Regressor Of The Fallen Family [EN]: Chapter 116

With a deafening boom, the wall exploded outwards, turning the study inside out.

Through the dust billowing into the room, a red-haired man swung his sword.

With that single strike, the sword cut through the metal object in front of Kraune Ranfield. This object had been standing where Cheren Crow was just moments before.

Logan was pushed back by the beam of light, now considerably weaker than before, but the impact was minimal.

Logan closed the distance of several meters and swung his sword.

Kraune raised his hand, and suddenly, red flames burst out, covering his chest and stomach.

“Die!”

Five blasts of fire shot towards Logan, but eight powerful waves of golden light smashed through them.

“Ugh!”

Kraune, his eyes now completely destroyed, was struck by the golden wave, thrown backwards and crashed through the wall.

The red-haired youth approached, his blue eyes gleaming.

“What are you so guilty about that you react like this, Mr. Kraune? Hmm?”

Kraune, the Massacre Magician, had a mysterious past.

Nobody knew where he learned magic or what he did before becoming a superhuman.

He appeared from nowhere just before the Imperial War and became very famous and powerful very quickly.

He was known to be cruel, paranoid, and arrogant, making many enemies.

“H-how did you know? I erased all traces!”

He looked like someone running from the law, scared and desperate.

The magician was slumped on the ground, crawling backwards. He looked nothing like the superhuman he was destined to become.

“Where do you think I came from?”

Logan questioned him gently.

“Don’t be ridiculous! That’s mine!”

A blue light erupted from Kraune’s chest, the blast detonating at point-blank range.

Logan felt the heat of the blast on his face. That was too close.

He instinctively raised his sword to block it, but the explosion made him lose his balance for a moment.

Kraune saw his chance and scrambled to his feet, leaping through the shattered wall.

“Why did I have to be curious…?”

Now that things had come to this, what did his past matter?

We are enemies now. I should have just finished him off.

Logan pushed aside his regret and charged through the wall after him.

He found himself in a gloomy stone chamber.

The air smelled of strange chemicals and burnt metal. Shelves lined the walls, filled with glass bottles and strange tools. Logan knew at once: this was a magician’s laboratory.

Before the expansive space, he spotted Kraune, cloaked in a black robe that emitted an eerie light.

“Die!”

With the cry, a chilling storm of frost erupted from Kraune’s slightly levitated form, followed immediately by searing yellow lightning.

Kraune cast spells one after another, very quickly. He was a powerful magician, even more skilled than Logan thought.

“Hmph!”

But Logan swung his sword. A powerful force came from the blade, cutting through the spells and filling the room. A beam of golden light shot out from Logan’s sword. It hit Kraune’s staff, breaking it, and then pierced Kraune’s hand.

“Aargh! You…!”

With a scream, the black robe emitted a bizarre aura, unleashing a tremendous power.

“Too slow!”

Logan’s huge golden sword came down, cutting Kraune in half and smashing through the laboratory from one corner to the other.

“I…”

The magician, unable to even utter his last words, was cut in half, his insides spilled out.

“Hooo…”

Logan sighed, a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead.

The ceiling surrounding the laboratory cracked, and part of the building crumbled, following the path of the sword strike that had split its owner in two.

Part of the building collapsed with a tremendous noise.

Logan, slightly frowning at the sunlight that suddenly poured in from outside, slowly looked around.

‘Kraune’s laboratory.’

The laboratory of the magician who would later be known as the Artifact Master.

Logan quickly looked around the laboratory. He thought there would be more magical objects here.

Also, the magical items Kraune was wearing were already broken.

All that remained were three magical objects stored separately in a corner of the laboratory.

He didn’t even use them when he was about to die, so Logan didn’t think they would be very good.

However, something else is more important.

Logan’s gaze turned to the bookshelves, desks, and papers in the corner of the laboratory.

Logan remembered something about Kraune. People said Kraune had found a way to put magic into normal metal. Usually, to make magical items, you needed rare metals like mithril.

An event that would occur in just 6 or 7 years from now.

Perhaps the research data for that method was still here.

No, it certainly would be, even if it’s not the complete method yet.

So, Logan calmly examined the laboratory.

He looked carefully at everything. He checked the open books and the papers Kraune had written on.

“As expected… I don’t understand.”

Logan knew ancient languages well from his past life, but he didn’t know anything about magic.

He could only understand a few words. The rest made no sense to him.

And then, unwelcome noises began to reach his ears.

“It’s, it’s over there!”

“It’s the magician’s house!”

“It’s been destroyed!”

“What has he done this time?”

“Contact the soldiers!”

The sounds of the surroundings growing noisy.

Logan sighed softly and picked up the bundle bag he had placed in the study.

Then, he quickly began gathering all the books and papers in the laboratory.

He carefully stacked the papers, which were easy to scatter, and collected the books from the bookshelf, starting with the ones that looked most worn.

Fortunately, the bundle bag, which was about the size of a person, was spacious enough to hold everything, even the remaining artifacts.

After gathering everything in the laboratory, Logan meticulously searched every corner of the intact house, just in case.

He wondered if there might be a secret passage or laboratory.

He used all his senses to find two magical books hidden under the bed before he heard voices shouting from outside.

Magician! Are you there?!

Logan let out a quiet sigh, the weight of his recent task settling on his shoulders. He swung his bag over his shoulder and walked towards the main gate.

*Thud. Thud.*

“Well, well, what have we here?”

“Who’s there? Show yourself!”

A knight stood there, looking confused. He seemed to be the leader of the soldiers. His armor was heavy and dark, polished to a dull shine. The bell symbol on his chest was made of bright silver, catching the light.

Even with the wizard’s house in pieces behind them, the soldiers had been too scared to go inside. But then, Logan walked out, looking like nothing had happened.

