If Mars is neutralized, Lencar thought, genuine panic beginning to edge into his cold, calculating logic, he doesn't go to the Witch's Forest. He isn't there to help Asta fight Ladros. More importantly, if he isn't at the Witch's Forest, he never recognizes Fana the Hateful.
A cold sweat broke out on Lencar's neck that had nothing to do with the freezing rain.
The emotional trigger required to break the Elf reincarnation spell's hold on Fana relies entirely on Mars being there to reach her. If she doesn't snap out of it, Asta and the Black Bulls won't have the firepower to defeat the Diamond Kingdom forces, the Eye of the Midnight Sun, and the Witch Queen simultaneously. They could be wiped out. Asta's arms might never be healed. The timeline collapses.
A broken Mars equated to a fundamentally broken world. Of course that is with him not trying to fix it. But timeline continuity was Lencar's greatest, most vital weapon. It was his only roadmap. It was absolutely essential for predicting and intercepting the larger, apocalyptic threats looming on the horizon—the full awakening of the Elven tribe, the emergence of the Dark Triad, and the overarching, god-like machinations of Lucius Zogratis.
He unclasped his own Logoless Grimoire. The thick, pitch-black tome rested heavily in his palm. It was an endless repository, a hard drive filled with the stolen magical data of dozens of mages.
He opened it. The thick, blank pages fluttered wildly in the high-velocity mountain wind, the storm trying in vain to tear the ancient book from his grasp.
He didn't speak to Mars. There was no point in explaining his actions to an unconscious boy, nor did he feel the need to justify himself to the universe. This was purely transactional.
He initiated the restoration sequence.
"[Replica Magic]: [Reverse Replication]."
Normally, he used this unique magic to copy, absorb, and consume. Now, he needed to fundamentally invert the formula to synthesize and project. He accessed the specific magic spells he had just acquired from Mars's soul, pulling up the cold, highly structured geometric parameters of the Crystal Magic and the volatile, angry algorithms of the Fire Magic.
He reached out with his right hand, gripping the edge of a pristine, blank page deep within his own grimoire. He took a sharp breath, steeling himself for the physical toll, and applied a violent, tearing force.
RRRRAIP.
The sound of tearing magical parchment was shockingly loud, cutting cleanly through the brief silence between rolling thunderclaps. It felt like pulling a tooth.
Lencar held the single, blank page aloft in the freezing rain. He engaged his newly expanded mana core, routing a massive, surging wave of his Stage 3 Peak energy down his right arm and directly into the torn page. He used the paper as a foundational, physical template for matter creation.
He poured his raw mana into the paper, aggressively altering its molecular structure. The thin parchment began to glow with a blinding, sterile white light that illuminated the plateau. He commanded his mana to replicate the physical properties he had observed earlier—diamond-weave leather and hardened mineral binding.
The page grew instantly heavier in his hand, expanding violently in all three dimensions. It thickened, sprouting a rigid spine and heavy, armored covers.
Next came the spell transfer.
Lencar accessed the isolated Crystal Magic Soul Gem within his internal repository. He didn't have to transfer the gem itself—that belonged to him now, a hard-earned prize he refused to give back. But he extracted the pure, unadulterated essence of the attribute, essentially copying the source code of the magic. He channeled this cold, structured pink data down his arm and injected it into the forming grimoire.
He immediately followed it up with the combat logs stored in his meticulous memory. He retrieved the specific spell algorithms Mars had utilized against him and the Golden Dawn during the treasury battle. He encoded them directly into the blank pages of the new book: Harpe, Nemean Armor, Talos Puppets.
The synthetic grimoire began to swirl with a vibrant, pulsing pink light, the pages rapidly filling with dense, geometric script.
But Mars needed the Fire Magic too. He needed Fana's flames to trigger her memories later. And Lencar also wanted to experiment something.
Lencar accessed the quarantined Red Soul Gem. He extracted the volatile, aggressive essence of the flame.
However, he had absolutely no intention of recreating Morris's flawed, torturous Chimera Rune. The artificial soul-grafting technique was unstable, inefficient, and agonizing for the host. Putting that ticking time bomb back into Mars's soul was a liability he couldn't afford.
Instead, Lencar relied on the unique properties of his own Logoless Grimoire. Because this new book was being synthesized directly from one of his own torn pages, an invisible, microscopic, and virtually unbreakable tether of Replica Magic remained. It connected the newly forged artifact directly back to Lencar's own spiritual core. It looked like a golden line connecting the replicated grimoire and his chest.
It was a brilliant, pragmatic workaround.
