Icariel woke up to the sound of crows near his face.

Their wings flapped wildly as they scattered, startled—the food they'd found had begun to move.

His eyes fluttered open. The rain had stopped, and sunlight broke through, stabbing directly into his vision. His body trembled from pain and exhaustion, his muscles aching with every shallow breath. Around him, puny orbs of mana floated gently, like dust suspended in the light.

"...What happened?" he muttered, his voice dry and hoarse. "I'm... alive?"

Silence.

Then, finally, the voice replied. "Barely."

"You fainted from the pain and the power you couldn't handle. Look at your hand."

He turned to his right—the same hand that had unleashed the white lightning—and froze.

It was torn. Wounded. Blood covered his fingers and knuckles, scratches marked every inch, and at the center of his palm, a small but deep burn pulsed faintly. His hand trembled uncontrollably.

"You know why that happened," the voice said.

Icariel's lips parted, his breath ragged. His mind flashed back to the moment he lost control. "The black mana... I accidentally gathered too much. I mixed it all—the red, the silver, and more black than you told me to. You said to pull just one orb..."

"That's right. Do you know why I told you not to mix more than that?"

But Icariel wasn't listening. Not really. His eyes were distant, void of light. The shock of nearly dying, of feeling that spell erupt within him like a beast, had drowned his thoughts in fear.

"...I don't care," he whispered, his voice empty.

Silence.

He pushed himself up with a groan, every limb protesting the movement. Pain screamed from his shoulder down to his spine, but he forced himself to walk, step by step, toward the cave.

"I give up," he said.

"I'm done training. I've acquired enough to get around. That's all I wanted. I nearly died because of that spell..." He gritted his teeth. "I trained to be strong to stay alive—not to die."

He had been happy before this happened, by the process of learning something new. But now, that same pursuit had nearly cost him his life. He had come dangerously close to death, all because of something he had learned. The very thing that once brought him joy had turned into a source of peril. Now, Icariel, who had been obsessed with surviving, found himself resenting the very act of learning.

The voice didn't respond.

"I need to hunt. Eat something. Sleep. I'm tired. This... This isn't meant for me."

He limped forward, breathing heavily, his steps dragging. The entrance to the cave wasn't far now.

"Do you really want to end it like that?" the voice asked quietly.

"Quit it," Icariel snapped. "I don't want to say something mean to you right now... I'm not in the mood."

"Raise your head."

"What?" he muttered.

"Raise your head to the sky."

With a groan of frustration, Icariel did as told, lifting his chin... and stopped in his tracks.

His breath caught in his throat.

Above him, high in the heavens, a massive hole had opened in the stormy clouds. It was as if something had punched through the sky itself. From that wound in the heavens, sunlight poured down like a divine spotlight, golden and warm, illuminating everything below in radiant brilliance.

"...Huh?" Icariel muttered, stunned.

"Do you still want to give up," the voice asked,"when you've already created and acquired for yourself something beyond even my calculations? An attack like that. A spell that monstrous?"

Icariel stared upward, his chest rising and falling, his lips trembling.

He hadn't truly looked at what the white lightning had done.

The storm hadn't ended naturally.

It had been silenced.

Not because the clouds had emptied themselves, but because he—a sixteen-year-old boy from a forgotten mountain village—had forced them to.

The voice continued to speak as Icariel stood frozen, still staring up at the hole in the sky.

"The reason I told you to avoid mixing more than one orb of black mana... was because of its properties," the voice said calmly, yet heavy with meaning. "It surpasses red mana in terms of explosive force and raw power, yes—but that's not even its most terrifying trait. Its true danger lies in what it does to a spell once mixed."

Icariel kept listening, his lips slightly parted, his breath caught in his throat.

"Black mana... amplifies everything. Think of it like this: You throw one of your flame spears—it hits, it burns, maybe the fire spreads a little. But add even a single orb of black mana to it, and the result isn't just a burn—it's destruction. It wouldn't just kill the prey, it would ignite the entire area around it, scorch the earth itself."

The voice grew more serious, more deliberate.

"It's like hunting a bear,"it continued."Normally, you'd need at least three skilled hunters to bring one down. But if you have a perfect bow, a sharp arrow, and the right distance—you alone could do it. That's what black mana does to spells. It turns one mage into an army."

"And even then..." The voice slowed.

"Black mana can only be mixed with rare, volatile elements—lightning, ice, lava. It can't be safely combined with basic elements like water, wind, or earth—though fire is the one exception. There was one who managed to mix it with fire, which is why you've never seen this before. That's also why it appeared when lightning struck during the storm. Even then, only a single orb—just one—is meant to be mixed. Only true geniuses have dared to combine more—maybe three or four—but that risks death. Until the spell is fully cast, your body must contain all that unstable energy…"

Icariel was trembling now, realizing what he had done.

"...How many did I mix?" he asked softly, his eyes wide.

"Twenty-five," the voice said.

Silence.

Icariel's eyes widened, his heart thudding louder than the thunder had.

"Twenty-five...?"

"That's right."

"Twenty-five orbs of black mana. That is unprecedented."

"It's true you didn't mean to—it was a mistake. But even so, what happened here... is something I have never seen before."

A silence fell.

Then Icariel spoke, his voice small, shaken.

"...Then how did I survive?"

A deep silence lingered in Icariel's mind. Then, at last, the voice spoke—quiet, uncertain.

"I don't know," it said. "Maybe it was luck." But then, it added, almost reluctantly: "Even then, 'luck' feels too small a word for what just happened."

The voice seemed to hesitate—something it rarely ever did.

"Maybe the spell mixed too quickly and was unleashed just as fast, before it could completely destroy you."

"But still… You should be dead."

Icariel looked down at his ruined hand. The wound still pulsed, the burn at the center of his palm a searing reminder.

Then the voice continued, its tone more composed now.

"There is something else you need to know."

"That spell—the white lightning. Because you successfully mixed and unleashed it… thanks to White Sense, it's now permanently imprinted inside you."

Icariel's breath caught.

"You mean I can… use it again?"

"Yes," the voice replied.

"You can cast or use it any time you want now."

A long silence followed.

"But you saw what happened."

Icariel nodded slowly, his eyes still on his hand.

"Yeah…" he whispered. "I know."

"It's true, you've acquired something… unreal. A power capable of causing destruction on a big scale."

"But let me give you one piece of advice."

The voice's tone turned cold, heavy with warning.

"Never use it."

[End of Chapter 16]