Chapter 33: 3rd-Circle Mage Kim Song-cheol (Part 2)

“What have you even been saying this whole time?”

Kim Song-cheol asked as he finally closed the front door.

To be honest, he hadn’t understood even half of what Cha Se-hyeon was saying.

It wasn’t a conversation; she was just saying whatever she wanted.

She clearly wasn’t drunk, though. Her pronunciation was precise, and her eyes were sharp.

“The stuff before was just the introduction. From now on, it’s the core. You only need to understand the core,” Cha Se-hyeon said with a shrug.

“This Notebook contains a method to grow your Circles quickly.”

Only then did Kim Song-cheol’s gaze change.

He had already been dissatisfied with his growth speed.

If such a method existed, he was willing to try it immediately.

“I’ve read it a few times, but honestly, I don’t know if it’ll work. I wonder if it’s even a method a human can pull off.”

“That…”

“But I believe you’ll do it. You have to.”

Cha Se-hyeon glared at Kim Song-cheol with intensity, almost as if she were threatening him.

He didn’t know what the method was yet, but it felt like she wouldn’t let him be if he failed.

“Explain it first,” Kim Song-cheol said, speaking more casually now that he felt he had been polite enough.

Cha Se-hyeon didn’t seem to mind at all.

“So… Oh, wait. I forgot because I was buying chicken feet.”

Cha Se-hyeon generated a Magic Circle beneath her feet and vanished in a flash of bright light.

The Notebook that had been floating in the air fell to the floor with a thud.

“What?”

Kim Song-cheol put down his bag and crossed his arms.

He had no idea when she would return.

Just as he took a step to open the Notebook, Cha Se-hyeon reappeared.

Kim Song-cheol quickly took a step back, feigning innocence.

A massive Portal Tablet was floating above Cha Se-hyeon’s head.

It was a simple stone slab with nothing drawn on it.

She slammed the Portal Tablet down in the middle of the living room.

The impact was strong enough to send vibrations through his feet.

The diameter of the Portal Tablet was about 2 meters.

It looked like it weighed hundreds of kilograms, and it was quite thick as well.

“…Did you carve a rock from a mountain somewhere?”

“No, I bought it with points. It only cost 160 points.”

With a slight flick of her chicken foot bone, the Notebook on the floor flew up and flipped open. She read a few pages and then stepped onto the Portal Tablet.

“Wait a second.”

Small Magic Circles appeared around Cha Se-hyeon.

They aligned parallel to the Portal Tablet, and a red light from their centers began to beam onto the stone.

“Kagagak!”

As the red light touched the Portal Tablet, stone fragments flew in every direction, and grooves began to form.

Six or seven palm-sized Magic Circles circled around Cha Se-hyeon, ‘printing’ a Magic Circle onto the Portal Tablet.

‘How many is she casting at once?’

Even in that situation, Kim Song-cheol was interested in her magic.

Even using Multi-casting, organically controlling several Magic Circles to draw a single complex Magic Circle was almost like an acrobatic feat.

Cha Se-hyeon certainly didn’t have ordinary talent.

“There, all done.”

Cha Se-hyeon finished drawing the Magic Circle on the Portal Tablet and stepped down.

The area was filled with stone fragments and dust.

Kim Song-cheol used Clean Magic to tidy up the surroundings while examining the completed Magic Circle.

“Is this 5th Circle Space Magic…?”

When Kim Song-cheol muttered this, Cha Se-hyeon’s eyes widened.

“How did you recognize it? You’re only at the 2nd Circle.”

“Just because someone is at a higher Circle doesn’t mean they stop using their current Formulas, so I took a guess… But Space Magic? How do you accumulate Mana quickly with Space Magic?”

“That’s the crazy part of this training method. Actually, this magic is just a safety device.”

Cha Se-hyeon snatched the floating Notebook and held it out to Kim Song-cheol.

“The key is the rotation direction of the Circles.”

Her explanation was as follows: originally, the 1st Circle and 2nd Circle rotate in opposite directions, and the 2nd Circle and 3rd Circle also rotate in opposite directions. Odd-numbered Circles and even-numbered Circles rotate in different directions.

However, in this training method, the rotation directions are forcibly unified.

When Kim Song-cheol heard that much, he couldn’t help but interject.

“That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“Exactly. That’s why I said I didn’t know if this was a method a human could do.”

