The moon hung high over Nairn, a pale, unblinking eye witnessing the madness unfolding in the small room above the Scarlet household. While the rest of the town slept, wrapped in the comfort of mundane dreams, Lencar sat in the center of a self-imposed purgatory.
The room was a disaster zone of magical inquiry. It was a chaotic sprawl of parchment filled with frenzied arithmancy calculations, overturned ink pots bleeding black onto the floorboards, and small wire cages containing the unfortunate conscripts of his research—field rats trapped in the back alleys behind the restaurant. The air was heavy, thick with the smell of ozone, burnt fur, and the static electricity of repeated, violent magical failures.
Lencar sat cross-legged, his posture rigid. He rubbed eyes that felt like they were filled with sand. He looked at his grimoire, which hovered open at eye level, the blank pages mocking him in the candlelight.
His [Replica Magic] was, by design, a one-way street. He took. They lost. It was absolute theft, a predatory transaction that left one side empty and the other full. But the fundamental laws of magic—and physics—suggested that flow could be reversed. If a pipe could suck water in, it could pump water out. If a door could be opened, it could be closed.
"Hypothesis," Lencar whispered, his voice raspy. He stared at the trembling rat in the center of his chalk circle. "I have the Soul Gem stored within me. It contains the blueprint of the mage's power. If I can project that blueprint back onto a blank medium... can I recreate the mage's capacity?"
He wasn't trying to resurrect the dead. He was trying to reload a gun he had already emptied.
"Experiment 42: Soul Projection."
He placed his hand over the cage. Earlier, he had used a non-lethal [Partial Syphon] to drain the rat's vitality, storing it as a tiny, flickering light in the periphery of his soul. Now, he tried to push it back.
He closed his eyes and visualized the flow reversing. He channeled his mana, grabbing that tiny spark of life and trying to force the stolen energy back into the rodent's small, shivering body.
PUSH.
The reaction was immediate and visceral.
The rat shrieked—a high-pitched sound of pure agony. Its body convulsed violently, muscles locking up as if electrocuted. The mana didn't integrate; it collided. It was like trying to force a liter of water into a balloon that was already tied shut. The creature's small heart couldn't handle the sudden, pressurized influx of foreign energy.
POP.
The rat expired instantly, its body overloading and going limp.
Lencar sighed, a sound of deep, grinding frustration that vibrated in his chest. He vanished the mess with a flick of [Entropic Deconstruction], turning the failure into harmless natural mana.
"Failure," he noted, marking a forty-second tally mark on the floorboard with a piece of charcoal. "The vessel rejects the return. The connection is severed the moment I absorb the soul. It's like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. The biology recognizes the energy as 'foreign' now."
He moved to the next cage. Experiment 43.
"Variable change: Diffusion."
He tried using [Mist Magic] (harvested from Fluss) to vaporize the mana, hoping to introduce it gently into the subject's system through respiration.
Result: The rat breathed in the mana-mist, seized, and died of magical toxicity. Failure.
He moved to the next. Experiment 44.
"Variable change: Bypass."
He tried using [Spatial Magic] (harvested from Silas) to teleport the energy directly into the rat's core, bypassing the physical skin barrier.
Result: Internal hemorrhage. The space displacement tore the subject apart from the inside. Failure.
He moved to the next. Experiment 45.
"Variable change: Reinforcement."
He tried using [Earth Magic] (harvested from Boran) to reinforce the rat's body, turning its skin to stone to withstand the pressure of the transfer.
Result: The subject turned to a statue and died of asphyxiation before the transfer even completed. Failure.
Hours bled into one another. The candle burned low, casting long, dancing shadows that looked like grasping hands. Lencar was sweating, his mana reserves dipping and refilling thanks to the Breath of Yggdrasil in his ring, but his mind was fraying. His patience, usually infinite, was snapping like an over-tightened violin string.
"Why?" Lencar growled, slamming his fist against the floorboards. The cages rattled. "I own the soul. It is mine. I should be able to do whatever I want with it. Why can't I give it back?"
Every time he failed, however, he felt something strange.
It wasn't just the sting of defeat. It was a physical sensation coming from his grimoire.
The book, usually a silent tool floating obediently by his side, was vibrating. It wasn't the violent shaking of a spell misfiring; it was a low-frequency tremble, like a cat purring or a massive machine waking up from a deep slumber.
