Dark Magus Returns

Professor Luka had to admit, he was impressed.

These students… they weren’t anything like what he had expected. As he stood in silence, watching the white-haired boy approach, his mind replayed everything that had happened up to this point.

‘It makes sense now,’ Luka thought. ‘If that girl truly has the God Eyes… then she would’ve seen the flow of mana within the magical circle. That’s how they escaped the trap.’

It was disappointing, in a way. He had hoped at least one of them had deciphered it through logic, intuition, or raw magical perception. But now it seemed it was all thanks to a rare ability.

Still, his assumptions had clearly been wrong.

‘When Alen told me he had a few potential students to send over, I assumed someone had twisted his arm. A favor, perhaps. So I agreed to assess them. But I had already made up my mind, I was going to reject every single one of them.’

Now, that no longer felt like an option.

‘At this rate, I can’t fail them. I’ll have to speak with the principal. These students are… different. Special.’

Luka’s eyes landed on Raze, the final student to be tested. From the moment they met, Luka had sensed something in him. Confidence. Stillness. Power.

But unfortunately for Raze… Luka had made another decision.

‘I can’t pass all five students. If I do, the principal will think I’ve lost my edge. I’ll look soft. No, I have to be stricter with this one. The most promising one. I’ll scrutinize every detail. One flaw, and I’ll use it.’

Though there were still multiple stages left to the assessment, Luka was the kind of man who trusted his instincts. Once his mind was made up, it was hard to change it.

He would judge Raze harsher than the rest.

If there was a single misstep, one reason to fail him, he wouldn’t hesitate.

“State your magic core!” Luka called out.

Raze raised his hand slowly. He had already made his choice.

He wasn’t going to use something predictable, no wind, no fire, nothing common. If he was going to stand out, he needed to shine.

From his shoulder, faint blue sparks began to swirl. They traveled down his arm, wrapping around it like coiled thread, until they condensed at the tip of his finger into a crackling orb of blue lightning.

“My magic core…” Raze said calmly, “is Lightning Magic.”

With a flick of his hand, the bolt shot forward. It zipped through the air and pierced the first golem, tearing a fist-sized hole straight through. The lightning didn’t stop. It surged through the second. Then the third. All the way through to the sixth.

But Raze wasn’t done.

He raised his hand again, and the single bolt of lightning curved upward, hovering in the air above the targets.

Then, with a subtle motion, he spread his fingers apart.

The bolt split, fracturing into six distinct strands of lightning.

With a downward swing of his hands, each bolt shot downward, slamming into the golems at once. The instant they hit, the rubble crackled with energy as arcs of electricity danced across the field, connecting the remains and sparking across the entire area.

By the time the lightning faded… nothing remained but rubble and scorched earth.

A silence settled over the grounds.

“Man, of course he had to go overboard,” Liam muttered, exasperated. “Of course the actual mage had to flex. He really couldn’t hold back?”

“I think…” Safa said softly, watching Raze from the sidelines, “Raze is impatient. He wants to get to the Central Academy and find his target. As soon as possible.”

Luka, who had reacted with awe when Safa revealed her God Eyes, now found himself physically stumbling backward. His legs gave out as he fell to the ground, staring wide-eyed at the student in front of him.

“That level of magic…” Luka whispered. “It can’t be. Was that… a Four-Star lightning spell?”

Raze met the professor’s gaze and shrugged.

“Close,” he replied. “It was a Five-Star Lightning Spell.”

Gasps echoed across the field, even among the staff in the distance.

“I’m a direct pupil of Alen,” Raze continued. “He’s been training me separately from the other students.”

It was a lie. But a necessary one.

There was no way someone like him could be unknown in the magical world, not with that kind of talent. This was the only story that made sense. Otherwise, the questions would never end.

And truthfully, it worked.

Luka was at a loss. He had prepared to nitpick every spell, to critique every gesture, but there was nothing to criticize. Raze wasn’t just good.

He was on Luka’s level.

‘How can I not accept a student like this?’

And that raised another question, one that Luka didn’t like.

‘If he’s this talented, why isn’t he already at the Central Academy? Why is he here?’

Whatever the reason, Luka couldn’t ignore it. Raze and Safa were talents so rare, so powerful, that questioning their story almost felt like a waste of time.

He needed to secure them. Fast.

Scrambling back to his feet, Luka did his best to compose himself. His voice trembled, just slightly.

“We’ll… proceed to the next part of the test. I just need to make a few preparations,” he said, brushing off his coat even though it was spotless.

Up in the classrooms, the watching students remained eerily quiet.

There were no cheers like when Liam had unleashed his move. No excitement. No jokes.

Just stunned silence.

Because most of them couldn’t even understand what they had just witnessed.

At one of the windows, a teacher with long dark purple hair leaned against the glass, eyes narrowed in deep thought.

Her name was Panla.

And she specialized in Lightning Magic.

“That spell…” she murmured. “How does a student that young know a spell like that? Who is that kid?”

*****

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