I Was Mistaken as a Genius Mage in a Game-Chapter 97

Maltiell made his choice.

He decided to ignore the cold bones crawling out from beneath his feet and the orc charging at him with his life on the line.

Maltiell had never intended to survive on this battlefield.

Three Great Lords had already died. The momentum of the battle was undeniably shifting in favor of the allied forces, and even if he survived, there was no way he could change the massive flow.

Maltiell had no power to reverse the current of the flowing river.

However, he could build a levee to weaken the current.

‘If I just kill Bin, someday, the tides will turn back in our favor.’

Right now, the river flowed fiercely, but it would gradually lose its strength. Once the Sword Saint grew old and died, the momentum would shift, and the tides would return.

For Maltiell, that was enough.

It didn’t matter if it was not him who stood on the peaceful plain in 50 or 100 years.

Maltiell gathered 30% of his remaining mana and concentrated it into his fingertips.

The bones crawling up his body pressed against his fingers, trying to pull them in another direction.

As the thin finger bones tugged at Maltiell’s fingers, the skeleton soldiers that had crawled out from the air threw themselves at him to knock him down.

The Great Lord’s concentration was not going to crumble under such a clumsy distraction.

Maltiell pulled all the mana from his body and compressed it in front of his fingertips, releasing it.

The entire battlefield was covered in black light.

‘......’

Maltiell furrowed his brows as he was submerged in the black light.

An unsettling feeling of unease suddenly burrowed deeply into his chest.

Clearly, Bin had been hit directly by his magic. No matter how much the boy had increased his reaction speed beyond the limits of a normal human, at that distance and in that posture, dodging Maltiell’s magic seemed nearly impossible.

The moment Maltiell’s magic made contact with the boy’s body, it should have been over.

If Bin had wanted to dodge the attack, he should have predicted the timing of Maltiell’s spell and moved a step ahead. But what Maltiell saw in the final moment was the boy standing there, like a statue, focusing only on converting the magic released from his hands into lightning.

The white-haired boy seemed not to even consider dodging the attack.

But that didn’t mean he was accepting death, either. The boy’s eyes, while preparing the spell, radiated a firm determination.

“Fifteen seconds.”

The boy’s low voice echoed.

A thin, translucent, sky-blue shield surrounded the boy’s body, wrapping around him as he gathered the storm into his hand.

“......I thought you couldn’t deploy a shield while using another spell.”

After the feeling of unease came a slight sense of powerlessness that filled Maltiell’s body. He still hadn’t figured out the conditions of the shield that always protected ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) the boy’s body at crucial moments.

“I guess the last card won’t stick.”

If Maltiell had had more time, he would have surely figured out the weakness of the “Spirit’s Blessing” and exploited it.

But, as mentioned before, time was not on Maltiell’s side, and he had no luxury to sit back and analyze his opponent’s magic one by one.

“Let’s finish this.”

Maltiell tried to move, fleeing from the boy’s grasp, but the bones wrapping around his body hindered his movements.

For just a brief moment, the Great Lord’s body was locked in place.

The boy took this opportunity to strike, charging at Maltiell with quick, deliberate steps.

For the first time, the boy closed the distance between himself and Maltiell.

It was a dangerous move, but a coldly calculated one.

Maltiell had absorbed his subordinate and was revived with full strength. Though he had used up all his mana, his formidable physical abilities were still intact.

The time he could buy with Rex’s horn was barely half a second.

There was not enough time to deliver a powerful blow that could incinerate everything, even Maltiell’s body, in that short span.

‘Bloom is not fundamentally an attack magic. It’s a kind of buff spell that awakens the mage and forces all the mana within the body to combust into lightning.’

There are two steps involved in using magic for an attack.

The first step is converting the mana in the body into elements like fire or lightning.

The second step is shaping the converted power into a certain form.

Bloom only drastically shortens the first step and serves as an awakening agent to enhance a mage’s abilities. Using that overflowing power to produce a lightning bolt from the sky or currents from the fingertips is an entirely different matter.

‘Maltiell will only be trapped for about half a second. There’s not enough time to create an attack powerful enough to burn Maltiell’s body to nothing.’

