I Was Mistaken as a Genius Mage in a Game

A thunderous bolt struck from the sky, lighting up the backs of the armored city guards. The intense brightness from the strike was so overwhelming that the soldiers, facing forward, were momentarily blinded.

"..."

Hans, the captain of the guard, who had been delivering his final speech at the back of the line, stared in disbelief at the place where the lightning had struck. There, standing amidst the chaos, was the boy with white hair, the one he had shared bread with.

Despite the enormous lightning bolt hitting right next to him, the boy stood unharmed, his limbs intact.

No, it wasn’t just that he was unharmed.

There was a faint blue glow emanating from the boy’s entire body.

With each step the boy took, small lightning bolts exploded beneath his feet, scorching the earth.

"Excuse me."

The boy, with a calm and composed voice, began walking toward the center of the battlefield.

Not a single guard dared to block the boy’s path.

His expression was one of quiet wisdom, like a sage who had seen all. The air around him seemed to stir with each of his deliberate movements. The dark clouds in the sky above stirred restlessly, as if preparing to strike again.

"I’ve always wanted to try this."

The boy muttered, walking with dignity toward the heart of the battle.

"...Are you a wizard?"

Hans, still stunned, asked the boy’s back.

"Well, for now, yes."

The boy replied casually, brushing his unruly hair with both hands.

"Who are you? There’s no way a wizard lives in this tiny city."

The demon, who had been at the center of the mutated creatures, slowly emerged from the mass of grotesque flesh, eyeing the boy curiously.

With skin a mix of green and red, the demon’s confusion was evident as it looked at the boy.

"Where did you come from... Reinforcements won’t arrive for several more days."

Indeed, just an hour or two ago, there hadn’t been any wizard in this city.

"I’m wondering that too. I just woke up, and it seems like this is the city," the boy said coldly, not offering any further explanation.

"Is this a joke? It’s not very amusing."

"I answered sincerely."

The demon quickly gave up trying to get any useful information out of the boy. The boy clearly wasn’t interested in proper conversation.

Instead, the demon began to observe the boy silently.

The boy looked young, no older than 16 or 17.

‘At his age, he shouldn’t have received any formal magic training. He’s probably one of the beggars from the streets...’

The demon knew that beggars were often uneducated, their intelligence too low for magic, let alone the ability to read or learn properly.

"...Strange."

Despite his youth and appearance, the boy was unmistakably using lightning magic.

A strange unease flowed through the demon, and he began using his special eyes to scan the boy’s magical energy. He had to figure out what was causing this feeling of discomfort.

‘He’s not an exceptionally powerful wizard...’

The boy’s magical energy appeared to be around the level of a mid-tier wizard, at best, about 4th Circle.

It was a significant level for someone his age and background, but still far from enough to challenge him or his army of mutants.

‘But...’

Crack!

The massive storm clouds in the sky released an enormous lightning strike right next to the boy.

The 1-billion-volt energy bridged the ionized parts of the atmosphere and struck the ground, leaving a massive crater in the earth.

The boy remained unfazed, not even flinching as the lightning struck beside him.

In his blue eyes, there was a look of madness and obsession, a burning desire to never let the demon in front of him escape.

‘For the amount of magic he has, the potency of that spell is ridiculously high. And the determination... It’s far beyond what a 4th Circle wizard should possess. Something’s definitely off.’

The demon realized that this boy was no ordinary wizard. His magical energy was concealed, and it seemed as if he was hiding something far greater than what appeared on the surface.

"Seems like this won’t be easy."

The demon took a deep breath and prepared himself, knowing this boy wasn’t someone to take lightly.

"Let’s test him a bit."

The demon raised his finger and commanded his army of mutated creatures to charge at the boy.

The mutants, with their misshapen bodies and twisted limbs, charged forward with eerie shrieks.

They were all grotesque, losing their human forms completely.

Some had their arms severed and replaced with sharp blades, others had their faces crushed flat, and some had lost all skeletal structure, reduced to fleshy, writhing masses.

All of them, however, retained a faint awareness.

The demon knew that when humans or elves were turned into mutants, their consciousness was usually preserved, allowing them to feel pain and suffering. This was intentional, to instill hesitation in those who would fight them.

The boy’s face contorted in disgust, as the presence of these creatures brought a physiological revulsion that swelled in his chest.

Whoosh...!

The boy raised his left arm with deliberate calmness, intending to end their suffering as quickly as possible.

A thin, sharp flash of light shot out, and the boy’s lightning consumed everything in its path, incinerating all the mutants charging toward him into white ash.

"Unbelievable."

The demon stood in disbelief as the mutants he had carefully crafted turned to ashes with a single blow.

"...You must be hiding your true power."

The boy’s spell had an impossible precision and force, far exceeding what a 4th Circle wizard should be capable of.

The boy had been glaring at the demon the entire time, his eyes burning with an intense, almost predatory focus.

The demon recognized this gaze. It wasn’t simple determination—it was the look of a hunter.

‘Dangerous.’

Through his keen observation and some instinct, the demon realized that the boy before him wasn’t someone who could be dealt with using mere magical strength.

"There’s nothing more to see. We should retreat."

The demon quickly decided to pull back. There was no demon in this world foolish enough to face such an unpredictable opponent head-on.

He spread his wings hidden behind his back and ascended into the air, signaling his army of mutants to charge the boy.

Although losing all these mutants was a waste, it was far better than losing his own life.

Mutants could always be created again.

From pig-deer hybrids with eight legs to human-dwarf hybrids with four eyes, each mutant was different, but all of them were coated with deadly, toxic substances.

