29.
“You already know you can’t win, Sir Lancel.”
Lightning crackled, morphing into plasma that spread in all directions.
A bundle of tightly compressed energy began to tear into the earth like the thrashing tentacles of an enraged octopus.
Kwa-kwa-kwang!
The entire landscape trembled as if an earthquake had struck.
The magic power Marigold unleashed utterly devastated the ground beneath Lancel’s feet, making it nearly impossible to maintain his balance.
Night rank magic: lightening tentacles.
“Easy now, easy!”
SWISH!
Magic power, coiling like a whip, hurtled toward Lancel with terrifying speed.
“This is…”
A brilliant light erupted from Lancel’s blade. Seizing the moment the tendrils of magic power coiled around him, he swung his sword with all his might.
Clang—!
The lightning tentacle was severed in an instant.
The plasma that scattered into the air slowly dissipated into particles, leaving behind dazzling sparks as if unwilling to be completely extinguished.
“Gah!”
A strand of his hair caught fire, and his entire body burned as if scorched.
“To block that… you truly are remarkable, Sir Lancel.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
“I mean it sincerely.”
Unlike the exhausted Lancel, Marigold remained serene, floating effortlessly in the air with her staff raised.
“If only all knights were like you, Sir Lancel.”
Crimson sparks erupted from Marigold’s eyes.
Eight tendrils of plasma surged forth from her center once more.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwang!
The overwhelming force tore through the grassy field, extending dozens of meters in an instant.
A chain reaction of bundles of magical powers crushed everything in its path—rocks, trees, the earthen ground, and even the academy building nearby.
The unpredictable movements defied all attempts of anticipating its direction. By the time Lancel regained his senses, three or four magic power whips were already targeting him simultaneously.
Even for Lancel, a single graze from one of those whips would leave his body utterly destroyed.
“Damn it.”
Lancel focused solely on dodging.
The ground was already a chaotic mess, with no safe footing left. Melted stone and gravel flowed like lava, creating a treacherous obstacle course.
Whether he had a chance of winning was irrelevant. The real question was whether he could even land a single hit.
‘Did the stats for great wizards get mixed up?’
Even in the game, Marigold hadn’t been this powerful. Could this truly be the ultimate form of a wizard? Lancel remained utterly helpless.
Even approaching her was difficult. Up until now, Lancel had only been able to get close to her twice.
He hadn’t even been able to swing his sword. An impenetrable barrier protected her.
“I won’t drag this out for too long. Not for Sir Lancel’s sake.”
Gwaaaaaah!
It was then.
A sound like a chilling shriek erupted from Marigold’s palm.
Magic power and air were relentlessly compressed, emitting light before finally coalescing into a black sphere.
“……!”
Lancel already knew what that magic was. Yet he couldn’t hide his bewilderment.
“Why the dummy data?”
Twelfth Rank magic: small dark sphere.
Lancel’s older sister who was skilled in game development but utterly ignorant of astrophysics, had seen NASA’s first image of a black hole and immediately exclaimed, “This would be perfect to put in the game as magic, right?”
That was the magic that had been enthusiastically crammed into the game.
“Will that even work?”
His objection had relegated the magic world’s ultimate secret technique to mere dummy data.
‘But it was never implemented, was it?’
The very concept of a Twelfth Rank magic had never been realized. Even within the game, magic was only implemented up to the Ninth Rank to maintain power balance.
Beyond that, it would no longer be romance fantasy but something closer to Cthulhu. All such plans had been scrapped during the game’s testing phase.
‘So why is she using it now?’
The appearance of dummy data classified as Twelfth Rank magic was already an anomaly.
According to the lore, the continent’s greatest wizard—the Court Magic Division Commander and the Magic Tower Lord—were both Eighth Ranks.
Historically, only one great wizard had ever reached the Ninth Rank threshold.
And now, a Twelfth Rank magic?
It was a concept that should never have existed.
Something was wrong.
“Mary, you…”
But what formed in Marigold’s palm was unmistakably a small dark sphere, Twelfth Rank magic.
Around the violently rotating sphere, an accretion disk materialized. A miniature black hole.
The air that ceaselessly sucked into it screamed in agony.
Kiiiiiiiiing—!
‘…This isn’t really something I can win, huh?’
Indeed.
