The surge came without warning.
Lencar felt it before he saw it—an abrupt distortion in the mana field rippling outward from the heart of the Royal Capital. Not chaotic. Not uncontrolled. But sharp. Focused. Violent in intent.
It wasn't the lingering residue of battle.
It was active.
He halted mid-step atop a fractured rooftop overlooking the inner districts. The mist around his feet thinned instinctively, reacting to the sudden pressure in the air. The night itself seemed to tense, as though the capital had drawn a breath it had no intention of releasing gently.
That mana—
Lencar narrowed his eyes.
It carried structure. Coordination. Multiple signatures moving in concert.
And beneath it all, something darker. Familiar.
"The Eye," he murmured.
The Eye of the Midnight Sun had not fled with the undead. They had merely waited.
Lencar raised his hand.
Fire gathered—not explosively, not violently, but with precise intent. His flames did not roar. They folded inward, compressing, flattening, reshaping under his control.
A mirror formed.
Not glass.
Not crystal.
Fire.
A perfectly circular plane of stabilized flame hovered before him, its surface unnaturally smooth. The edges burned brighter, forming a thin, radiant frame, while the center dimmed—reflective, translucent, obedient.
A Fire Mirror.
The technique was not meant for combat. It was observation refined into art.
The surface rippled once—
Then resolved.
The center of the capital filled the mirror.
A shattered plaza. Broken stone. Craters carved into white marble streets. Burned banners fluttering weakly in the night air.
And at its center—
Asta.
He was already moving when Lencar found him.
The boy's anti-magic blade cleaved through a spell construct mid-swing, dispersing it into nothingness. Black energy surged around him, unstable yet familiar, as if the sword itself was impatient.
Beside him, Noelle stood her ground.
Her water magic formed a rotating formation around her—layered, disciplined, sharp. The spell she had learned held firm under pressure, intercepting incoming attacks and redirecting them with deliberate force.
Leopold burned nearby, flames roaring outward in controlled bursts, his magic no longer wild but focused, driven by intent rather than impulse.
They were fighting together.
Not recklessly.
Not desperately.
They had improved.
Lencar observed in silence.
Three members of the Eye of the Midnight Sun pressed them from different angles—each cloaked, each radiating twisted mana warped by ideology and malice.
A spatial distortion snapped open above the plaza, releasing a barrage of compressed spell fire.
Noelle reacted instantly.
Her shield rotated, angle shifting at the last moment.
The blast deflected upward, detonating harmlessly against a ruined tower.
Asta leapt forward without hesitation, sword dragging along the ground before sweeping upward, anti-magic tearing through a summoning circle before it could stabilize.
Leopold followed, flames spiraling outward in a widening arc that forced one of the cultists back.
Lencar's gaze sharpened.
"They're holding," he noted.
But holding was not winning.
The Eye adapted quickly. One of them shifted tactics, conjuring layered illusions that fractured Asta's perception. Another began chanting—mana spiraling inward, compressing into something dense and dangerous.
A killing spell.
Lencar felt it forming even through the mirror.
His fingers curled slightly.
He had already taken so much.
Lightning. Fire. Ice. Gravity. Barriers. Spatial constructs. Dozens of grimoires. Hundreds of spells.
His Replica core was saturated, humming beneath his skin with restrained potential.
He did not need more.
And yet—
The image shifted.
Asta stumbled—just slightly—his footing disrupted by a gravity fluctuation. Not enough to knock him down.
Enough to slow him.
Noelle noticed.
She moved to compensate, shifting her shield outward, overextending just a fraction.
Leopold shouted something—inaudible through the mirror—but his flames flared higher, drawing attention.
The cultist chanting smiled.
Lencar's eyes narrowed.
"…This is inefficient," he said quietly.
He did not feel urgency.
He felt calculation.
He weighed the variables with practiced speed.
Intervening would expose him.
Not intervening risked escalation.
He had already altered the capital's flow of events beyond recognition. Grimoires returned intact. Mana stabilized. Damage contained.
At this point, restraint no longer served the same purpose.
He exhaled slowly.
"I have more than enough," Lencar said.
The Fire Mirror flickered as he altered its configuration, widening the mana intake, refining the clarity. Every thread of magic in the plaza became sharper, more defined.
He could see the spell vectors now.
The direction of mana flow.
The pressure gradients.
The delay between intent and manifestation.
Still, it wasn't enough.
Not yet.
Lencar closed his eyes.
Then opened them again.
And the world changed.
He released the limiter.
Not on his power.
On his perception.
Mana surged outward from him—not explosively, but in a perfectly controlled expansion. Invisible lines spread through the air, intersecting, overlapping, forming a vast, multidimensional lattice.
The Composite Magic Vector Perception Field activated.
Instantly, the capital transformed in his sight.
Every spell became geometry.
Every mana source, a node.
Every attack, a trajectory mapped before it fully formed.
The Eye's magic unraveled into layered intent—deception spells nested inside force constructs, escape vectors woven into offensive formations.
Asta's anti-magic carved voids through the field—absences that distorted everything around them.
Noelle's water spells rotated in harmonic patterns, their vectors clean and disciplined.
Leopold's flames surged outward in spirals of aggression and growth.
And beyond them—
Lencar saw it.
A deeper convergence point.
Not just three cultists.
Something watching.
Something waiting for the fight to tip.
The perception field expanded further.
The mist around Lencar's feet spiraled upward, responding to the sudden clarity, reacting to the overwhelming amount of structured information flowing through him.
His heartbeat remained steady.
His expression unchanged.
"…So that's where you are," he said.
The Fire Mirror burned brighter.
Below, the battle reached a breaking point.
And Lencar—
Finally—
Saw everything.