There really was a massive misunderstanding here.
What Ian said had been nothing more than a simple warning based on the facts.
They were on the outer rim of the path leading straight to the sleeping core of the ruler of the Great Old Ones. Even Ian had to tread carefully here.
For three adventurers who hadn't even reached Legendary status, one of whom was already deeply corrupted, following him in here was basically the same as jumping into the core of a star.
And physical danger was only half the problem. Their minds and very souls risked being twisted, corrupted, and swallowed whole.
Ian really had just been trying to help.
Unfortunately, thanks to his habit of keeping an enigmatic, stone-faced expression, Saruman and the others had gotten a completely twisted impression of him.
Everyone at Hogwarts knew Ian Prince was a wonderful guy, didn't they?
When he said, "You really shouldn't have followed me in here," he meant it literally.
In Ian's colorful inner monologue, what he actually wanted to say was:
'Guys, did you walk onto the wrong set? This is the entrance to the final boss room, not the exit from the beginner village! And you're dragging along a teammate who's already halfway mutated. You're basically delivering a three-course meal right to the boss's door!'
But Ian had crossed through so many eras, and he still had a touch of chuunibyou in him. He was far too used to maintaining the image of a cold, distant, unapproachable Legendary whenever anyone was looking.
So all his complaints stayed locked in his head, while his face remained as frozen as ten-thousand-year-old ice.
Usually, it was convenient, looking intimidating frightened off trouble before it even started. This time, though, it was the sole source of the misunderstanding.
Maintaining his poker face, Ian watched as the silver-robed young wizard, whose soul had apparently just undergone an upgrade, turned paler than a vampire.
The sheer terror in Saruman's eyes was practically overflowing, his lips trembling like he'd grabbed a live wire. Meanwhile, the hulking warrior beside him looked like he was preparing to fight the ultimate enemy of his life, fully ready to go down in a blaze of glory.
Ian: "...?"
'Seriously? I stated one basic fact. Is all this drama necessary? Did you guys learn how to overreact from trolls at an acting school?'
Ian felt a little annoyed at how unfairly they were judging him. Was it because he was white? Were these Africans discriminating against him?
He'd clearly been trying to warn them that the area was dangerous and that they should head back through the portal. So why were they acting like he'd just said, 'You've seen something you shouldn't have. Now I have to silence you.'
Ian clicked his tongue in his head. 'Yup. Different skin colors really do make misunderstandings easier.'
Clearly, Ian was having his own misunderstanding here. Of course, even if he'd realized it, he still wouldn't have bothered explaining himself.
For one, trying to explain things to two people who were already terrified out of their wits sounded exhausting.
And more importantly... he couldn't think of a way to say, '"I was just nicely warning you that this place is dangerous,"' without completely wrecking his "cold Legendary" persona.
What was he supposed to say? '"This place is dangerous. Leave at once."'
No way. Way too lame. Completely ruined the image Ian Prince had spent so much effort building back in the day!
So, from Saruman and Kag's perspective, after issuing his "death sentence," the mysterious young Legendary simply went quiet, his cold eyes staring at them with total indifference. It was like he was watching prey struggle before the end, or deciding the most convenient way to dispose of them.
The silence was far more terrifying than any verbal threat.
Saruman's mind raced frantically. How could they survive this? Could he negotiate? What could he offer? He was already prepared to surrender every secret and every artifact he owned just to buy their lives.
Kag, however, was a warrior. Under the crushing weight of fear and pressure, his nerves stretched tauter and tauter until they finally snapped.
He couldn't stand the silent oppression any longer. He couldn't bear seeing the hopeless pale look on Saruman's face, and most of all, he couldn't stand hearing Lina's shallow, fading breaths behind him.
"AHHHHH! WE'RE DEAD EITHER WAY!" Kag let out a feral roar, shattering the suffocating silence. "A WARRIOR BELONGS ON THE BATTLEFIELD! IF I'S GONNA DIE, I'D RATHER DIE FIGHTING THAN STAND HERE WAITING FOR IT!"
"Kag! Don't!" Saruman's shout came half a second too late.
Kag was already charging forward like a cannonball, muscles bulging as he recklessly flared every last scrap of Magical Energy in his body. A blazing crimson aura erupted around him like literal fire.
The damaged greatsword in his hands hummed under the sudden surge of energy. Kag swung with zero hesitation and no retreat, driven purely by the desperate force of a man trying to hack through whatever stood in front of him.