Lencar routed the Fire Magic data through this secure, encrypted tether. He programmed the new grimoire to pull the necessary fire attribute algorithms and raw thermal energy directly from the Red Gem housed safely within Lencar's soul, rather than forcing the volatile magic to reside directly in mars soul.
Mars would have full access to cast the powerful fire and healing spells, but the conflicting, agonizing mana would not be violently crammed into his own regenerating soul. Lencar would act as the remote server, secretly hosting the power Mars drew upon.
As the final spell transfer completed, the cover of the newly forming grimoire reacted violently to the dual inputs. The smooth, pearlescent white material on the back half of the book suddenly scorched and bubbled, transforming into jagged, crimson leather.
Lencar finalized the visual parameters, commanding his mana to form two distinct Diamond Kingdom insignias, overlapping them in the exact, messy, forced amalgamation that had characterized the original item. He even recreated the thick, raised magical stitches running down the spine, ensuring they looked functionally identical to Morris's horrific work, even though they were now purely cosmetic.
The blinding light faded.
In less than twenty seconds, a brand-new Grimoire rested heavily in Lencar's palm.
He held it up, running a full diagnostic scan with his sensory magic. It was a perfect, 1:1 visual replica of the patchwork abomination Mars had carried before. It possessed the correct mass, the correct rough texture, and the exact same intimidating external mana signature.
However, its internal architecture was flawless. There was no soul-tearing friction. There was no decaying geometric rune threatening to detonate the user. It was a clean, highly efficient spell-casting tool cleverly disguised as a butchered chimera.
"There," Lencar said, letting out a heavy breath of profound relief. He inspected the spine, verifying the aesthetic stitches. "A clean slate. You still have your fire magic, Mars, but the chimera stitching is gone. The risk of you spontaneously combusting is zero. But to get such benefits you would have to survive through it."
He crouched down once more. He placed the heavy, synthesized grimoire carefully on the wet obsidian rock, positioning it exactly three inches from Mars's limp right hand, precisely replicating the location of the original item before it had disintegrated into dust.
He stood back up, securing his own black grimoire back into its harness on his hip.
The primary objectives of the Kiten Dungeon operation had been achieved with an exceptionally high margin of success. He had gathered critical, real-world combat data on the Clover Kingdom protagonists, observing their limits firsthand. He had secured the Diamond Kingdom's most advanced, forbidden magical technology. He had significantly upgraded his own spiritual capacity to the absolute peak of Stage 3.
Yet, Lencar did not activate his spatial ring to depart.
He remained standing on the plateau, his heavy boots planted firmly on the black rock. His posture was perfectly straight, relaxed but entirely motionless, resembling a solitary statue carved from obsidian.
He turned his masked face toward the eastern horizon.
The violent storm that had raged across the peaks for hours was finally beginning to break. The heavy, oppressive barometric pressure was rising steadily. The terrifying frequency of the lightning strikes had decreased to a mere occasional, distant flicker. The howling wind was dropping to a manageable, steady gale, and the freezing rain was thinning out into a cold, persistent drizzle.
Dawn was approaching. A faint, bruised strip of dark purple and muted grey light was beginning to crack the eastern skyline, slowly, stubbornly pushing back the absolute darkness of the night.
Lencar stood there, tracking the slow rotation of the earth and the gradual accumulation of pale light on the horizon.
He was not waiting to appreciate the beauty of the sunrise. He was not waiting out of some sense of dramatic, theatrical timing.
He was waiting because he had to be absolutely sure.
He had administered severe physical trauma to the subject. He had extracted the subject's soul core, an action that carried a massive, terrifying risk of inducing an irreversible coma or catastrophic brain death, even taking Mars's enhanced regenerative capabilities into account. He had subsequently provided a synthetic grimoire designed to blindly interface with the subject's dormant, traumatized neural pathways.
He needed to observe the reboot sequence. He needed to verify that the asset named Mars was fully functional, retaining his memories and capable of independent locomotion, before he abandoned the site. If the boy failed to awaken, or awoke with severe cognitive impairment that rendered him useless to the Diamond Kingdom's military, Lencar would have to intervene again. He couldn't afford to leave a loose thread.
Lencar adjusted his posture, ignoring the ache in his muscles, locking his gaze entirely on the unconscious boy at his feet.
He extended a thin, invisible thread of sensory magic, monitoring the boy's vitals like a heart monitor.
Heart rate is rising. Sixty-four beats per minute. Respiration is deepening. Brain wave activity is elevating from deep delta sleep to active theta frequencies.
The metrics indicated an imminent return to consciousness.
Lencar remained perfectly still, a silent, unmoving shadow standing tall in the grey, washing light of the approaching dawn, waiting patiently for the Diamond Kingdom's broken machine to open its eyes.