The impact was so great that cracks began to spiderweb through the ancient, magically reinforced marble.
Lencar hit the ground, sliding across the floor. He coughed violently, his body racking with tremors.
But he wasn't coughing up blood.
He was coughing up glowing, emerald mist. Raw mana, leaking from his lungs.
"Damn... it... everything..." Lencar wheezed.
His vision was blurring. His head was spinning.
His heart was hammering against his ribs at a rhythm that shouldn't be possible for a human being. It was a frantic, erratic drumbeat.
The loop... it was still active. But it wasn't recycling energy. It was spinning out of control. It was a centrifuge of raw power, and it was tearing his physical shell apart from the inside out.
His skin was literally cracking.
Small, jagged lines of green light were tearing through his arms, his chest, his neck. He looked like a porcelain vase that had been dropped and glued back together with lightning. His very soul was trying to leak out of its container.
"Damn... Hiss..." he hissed, his mind still trying to analyze the data even as he died.
"My... Body... is... melting."
He reached out. His fingers were trembling so hard he could barely control them. They felt numb, like they belonged to someone else.
He desperately lunged toward the Breath of Yggdrasil.
His hand clamped onto the emerald crystal sitting on its pedestal.
With a final, desperate surge of will, he forced the hyper-refined, cooling energy of the crystal into his body. He used it as a massive, spiritual fire extinguisher to quench the runaway reaction.
Slowly. Agonizingly. The green cracks in his skin began to dim.
The roaring in his ears faded to a dull hum.
The burning sensation in his meridians receded, leaving behind a hollow, throbbing ache that felt like his entire nervous system had been fried in a pan.
Lencar lay on the cold marble floor for a long, long time.
He stared up at the white, shadowless ceiling. He didn't move. He couldn't move.
His chest heaved, each breath a struggle.
His hands were still shaking, the leather of his gloves scorched and blackened from the heat of his own mana.
He had almost died.
He hadn't been taken down by the Diamond Kingdom's ultimate weapon. He hadn't been defeated by a Zero Stage mage of the Spade Kingdom.
He had almost been deleted by his own ambition. He had almost been erased by a line of code he couldn't handle.
"Well," Lencar whispered.
A dry, bitter laugh escaped his lips. It turned into a wince as his ribs protested.
"Now I know the reason. The hard way."
He sat up slowly, clutching his side. Every movement felt like a personal insult to his muscles.
He finally, truly understood why the integration had failed.
The logic of the rune was perfect. He had spent hours debugging it. The synchronization had been a success. The code was flawless.
The problem wasn't the software.
The problem was the hardware.
"My body," Lencar noted. His voice was returning to its clinical, analytical baseline, though it was still shaky.
"The Mana Skin was stable. The rune was functional. But the physical vessel... it's just a wooden carriage."
He looked at his scorched palms. He could still see the faint, fading scars of the rune integration.
"The pressure of a perpetual motion loop creates a spiritual 'heat' and a kinetic load that my current physical density simply cannot contain. It's like putting a high-output jet engine into a cart made of old pine."
"The cart won't fly. It won't reach the stars. It will just disintegrate into splinters the moment you hit the throttle."
He stood up shakily. He had to lean against the pillar he had just cracked for support.
His Stage 3 Peak mana was still there, humming in his core, but it felt... heavy. Like a weight his body wasn't ready to carry.
The experiment was a total, unmitigated failure.
But in Lencar's world, a failure was just a different kind of success. It was just the elimination of a false variable.
"I don't need better magic," Lencar concluded, his gaze hardening behind the mask.
"I need a stronger cage."
He looked at his hands, then out at the horizon of the Vault.
"Stage 3 Peak is the limit of the soul for now, but my physical evolution has lagged behind. I've been focusing so much on the 'magic' part of this world that I forgot I'm still living in a body made of meat and bone."
"I'm all brains and no brawn."
____
The space remained unchanged.
Still.
Silent.
Almost… distant.
The Void Vault was a cathedral of absolute white, a place where time didn't seem to exist unless Lencar brought a watch. The air was thick with the scent of the Breath of Yggdrasil—a crisp, minty smell that felt like it was scrubbing his lungs clean with every breath.