That single swing packed every combat technique he'd mastered over his lifetime, all his remaining Magical Energy, and the ultimate resolve of a man going down fighting. The power behind it easily surpassed his normal peak.
The sudden charge instantly snapped Ian out of his mild annoyance at being misunderstood. "Oh?" A spark of genuine interest flickered in his icy eyes.
Not because Kag's attack was particularly strong, but because of the type of energy bursting from him. 'Magical Energy.'
Ian had never seen anything quite like this back at Hogwarts. The Restricted Section had vague mentions of ancient knights cultivating a similar power, but those descriptions were annoyingly sparse.
The last time he'd seen anything remotely like this was with that talkative armored guy calling himself the 'Eternal King'. But 'that' guy's Magical Energy was a blinding gold, making him look like a giant lightbulb.
Kag's was totally different: crimson, violent, and drenched in the raw presence of a veteran who'd survived countless bloodbaths.
'An Extraordinary Warrior? Interesting!' Ian's inner researcher was practically rubbing his hands together. 'That old bastard King Arthur really was holding back on me! Kept saying the Path of the Knight didn't suit me. Bullshit. He was just worried I'd master it and beat his ass with it!'
Spotting an unfamiliar power system instantly woke up the obsessive researcher and combat junkie inside him. His hands were practically itching. At this point, he couldn't even be bothered maintaining his "pure Legendary Wizard" persona.
Deep down, Ian was probably more arrogant than most Legendaries anyway. It didn't even cross his mind to wonder whether a Space-Time Rift right outside Cthulhu's lair was a bad place for a spar. To Ian, anywhere was a fine training ground if something caught his interest.
So, while Saruman watched in horror and Kag charged in with suicidal resolve, Ian did the last thing either expected.
"Come on. Show me what you've got."
He didn't cast any terrifying "Avada" variants or summon flashy magic. Instead, Ian casually raised a hand, and a sword materialized out of thin air. It looked... completely plain.
There wasn't a single trace of magical energy coming from it. If anything, it looked like one of the cheap practice swords held by the suits of armor in the Hogwarts corridors.
Holding the plain longsword, Ian shifted his stance slightly and flicked his wrist. The tip traced a short, crisp arc straight toward Kag's mountain-splitting downward strike.
CLANG...!
The sharp, deafening clash of steel against steel echoed through the distorted void. But the obvious outcome didn't happen. Ian's plain sword didn't shatter, and Ian wasn't sent flying.
Instead, the tip of Ian's blade caught the exact weak point in Kag's force line, that tiny microsecond between the peak of his swing and the start of his follow-through.
Ian didn't meet the blow head-on. With insanely refined leverage, he simply parried the massive downward chop slightly to the side, using a fraction of the force to deflect something ten times heavier.
Kag felt a strange sensation travel up his arms as his full-power strike was yanked off course against his will. His crimson-blazing greatsword sliced clean past Ian's shoulder and hit nothing but empty air. The missed strike sent violent ripples through the local space, throwing Kag off balance as his own redirected momentum pulled him forward.
"What?!" Disbelief flooded Kag's eyes. That had been a full-send, suicidal attack, yet Ian had brushed it off with a plain sword like he was shooing away a fly. How was that possible?!
"Again!"
Ian didn't care about Kag's shock in the slightest. With a twist of his wrist, the plain longsword seemed to come alive in a fluid blur. The blade darted forward like a striking viper, probing at Kag's open spots, avoiding anything actually fatal, of course.
The next second, it flowed like a leaf on the breeze, casually deflecting Kag's panicked counters. Ian's footwork looked almost lazy, yet every step placed him just outside Kag's explosive range, or slipped him directly into the openings between his attacks.
The swordsmanship Ian was using didn't belong to any school in this world. It was just something he'd cooked up during his spare time at Hogwarts.
He'd taken the basic knightly drills he'd bugged King Arthur into teaching him, blended them with his knowledge of human biomechanics and energy pathways, and messed around until he came up with what he dubbed, 'Ian-Style Practical Swordsmanship.'
It wasn't flashy, but it was efficient, precise, and brutally economical, custom-tailored to pick apart flaws and hit weak points. Against a warrior like Kag, who relied on raw power over refined technique, it was a hard counter.
Ian danced around him in a blur. In his hands, a plain longsword might as well have been a masterwork blade, poking in from bizarre angles and smothering Kag's swings before they could even start, forcing the warrior into a panicked defense.
