The Returned Magician Prevents the End

Chapter 3

“You useless idiots! Can’t you move faster!”

A giant standing atop a high hill of trash and scrap metal roared loudly.

At the giant’s menacing shout, the bodies of those rummaging through the junkyard with bare hands flinched.

Clad in tattered rags, their faces shadowed with gloom, they bore scars from sharp scrap metal wrapped in bandages.

The scrap collectors of the scrap mountain.

Each dragged to this miserable junkyard for their own reasons, their daily lives were utterly monotonous.

They searched through piles of trash and scrap for anything remotely useful, offering it to the collectors overseeing them.

If they were lucky enough to find something worthwhile, they might avoid punishment, but finding anything useful in a place filled with garbage was no easy task, so the scrap mountain always echoed with the horrific screams of slaves.

The collector Hank, approaching me, Rough, held a significant share of those screams.

Hank glared at me, his crude mechanical eye glinting.

“You there! Come here and open the sack.”

Slumped on the ground, I weakly lifted my head to look up at the massive collector approaching me.

Bright red blood dripped from the end of the vicious whip in Hank’s hand.

Brandishing the whip in his right hand, Hank bellowed fiercely at me.

“Are you deaf or something? I said come open the sack!”

The blood-dripping whip swung threateningly before my eyes, but I showed no reaction.

With sunken eyes, I stared blankly at the mechanical-eyed collector standing before me.

Infuriated by my response, so different from the slaves who cowered at the sight of the whip, Hank raised it.

Just as the whip was about to lash my body, Victor hurriedly dashed between us.

“Master Hank! Please, just a moment, hear me out.”

“What is it, Victor? Don’t interfere and get lost! It’s time to teach this useless mongrel some manners.”

“Come on, don’t be like that. This guy hit his head hard a while back, and now he’s in this state.

He can’t even answer questions properly. He’s turned into a complete idiot.”

At Victor’s words, Hank paused, recalling recent news.

Seizing the moment, Victor swiftly grabbed the sack from my hand and presented it to Hank.

“He may be an idiot now, but he hasn’t lost his knack for work. Look at this. Didn’t he manage to salvage some decent stuff?”

The sack, previously empty, now held a few plausible machine parts.

Hank, inspecting it with a displeased look, spat on the ground.

“You, shielding this mongrel, you’ll regret it one day.”

“Of course, sir. I was just thinking of shoving him off the hill soon anyway. Oh, I shouldn’t have said that.”

At Victor’s jesting words, Hank finally let out a chuckle, pulled the parts from the sack, and left.

Holding the empty sack Hank had tossed, Victor, who had been smiling politely until Hank was out of sight, let out a deep sigh and approached me.

“You okay? Any injuries?”

“Mind your own business. I didn’t ask for your help.”

“Yeah, yeah. No need to thank me for helping.”

I glared at Victor, my lips tightly shut.

Even at a glance, my condition looked terrible.

My face, pale beyond white, dripped with cold sweat, and my frail limbs trembled incessantly.

“My goodness… You haven’t eaten anything since yesterday, have you?”

Victor, examining my state, asked in a worried tone, but I didn’t answer.

Scratching his head, Victor sighed.

“You didn’t meet the quota, so you wouldn’t have gotten rations. Here, eat this. It’s hard to chew, but if you bite it little by little, it’ll go down.”

Victor pulled a dried, shriveled piece of bread from his pocket and offered it to me, but I pushed his hand away.

Before Victor could say anything, I forced my parched lips to move and spoke.

“I don’t get it. You can barely take care of yourself in this situation, so why are you being so nice to me?”

“What? That’s what I want to ask you. What’s with you, Half? You were always frail, but not like this…”

“Don’t call me that!”

It was an enraged shout, unbelievable from a boy who had been trembling weakly moments before.

At my intense reaction, Victor’s face, which had been tolerating my complaints, darkened.

After hesitating for a while, unsure what to say, Victor spoke quietly.

“Do you remember our promise to go up to Meltogan?”

But I, turning my head away from Victor, gave no reply.

Sighing, Victor looked at me and left.

“If you want to live even a little longer, eat something and rest. You might actually die like this.”

Victor’s low voice reached me over my shoulder.

Listening to his receding footsteps, I mulled over his words.

‘Yeah, it’d be nice if I just died like this.’

Turning my head, I gazed gloomily at my reflection in a glossy piece of metal.

I saw a gray-haired boy with blue eyes.

A figure filled with the traits of the sorcerers I so despised.

That was my appearance now, awakened in this unfamiliar world.

Occasionally, sorcerers ‘banished’ from Meltogan fell to this Scrap City.

According to Victor, my body seemed to be that of a mixed-blood human born between such a sorcerer and a human from Scrap City.

A forsaken human, belonging neither to humans nor sorcerers.

The collectors enslaving me called me a mongrel with disdain.

Even Victor, who showed me some kindness, called me by the bizarre nickname Half, which was no less unwelcome.

Every time I faced the sorcerer’s traits in the mirror, I felt an intense urge to end my life.

To live in the body of the sorcerers I so hated.

I clutched my face with both hands.