Lencar Abarame stood at its center.
He was alone, his boots resting on the polished marble that still bore the faint, spiderweb cracks from his previous, disastrous failure. His chest still ached. Every time he took a deep breath, he felt a sharp reminder of the "Forced Integration" attempt that had nearly turned his skeleton into a pile of glowing dust.
He wasn't a god. Not yet.
He was just a guy with a very expensive hangover from a magical overdose.
Lencar has decided to draw the runes on his body later as his body is not yet strong enough and right now he will focus on training his mana skin.
He raised his hands.
Mana flowed across his body.
Thin.
Even.
Carefully controlled.
It was the basic Mana Skin. Every Magic Knight worth their salt knew how to do it. It was the "Hello World" of high-level mana defense. You coat yourself in mana, and you don't die as fast.
Simple.
Boring.
He moved his hand slightly.
The shimmering layer of emerald-tinted mana followed his fingers.
No delay.
No resistance.
It responded exactly the way it should, clinging to his skin like a second, translucent epidermis.
"…Better."
It was a quiet conclusion.
But it wasn't satisfaction. Not even close.
Lencar's eyes narrowed behind the dark slits of his wooden mask. He looked at the shimmering film on his arm and felt a flare of genuine annoyance.
It still wasn't enough.
Mana Skin, in its current form, was trash.
It was a static wall. A coat of paint. A costume made of light.
It protected. It reinforced. It reduced damage by providing a buffer between the mage and the world.
But that was all it did.
It didn't adapt to the nature of the attack. It didn't react on its own. It didn't "understand" the difference between a blunt hammer and a piercing needle. It was a dumb tool for mages who were too lazy to think.
"If I'm micromanaging the defense at every moment, I will show a flaw sooner or later," Lencar whispered.
Lencar stepped forward.
The faint, sharp clack of his foot touching the ground echoed softly through the three-kilometer expanse of the vault.
He raised his left hand, focusing his intent. A small, condensed pulse of mana formed in the air in front of him.
Dense.
Controlled.
He watched the glowing orb for a brief moment—a tiny, angry ball of kinetic energy.
Then he released it.
The attack curved through the air.
It turned sharply, following the mental trajectory Lencar had programmed into it.
It returned toward him like a boomerang.
It struck his shoulder.
The impact landed.
Dull.
Contained.
But it wasn't a clean block.
The Mana Skin on his shoulder hardened—
But it only happened after the strike had already connected.
Lencar felt the thud. He felt the vibration rattle his collarbone. The defense was reactive, yes, but it was lagging. It was the magical equivalent of high latency in a video game.
Lencar's eyes shifted slightly toward the impact point on his shoulder.
"…Too slow."
The problem wasn't strength. He had Stage 3 Peak mana; he could make a shield as hard as a Diamond Kingdom fortress if he wanted to.
The problem wasn't coverage. His skin was fully coated.
The problem was the timing.
The defense was waiting for Lencar to tell it to be a shield.
He raised his hand again.
Another pulse formed in the white air.
This one was sharper. Faster. More focused.
He didn't make a ball this time; he made a needle. A high-velocity sliver of wind magic.
He released it without hesitation.
It struck his side.
Again—
The layer of mana reacted.
It flared brightly, hardening into a crystalline plate at the point of contact.
But it was a fraction of a second too late.
The needle had already pushed halfway through the buffer zone before the skin solidified. Lencar felt the sharp sting of the wind magic grazing his ribs.
Lencar exhaled slowly, a long, weary sound.
"…It follows my intent."
A long pause.
"…But it follows nothing else."
That was the fatal limitation.
The Mana Skin was a perfect servant. It responded to Lencar. It responded to his will. It responded to his strong control.
But it didn't respond to danger.
It didn't respond to the sudden change in air pressure.
It didn't respond to the raw kinetic impact itself.
It was waiting for the "Boss" to give it instructions. Even Lencar, with his enhanced soul and his debugger mindset, couldn't process a thousand points of impact per second.