?”
> “Who would’ve thought the great Leonard Walter would end up like that…”
> “I heard he was cursed by black magic and went mad in agony!”
> “No, no—someone told me it was a spell that destroys the mind!”
Dale’s name was no false fame.
And as always, rumors grow with every retelling.
Worse yet, since even the Red Tower could not afford to reveal the truth and kept silent,
Dale’s dark reputation swelled endlessly.
Whispers spread—
that Leonard had been cursed and driven mad by the *Black Prince’s* forbidden magic.
As a result, no one at the Imperial Academy dared to provoke Dale.
If anything, everyone went out of their way to appease him—
even the professors who were supposed to teach him.
For they, more than the students, truly understood the terror of the *Black Duke* and the House of Saxen.
In any case, for Dale, it was nothing but convenient.
—
—
Some time later—
After the firstborn, Leonard, had gone mad and was confined underground—
The **Red Tower**.
Its elder and sixth-circle magician, *Walter the Bloodflame*, bit his lip until it bled.
He wept in anguish so deep it chilled the bone.
> “The bloodline of House Walter…!”
It was not the sorrow of a father mourning his son,
but the grief of a nobleman whose family’s honor had fallen into ruin—
whose heir had lost his worth.
The shame of tarnishing the proud name of Walter was unbearable.
> “Impossible! This cannot be!”
True to his epithet *Bloodflame*, Count Walter’s blood began to boil within his veins like fire.
> “Dale of Saxen… that accursed brat from House Saxen!”
**Walter the Bloodflame**—
Elder of the Red Tower, and once, during the Empire’s unification wars,
the commander of the Sixth Division of the *Crimson Sect Battalion*—
a red sorcerer who had conducted countless human experiments
in the name of “academic progress.”
> “Unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable!”
And there was no need to ask where his wrath would turn.
> “Ah, Lord Walter.”
A voice called out.
At that sound, the blood boiling within him froze cold.
> “T-Tower Master…!”
Before he noticed, a red-haired nobleman stood there—
handsome, smiling faintly, gazing at him in silence.
> “I-I greet the Tower Master!”
It was the **Marquis of Blood**, *Yuris*.
> “You must be suffering greatly,”
> Yuris said, wearing a look of exaggerated sympathy.
At that, Count Walter’s expression stiffened like ice.
He bowed hastily.
> “M-my deepest apologies!”
He looked at Yuris not with reverence, but with sheer terror—
the kind one feels toward a monster.
For none knew better than he what kind of being the *Marquis of Blood* truly was.
> “I… I harbor no ill feelings whatsoever toward the heir of House Saxen, whom you personally invited, my lord!”
> “Oh? Truly?”
> “Y-Yes! Please, I beg you—do not misunderstand!”
> “Hm. What a pity,”
> Yuris tilted his head slightly, as if disappointed.
> “For I came here, Lord Walter…”
> His lips curved in a faint, unknowable smile.
> “…to help you take your revenge.”
