The sheer volume of mana Lencar now possessed was sickening. It felt like trying to hold the entire ocean in a small waterskin. Yuno's capacity was a monstrous, passive force, and Lencar's body—even his Mana-Forged one—was struggling to cope. He felt bloated with power, and a single stray thought felt like it could trigger the [Towering Tornado] spell and level half the village.
He needed to get away, to practice, but he also knew what was coming next.
He watched from a distance as Asta, dejected, staggered away from the tower, and Yuno followed him. Lencar, clutching his grimoire, followed them both. He wasn't just Lencar, the disciplined commoner. He was Kenji, the data analyst, and he knew the plot. The first "dungeon" was about to open.
He found them in the ruins just outside the village, by the giant demon skull. And just as expected, they weren't alone.
A man in a tattered cloak was cackling, his grimoire open. He was tall, with a manic grin: Revchi of the Chain Magic.
"The four-leaf grimoire... what a prize!" Revchi sneered, his chains already wrapping around Yuno, who was bound and on the ground. The chains glowed with a sick, purple aura.
"Stop it!" Asta yelled, charging in recklessly.
"Fools," Revchi said, not even looking. A single chain lashed out, sending Asta flying into a stone wall.
Lencar watched from behind a crumbling pillar, his mind racing. Okay. Data analysis. Target: Revchi, a former Magic Knight. Magic: Chain Magic. Special ability: The chains are magic-suppressing. Look, Yuno can't even use his wind. This is it. This is the utility I need.
This was the perfect opportunity. He didn't just need spells; he needed utility. And a magic that could restrain and suppress was the ultimate utility.
Asta was getting beaten, badly. Revchi was monologuing about his past, about how he was supposed to be a captain.
Now.
While Asta was down, and Revchi was distracted by his own ego, Lencar moved.
He didn't cast a spell. He didn't yell. He just ran.
His Mana-Forged muscles exploded into action. He cleared the twenty yards in a second, his feet barely touching the ground. Revchi's head snapped up, eyes wide with surprise. "What? Another rat?"
A chain shot out, but Lencar had anticipated it. He wasn't a mage; he was a fighter. He planted a foot, using his calloused hand to parry the flat of the chain, deflecting it off his arm with a painful clang.
The opening was all he needed.
Before Revchi could react or pull back his grimoire, Lencar was on him, slamming his own blank-covered grimoire against Revchi's open, three-leaf book.
[REPLICA: COMPLETE]
A jolt ran through Lencar's arm. He kicked off Revchi's chest, flipping backward to land near Asta.
"L-Lencar? What are you...?" Asta wheezed.
Revchi looked furious. "You... you little brat! What did you do?"
Lencar opened his grimoire. A new page had been written. It was titled "Chain Magic." Under it, two spells: [Magic-Sealing Chain] and [Chain-Dance Slasher].
"Let's test this," Lencar muttered. He focused his will, not his mana, on the spell. He could feel the new magic, separate from Yuno's wind.
"[Magic-Sealing Chain]!"
A single, thick chain erupted from Lencar's open grimoire, shooting straight at Revchi. It was stiff, clumsy, and had no elegance. It was exactly as the prompt had dictated: inflexible. It didn't bend or snake through the air; it just shot out like a spear.
Revchi, a master of chains, easily dodged it. "Ha! You think you can use my own magic against me? Pathetic!"
"Just needed a distraction," Lencar said, his grim smile hidden in the shadows.
The rest was history. Asta, seeing Lencar fight, got his second wind. Yuno, seeing them both fight, yelled his "rival" speech. And just as Revchi was about to finish them all, the despair, the anger, and the hope collided.
A new grimoire, black and red, burst from the stones and slammed down in front of Asta. The five-leaf clover.
"The Anti-Magic..." Lencar breathed, his analyst's mind buzzing. I have to copy that. I HAVE to.
Asta pulled the black, rusted sword from the book and stood up. The fight was over in an instant. Asta's raw strength combined with the Anti-Magic blade cleaved through Revchi's magic, knocking him out cold.
The ruins were silent, save for the panting of the three boys.
Yuno and Asta had their moment, declaring their rivalry anew. Then, they both turned to Lencar, who was wiping blood from his arm where the chain had hit him.
Yuno, now free, looked at Lencar with sharp, suspicious eyes. "Lencar... what was that?"
"He's right!" Asta shouted, his voice full of energy again. "That was so cool! You used that chain guy's magic against him!"
Lencar's heart was hammering. This was the moment. He had to get the Anti-Magic. He stumbled forward, feigning exhaustion from the fight.
"Asta... your grimoire..." he said, his eyes wide with feigned wonder. Asta's black, five-leaf grimoire was lying open on the ground, its pages vibrating with a strange, dark energy.
"I know, right!?" Asta said, grinning.
Lencar "tripped" for the third time in his life, falling forward. "Whoa!"
His hand, holding his own Replica Grimoire, fell—seemingly by accident—slap-bang onto the open pages of the five-leaf clover.
There was no jolt. No rush of power.
Instead, there was a void.
Lencar felt the massive, overwhelming presence of Yuno's mana get snuffed out like a candle. He felt his own small, flickering mana disappear. He felt the new, sharp presence of the Chain Magic vanish. Everything. Gone.
His body, which had been thrumming with copied power, suddenly felt... empty. Just his own physical strength remained.
He opened his grimoire. All the pages—the wind, the chain, his parents' weak fire and wind spells—were gone.
A new page had appeared. It was stark black, edged in red. The title, written in an angry, jagged script, read: [ANTI-MAGIC].
There were no spells. Just a single instruction: [TOGGLE].
Lencar focused on the instruction. In his mind, he pushed the toggle.
VWOOM.
The pressure of Yuno's oceanic mana flooded his senses, almost making him pass out. The sharp tingle of the Chain Magic returned. He looked at his grimoire. The Anti-Magic page was gone, and the Wind and Chain pages were back.
He'd done it.
"Lencar, are you okay?" Asta asked, pulling him up.
"Y-yeah," Lencar panted, the sudden return of the massive mana pool making him dizzy. He stood up and focused, his grimoire's cover shimmering and settling on a new, convincing disguise: a three-leaf clover.
"Just... overwhelmed," Lencar said, which was the absolute truth. "What a day."
Yuno said nothing, but his eyes were fixed on Lencar, his gaze unreadable.
Lencar now had the power of a prodigy, the utility of a knight-killer, and the ultimate trump card of a demon. But he also had a new, critical rule: he could be a mage, or he could be an anti-mage, but he could never, ever be both at the same time.