Genius Wizard Takes Medicine Chapter 26

The impact shattered the shield Lenoch had carefully constructed and sent him briefly airborne, but he remained calm.

He had already expected the man to trace the source of the mana and come straight for him.

That was why he had prepared several layers of shields in advance.

More than that, Lenoch had designed those shields to break on purpose.

Instead of reinforcing them with more mana, he made them shatter on impact and absorb the force.

If you knew where the attack was coming from and prepared for it, even an anti-tank weapon could be dealt with.

The man’s arm, moving even faster than before, smashed through Lenoch’s shields one after another.

But Lenoch himself remained untouched.

“Van!”

The mercenaries shouted in shock and rushed to move.

But the man did not try to retreat.

Instead, he swung his arm at Lenoch again with even greater ferocity.

Even if it meant taking the mercenaries’ attacks head-on, he had decided that killing Lenoch first was the better choice.

That was how dangerous Lenoch’s lightning spell had been.

Even among mages, power like that was rare.

Whoosh!

He had broken the shield once.

Why would he fail to break it a second time?

The man seemed certain that he could pierce through Lenoch’s remaining defenses and drive his five fingers straight into his heart.

But Lenoch did not step back.

He did not cast another shield spell either.

He simply raised the revolver in his hand.

The mana he had prepared immediately after casting [Thunder Calling] surged through his left hand, taking shape in an instant according to his will.

Whoooong!

In a flash, the revolver was wrapped in a blue glow.

It trembled faintly, but the mana flowing through it was strangely stable.

With Lenoch’s current capacity, double-casting common magic was impossible.

But auxiliary spells were different.

Especially shooting-support magic.

They required less mana and capacity, and Lenoch had refined their use countless times through gameplay.

He remembered perfectly which auxiliary spells worked best with each firearm, and how to arrange them for maximum efficiency and power.

[Targeting Correction]

[Firing Acceleration]

[Recoil Control]

[Rapid Fire Adjustment]

Four auxiliary spells specialized entirely for shooting.

On their own, each one only strengthened a shot slightly.

But when all four were layered together, the result changed completely.

Stacking four auxiliary spells onto a single attack created a synergy that explosively increased the bullet’s power.

Tat, tat, tat, tat, tat!

Five blue flashes burst from the muzzle like lightning and struck the man’s body.

Two shots to the solar plexus.

Two below the abdomen.

And the final shot to the head.

At point-blank range, [Targeting Correction] locked onto the most vulnerable and lethal points with terrifying precision.

In an instant, the man’s attack was ruined.

While his pitch-black arm sliced uselessly through the air, Lenoch’s bullets struck every vital point without missing.

“Gaaah!”

After taking five counterattacks in a single moment, the man abandoned his offense and writhed in pain.

The dark-magic drug had hardened his skin enough to deflect ordinary bullets, and it seemed to absorb most of the impact.

Even so, it could not stop his body’s functions from being temporarily disrupted.

Lenoch did not miss that opening.

He immediately gathered mana to finish him off.

At this distance, the most efficient attack was already decided.

One mistake would push Lenoch’s frail body to the edge of death.

But his cold rationality understood perfectly that there were moments when close combat could not be feared.

Tap!

With a hand coated in a shield, Lenoch grabbed the man by the lower jaw and squeezed tightly.

Then he gathered mana.

Nothing had changed since the day he first escaped the factory.

Lenoch had risked his life every moment to survive.

And he would continue doing so.

This spell was like a signal flare, reaffirming that resolve.

[Bolt]

Crackle, crackle, crackle!

A thick blue current surged between his five fingers.

It was incomparably stronger than the first time he had learned the spell.

The dazzling electricity, bright enough to blur Lenoch’s vision, erupted forward and struck the man directly in the head.

“Guh— Aaaagh!”

It was an anti-personnel spell designed to render its target unconscious.

At maximum output, however, it became a high-powered attack spell.