Lencar stopped. He looked at the book. The blank cover seemed to be pulsing in time with his own heartbeat.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Lencar stared at the blank pages. "I'm close. I'm pushing against a wall that is meant to break."
In the world of Black Clover, grimoires were not static rulebooks. They were living documents. They evolved. When a mage faced a crisis, when their emotional state aligned perfectly with the core nature of their magical attribute, new spells were born.
Lencar's attribute was Replica. Until now, he had used it as a thief. He saw, he took, he kept.
But his desire had shifted. He didn't just want to copy. He wanted to control. He didn't want to be a lone wolf hoarding power; he wanted to be an administrator. He wanted to dictate who held power and who didn't. He wanted to lend power and revoke it on a whim.
That shift in desire—from Greed to Dominion—was the key.
"Experiment 49," Lencar whispered, his voice hoarse.
He focused not on the mechanics of mana flow, nor on the physics of the body. He focused on the intent. He focused on the feeling of ownership.
I took this. I am lending it back. You work for me.
He pushed the mana into the next rat.
The rat twitched. It squeaked. Its eyes glowed for a fraction of a second with Lencar's mana signature. It survived for three seconds... then died.
"Closer," Lencar breathed, his eyes widening. "It didn't explode immediately. It accepted the bond for a second."
He prepared the final subject. Experiment 50.
He closed his eyes. He reached deep into his inner world, past the four swirling Soul Crystals of the mages he had fully harvested, down to the core of his own soul—the blank, hungry void of the Heretic.
He felt the structure of his grimoire linked to his soul. He felt the binding on the pages.
"I need a medium," Lencar realized, the logic finally clicking into place like a deadbolt. "I can't just shove the soul back into the body. The body is just meat. The body is the house, but the Grimoire is the door. If I want to give them their magic back... I need to give them a Grimoire."
But their original grimoires disintegrated into dust when he took their souls. That was the law of the world.
"Then," Lencar whispered, opening his eyes which now glowed with a terrifying, golden intensity, "I will make one."
He placed his hand on the blank page of his own book.
"[Replica Magic]," Lencar commanded, his voice resonating with absolute authority, vibrating the very air in the room. "Reverse Flow."
He pulled. Not from the rat. From himself.
He ripped at the fabric of his own magic. He tried to tear a piece of his own grimoire out to create a vessel. He poured his desire for control, his need for an army, into the paper.
The air in the room grew heavy. The shadows stretched and twisted toward him. The pressure was immense, pressing down on the floorboards like the gravity in the Grand Magic Zone.
THUMP-THUMP.
His grimoire pulsed. It was a heartbeat. Loud. Undeniable.
Suddenly, the book tore itself from Lencar's grasp. It floated into the center of the room, rising toward the ceiling.
It didn't glow with the pale blue of his mana skin, or the green of the Yggdrasil crystal. It erupted with a blinding, Golden-White Light.
It was the light of creation. The light of a new law being written into the universe.
Lencar shielded his eyes, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"Evolution," he gasped.
The grimoire flipped open violently. The pages fluttered like the wings of a trapped bird, flipping past the stolen spells of the bandits, past the elemental attributes, until it stopped on a fresh, blank page near the center of the book.
Mana from the room—the natural mana, Lencar's mana, the residual mana of the dead rats—swirled into a vortex and slammed into the page.
Runic script began to sear itself onto the paper. It wasn't handwriting; it was branding. The letters burned with golden fire, etching themselves into the reality of Lencar's magic with the smell of scorched ozone.
The light reached a crescendo, turning the entire room white for a split second, before collapsing back into the book.
The grimoire snapped shut and fell out of the air.
Lencar caught it. It was hot to the touch.
He sat there in the silence, breathing heavily. The trembling was gone. The book felt different now. Heavier. Deeper. Like it contained a new dimension.
He slowly opened it to the new page.
The spell was complex. The runes were intricate, spiraling in a double-helix pattern that represented two souls intertwined—one dominant, one submissive.
Lencar didn't need to translate it. The knowledge flowed from the ink directly into his brain, downloading the instructions for his new power.
[Replica Magic]: [Reverse Replication]
Lencar read the description in his mind. A slow, incredulous smile spread across his face, transforming his features into something predatory.
"It's not just a return," Lencar whispered, tracing the golden ink with a trembling finger. "It's a lease."
He closed his eyes and immersed himself in his grimoire and his inner world. He needed to understand the mechanics. He needed to see the gears of this new machine.
And what he found inside his soul changed everything.