The Kiten Ruins loomed like a half-buried scar on the northern edge of the Heart Kingdom. Ancient towers, eroded and fractured, pierced through the overgrown canopy like ribs of a long-dead beast. Faint blue runes flickered across the stone walls — remnants of an era when mana itself was sculpted with mathematics.
Lencar crouched at the ridge overlooking the ruin. The air shimmered faintly with concentrated mana particles. He could taste it — dense, stale, heavy. A dungeon that had once been a place of research and experimentation. Now, just silence.
He tightened his cloak and whispered, "No guards… no scouts… just the residual hum. Perfect."
His grimoire floated beside him, pages turning on their own. The silver-ink glyph of [Spatial Magic: Link] pulsed weakly, responding to the ambient spatial distortions around the ruins.
He frowned.
"The leyline here's fractured… good. That means even the Clover or Diamond mages can't sustain stable portals."
He marked that on his mental map.
Then he exhaled — and stepped forward.
The outer corridor was littered with collapsed stone and corroded mana metal. Moss crept along the old seals. Each step he took was soundless, his boots coated with a mana layer to muffle sound.
He ran his hand along a nearby wall — the texture was rough, etched with rune arrays.
"These symbols…" he muttered, brushing away the moss. "Old Heart Kingdom style. Primitive rune channels. They used mana recursion loops for trap activation."
He reached for a small flask at his belt — mana dust, fine particles that revealed magical currents when released.
He uncorked it and sprinkled the powder into the air.
A soft glow illuminated the hallway, revealing several faint lines running from the floor into the wall — trap conduits.
"Pressure-based," he said. "Still active."
He crouched low, tracing one of the glowing lines with a fingertip until it reached a damaged seal on the wall. Then, with a flick of his finger, he cast a whisper of [Chain Magic: Intercept Bind], the tiniest tendril of mana snaking into the conduit and looping around it.
The glow dimmed. The rune's flow broke. The trap deactivated.
"Ancient defense, meet modern efficiency," he said, smirking faintly.
Two levels down, the corridors changed. The air thickened. Magic pooled unnaturally in corners, like mist in stagnant air.
Every few steps, Lencar stopped to analyze — pulse check, mana reading, air pressure differential.
At one intersection, he paused, squinting at an engraved sigil that spanned the entire floor.
"Hmm." He crouched. "Seven rings. Multi-layered barrier trap. Triggered by directional mana flow… how archaic."
He tilted his head, studying it.
Then, without hesitation, he tore a small blank page from his grimoire — a single fragment, glowing with latent potential.
He whispered, "[Reverse Replication: Page Creation – Illusory Anchor]."
The torn page expanded mid-air, folding into a faintly glowing replica of his own grimoire page, then projected a soft pulse of false mana onto the sigil. The trap flared briefly, mistaking the phantom signature for an intruder, and released its full charge — a wave of blue fire roaring across the floor.
It passed straight through the projection and dissipated harmlessly into the wall.
Lencar chuckled softly. "Still got it."
He snapped his fingers, dissolving the fake page back into blank essence. Reverse Replication worked beautifully for more than grimoires — it let him bait systems with cloned mana imprints.
Every mage trap he encountered after that became a puzzle, not a threat.
Half an hour later, he reached the inner vault chamber — an enormous dome carved from dark stone, lined with circular runic arrays. In the center stood a stone pedestal, half-collapsed, surrounded by floating mana shards.
A sword — black and ancient — hovered above the pedestal, humming faintly with residual demonic energy.
The Demon-Dweller Sword.
Lencar's eyes narrowed. "So the legends were true."
He didn't approach immediately. He crouched instead, letting his eyes scan the pattern etched beneath the sword.
Seven rings again, this time intertwined with counter-runes from multiple eras — Heart, Clover, even Diamond influence. The outer rings pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.
He recognized the structure.
"Anti-theft seal. Keyed to mana intent. Any interference triggers a mana inversion field — a magical implosion."
He smiled faintly. "Good thing I don't interfere. I replicate."
He tore another blank page from his grimoire, and whispered:
"[Reverse Replication: Material Blueprint Extraction]."
The page flared with light, then extended a thin veil of silver energy across the sword and pedestal. It mapped every mana line, every rune structure, every tether.
When the glow faded, his grimoire's new page displayed an exact blueprint of the sword and its magical bindings.
He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "If I take the sword, the seal collapses. But if I create a false mana substitute—"
He turned to another blank page, focusing deeply. "—then even the seal will think it's undisturbed."
A second spell followed:
"[Reverse Replication: Substitute Form]."
From the page emerged a perfect visual replica of the Demon-Dweller Sword — same size, same mana signature, same resonance — but composed entirely of Lencar's mana essence. It would fool most detection arrays for hours.
He carefully placed the replica into the mana field, synchronizing its frequency. Then, in one smooth motion, he reached into the seal's heart and pulled the real sword free.
No explosion. No surge. Only silence.
The substitute floated gently in place, maintaining the illusion of stability.
Lencar exhaled, grinning faintly. "That's one less headache."
He studied the real sword for a moment. Its demonic aura pulsed irregularly — wild, chaotic, yet strangely resonant with his own mana threads.
He slid it into his spatial storage. "You'll get along with the others."
As he turned to leave, he spotted another object — a half-buried mana-etched stone tablet lying near the wall.
He brushed the dust away. The text was ancient Heart Kingdom script. The top half was broken, but a few lines remained:
> "When nature rejects balance, the runes shall—
link the false and the true—
through the mirror of mana…"
He traced the etching with a finger, frowning. "Mirror of mana… sounds like the principle behind Reverse Replication."
He tore another note from his book, copying the text word for word. "This might explain the mechanism's ancient origin."
The journey back was uneventful, though not without its quirks. At one point, a mana bat swooped from the ceiling — a tiny, winged creature that squealed like a kettle. Lencar froze, watching it flap straight into a closed door. It squeaked pitifully and slid down the wall.
He sighed. "I feel that spiritually."
The creature got up and glared at him — or so he imagined — before fluttering away.
"Don't look at me like that," he muttered. "I'm not the one who flew into stone."
He shook his head, chuckling softly, and continued upward through the ruin's halls.
By the time he reached the outer ridge again, dawn was breaking. The ruins behind him were silent once more, unaware that their greatest relic was now gone.
He opened his grimoire, reviewing the mapped data. The replicated pages glowed faintly, storing not only the sword's structure but also dozens of runic inscriptions from the walls.
"Complete extraction. Zero casualties. No trace mana left," he murmured. "Rebecca's going to think I went hiking again."
He closed the grimoire and laughed under his breath. "Technically, I did."
He looked once more toward the ruins — ancient, broken, but still alive in their mana. "Thank you for the lesson, old world."
Then, with a twist of his wrist, the air split open.
"[Spatial Magic: Link – Short Jump]."
The world folded, and Lencar vanished into silver light — his first heist complete.