Kag's crimson energy was undeniably strong, but against Ian's surgical precision and absurd physical stats, his swings started looking heavy, slow, and clumsy.
"How is this possible?!" Kag couldn't wrap his head around it. How could he? He'd never fought a true Legendary before.
A body conditioned by Legendary magic was way beyond normal human limits. On raw physical stats alone, most Legendary Wizards outstripped high-level warriors. They were simply a higher tier of creature.
"He's trained in both magic and swordsmanship! A magic-swordsman dual wielder!" No wonder Kag was losing his mind.
Every single time Kag raised his blade, Ian's tip was already hovering at a key joint or a gap in his energy flow, forcing him to cancel his attack and frantically block.
And so, inside this weird Space-Time Rift, the two of them ended up trading blows. Though "trading blows" was being generous, Ian was sticking strictly to swordplay while actively nerfing his strength and speed down to Kag's level.
Still, the sight nearly made Saruman's eyes pop out.
A wizard! This was a terrifying monster who casually threw around Legendary death magic, commanded the elements, and shrugged off R'lyeh's corruption... and now he was brawling with one of the strongest warriors Saruman knew, in melee range, using a sword, and completely wrecking him!
Ian looked like he was taking a casual stroll. The whole display shattered Saruman's idea of what a wizard was supposed to be.
In his experience, high-level mages might learn a trick or two for self-defense, but none wasted time mastering swordplay. And no ordinary wizard could possibly reach this level of mastery. The sheer physical control alone was absurd, to say nothing of the combat instincts, timing, and spacing required.
What freaked Saruman out even more was that Ian was actually offering coaching advice mid-fight.
"Decent strength. Good explosive power, but your attacks are way too linear."
"Your Magical Energy flow is jagged. There's a gap three inches below your left shoulder."
"Your footwork isn't keeping up with your swing. Your base is unstable."
Every single critique pinpointed a fatal flaw in Kag's form. Kag didn't look like an opponent trying to kill him, he looked like a student getting tutored by an instructor.
Cold sweat drenched Saruman's back. Just how many absurd secrets was this Legendary hiding? What kind of monster was he?
Then, after casually slapping away one of Kag's horizontal slashes, Ian got a little too into it and muttered something under his breath. He didn't say it loudly, but Saruman's senses were hyper-tuned from shock, catching every word.
"Tch. His force-generation technique is actually better than what King Arthur taught me. Damn it, I knew that bastard Arthur was holding out on me..."
Ian was just venting about an old buddy from the Illusory Realm, but he'd completely forgotten how much weight the name 'King Arthur' carried.
King Arthur?! The name detonated in Saruman's mind like thunder. His heart nearly stopped.
King Arthur! The mythical king of ancient Britain! The symbol of chivalry! A legendary figure said to have shaped an entire era alongside the wizard Merlin!
Secret texts hidden in ancient magical archives claimed King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table wielded a unique, powerful form of "Extraordinary Power." It was said to be completely different from modern magic, though modern scholars dismissed those accounts as mere myths.
And this mysterious young Legendary... 'knew' King Arthur?! Not only that, he talked about him like he was just an annoying old buddy.
Which meant... had Ian actually sparred with King Arthur?
Were they friends?
A terrifying theory took root in Saruman's mind and spread like weeds.
What if Ian Prince wasn't from some lost ancient civilization at all?
What if he was actually... someone from the era of Arthur and Merlin?
Someone who had personally walked alongside them, an ancient entity surviving all the way from that mythical age to the present day?!
That explained everything! Why he looked so young despite possessing godlike power and ancient knowledge, why he knew King Arthur, why his swordsmanship was so terrifying, and why Kag's Magical Energy had immediately piqued his interest.
Compared to all of Saruman's earlier guesses about "ancient Legendaries" or "time displacement," this was infinitely more chilling. And somehow, it felt disturbingly close to the hidden truth beneath centuries of myth.
Saruman nearly forgot to breathe as wild thoughts spiraled in his mind. But that was the curse of wizards, they overthought everything. The smarter they were, the more elaborate the conspiracy theories they built for themselves.
Looking at Ian now, Saruman felt far more than raw terror. He was paralyzed with shock, the look of a man who had accidentally uncovered a forbidden fragment of ancient history.
'Wait...' An even crazier thought struck Saruman. 'Don't tell me... he's Merlin?!'
Once that thought took root, Saruman couldn't shake it. If that was true... just what kind of apocalyptic mess had they stumbled into?
(End Of This Chapter)