Why did this happen to me?

The reason was relatively clear.

The voice of the Witch of Starlight during the time regression.

That mad witch, whose only goal seemed to be humanity’s extinction, had finally uncovered my greatest secret.

I had no choice but to admit I’d been completely outmaneuvered by her plan.

It was infuriating enough to bring tears of blood, but I had no way to escape this situation right now.

In a starved, frail body, a slave in a junkyard—how could I break free?

If only I were in a state of awakened mana, like my body before the regression, I might have found a way.

If I could wield mana and create tools through ‘magic engineering’ as I did before, I might have navigated this situation effortlessly.

After all, hadn’t I developed magic engineering in far worse conditions to prepare for the war against the sorcerers?

But this cursed body, supposedly carrying sorcerer blood, hadn’t even achieved the mana awakening that I, an ordinary human, had managed.

In a gloomy mood, I spread my frail fingers, recalling past memories.

‘How did I awaken mana back then?’

But no matter how hard I racked my brain, the moment of my first mana awakening wouldn’t come to mind.

My memories, weathered by countless regressions, had long faded.

Drained, I let out a sigh.

“What a shitty situation.”

“I agree with that sentiment.”

Startled by the sudden voice, I hurriedly twisted my body.

Before I could properly look, a calloused hand roughly grabbed my face and lifted me.

Through the thick fingers obscuring most of my vision, I saw a glinting mechanical eye.

Meeting my gaze, Hank grinned cruelly.

“I couldn’t just leave you like this. You damn mongrel. Ever since you came to our turf, things have been nothing but bad luck.”

“Let… go…!”

I struggled with all my might to escape Hank’s grip on my face.

But his thick arm didn’t budge despite my thrashing.

Hank let out a vile, cackling laugh.

“Don’t waste your strength. If you’d died quietly when I threw you last time, it would’ve been so much easier. Behave this time.”

At Hank’s words, an unfamiliar memory resurfaced in my mind.

A rainy night on the scrap mountain, a large, thick hand pushing my back, the glint of a mechanical eye during my fall.

‘Is this a memory from the original owner of this body?’

I couldn’t know for sure, but one thing was certain.

This bastard gripping my face had already killed this mixed-blood sorcerer boy I now inhabited.

Holding me, Hank headed toward the edge of the scrap mountain.

Built on the unstable desert terrain, the scrap mountain had dark cracks leading to the underground in several places.

Standing before a large crack, Hank looked into its bottomless darkness with apparent delight.

“As expected, a half-breed rat like you belongs rolling down there. Who knows? If you’re lucky, maybe someone will find a few of your bones among the trash someday.”

I had no chance to resist as I struggled.

Extending the hand gripping my face toward the crack, Hank released his hold.

A fierce wind howled in my ears as I fell.

Before I could feel fear, a dull impact overwhelmed me.

Unable to even scream, I rolled limply down the jagged hill.

Unknown debris piled in the cold underground stabbed at my body mercilessly.

The overwhelming pain left me unable to even groan properly.

After rolling for a while, I barely lifted my head, seeing only pitch-black darkness.

The faint sound of flowing water suggested I had landed near a stream.

Cautiously trying to stand, I let out a groan.

Every attempt to move brought excruciating pain through every part of my body.

Giving up on standing, I let out a hollow laugh.

“To end like this, so pointlessly? Without any meaning?”

In the heavy darkness, past memories surfaced one by one.

All the things I had done, defying time countless times to prevent the End.

Had all my efforts been for nothing?

As that thought crossed my mind, an indescribable anger boiled within me.

The deep-seated anger of a slave boy from Scrap City, and the obsession of a man seeking revenge against the sorcerers of the floating city.

All of it converged and erupted.

“Don’t make me laugh! You think I’ll let it end like this?!”

Just as I had invented the Chrono Break in what I thought was my final moment.

If I didn’t give up, I could find a way, somehow.

And that small cry sparked a change.

Unknown to me, deep within the city built atop things fallen from the floating city, ancient relics slumbered.

Forgotten and buried, never found by anyone, yet still holding mana, a mountain of great trash.

One of the simplest relics, designed to light up at a visitor’s voice, reacted to my cry, igniting a blue mana torch in the darkness.

Even if simple, it was part of the world’s most powerful law.

My body, inheriting the blood of those who breathed with that law, trembled at the sight of the mana torch.

A sense of mana, always present but unnoticed, imprinted itself in my mind.

The entire world, the entire universe, rushed toward my frail body.

The faint stream flowing around me turned into an explosive torrent, enveloping my body.

An eternal moment and a fleeting eternity brushed past me.

At the same time, I faced my body’s memories.

A mixed-blood orphan born in the junkyard, knowing neither father nor mother.

Unconsciously accepting the memories, the purest potential sleeping within my body finally awakened.

“Hooo…”

Above the returning stream, I, drenched like a soaked cat, exhaled softly.

Amid the thrilling exhilaration coursing down my spine, I cautiously opened my palm.

Crackle!

With a chilling sound, an intense spark, unlike anything I had ever seen, bloomed in my hand.

Gazing at the radiant light, I smiled.

Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed.