How a Catastrophe-Level Magician Lives

He had a dream.

‘Is that…?’

The place he saw was the garden of House Phoenix.

The people there were none other than his mother and younger sister Reina.

And his ten-year-old self and fifteen-year-old Alkas.

‘Is this… a dream…?’

He became aware that it was a dream.

But strangely, even though he knew it was a dream, he couldn’t wake up or do anything.

As if watching something from his memory from a third-person perspective.

But,

Smack!

“Ugh…!”

It wasn’t just a dream-like memory.

‘…!’

There was his ten-year-old self, hit on the cheek by Alkas’s backhand and falling ungracefully on his behind.

Something,
is strange…

After that, Alkas, who had just returned to the family after the academy vacation, still fifteen years old, mercilessly kicked his young self who had fallen on his behind, saying, “Disgusting brat, not knowing your place…!”

His young self, getting hit and unable to resist at all, with blood splattering from his mouth.

On one side, his mother tried to intervene, saying to stop, but she fell backward from the wind pressure generated by Alkas’s arm swing imbued with magical power.

‘Mother…!!’

Seeing this, I widened my eyes and tried to intervene right away, but the attempt was futile.

Of course.
This was clearly just a dream that I was aware of.

‘Mother! Reina!’

Reina, seeing her mother fall while trying to intervene, is crying in fear.

Alkas frowned, saying it’s noisy, and strode towards the young sister.

My young self, trying to save his little sister, barely grabbed Alkas’s ankle while lying face down on the floor to stop him from approaching his sister.

However, seeing this, Alkas said, “This bastard still…!” and kicked the head of his ten-year-old self who had grabbed his ankle, then kicked him more severely and beat him mercilessly.

The mother who had fallen to the floor soon regained consciousness with a groan of “Ugh…!” and called out “Free…!” in a pained voice, seeing her son being beaten helplessly by Alkas, but she couldn’t stop Alkas’s atrocity with her strength.

The little sister who had been crying on one side suddenly ran to her mother who had fallen to the floor and snuggled into her mother’s arms as she raised her upper body.

With that, the dream began to fade. The background of the dream world shattered like broken glass pieces.

But at the end, as the dream was fading away, the final scene I saw as a third person who couldn’t do anything but just watch was: the young sister Reina, who had buried her face in her mother’s arms, suddenly turned her head and gaze, and with her gold and red odd eyes filled with tears, she was staring at her ten-year-old brother who was still being beaten and at the fifteen-year-old Alkas who was inflicting one-sided beatings and violence with an unpleasant smile on his face and bulging eyes as if he found the situation amusing now.

As if with eyes full of deep resentment…

With that, the dream finally woke up completely.

Jolt…!

“What’s the matter, Student Free?”
“……”

Looking around, he realized that he was currently in a classroom during a lesson, and that he had accidentally fallen asleep on his desk.

“…It’s nothing.”
“Ahem, I hope you won’t do anything too disruptive to the class.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll be careful.”

Fortunately, the teacher simply accepted the apology and moved on.

But that wasn’t what was important right now.

‘…What kind of dream was that? That?’

He fell into serious thought, unable to understand the dream that was too vivid and realistic to be just a dream.

‘It was different from ordinary dreams. That dream…’

No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t come up with a definite, accurate answer.

However, if there was one thing he vaguely guessed,

‘…Could it have been a scene from a different world line from the present? Perhaps from a past where such a thing could have actually happened?’

It was all a mystery.

There was still too little information, and it could simply be dismissed as just a dream.

However, it was too much to think of as just a meaningless dream, as cold sweat covered his forehead and entire body as if he had been briefly paralyzed.

It was that much of an unrealistic yet simultaneously realistic dream.

‘I can’t make heads or tails of it… I wonder why I suddenly had such a dream.’

Although he tried to think about it himself, he still couldn’t come up with any suitable inferences.

‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been too tired lately.’

He might have unknowingly accumulated fatigue.

After all, there had been various events happening recently.

As time passed, the content of the dream in his head gradually faded, and the emotions he felt in that situation slowly disappeared.

Perhaps he wanted to believe it was just an ordinary dream.

‘…I guess I was sleep-deprived after staying up all night learning the training method yesterday.’

The cause of this was in the same classroom, taking the same class. In a seat a little behind his.

Swish, when he briefly turned his gaze back, he met the eyes of Aina with her light blue hair, pale yellow eyes, and long straight hair.

Aina had been watching him, the one who had just caused a brief commotion in the classroom.

When their eyes met, Aina naturally turned her gaze towards the blackboard at the front of the classroom as if she hadn’t been looking.

“……”

I thought it was too late for her to pretend now.

Aina had partially succeeded in mastering the degraded version of the Magical Eye that Free had taught her in just one day.

Although she hadn’t mastered it perfectly, she had made some progress.

