The Genius Mage Was Reincarnated Into A Swordsman Family - Chapter 341

Capítulo 341: Blink and the Price of Sight

The heavy iron door of the secret cell compartment slammed shut with a sickening thud, a sound that, for all its finality, was immediately swallowed by the wave of ecstatic, fever-pitch murmurs rising from the Icarus cultists.

Melo, the Emperor’s Shadow, spun around, his black mask tilting upward, every fiber of his being focused on the singular goal: securing the Young Master. The moment Klaus had delivered his final, cryptic words to the High Priest, the interaction was over. But as Melo lunged to follow, the chilling emptiness of the stone corridor struck him with the force of a physical blow.

Klaus was gone.

Melo’s instincts were honed by two decades of serving Roman Lionhart’s darkest needs; he had seen thousands of disappearances, both clean and bloody, but never one so absolute and silent. He had been mere feet behind the Young Master, his eyes tracking every movement. There was no fading shadow, no flash of elemental light, no lingering heat signature of a charged spell.

Impossible.

The frustration coiled in Melo’s gut like a viper. He knew the inner workings of the Imperial Dungeons better than the geometry of his own body. The final security barrier—the massive slab of reinforced bedrock that sealed the inner dungeon—could not be operated without the highly unique, signature-specific Mana Imprint Verification keyed to himself and the Emperor. It was the ultimate failsafe, designed to stop anything short of a high-tier siege weapon.

Yet, Klaus Lionhart, the walking anomaly, the one whom the entire Empire now regarded as a transcendent, post-ritual entity, had bypassed it all. He had simply ceased to occupy that space.

Melo’s masked gaze swept the walls, searching for the tell-tale fracture lines or energy residue of a forced passage. Nothing. The suppression seals hummed with their usual dampening lethargy. He glanced at the cultists, their faces contorted in expressions of pure, tearful devotion, still bowing toward the empty patch of floor. They were useless, lost in the fading afterglow of their so-called God’s passage.

‘Young Master…’ Melo’s thoughts were a desperate, raw, soundless cry, a breach of the perfect calm he was mandated to maintain. This wasn’t merely a casual exit; it was a deliberate, almost mocking demonstration that the Young Master’s power transcended not only Imperial law but Imperial security. Melo would have to deliver the absurd truth to the Emperor: “My Lord, he evaporated.”

–

The evaporation, of course, was merely the execution of the Third Circle Magic: Blink.

In theory, Blink was an advanced, line-of-sight displacement spell, typically allowing a mage to jump a few hundred meters, heavily restricted by an exorbitant mana cost.

But Klaus’s reality was different. His approach to magic—a secret, unorthodox path forged by the Ten Eyes Mantra long before the Icarus ritual—had always defied the conventional power-to-cost ratio. Now, fused with the Icarus Fragment, the resource constraint of mana had become meaningless. The Fragment was an engine of pure, chaotic energy, allowing him to treat Blink as a zero-cost utility.

The true key, however, was in the range.

The Five Opened Eyes of the Mantra granted Klaus a perception that surpassed mere optical sight. His visual horizon was not the curve of the earth, but the detectable structure of mana across space. His “line of sight” now extended across the entirety of the vast Lionhart estate domain. It was the ability to map the destination’s latent magical structure, allowing him to define the vector perfectly: from the deepest prison cell to the outer gates of the Eastern Tower.

Space did not fold; it simply reorganized. The displacement was instantaneous, marked only by the faintest pop of vacuum filling where his body had been.

Klaus materialized directly in front of the fortified gate of the Eastern Tower.

The two guards, members of the estate’s specialized perimeter detail, recoiled visibly. They were seasoned veterans, yet the sight of the Young Master simply appearing out of thin air—not running, not flying, but materializing—made their hearts hammer against their ribs.

They snapped immediately into a rigid military salute, their training overriding their shock. It wasn’t their place to question the bizarre.

The consensus within the Imperial ranks was clear, if vaguely terrifying: Klaus Lionhart was no longer a simple swordsman. After his abduction and the cult’s ritual—whatever that ritual truly entailed—he had been irreversibly altered. He had returned to them a transcendent being, a weaponized enigma. The Patriarch, the Emperor himself, had ordered him confined to the Eastern Tower—isolated, remote, yet still within the estate—precisely because he was an unknown variable, a phenomenon that obeyed no known laws of movement or power. They didn’t know he was a secret mage; they just knew that the creature who wore Klaus’s face was capable of impossible things.

Klaus gave a curt, dismissive nod and strode past them.

As he entered the courtyard, he noted the meticulous detail of the cleanup. The Eastern Tower, when he had last left it, was a mess, scarred by the raw Arcane power unleashed during the recent events — first during the spar with Nicholas, and then with Greed’s reawakening. Now, it was pristine. The scorched earth was replaced, the cracked marble of the ancient paving stones was fresh and new, and the air was cleansed of the residual scent of volatile mana.

Fast, he mused, a grudging acknowledgement of the Lionharts’ workers’ efficiency. The Imperial machine moved with silent, total commitment, erasing evidence of weakness instantly.

He walked past the quiet interior halls, heading toward the serene seclusion of the estate’s inner garden. The urgency of his current mission—the necessary trip to the Ice Palace—demanded that he first confirm the status of his most critical ally and ward.

He found him resting there.

Dudu, the black dragon hatchling, was no longer the small, undeniably cute baby dragon Klaus remembered. The creature was sprawled on his stomach on a patch of emerald-green grass, resting peacefully, seemingly oblivious to the chaos brewing in the capital. Though still dwarfed by the ancient oaks and high walls of the garden, Dudu’s proportions were now approaching that of a large, stocky griffon, his midnight-black scales glistening with a faint, iridescent sheen. The wings, still folded tightly, were now massive sheets of leather and bone.

Despite the noticeable growth spurt, Klaus could tell, purely from the lack of raw, terrifying mana emission, that Dudu was still very much in his infancy stage—perhaps equivalent to a human toddler in terms of development, despite his impressive size. Dragon growth was notoriously slow and dependent on external factors, primarily the consumption of high-grade mana stones and ancient artifacts.

Klaus approached the massive beast, the dragon’s breathing a low, steady rumble that vibrated through the grass.

The mission to the Ice Palace is complicated, Klaus thought, looking down at the immense, sleeping form. I will be venturing far from the capital, far from the security of the Rikxia Empire’s central defense. I need to know exactly what kind of firepower I am leaving behind to guard the Annex.

He recalled the Arkdieu System. It was the only objective tool available to quantify the true power and progress of the creature before him.

Focusing his will, he called upon the fragmented, user-specific interface that only he and the other Apostles could perceive.

“Statut Window.”

Power Ranking Weekly #50

Dec 10, 23:00 – Dec 31, 22:00

Mass release 20 chapters