If an ordinary person were hit by it, their head being reduced to ash would not have been strange.

But even after taking [Bolt] directly to the head while completely defenseless, the man continued thrashing and resisting.

“He’s still holding on?”

The moment Lenoch realized he had failed to subdue him in one blow, he shook him off and retreated.

His response was frighteningly calm.

There were monsters in this world who could catch bullets with their eyelids.

Compared to that, there was no reason this man could not endure a lightning spell to the head.

After facing Crocken Achilles, Lenoch was confident he would not be shaken by any opponent.

[Reload Acceleration]

Before the man could recover, Lenoch swiftly reloaded the revolver and pulled the trigger again.

Bang! Bang!

One shot struck each eye.

The third missed slightly and hit his forehead.

The man’s skin, reinforced by dark magic, was tough.

But it seemed he had not hardened his eyeballs.

The sound of both eyes bursting rang out clearly.

“Aah… Aaaaah!”

Even in that state, the man raged wildly, desperately trying to land a blow on Lenoch.

But this time, Lenoch did not meet him head-on.

He calmly looked down at the man.

Crack!

Thud!

At that moment, the mercenaries rushed in from behind.

They drove their weapons into the man’s body and pinned him to the ground.

“You son of a bitch…!”

“Hold him down!”

Ratatatatata!

“Graaah!”

Even with blades embedded in his limbs, the mercenaries fired into him to finish the kill.

But the man only howled in pain.

There was no sign that his strength was fading.

Even while pinned down, he still thrashed with so much force that the mercenaries restraining him briefly staggered.

After pouring more than a magazine’s worth of bullets into him, the mercenaries clicked their tongues at the sight.

The shots were barely affecting him.

Unlike Lenoch, who had targeted the eyes, their bullets did not seem to cause him much pain at all.

“What the hell is this thing…?”

“Can we even kill him here?”

“Boss, what do we do?”

The mercenaries turned heated gazes toward Dray.

Several of their comrades had already died to this man.

If they could not settle things here, the result would be far too bitter.

Dray, who had driven his sword into the man’s left shoulder, thought for a moment before looking at Lenoch.

With his limited knowledge of magic, he could not accurately judge the man’s current condition.

The only person here who might understand the drug the man had used and offer a proper opinion was Lenoch.

“Van, is there any way to deal with him?”

At Dray’s question, the other mercenaries fell silent and turned to Lenoch.

The three lightning spells Lenoch had used during the battle had reminded them what a true mage was.

Calling down blue lightning from a clear sky as if it belonged to him—

That skill was neither a trick nor an illusion.

“It’s dark magic.”

Lenoch answered.

“The principle itself isn’t complicated. It greatly boosts strength, recovery, and durability, but it does so by sacrificing something in return. It mainly uses human flesh or blood as fuel. And when that fuel runs short, it seems to damage cognitive functions, including speech.”

The man had spoken and moved normally right after injecting the drug.

But during the brief moment when Lenoch dropped lightning on him and forced him to endure the attack, his mental state had become unstable enough that he could no longer speak properly.

It seemed that without constantly killing people to consume their blood and hearts, his cognitive abilities would dangerously decline.

That also explained why he had deliberately left the members of the Second Squad alive instead of killing them.

“Dark magic…”

The other mercenaries’ expressions darkened rapidly at Lenoch’s answer.

Learning and practicing dark magic was not forbidden in the megacity of Balkan.

However, the conditions and prices required to learn and use it were demanding and dangerous, and it depended heavily on the user’s aptitude. Despite being infamous for its powerful and diverse techniques, there were relatively few mages who had mastered unique magic belonging to the dark magic system.

Naturally, few people possessed detailed knowledge about dark magic or understood how to counter it, and there were plenty who had no idea how to respond when actually faced with an enemy empowered by it.

The mercenaries gathered under the Grimgald Mercenary Office were no different.

“……”

Instead of responding to their uneasy murmurs, Lenoch narrowed his eyes and silently looked down at the struggling man.