The Marigold standing before Lancel had already far surpassed the realm of great wizards.
“This is it, Sir Lancel.”
A being who had mastered even magic beyond the game’s boundaries, wielding it flawlessly—one who had transcended the very concept of a wizard.
A literal transcendent.
A being closer to divinity than any other.
“I’ll end this now.”
Therefore, Lancel couldn’t help but sense something unnatural about this sight.
.
.
.
“A nightmare?”
“Yes, they say it induces nightmares.”
It was a distant memory.
“The content of the dream varies from person to person, but it’s said to begin when Miss Mary falls asleep and continues until she wakes up. Professor Laura, do you know anything about this?”
At Lancel’s question, Professor Laura rested her chin on her hand, as if searching her memory.
Lancel waited silently for her response.
The “nightmare incident” Marigold had caused—the one that had made her an outcast at the academy—still bothered him.
“Hmm. It’s definitely some sort of mental magic, but dreams…?” Professor Laura finally spoke.
“If it’s related to dreams, it might be the nightmare phenomenon.”
“The nightmare phenomenon?”
“Yes, it’s a magical phenomenon that literally makes the target dream. No one knows how it manifests. Mental magic hasn’t been studied much yet. It’s primarily used by demons, monsters, and other creatures rather than humans. As such, this makes research quite limited.”
Mental Magic.
In the game, it was used to inflict status effects like sleep, confusion, and darkness.
Did that mean Marigold had unconsciously used it?
‘She is a demihuman, after all. Just look at the grass growing out of her head.’
Thinking about it that way, it made perfect sense.
“Some people perceive it as a pleasant dream, while others experience it as a nightmare. It varies from person to person. But the fact that most perceive it as a nightmare… could it be because they can’t escape it through their own will?”
Laura took off her glasses and continued, “It can last anywhere from a fleeting moment to several months or longer. Most people wake up with a clean slate, having forgotten everything. But they all remember one thing: that they were trapped in a dream.”
“So, some people do remember the content of their dreams?”
“Very rarely, and only those who had pleasant dreams.”
“…It’s fortunate that nightmares are forgotten.”
“You could see it that way,” Laura shrugged. “What kind of dream you have depends on the individual. Dreams might seem like infinite possibilities, but that’s not really the case.”
“Is that so?”
“Absolutely. No matter how bizarre a dream is, it’s still just imagination. And imagination is ultimately limited by the person’s own capacity for it.”
Now that she explained it, it made sense.
“Fascinating.”
“Would you like to hear more?”
“I’ll pass on that.”
.
.
.
Lancel snapped out of his brief reverie.
The Twelfth Rank magic, small dark sphere, lingering in Marigold’s hand.
The reason this impossible phenomenon had manifested wasn’t because she was a powerful wizard.
Marigold being a great wizard, a transcendent, a Cthulhu-esque being, or a human infinitely close to divinity—all these were merely symptoms of a deeper cause.
Indeed, it was all Lancel.
This dream was his dream.
Mary was merely a stranger who had entered it.
The reason she could manifest Twelfth Rank magic was simple: she was merely taking the strongest form possible within the limits of Lancel’s imagination.
In this game, who besides Lancel would even know that such magic existed?
This imagined world, which regressed every thirty years, was no different. It could only exist because Lancel was a regressor.
It was almost a guarantee that Marigold in this iteration wouldn’t even grasp the concept of “regression.”
The Marigold in Lancel’s dream had simply grown based on the imagination she borrowed entirely from him, from beginning to end.
She was merely a guest.
“Right. This was my dream.”
‘Why had I been thinking the opposite?’
Until now, Lancel had believed he was entering Marigold’s dream.
But the truth was, it was actually the opposite. This was his dream, the world he had longed for.
Not Marigold’s.
This was Lancel’s own idealized paradise.
A fantasy of happiness. A fantasy of living in a peaceful world. A fantasy of a harmonious life. A fantasy of Marigold becoming a great wizard. A fantasy of marrying Marigold…?
‘This isn’t right.’
In any case, Marigold was only preventing him from escaping this dream.
Lancel was still the master of this dream.
The nightmare phenomenon.
That day, Lancel had simply been in the same situation as the other academy students sharing a dormitory with Marigold.
“Hmm.”
All the pieces of the puzzle had finally fallen into place.
