Not as a metaphor—but as fact.
Thick shadows smothered the ruined training courtyard. Even with Rein’s abnormally sharp vision—far beyond that of any ordinary human—he couldn’t pierce the curtain of darkness pooling around the corner of the building.
It was as if the enemy had merged with the night itself.
Cold sweat seeped along his hairline and slid down his cheek. The messy-haired boy clenched his teeth and rapidly calculated the remaining mana inside his Core Mana Circle.
Some of it had recovered during the investigation—but after casting Haste for acceleration and Levitate for midair vector redirection just moments ago…
The number flashing through his mind burned blood-red.
Less than ten percent.
This was far worse than the earlier clash with zombies or the Intruders that evening. Back then, he’d had roughly thirty percent mana, mana potions—and LIZ providing support.
Now?
Alone.
Nearly dry.
Facing a boss he couldn’t even see.
“Winning odds…” Rein muttered.
“No need to calculate. Surviving more than three minutes would already be a miracle.”
Despite standing on the edge of death, the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
A strange excitement surged through his veins.
“Damn it… must be this body’s raw instincts kicking in.”
He straightened to his full height, brushed dust from his knee, and kept his blue eyes locked on the densest knot of darkness without blinking.
“Bit shy in front of the camera, are we?” Rein called lightly.
“Or are you just an introvert who hates social interaction, Kurosawa?”
Fff—! Fff—!
That was the answer.
Two Darkness Arrows sliced out of the shadows.
Rein narrowed his eyes. Residual acceleration from Haste flared through his muscles, and his body blurred left in a split second. The black bolts tore through the space he’d occupied an instant earlier and slammed into the stone wall behind him.
BOOM!
The wall didn’t crack—it rotted.
Black energy devoured stone in an eyeblink, leaving a gaping cavity behind.
Rein didn’t wait for the dust to settle.
He lunged forward.
His body zigzagged like a living shadow—left, right, sharp angle changes at high speed—never becoming a stationary target as he charged straight toward the darkness.
But just as he entered close range—
WHUM! WHUM! WHUM!
Three cyan magic circles flared into existence directly in front of him.
“Delayed-Cast Lightning Bolts!?”
A trap.
Any seasoned fighter knew the price of charging a trap-specialist mage head-on—and more often than not, that price was death.
Mage combat was about distance. Spells. Shields.
Whoever broke first lost.
What Rein was doing instead was charging straight into spellfire.
A normal mage—especially one who despised close combat—would immediately raise a Magic Shield.
But the enemy in the shadows knew that weakness.
So the traps had been laid in advance.
Three lightning bolts primed to tear apart anything foolish enough to enter the kill zone.
This should have been Rein’s end.
And yet—
“Aeris Vela…!”
In the fraction of a second before impact, Rein’s forward momentum snapped upward.
His body deflected straight into a vertical ascent, as if gravity had simply stopped applying to him.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
All three lightning bolts tore through empty space beneath him.
“—What!?”
The voice from the darkness finally cracked.
Its gaze snapped upward—catching sight of the faint emerald outline of a magic circle lingering in midair where Rein had stepped.
Levitate…?
A compressed cast—used as a midair foothold!?
Nearly ten feet above the ground, Rein hung suspended by the last of his upward momentum. He flipped upside down, index finger pointing straight at his target.
A miniature spell-ring—one third the usual size—spun violently at his fingertip, shrieking as compressed mana screamed to escape.
Rein grinned.
Pit Viper.
Pff! Pff! Pff!
Three hyper-compressed mana rounds screamed downward at supersonic speed.
But before they could strike—
The darkness below collapsed inward.
Like a massive black cloth being twisted and wrung into a sphere, the shadows converged, spiraling into a vortex that swallowed the projectiles whole.
No explosion.
No impact.
The Pit Vipers vanished—devoured—as if they’d fallen into a bottomless abyss.
Rein’s eyes widened.
“Darkness Armor.”
A stratosphere-tier defensive spell of the Dark attribute—the same one that Warlock had used.
But—
“No… this isn’t the same.”
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His mind raced—old combat data snapping into alignment.
“Warlock’s armor relied on dozens of stacked spell layers—raw power absorbing force head-on.
That technique violated conventional magical limits. On this continent… there was likely only one person capable of such a feat.”
“But this was fluid.”
“The darkness flowed like liquid, dispersing and absorbing the impact rather than resisting it.”
“If it’s not Warlock…”
A face flashed through his mind.
No time.
The blue glow around his ankles flickered violently—standard Haste was seconds from collapse.
This has to end now.
Aeris Vela—!
Rein roared midair.
Still inverted, he kicked off the reversed Levitate circle—now nothing more than an aerial springboard.