The deer’s sharp claws were coated in acid strong enough to melt flesh, the dwarf’s thick tendons released paralytic gas upon inhalation, and the human mutants had organs leaking foul waste, the smell unbearable.

The mutants, unable to even recognize each other, tripped over one another, tumbling and getting tangled as they charged toward the boy like a massive tide of flesh.

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The boy simply stood still in front of the tsunami of grotesque flesh.

With a light flick of his finger, he let out a small snap.

Snap.

It was the only sound the soldiers on the battlefield could hear.

Immediately after, a blinding flash of light erupted from the boy’s fingertip, far stronger than the lightning that had struck earlier.

The lightning, spreading from the boy’s hand, incinerated everything in its path, burning the monstrous wave of flesh to a crisp.

The demon, rising into the air to escape, couldn’t even react as he was engulfed in a blinding white flash and completely obliterated.

The mutants charging toward the boy were also consumed by the immense electrical energy, turning to ash in seconds.

In less than an instant, the battlefield, once filled with tens of thousands of monstrous creatures, was completely wiped clean.

At the same time, the black storm clouds parted, and a faint sunlight filtered through the cracks, illuminating the now-ashen battlefield.

The massive pile of flesh and its deadly stench had vanished, leaving behind nothing but a barren, white wasteland.

The soldiers, temporarily blinded by the overwhelming shockwave, took a long time to regain their senses.

"..."

When their sight finally returned, the soldiers looked around, hardly believing what they were seeing.

The once-blood-soaked battlefield was now white, and only the boy, whose body crackled with electricity, stood proudly in the center.

The battlefield, devoid of blood, flesh, and all remnants of the battle, had become a vast, pristine wasteland.

The boy slowly began to ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) walk toward the city guard, his slow, dignified steps leaving the white wasteland behind.

"...Estella has saved us!" a wounded guard shouted, his broken limbs still weak as he tried to speak.

The other soldiers, still dazed from the shock, began to pray, mistakenly believing the boy to be a divine envoy.

It wasn’t strange.

After all, the boy, who had introduced himself so casually as "just born in this city," had suddenly appeared and saved the city from certain destruction.

With the fatigue from battle, the relief of survival, and the satisfaction of seeing the demons die, the soldiers couldn’t help but mistake the boy for a savior sent by their gods.

"...Thank you, wizard! I’m so sorry, I was just in a hurry!" one of the soldiers, finally snapping out of his daze, bowed deeply to the boy.

"Anyway, there must be a reason you’re here. I didn’t expect someone like you to be wandering around a backwater city like Stradus."

"......"

The boy kept silent, his expression inscrutable, refusing to explain himself. It wasn’t like he could tell them he just started as a beggar to increase his crit chance, and now everything had gone awry.

"I won’t ask further. A hero who saved the city deserves to be treated with respect. You may not have much, but we will offer you the best food we have. Please, come inside the city."

"That’s right! If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have seen food again. Eat as much as you like and gain some weight!"

"Yes! Thanks to you, we can live another day! Please, destroy the remaining demons around here too!"

The soldiers raised their arms high and cheered for the boy, offering him a grand welcome.

The boy, feeling strangely pleased, smiled lightly despite his cold expression.

"Come in! Although there’s not much time left, we even have some drinks prepared for you..."

As the lieutenant approached the boy with a bright smile, the boy reached out to grab his hand, but at that moment...

Thud.

"...?"

"Wizard?"

The boy’s body suddenly collapsed forward, falling weakly to the ground.

Inside a deep, dark cave where blood and flesh dripped to the floor. The place was filled with the cries of those who had not yet completely transformed.

And inside a cave that was deeper, wetter, and dirtier than that, a demon with long horns and pitch-black skin was sitting.

The chair he was sitting on was a horrific sculpture made by patching together various skins so that it was impossible to tell if it belonged to someone.

"Impressive."

The highest-ranking demon with pitch-black skin, Overlord Malthael, let out a soft exclamation as he looked at the white-haired boy and the enormous power he unleashed on the small screen created by magic.

"What a skilled wizard."

"I didn't expect there to be a wizard like that in that city. It seems that reinforcements have arrived.”

The two demons bowing on either side of the overlord Malthael added a word each while looking at the screen.

“And he’s young, too. If we leave him alone, he’ll be a big obstacle for us in the future.”

Malthael also agreed with his adjutants’ words with an unpleasant smile.

“Prepare the army. We should nip the monsters in the bud in advance.”

“Good decision. Which demons will you send? Binverde is already prepared... ... and Veluda will also return from his mission soon.”

“I’ll go myself.”

“... ... Are you saying that the overlord himself will move?”

The adjutants reacted slightly bewildered by Malthael’s words.

“Yes. That wizard clearly only used one skill. And he turned all those mutants and my subordinates into ashes with a ‘one blow.’ If you think about it a little, you’ll understand what this means.”

“... ... Are you saying that’s not power?”

“7th circle. I expect that monster to be a big shot in that area. Considering his age... ... it won’t be too far in the future for him to reach 9th circle.”

Overlord Malthael slowly rose from his flesh throne, still with a sinister smile on his lips, as if he was looking forward to his long-awaited outing.

“In addition, that bastard... ... has quite dangerous eyes. They were the eyes of a human who would become a monster. That’s it.”

Every time Malthael took a step, rotten flesh or skin chunks attached to the throne fell to the floor of the cave.

“Shouldn’t we definitely nip the monster in the bud?”