She thought to herself during class.

‘…Magical Eye. The more I learn about this magic, the more I realize how amazing it is.’

Aina was having the same thoughts as Free had before.

Swish, she secretly stared at Free’s back in the seat in front of her, with whom she had just made eye contact.

‘What kind of person is he? How did he independently create such a high-level magic?’

As the Grand Duchess of the North, she couldn’t help but be particularly interested in a classmate who had done such a thing. Because it was a boy of the same young age as her, just a first-year middle school student, who had created such an unbelievable level of magic.

‘His full name was… Free von Betelgeuse, I believe.’

When she heard the middle name and surname, Aina guessed.

That he was just an exchange student from another country.

‘Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse… I’ve heard that name somewhere before.’

The surname Betelgeuse was quite a famous and renowned family that even high-ranking nobles from other empires would have heard of once or twice.

It was also the only family in the empire where the family name and surname were different, and even in other empires, House Phoenix had some influence in various businesses.

‘…Ah, I remember now. It was from the Argen Empire…’

House Phoenix.

The place that uses the phoenix emblem as their family crest.

Occasionally, carriages with that emblem imprinted on them were imported even to the distant north where she lived.

‘…That boy, he was a son of that family.’

Aina was very interested in magic.
So it was inevitable.

About that mysterious boy named Free.

The desire to satisfy her interest and curiosity.

This incident had caused it to spring up endlessly towards him.

Lunchtime.

“Hey!”
“…?”

Someone suddenly called out to Free.
With a rough voice that sounded somewhat fierce.

The one standing next to him as he sat quietly at his desk in the classroom was.

None other than the dark red-haired male classmate.

It was the boy who had caused a small trouble and commotion with Aina on the way to school on the first day of the entrance ceremony.

“You are certainly…”
“Rekas.”
“…Your name?”
“Cut to the chase. You.”

The next words he spat out were none other than.

“Have a magic duel with me.”

He was challenging him to a duel.
Under the pretext of a match. At Sephirion Academy in Orwen, there was a system and rules in place for students to independently challenge each other to magic duels when there were magical opinion conflicts or when someone’s honor was tarnished.

The loser of the magic duel had to not only officially apologize to the winning side but also had to follow one request that the winner wanted, no matter what.

As long as it wasn’t unethical, immoral, or against school rules, the academy would review the content first and give final approval.

This was Sephirion Academy’s policy to instill the concept of magic duels between students from the beginning, intending for students to resolve their conflicts through conversation rather than actual duels when there were disagreements.

But sometimes, there were those who challenged others to magic duels under the pretext of tarnished honor, not magical opinion conflicts.

“Why should I do that?”
“……”

However, it’s also a student’s freedom to refuse this.

If such restrictions weren’t in place, fights would break out everywhere every day under the pretext of tarnished honor.

This was especially frequent among adolescent male students.

And Free wasn’t the type of person to quietly comply with someone’s wishes unless it was an absolutely unavoidable situation.

The reason for this was closely related to his previous life. He had personally experienced being forcibly bound by a noble with conditions and justifications that he couldn’t refuse, trying to use him according to their own will.

He had no desire whatsoever to be swayed by such a young child.

However.

“I thought you’d say that. You coward.”

Provocation? That level of provocation didn’t stir any emotion in Free.
Free said.

“If you have nothing more to say, step aside. You’re in the way.”

As he was about to stand up and head to the corridor, the dark red-haired student who had introduced himself as Rekas finally presented a condition that he couldn’t refuse.

“…In the impossible event that you win against me in the magic duel, I’ll provide and lend you any magic book you want. Of course, limited to the magic books I possess. For a period of one week.”
“……”

Free really thought that things often happened contrary to his intentions.

And.
For Free, who had a strong desire for magical knowledge and exploration, that offer was an attractive condition that he couldn’t possibly refuse.

“…Fine. Let’s do it. That magic duel with you.”
“Hmph…! Follow me outside.”

Rekas, who had spoken, turned his back first and left through the classroom door.

At this, the many students who were still in the room stopped on their way to the cafeteria and looked alternately at Free himself and the classroom door where Rekas had left.

Then, seeing Free quietly stand up and seemingly follow behind,

As he completely left the classroom, the students remaining in the classroom looked at each other’s faces once with a strange silence.

Eventually,

They were nodding to each other without saying a word, with smiles on their faces and sparkling eyes, not hiding their excited emotions at all as they left the classroom.

“……”

Watching the many students suddenly leaving the classroom and seemingly following the direction of those two.

The only student who remained in her seat until the end was Aina alone.

However.

Creak,
She too.
Rustle…

Although she pretended not to be interested, her gaze was clearly fixed on the classroom door where the other students had left.
“……”

Aina, who had quietly stood up from her seat, slowly pulling her chair back, also seemed to be following behind without saying a word.