THUD!
The recoil hurled him diagonally downward like a diving hawk.
The instant his foot brushed the ground, he redirected the fall into forward momentum and burst into point-blank range with his last surge of speed.
Too little mana left for high-tier spells.
So he chose the cheapest option—
The one that hurt the most.
Potentia Augmenta!
“Might Enhance”
Pure mana flooded his right arm.
Muscle fibers swelled beneath his sleeve. Veins bulged, pulsing as raw mana tore through flesh.
Rein twisted his hips, drew his fist back to its limit—
And unleashed it with a thunderous roar.
“Clench your teeth…”
His eyes sharpened.
“Ninth Variable!”
KRAAANG—!
The impact sounded like steel being crushed by a sledgehammer.
The shadowed figure was blasted off its feet, spinning helplessly through the air like a severed kite before crashing into the far wall in an explosion of dust and debris.
The black-haired boy stood there, gasping heavily. Sweat drenched his face, his right arm trembling uncontrollably after the punch.
Under normal curriculum doctrine, enhancement magic was meant to distribute mana evenly across the entire body to maintain balance.
Rein had broken that rule—by compressing all available mana into a single point: his right arm, creating a momentary explosive output.
The result was overwhelming destructive force…
at the cost of brutal strain on his body.
Micro-level muscle tears… acute joint inflammation…
Pain lanced up to his shoulder as he assessed himself.
At least the bone isn’t cracked.
This spell formula still needs tuning.
But for a first live-field test—acceptable.
His blue eyes remained fixed on the drifting smoke. The strike moments earlier had exploited a fractional instant—when the opponent’s Darkness Armor loosened to absorb the Pit Viper rounds, creating a brief physical gap.
Naturally… if he’d mistimed it, there would’ve been no second chance.
Amid the falling rubble, a figure in a black cloak slowly pushed itself upright. It clutched its head, shook off the daze—then burst into laughter.
The voice was warped, distorted—its gender impossible to identify.
“Ha… hahaha! Impressive… No wonder Eboros fell to a brat like you.”
The laughter faded, replaced by an icy tone.
“A mage… choosing brutish, warrior-style tactics.”
A pause.
“Just how reckless can you be?”
Rein sneered, suppressing the pain as he shifted into a deceptively relaxed stance. His right hand slipped into his pocket to hide the tremor, while his left brushed the hair from his eyes.
“Thanks for the compliment.”
The cloaked figure asked sharply,
“Why did you leave the library?”
“Because you wanted me trapped in there,” Rein shot back without hesitation.
The figure stiffened.
“…What?”
Rein stared deep beneath the black hood.
“This was never a book-theft case.
It was never a murder case.
All night long, your sole objective was to confine me—and everyone else—inside the library.
To keep us away from the place you were after.”
Silence fell.
Then the cloaked figure spoke coldly,
“You’re jumping to conclusions. You’re mistaking the outcome for the cause.”
“It’s not assumption,” Rein said, raising his left index finger.
“It’s logic.”
“First—” he continued, holding up his index finger, “—you tried to frame me for Lucien’s death. You wanted Master Rachel to detain me, or at least keep me tied up in interrogation. Back then, I thought you were just eliminating a rival… or that you personally hated me.”
A cold smile crept across his face as he extended his middle finger, forming a sharp ‘V’ shape.
“But second—your approach changed. From framing… to assassination.”
He took a step forward. An intense pressure radiated from his small frame.
“The question is simple: why change objectives midway?”
“There is a principle called Occam’s Razor.”
He lowered his middle finger, leaving only the index pointing up.
“Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.”
“Applying that here, the simplest explanation is this—”
He paused for effect.
“Plan B happened only because you knew Plan A had failed.”
The cloaked figure remained silent.
“The fact that you knew I could clear my own name means you had to be inside the library,” Rein continued.
“Watching everything. Like a surveillance camera, observing us.”
He stepped closer.
“And a mage capable of Delay Casting, Darkness, and Lightning into layered traps…”
His eyes hardened.
“…is at least Stratosphere-tier.”
He gestured dismissively.
“No first- or second-year student in that room qualifies. Every single one of them can be eliminated.”
The distorted voice rasped,
“So you’re saying… I exposed myself?”
“You almost pulled it off,” Rein admitted.
“I nearly went down the wrong path.”
He paused.
“But once I placed your behavior on the board…”
His eyes gleamed.
“…I realized you weren’t a piece.”
A beat.
“You were the King.”
“And your true target,” he said quietly,
“was never me.”
The cloaked figure sneered.
“Hah! Is that so? And you think I can’t tell your mana’s completely drained? Everything you’ve been saying is just stalling for time!”
