The Last-Seat Hero Has Returned

68. Interlude – Furnace (火爐)

My body felt hot as if oil had been poured into a blazing fire.

“Ugh…!”

The energy of the elixir that passed through my throat surged violently, as if it would burst through all the meridians in my body.

It felt like a sudden flood in a gently flowing stream.

The rapidly increasing mana shook my consciousness.

‘Focus.’

I controlled the fiercely surging mana and slowly guided it to the holy mark.

‘There’s more than I expected?’

The amount of mana felt like I had simultaneously gulped down 2-3 holy mark amplifiers, filling the holy mark to the brim and almost overflowing.

It was an amount that wouldn’t be strange if the mana overflowed and went berserk, but ‘mana control’ was the only field where I was ahead of my comrades.

‘Controlling this much mana isn’t difficult.’

I had controlled the mana that grew infinitely in the state of incarnation without any problem.

No matter how unexpected the effect of the elixir was, it wasn’t enough to cause a mana rampage.

‘Good. If I can just store the mana in the holy mark like this…’

Just when I thought I could absorb the energy of the elixir without any problem.

Whoosh!

Suddenly, the primordial fire reacted violently and flared up.

“Argh! Ugh!”

A terrible pain spread throughout my body as if I had entered a pit of fire.

‘W-what is this all of a sudden?’

Why was the primordial fire, which only reacted to my ‘death’, suddenly reacting to the elixir?

Sizzle!

Before I could even question it.

The primordial fire spread throughout my body, following the meridians.

Like when using ‘Ignition’, gray ash spewed out of every pore of my body like smoke.

“Ah, ugh.”

My head is burning.

My body is on fire.

I can’t breathe.

As if every cell is burning, even a handful of my soul seems to turn to ash.

It’s just hot.

Hot, hot, hot.

And then.

Crack!

The sound of bones twisting.

Like a naive child mixing clay haphazardly, the muscles of my entire body repeatedly contract and expand.

“……!!!”

A dizzying torrent of pain strikes my brain like lightning.

Barely swallowing the scream that was about to burst out, I waited for the ‘Blessing of Resurrection’ to activate.

But.

‘What?’

Even as my bones twisted and my muscles and blood vessels mixed, the Blessing of Resurrection did not activate?

‘Has the Blessing of Resurrection… disappeared?’

No.

That can’t be.

If it were a blessing that would disappear so futilely, I wouldn’t have wandered for thousands of years chasing death in my previous life.

‘If it hasn’t disappeared.’

It means that the changes happening in my body right now are unrelated to ‘death’.

Realizing that fact, I felt a new sensation in the midst of the terrible pain that I had never felt before.

‘What is this…?’

Crack! Crack!

The sensation of twisted bones being realigned.

The sensation of hair, teeth, and nails that had been pulled out growing anew.

The sensation of crushed and torn skin regenerating.

Originally, the countless ‘resurrections’ I had experienced should have been as familiar as breathing.

‘Something’s different.’

It’s different from usual.

Instead of my burnt body returning to its original form, it was changing into something ‘new.’

‘Yes… just like.’

As if being reborn.

As if being remade.

A new body was being born.

“Haah.”

I let out a low breath.

Sss, sss.

The ashen smoke gradually dissipated from every pore of my body.

“…Is it all over?”

As I turned my head and took a breath.

“Ugh. What’s this rotten smell?”

A stench that could twist my nose emanated from the gray smoke filling the room.

Creak.

I opened the window to let the smoke out of the room.

The outside air seeped in through the open window.

“Huh.”

Even without enhancing my body with magic, I could smell the soup boiling in the student cafeteria hundreds of meters away.

It wasn’t just my sense of smell.

The touch of the air on my skin, the sound of insects in my ears, the view of the school landscape with my eyes.

It all felt much clearer, as if I had replaced an old filter with a new one.

“This is…”

I hurriedly went into the bathroom to check my reflection in the mirror.

A slightly taller height and broader shoulders.

The muscles all over my body were perfectly sculpted as if by a meticulous god, and my skin shone flawlessly like that of a newborn baby.

“……”

I’ve heard of this before.

Heroes who possess an excessive amount of magical power have their bodies restructured into vessels that can handle that power.

‘In my previous life, Yuren and Senior Sophia were like that too.’

Of course, just having a lot of magical power doesn’t mean the body gets restructured.

Only after achieving a state befitting the magical power does the body get newly created.

“…This elixir shouldn’t have that much effect.”

I can’t deny that it’s the best elixir I’ve ever taken, including in my past life.

From noble mtl dot com

But even so, I didn’t have enough magical power to experience ‘body restructuring,’ as I had only about half the average magical power of a candidate.