More precisely, he was watching the movement of the pitch-black mana flowing around his body.

He had managed to subdue the man by mixing together various spells, but Lenoch had no intention of letting him leave this place alive.

There was no telling what might happen in the future. He couldn’t afford to leave behind a potential threat.

He wasn’t going to leave even the slightest possibility of some one-eyed man coming back later in the name of revenge.

And now, Lenoch was beginning to see a way to make sure that never happened.

‘……I think I’m getting the hang of it.’

Immediately after the drug had been injected, there hadn’t been a single opening in the dark mana flowing through the man’s body.

But after being battered by countless spells and bullets, holes had begun to appear in that flow.

Lenoch watched the dark mana move unnaturally, almost as if it could feel his gaze and was trying to avoid him.

Then he raised his own mana and reached out.

Whoom!

“Kahk!”

Lenoch placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and poured mana directly into him.

Using the mana he had driven inside as a rake, he scraped away every trace of dark mana flowing through the man’s body.

It wasn’t difficult.

The repulsive force created by mana controlled at the particle level was more than enough.

A strange certainty filled Lenoch’s mind, telling him that this was all he had to do.

“Ughhhhhh!!”

The strength suddenly drained from the man’s body.

His eyes, which had been dyed completely black, rapidly returned to their original color as though the darkness were being bleached away.

With all the dark mana removed, his face had withered so drastically that he looked as though he had aged another twenty years.

After extracting every last trace of dark mana remaining inside him, Lenoch straightened up.

“Kill him.”

“……What?”

“It should be fine now.”

The mercenaries stared at him with expressions of incomprehension, but Lenoch paid them no mind.

Just now, using nothing but pure mana control, Lenoch had successfully interfered directly with another mage’s mana.

‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

He had managed to extract the dark mana, but holding it like this for long was impossible.

Storing mana required a specialized container manufactured specifically for that purpose.

Lenoch considered his options for a moment, but eventually released all of the dark mana into the air.

Keeping hold of it would only continue draining his own mana, and he didn’t see much benefit in doing so.

He walked toward the rear of the rooftop and released the pitch-black mass into the air.

The mana scattered like a faint mist before rapidly dissolving into the atmosphere.

If he had been able to preserve it, he might have taken it back and used it as an opportunity to investigate dark magic in greater detail.

A shame.

Lenoch quickly discarded his lingering regret and turned around.

Then a voice suddenly came from beside him.

“You’re really something.”

“……?”

It was Weian.

He had been beaten down by the Scavenger man earlier and left lying on the ground.

Lenoch had assumed he was still unconscious, but he had been lying outside the combat zone and seemed to have recovered some of his strength.

Weian sat with his back against the rooftop wall, one hand clutching his wounded abdomen as he looked up at Lenoch.

“Are you actually some kind of genius?”

“Genius?”

“Yeah. I could see you manipulating your mana from all the way over there. I’ve never seen mana control like that in my life. It really made me realize just how pathetic the way I use mana is.”

Weian gave a self-deprecating laugh as he spoke.

“……”

Lenoch listened silently, sinking into thought.

There were quite a few others in the Grimgald Mercenary Office who could use mana, but Weian was the only one who claimed to have seen Lenoch scrape the dark mana out of the man’s body.

If he wasn’t lying, that meant Weian had accurately perceived the process of Lenoch manipulating mana from this distance.

That was proof that Weian possessed an exceptionally sensitive innate perception of mana.

Perhaps his talent had never belonged on the front lines in the first place.

Maybe it lay in a profession centered around manipulating mana.

“I’ve seen plenty of people calling themselves mages and acting proud of it, but I’ve never seen a single mage handle mana as precisely as you do.”

Weian glanced down.

“If I try to imitate even a little of the way you move your mana… do you think I could become stronger than I am now?”

Muttering to himself, he looked down at the two completely shattered tonfas lying beside his thigh.

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