The reason the rotation directions of the Circles were set to be opposites was explained by the thousands of years of magic history in Arcadia.

When Circle Magic first appeared, direction wasn’t very important because the concept of having multiple Circles didn’t exist back then.

But as magic advanced, an additional Circle was naturally added.

This was because there was a limit to how much a single Circle could grow.

At the same time, the side effects of two Circles rotating in the same direction were revealed.

It was the Circle Merge Phenomenon.

It was a phenomenon where two or more Circles would spontaneously merge, which was also the reason for the growth limit of a single Circle.

If the Circle Merge Phenomenon occurred, a Circle Rampage was guaranteed to follow.

Even if a single Circle was forced to grow excessively, a rampage would occur.

When a Circle Rampage happened, the Mage had a 99.9% chance of dying.

The remaining tiny percentage—those who survived—somehow managed to dismantle their Circles entirely.

They would become cripples who could never learn magic again, but they saved their lives.

But now, Cha Se-hyeon was directly contradicting those thousands of years of history.

Or, more accurately, she was telling Kim Song-cheol to contradict it.

“For your information, this method was left behind by a Descendant of the Great Sage before you. That person said it worked. So it should work for you too. Read it for yourself.”

“…Is that so?”

Kim Song-cheol opened the Notebook.

Small, neat handwriting was the first thing he noticed.

Cha Se-hyeon had personally transcribed the Magic Book inside a Dungeon.

He could see how serious she was about this training.

Kim Song-cheol stood there and read through the training method.

The core of this method was to intentionally cause the Circle Merge Phenomenon.

However, a rampage would not occur because the practitioner’s own absurd mana control would suppress it.

If a rampage didn’t occur, the mechanism leading from Circle Merge to Circle Rampage would be broken in the middle.

Then, all that remained was the Circle Merge.

Multiple Circles would simply become ‘one giant Circle.’

This was the gist of the training method.

If they became a single Circle, the effect was beyond imagination.

To borrow the words of the author: ‘It is not a method of supplying mana through a Breathing Method, but a method where the Circle itself sucks in mana to grow.’

One would block the risk of a rampage with control and only take the benefits.

‘I think I can do it.’

After reading the entire Notebook, Kim Song-cheol felt more confident than before.

There were several hints.

A hint that he had even stronger control than the Descendant of the Great Sage who wrote this book.

Furthermore, the training method itself wasn’t difficult.

The Circle Merge was possible right now, and if things went according to the scenario, separating them again would be simple.

The problem was the tug-of-war between his control and the Circles trying to cause a rampage.

“Let’s do it.”

As Kim Song-cheol took a step onto the Portal Tablet, Cha Se-hyeon suddenly grabbed his sleeve.

“Now? Why don’t you think about it a bit more?”

It was unexpected.

He hadn’t thought Cha Se-hyeon would try to stop him after urging him so much.

“You told me to do it quickly.”

“Well, yeah, but you could get screwed if you mess up. Once you start, even I can’t interfere. Read it one more time.”

“There’s not much to the content. It’ll be the same no matter how many times I read it.”

Kim Song-cheol pulled away from Cha Se-hyeon and stepped onto the Portal Tablet.

“Damn it.”

Cha Se-hyeon, who was usually so willful, bit her nails and watched with anxious eyes.

Having lived as an ‘uncontrollable’ person herself, experiencing it indirectly made her quite anxious.

If Kim Song-cheol were to die like a weakling here, her plan to hand over the top rank would completely fall through.

However, she didn’t have a good reason to stop him.

“Shit, I’m thinking about the Director a lot today.”

She had no choice but to drink straight from the soju bottle.

Kim Song-cheol listened to the sound of the soju sliding down her throat as he sat on the Portal Tablet and closed his eyes.

First, he activated his Circles and poured Mana into the Magic Circle.

He felt a significant amount of Mana drain away as the Magic Circle activated.

If Kim Song-cheol’s Mana capacity hadn’t been large, he would have run out of Mana before even starting the training.

“Whew…”

Kim Song-cheol took a deep breath and adjusted the rotation speed of his 2nd Circle.

The rapidly spinning 2nd Circle slowed down and eventually stopped.

As the Circle that had held Mana based on its rotation stopped, the Mana began to drift away.

Of course, Kim Song-cheol didn’t just watch.

