The remaining one and a half months were a blur of optimization. Lencar, the analyst, was now in his element. "Regulator v1.0" was functional but inefficient. "v2.0" and "v3.0" were all about refinement.
The field of craters was no longer his primary training ground. His control had evolved. He no longer needed to brace; he could modulate.
His final test was one of finesse. He stood in the hovel, his parents watching with barely concealed terror, and held his hand over a cold candlewick.
"Mage Mode. Active."
The pressure in the small room jumped, making his mother flinch, but Lencar himself was an island of calm. The headache was gone, fully assimilated. The "roaring" of Yuno's mana was just background noise, a tool he could access at will.
He engaged the "Regulator v3.2." He visualized his complex mental machine—now a sleek, optimized, almost biological-looking construct—and drew exactly one candle's-worth of power.
"[Tiny Fireball]."
Flick.
A small, perfect, silent flame, no bigger than his thumbnail, appeared on his fingertip. He gently touched it to the wick, which lit with a simple, domestic pop.
He had done it. He had tamed the tsunami.
Marta let out a breath she'd been holding for months. Rion just stared, his jaw slack.
Lencar closed his grimoire, and the pressure in the room vanished. "It's time."
His final results, compiled by the analyst Kenji Tanaka, were stark:
Final Status: Lencar Abarame (Pre-Exam)
Physique (Mana-Forged 2.0): His body was a noble's weapon built with commoner discipline. He was deceptively lean, but his muscle density was, by his calculations, at least 300% greater than Asta's at the time of the Hage tournament. He wasn't just strong; he was durable. His body was a high-grade-mana-infused-and-forged physical battery.
Mana Pool (Replica - Yuno): Unchanged. A bottomless, high-pressure ocean he could tap at will.
Mana Pool (Replica - Asta): A dark, cold, empty void. Ready.
Mana Pool (Replica - Revchi): A small, shallow, but useful reserve.
Control (Regulator v3.2): He now possessed absolute control over the output of his copied magic. He could draw a thimble-full or the entire damn. This meant he could use Yuno's magic for mundane, fine-motor tasks or devastating, large-scale (and still clumsy) spells.
Spells:
[Chain Magic: Serpent's Bind] (Revchi): Mastered. Inflexible, but he could now summon it in under a second.
[Fire Magic: Tiny Fireball] (Rion): Mastered. (From candle-flame to flamethrower).
[Wind Magic: Towering Tornado] (Yuno): Controlled. No longer a chaotic explosion. It was now a directed, albeit still brutish, attack. He couldn't create a hawk, but he could create a cannon.
Toggle-Time (The Click): His processing speed for switching between Mage Mode (Yuno) and Heretic Mode (Asta) was now, by his measure, 0.05 seconds. Functionally, it was instant. He didn't just click anymore. He was the switch.
He was a walking contradiction. A heretic.
He could, at any given moment, be a physical powerhouse with no magic (Asta), a high-mana noble with (clumsy) wind magic (Yuno), or a mid-tier commoner with Chain Magic (Revchi). And he could switch between them at the speed of thought.
Departure
He stood at the edge of Sosie village, at the same cliff-edge where he'd done his first Mana-Forged stance a decade ago. His small pack held bread, water, and his hidden grimoire.
Marta was crying openly, clutching a small wad of bread she'd tried to force on him. Rion stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder, his face a mask of pride and fear.
"Lencar..." Marta sobbed. "The capital... they'll eat you alive. You're still just a boy."
Lencar looked at her, his gaze no longer that of a confused, reincarnated analyst or a striving commoner. It was calm. Measured.
"I won't be eaten," he said, his voice quiet but absolute. He knelt and gave his mother a rare, stiff hug. "I'll be the one who sets the table. Thank you for the bread."
He turned to his father. Rion just put his rough hand on Lencar's shoulder.
"Don't... don't let them break you, son."
"They can't," Lencar replied. "They won't know what to break."
He turned, and without looking back, began the long, one-and-a-half-month walk to the Royal Capital.
The journey itself was the final phase of his training: a 45-day, non-stop, endurance test. He would run most of it, toggling between modes, hunting his own food, and arriving not as a weary traveler, but as a primed and calibrated weapon.
The Heretic was on his way.