That’s why the boy ran toward Maltiell, reaching out with his hand.

He needed to deliver this overwhelming power as quickly as possible.

This was the closest to the right move the boy could make.

‘He’s coming.’

But from Maltiell’s perspective, this wasn’t a move that was completely defenseless.

The boy was fundamentally slow.

Although he had elevated his reaction speed to transcend the biological limit through bioelectric currents, that only affected reaction speed.

It still took him far too long to run toward Maltiell and extend his hand.

Bin knew this very well. Expecting Maltiell not to read his slow movements was not only arrogant—it was downright stupid.

If you are reading this translation anywhere other than Novelight.net or SilkRoadTL, it has been stolen.

Yet, the boy judged that ‘it didn’t matter.’

Even if Maltiell could read every one of his movements, he was completely bound, unable to dodge or counterattack.

Fshk...!

In the next instant, the boy’s fingertips touched Maltiell’s chest.

In that split second, an immense amount of energy, far beyond what any living creature could withstand, poured into Maltiell’s chest.

The Great Lord’s body was torn apart like a dry, withered leaf.

Blood, bones, flesh, and skin.

Not a single trace remained to prove the existence of life. Only the faint sound of a spark could be heard.

“Not bad.”

At the moment when the boy felt relief that his judgment had not been wrong, the horrid voice echoed in his ear once again.

‘......Core.’

In the corner of his vision, the boy spotted a small sphere, the size of a fingertip, flying away.

Maltiell had fully acknowledged that his ‘body’ was unable to avoid Bin’s attack due to the bones binding him in place.

So, he immediately twisted his muscles and bones to push the core embedded in his body out.

He abandoned his physical form to preserve the core.

The reason Maltiell could make such a decision was because of the boy’s slow movements.

There was plenty of time to calmly assess the situation and think of a way out.

He had enough time to calculate the chances of success for the breakthrough he thought of and even to consider his next move.

In the end, the boy was not suited to stand in a battlefield alongside Great Lords and Generals.

“You’re too slow.”

That was always the problem.

“You’re just a pitiful mortal, after all. You’ll never be perfect. The creatures of this world are structurally flawed. It would be better to clear it all away and start anew.”

From the core that spilled from Maltiell’s body, bones and flesh began to grow.

A newly growing black arm reached slowly toward the boy’s neck.

“True enough. We can never be perfect.”

The boy answered indifferently as he watched Maltiell recreate his bones and flesh from the black core.

“I, and even those great generals, are ultimately just small humans.”

Cardeek!

The sound of rusted, dull steel crushing bones and flesh echoed through the battlefield.

The metallic arm that had just started growing from Maltiell’s body pierced through, pulling the core hidden inside out.

“......What.”

The owner of the mechanical arm, marked with the number 6, was none other than Rex, the son of Belzark.

“An orc once told me, all the people living on the continent help each other by filling in each other’s weaknesses.”

Ka-deek...!

Soon, the orc’s mechanical arm twisted, screws popped out, and a long pipe, the purpose of which was unclear, rolled across the floor.

“Life is about depending on each other. You’ll never understand that.”

“......A pathetic excuse to cover up your imperfections.”

Clang!

Rex, tired of hearing Maltiell’s voice, completely shattered the black sphere inside the mechanical arm.

The flesh that had been about to grow around the core disintegrated into gray ash and vanished in an instant.

“Hah, huff... Hah...”

Rex stood without bending his broken legs. A large hole in his abdomen was infected with poison, turning black.

Rex’s arm slowly crumbled. Soon, the heavy steel began to slide down from his shoulder, and the mechanical arm fell to the ground.

The sound of tearing steel rang clearly in the boy’s ears as the orc, now unable to lift its head, only stared at the floor.

“......Now, rest.”

The boy quietly spoke as he watched Rex, who was gasping for breath, his body filled with poison.

Hearing the General’s order, Rex smiled weakly, finally feeling relieved, and let the strength leave his legs.

It was the 18th day since Rex Belzark had arrived at Vallerand.

The fourth Great Lord had lost his life.