According to his will, the 2nd Circle began to rotate in the opposite direction.

He had matched its rotation direction with the 1st Circle.

“Vwooom…!!”

The 1st Circle and 2nd Circle began to spin faster and faster.

Both Circles were in the same direction.

Kim Song-cheol adjusted the positions of the two separated Circles and slightly overlapped them.

“Vwooooong!”

Then, as if they had been waiting, the two Circles stuck together like the north and south poles of a magnet.

In that moment, the unified Circle began to rotate with fierce intensity.

‘Kugh…!?’

A massive load was placed on Kim Song-cheol’s body.

Even though he was prepared, he momentarily lost track of the Circle’s expansion.

The Circle was forcibly expanding and protruding out of Kim Song-cheol’s body.

It was a premonitory symptom of a Circle Rampage.

That was also when the Magic Circle on the Portal Tablet glowed brightly.

The 5th Circle Space Magic blocked the expansion of the Circle by disconnecting the inside and outside of the Portal Tablet.

“Kagagagagang!”

The Circle collided with that space disconnection surface, scattering light dust everywhere.

Kim Song-cheol used his maximum power to push the Circle back toward the center.

Space disconnection wasn’t omnipotent.

It would be dangerous if it collided a few more times because the rampage would occur in three dimensions rather than two.

If that happened, Kim Song-cheol would have no way to stop it.

‘Let’s see who wins.’

Kim Song-cheol opened his eyes and glared at the Circle.

The Circle repeated a cycle of expansion and contraction.

When his control was strongly applied, it contracted, but a repulsive force equal to the contraction made it grow large again.

It was a tug-of-war between Kim Song-cheol and his Circle.

A long time passed where Cha Se-hyeon couldn’t even breathe and Kim Song-cheol couldn’t even blink.

“Then, at some point…”

“Kagagang!”

As if giving one last struggle, the Circle slightly scraped the space disconnection surface and then shrank significantly inward.

There was no more tug-of-war.

The Circle began to rotate cleanly around Kim Song-cheol.

He had finally stabilized it.

It was silent. Around the planet that was Kim Song-cheol, a single ring rotated majestically.

Only then did Kim Song-cheol close his eyes again.

‘Someone can actually do that…’

Cha Se-hyeon, who had been biting her nails, finally let out a sigh of relief.

If it had been her, it would have ended with the first Circle expansion.

It was a terrifying moment even in hindsight.

Cha Se-hyeon walked slowly to the sofa and slumped down.

She could clearly feel what was happening on that Portal Tablet right now.

The Circle was creating a suction force on its own, absorbing surrounding Mana and growing.

The speed was incomparable to any Breathing Method.

A Breathing Method had a high Mana loss rate, but this method was almost 99% efficient.

Cha Se-hyeon finally wiped the sweat from her forehead and took a sip of soju.

As long as he maintained stability once, there shouldn’t be any major dangers ahead.

The first time was the hardest; the second and third times would be easy.

This was also written in the Notebook.

Kim Song-cheol continued to maintain his concentration.

He felt as if only he and the Circle existed in this world.

This was the first time he had focused on his Circle to this extent.

The fact that the Circle was one… actually felt stable.

It was different from having multiple Circles existing with different rotation directions.

It couldn’t be explained well in words.

It wasn’t a feeling that could be described in just a few sentences.

Then, he suddenly remembered a phrase he had read in the Notebook.

It was the phrase written at the very end.

‘By discovering this training method, I have taken another step forward in the study of magic. This time, I intend to take another step by researching Circle Magic itself.’

As that phrase came to mind, his concentration wavered.

This was because he felt he understood why the author had started researching Circle Magic itself, and distracting thoughts entered his mind.

The Circle began to shake slightly.

Kim Song-cheol hurriedly began the separation process.

Trying to maintain balance any longer would have been too much.

The single Circle split into two, and the outer Circle slowed down until it stopped.

Then, it began to rotate in the opposite direction again.

The two Circles clearly divided their territories.

Furthermore, the 2nd Circle had grown noticeably larger than before.

The Circles grew smaller and disappeared into Kim Song-cheol’s body.

Kim Song-cheol opened his eyes.

Cha Se-hyeon was nowhere to be seen.

It was already dark outside.

‘How many hours have passed?’

When he looked at the clock, a full 5 hours had passed.