It advanced three heavy steps. Crushing pressure surged outward.
“Admit it. Your mana isn’t even enough to cast a Troposphere-tier spell now.”
“I admit it.” Rein shrugged.
“My mana’s almost empty.”
“Good,” the figure hissed. “Then I’ll grant you the courtesy of last words.”
“That works,” Rein replied calmly. His gaze sharpened.
“Then my last words are this—”
He looked straight into the darkness.
“You wanted access to The Vault.”
The words The Vault struck like a curse.
The cloaked figure froze for a split second.
Shock rippled through its posture.
That instant—
Rein didn’t raise his hands to cast a spell.
Instead, his right arm whipped behind him beneath the oversized black cloak—Master Chloe’s cloak he was wearing. Sewn into the back of a high-rank mage’s cloak was a leather loop meant for hanging a magic staff…
…but what Rein had hidden there was something far worse.
His hand closed around a cold metal grip.
He tore it free from the loop, kicked off the ground—
—and lunged forward in a suicidal charge.
The cloaked figure snapped back to reality—but it was one beat too late.
“DIE!!”
Both hands flew up.
Crackle! Crackle!
Twin Lightning Bolt circles flared to life, ready to incinerate the charging boy at point-blank range. At this distance, there was no evasion—and even if Rein tried to trade blows, he was still nearly three feet short.
SHNK—
The sound of a blade slicing air came before the thunder.
The lightning circles shattered into motes of light. The cloaked figure reeled backward as searing pain exploded from its chest to its brain. Blood flooded its throat.
Its body slammed into the same wall again—but this time, it collapsed.
A trembling hand rose to clutch its chest—
A jet-black saber was embedded there.
“—Ghk…!”
Blood spilled freely, soaking the black cloak.
That blade—
Nightfall.
The cursed sword Rein had seized from the Intruders’ leader earlier that night.
Hidden for this exact moment—
The moment he would switch from prey to predator.
The cloaked figure lifted its head with effort. The hood slipped away, revealing its true face under the first light of dawn.
Eyes once filled with authority now brimmed with pain and defeat, staring up at the boy before it.
Rein’s face was calm. Emotionless.
He stood tall in the shattered courtyard, twenty feet away. Golden dawnlight crested the horizon, casting his long shadow over the fallen culprit.
“Nightfall…” Rein murmured softly, then spoke the name of the person before him.
“The night is over.”
A beat.
“Librarian Belle.”
These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.
Completely optional — read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.
Darkness Arrow
– A high-penetration, Dark-element spell that forms a black arrow-like projectile.
– On impact, it corrupts matter instead of cracking or blasting it—causing rapid decay, even in solid stone.
– Often includes necrotic properties or curse effects, making it extremely dangerous.
– Used effectively by Stratosphere-tier dark mages in ambush or long-range strike setups.
Delayed-Cast Lightning Bolt
– Lightning-element trap spell that uses Delay Casting to place lightning bolts in preset locations.
– The spell activates when the target crosses into a pre-defined area.
– Effective for zoning and surprise attacks.
– Typically requires advanced precision in casting and mana control.
Levitate
– Wind-element support spell allowing the caster (or a target) to float or hover in mid-air.
– Rein uses it creatively by compressing the spell into aerial springboards, launching himself into precise trajectories.
– Maximum height and mobility depend on caster’s skill and momentum.
– Incantation: “Aeris Vela, Surgere Leniter!”
Pit Viper
– Rein’s custom high-velocity Magic Missile spell that fires hyper-compressed mana projectiles.
– Delivered with speed and force, useful against both physical and magical defenses.
– Usually fired in sets (e.g., three shots).
Darkness Armor
– A Stratosphere-tier Dark-element defense spell.
– Absorbs or nullifies both physical and magical attacks by converting incoming energy into dark mana.
– The variant encountered here appears fluid and reactive, unlike Warlock’s layered armor, suggesting a different casting style or user identity.
Might Enhance
– Body reinforcement spell that channels mana into the body, enhancing strength explosively.
– Rein compresses it into his right arm only, gaining massive striking power at the cost of intense physical damage.
– Causes internal injury (micro-tears, inflammation) due to unnatural strain.
– Demonstrates combat engineering beyond standard academic doctrine.
Nightfall
– A cursed black saber recovered from a previous encounter with the Intruders.
– Rein hides it and uses it for a final surprise attack against the true mastermind.
– The blade is potent enough to shatter lightning spell circles and pierce magical defenses at close range.
it doesn’t bring relief—
only clarity.
They are about who was watching
when the last move was made.
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The next horizon is already shifting.
— Re:Naissance