“Ah,” Logan said, trying to sound like a simple merchant. “I’m just a merchant, here to sell goods to Master Cheren. I arrived in the city today…”

“Ah, that merchant.”

Someone behind the knight pretended to recognize Logan.

Turning his head slightly, he saw the soldier he had seen at the city gate.

“Jin, do you know him?”

“He’s the merchant who entered the city today. He said he was robbed…”

“Robbed, you say? A robbed merchant doesn’t usually have anything left to sell?”

The knight was not stupid.

This was bad for him.

*Thwack!*

“Ack!”

Logan’s fist smashed into the knight’s side. The sound was like crushing bones, even through the thick armor.

Logan could tell quickly: this knight was just a good soldier, nothing more.

The moment Logan’s fist connected, the knight felt his left ribs shatter completely, and darkness filled his vision.

A sharp pain shot through him, and he felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

Even hurt and unable to breathe, the knight still tried to do his job.

“An, enemy…”

*Wham!*

*Plop!*

“Honestly, you people are such a pain,” Logan muttered.

Logan knocked the knight unconscious with a strike to the back of the head and smiled, a cold feeling in his chest, causing the surrounding soldiers to raise their spears in alarm.

“It’s the enemy!”

“Seize him!”

However, the soldiers were clearly afraid.

What could ten soldiers do against someone who could beat a knight so easily?

‘If I could, I’d destroy a small town or two before I left,’ Logan thought.

But he didn’t want to cause more trouble with the Empire right now.

Logan glanced at the twitching knight but didn’t bother to do anything more.

And then…

“Have fun cleaning up this mess,” he said, waving to the soldiers before vanishing like the wind.

The combination of the Ghostly Shadow and Boots of the Wind God made it impossible for the soldiers to keep up.

That day, rumors spread throughout the surrounding territories that a ‘3rd Circle’ mage had been murdered in a small territory called Luthspell, located in the southeastern corner of the Empire.

However, no one knew the identity of the victim other than that he was a wizard in some sort of business relationship with the Lord of Luthspell, and no one cared.

Wizard Cheren Crow was not a nice man. Many people were even happy he was gone.

So, people only talked about how strong the robber was, the one who killed the wizard and beat the knight.

Only the lord, who had visited Cheren Crow’s house several times and seen some of the artifacts, regretted the stolen items.

So, eventually, a wanted order for a fierce-looking young man with red hair and ‘blue’ eyes spread from the territory of Luthspell to the surrounding territories.

But the wanted order, which no one bothered to look for, soon faded away.

Three days’ walk from Luthspell, Logan had run hard all day to get far away. Now, he stopped in a forest clearing as the sun went down. He started a fire.

*Whoosh!*

‘Maybe these aren’t the *best* things I could have taken… but they are good enough. That wizard was a bad person anyway.’

Even if the research materials he was aiming for weren’t among the items he had taken, he vowed not to dwell on it.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but feel a slight lingering regret, so Logan took out the artifacts he had taken instead of books or research materials that he couldn’t immediately identify.

“I’m not expecting much…”

Logan muttered, but his eyes, contrary to his words, were fixed on the items he had taken out.

A ring, a necklace, and a gauntlet.

He held the small ring in his hand and infused it with Force.

*Whirr!*

With a slight vibration, a faint mana spread out, emitting light forward.

The light projected forward created the shape of a black snake coiled in the air, but…

“…That’s it?”

Frustratingly, he felt no other effect.

The necklace was somewhat better.

The moment he put it around his neck and infused it with Force, he felt a refreshing sensation and a surge of strength throughout his body.

However, the amplification was only about 10 percent, which was disappointing.

To amplify the power of Logan, an upper-level knight with exceptional physical abilities, by 10 percent meant that it was at least a 3rd class artifact, but Logan, who already possessed the Boots of the Wind God, found it underwhelming.

“Well, I’m being too picky.”

Mana and Force were very different kinds of power.

For someone who uses Force, even a little bit of mana could be like poison.

‘But…’

In other words, Logan could still use one more amplification artifact.

Even with the Boots of the Wind God, he could use this necklace.

This necklace alone was a good reason to explain to his father why he did all this.

If it made *him* 10 percent stronger, it would make Ronian, Victor, or Aileen much, much stronger.

So, with a light heart, he picked up the gauntlet.

But then…

“Huh?”

The item didn’t seem to have much power at first.

But the feeling was different when he held it in his hand.

He felt that something much larger was hidden beyond the faint mana that was felt on the surface.

Logan had experienced a similar feeling once before.

“Could it be…”

He glanced at the boots, which now felt almost like a part of his body, and then poured Force into the gauntlet as he had done then.

And soon, Force began to be sucked out like crazy, similar to that time.

“Gasp!”

Perhaps because he had experienced it once before.

Despite his increasingly pale complexion, Logan’s face showed anticipation rather than a sense of crisis.

And soon, that anticipation became reality.

*Clang!*

A feeling of something blocked being pierced, heard only in his head.

Along with that feeling, the Force that rushed back into his body told him the artifact’s effects, just like before.

The gauntlet shrank to fit his hand perfectly the moment he put it on both hands.

It felt so comfortable, like he wasn’t even wearing it, just like his Boots of the Wind God.

“30% increase in strength and durability. Force amplification. Size adjustable. Self-repairing… Huh, another one of these?”

The gauntlet’s powers were just as amazing as his Boots of the Wind God. And it felt like it had the same kind of magic hidden inside.

He really thought it must have been made by the same person or group who made his boots.

Of course.

“Who cares? It’s enough if I can use it well.”

No need to worry about questions he couldn’t answer.

The joy of having dealt with one of the greatest enemies of the future, and the fact that he had obtained a useful artifact.

These two achievements alone were enough to make it a very happy return journey.