‘Shall I check how much my magical power has increased?’

I awakened the magical power dormant within the stigma.

Compared to before taking the elixir, my magical power had increased by about six times.

Since the magical power I had before was about half the average of a candidate, it has now increased to about three times that level.

‘At this level… am I slightly below Professor Lucas?’

Compared to Yuren, who has much more magical power than Professor Lucas, there’s still more than twice the difference in magical power.

‘My magical power has increased tremendously, but…’

It wasn’t enough to cause ‘body restructuring.’

“So, the body restructuring happened for a reason other than magical power….”

It wasn’t hard to guess what that other reason was.

I focused my mind on my left chest and awakened the power of the primordial fire.

Until now, the primordial fire hadn’t shown any reaction unless I experienced ‘death,’ but now I could feel it moving slightly according to my will.

“Ha.”

A hollow laugh escaped my lips.

‘To think I would be able to handle the power of the primordial fire in this way.’

Although it’s still only a small fraction compared to the full power of the primordial fire.

Being able to control the energy of the primordial fire with my will was a tremendous change.

‘So, the reason I couldn’t handle the primordial fire until now was because of my body?’

If I compare my body to a vessel, it means that until now, my body was insufficient to handle the immense power of the primordial fire.

‘So, this time, it completely changed my body itself.’

Into a furnace that can contain the primordial fire.

“Whew.”

My head was complicated, perhaps because unexpected changes happened all at once.

I took a deep breath to calm my excited mind.

‘So, to summarize the current situation.’

The amount of pure magic power has increased by about six times.

Although it’s only a small part, I can now control the power of the primordial fire at will.

My body itself has been strengthened as if infused with magic.

“…How much stronger have I become just by taking one elixir?”

Honestly, the explosive growth was so great that even I couldn’t gauge how much stronger I had become.

‘At this level… have I already surpassed my previous life’s level?’

Graduating at the bottom of my class and rolling around as a lowly mercenary for ten years.

Meeting comrades like Yuren and Berald, forming a party, and becoming the ‘Last Hero’ to fight the final battle against the Demon God for another ten years.

In less than three months since my return, I had surpassed the growth achieved in over twenty years in my previous life.

“No, it’s a bit much to say I’ve surpassed it yet.”

Setting aside the primordial fire for now.

In terms of pure magic power alone, it was certain that I had more magic power than my previous life.

‘In my previous life, I had to go through all sorts of trouble to increase my magic power, obtaining elixirs and artifacts with great difficulty.’

After my return, my magic power increased automatically just by ‘clicking’ four times a day, and by taking one lucky elixir, I surpassed my previous life’s level.

If my previous self heard this news, he would probably foam at the mouth and throw a fit.

‘But that’s only considering pure magic power.’

Back then, I had various weapons to supplement my lacking magic power.

For example, a magic sword that granted great power at the cost of blood.

For example, a forbidden spellbook that could only be used by sacrificing one’s life.

For example, a cursed armor that ate away at the body the more it was used, and so on.

I had not yet obtained the powerful weapons that made me one of the last five heroes and earned me the title of ‘Immortal Demon’.

“Considering all that… I’m probably on par with my previous self now.”

Of course, this comparison excluded the ‘primordial fire,’ which could be considered an outlier.

“Hah… Should I be happy about this, or should I feel empty?”

No matter how I thought about it, surpassing the power I had gained through twenty years of blood, sweat, and tears in just three months made me feel both good and hollow.

It was like someone who had saved up for decades to buy a house seeing someone win the lottery and buy a house in one lump sum.

Of course, since I was the one who won the lottery, I wasn’t resentful, but I couldn’t help feeling bittersweet.

“If there’s one downside, it’s that I can no longer use the ‘Stigma Amplifier.'”

I clicked my tongue as I glanced at the glass bottle containing the blue liquid, carefully placed on the table.

The stigma amplifier is a potion that intentionally overdrives the stigma to gain immense magical power momentarily.

Now that my body has been restructured, the safety of the stigma has also increased dramatically, so the existing stigma amplifier could no longer overdrive the stigma.

‘If I could find and make a stronger ingredient here, I could force it to overdrive.’

For now, I decided to put this plan on hold.

I now have a new technique called ‘Ignition’ in addition to the stigma amplifier.

“Well… now that I’ve accumulated some magical power.”

It’s time to move on to the ‘next step.’

‘Let’s see… what’s the easiest weapon I can get among the ones I used in my previous life?’

A weapon that is not too far from the school and can be easily obtained with the power I have now.

The deliberation didn’t take long.

“The cursed sword, Veskal.”

I grinned as I recalled the sword, trapped deep within the ruins, starving for blood.