Darkness is all that Lento can see, his body feels like he is lying on a warm, comfortable patch of grass, the wind blowing softly against his skin, the birds are chirping and the sounds of wildlife can be heard all around him. Lento can stay in this position for a while, enjoying the tranquility and peace, especially with the cool and jelly-like feeling covering his stomach like a blanket… but after a while, the thing on his stomach begins to feel painful. Lento opened his eyes, seeing the blue sky and a blue slime slowly trying to consume him, starting from his torso. The slime had already torn off a part of the robe, exposing Lento’s skin.
“AAAAAAAH!” Lento screamed in terror, he extended his hands toward the slime to defend himself, only for his hands to let out a spark, and out came an unbelievably strong fire magic that melted the slime instantly. “Eh…?”
Lento froze in confusion, he never recited or put some time into casting a spell that strong out of his hands, especially for a slime. It also confuses him that sparks were coming out of his hands before the fire magic came out bursting.
He takes a look at his hands and he finds that his hands are a bit smaller and not frail and bony like he is used to seeing. From his hands, he looks at his exposed skin, and his stomach, there doesn’t seem to be any visible injury from the slime, but what interests him the most is how his chest and stomach are solid and smooth.
He can also flail around his arms and stretch his body without any back and shoulder pains soon after. Desperate to remember what happened, he spots a puddle of water nearby and quickly comes to it to look at the reflection of his face.
Lento sees a young man with a blazing pair of amber-colored eyes and breezy, light-reddish silver hair. And on top of all, he has no wizard beard anymore, his skin is fair and not wrinkly, a striking resemblance to himself when he was a young man.
“I… I don’t have a Grandpa wizard beard anymore! And… the color of my hair... it looks unusually out of place... perhaps a side effect of the potion? Never mind that! Grandpa me turned into 15-year-old me...” Lento murmured to himself touching his face and hair in disbelief.
Lento remembered that he sneaked out of the castle last night and buried his journal and belongings under a concealed area in the forest near Nira Kingdom. He made sure to use his strongest illusion magic as the last magic that he would ever cast before abandoning his old self so that no one could detect or come across the patch of ground where he buried them. After that, he drank his potion of youth and undergo changes, it was painful and he passed out. Before he can think about anything else, a stinging smell of burned wood and smoke gets more intense by the second, and when Lento turns his back around, he sees that the forest is in flames and black smoke is surrounding the area, it is a massive forest fire that he accidentally started.
“HEAVEN’S SAKE! I USED FIRE MAGIC IN A FOREST! WATER!”
As he shouted in panic, he tried to defuse the situation by casting a water spell, but again, as he extended his hands toward the flames, another spark came out of his hands before a large spread of water covered more than the burning area, most definitely putting out the spreading forest fire… although rather too effectively.
The area is completely charred and the trees tumble down and break down to ashes, mixing in with the flood-like water that is spreading through the ground and is slowly being absorbed into it, but at least the fire is stopped.
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The amount of magical output that Lento can release despite making no effort to cast them on a whim terrifies him. He already promised himself that hiding his belongings using illusion magic would be the last magic that he would ever use, disappointing himself greatly.
His Mana is flowing smoothly throughout his young body but is too dangerous and unstable. He already mastered the arcane and stood on the apex of sorcery, the accumulated magical power he has in all of his lifetime is now running wild in his young body to the point where he doesn’t feel tired by casting two grand-scaled magic in such short time.
Anticipating that this would happen, Lento already prepared for this beforehand. He has a pouch around his belt filled with rings that he made to suppress his magical power. The reason he made 10 of those rings using anti-magi metal was because how he felt bothered that he could not even cast the weakest of magic spells for everyday life without the risk of burning and destroying something.
Once he gathered his resolve again to never use magic and to pursue the path of swordsmanship, he opened his pouch filled with rings to wear all of them, but then some footsteps and voices began to close into Lento’s location, startling him and making him drop his pouch, his rings scattered.
“Over here! Come on, hurry up you all!” A loud yell of a young man was heard in the distance, followed by sounds of more footsteps inching closer by the second.
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Minutes before…
A group of 4 can be seen walking through the woods, they keep their eyes clean and hold their weapons at the ready, looking around to anticipate any attacks from monsters or keeping an eye on anything interesting. One of the adventurers, a young girl with beige colored hair in a ponytail and clear blue eyes in the group sighed deeply and rolled her eyes.
“Hey, Karuwa, how long will we have to walk for? There is no way that crazy old man speaks the truth when he says he saw a mutated fire salamander deep in the Nira woods!” The young girl said, crossing her arms and looking irritated at a young demi-human man who was leading at the front.
“… We can’t ignore old man Bolos’ words, Aria. He took care of us more than enough times for us to not believe in him. Besides, we’re on another quest in the meantime too, so why don’t we look around to confirm the mutated fire salamander’s existence? We could even report it to the guild ourselves and prevent a disaster from happening.” The young demi-human said, looking back at the young girl with an unchanging and serious face.
“Uuugh, Karuwa you stubborn idiot!” The girl named Aria said, clenching her fists in annoyance.
“B- But… sis, what if there is really a mutated fire salamander? Old man Bolos was right once about the King Slime…” A young man with the same beige-colored hair as Aria’s said, clenching his wooden staff closely while looking around nervously.
“Abel, not you too?!” Aria said to her little brother, Abel. Feeling dejected that even her little brother agrees with Karuwa.
While the three of them are having a mild argument, the last member of the party, who is wearing a cloak and hiding her face begins to sense something in the distance. She felt dread and then dropped to the ground, shaking and overwhelmed, she could not believe the amount of magic and mana coming from that direction. A water sprite then came out from her cloak and panicked, rushing to the middle of those three.
“M- Master Delila sensed a massive magical power in the distance! From the Mana-sensing that Master did, Master Delila can feel a strong fire spell being cast” The water sprite said, all of them then saw a cloud of black smoke and flames erupting in the distance.
“Come on, there’s no time to lose, we’ve got to put out the fire and check what’s going on!” Karuwa said, sprinting in the direction of the forest fire. Abel and Aria are still feeling shocked and try to help Delila to get up.
“Karuwa?! Hold up! Geez, that guy does whatever he wants, it’s so annoying!” Aria said as she facepalmed, after Delila was up and feeling fine, they began to chase after Karuwa.