SSS Rank Sword Mage: Awakening Starts with Weakest Mana Affinity-Chapter 113: The "God" vs. The "Genius"

His dragon flesh tore open violently as old, obsolete structures were forced out by the pressure of the new. It was a grotesque, beautiful rebirth. This was what he wanted: a higher death. He had baited Zedd into using one of the most advanced execution method known to mages because he knew that to survive it, he would become something truly remarkable.

Now, his stalling made terrifying sense.

Dragon Scales and bone shredded like paper. Filament-like organs unfolded from the wreckage of his torso, glowing faintly as they spread and pulsed with raw, rhythmic mana. They didn’t resemble lungs or any organ I recognized; they were perfectly symmetrical, shimmering structures that my brain struggled to even categorize.

The ground groaned beneath us.

"I fought alongside Arolion for many years," Bagu’s voice continued, calm now, almost fond. "Now that you have seen my real ability, you must truly understand... your situation?"

His long, forked tongue licked the corner of his new, armored lips. "What other legendary spells do you have for me? Please, show me more."

Bagu rose.

His form was no longer entirely that of a dragon. He looked more like he was encased in a pristine, biological battle suit—sleek, crystalline, and terrifyingly efficient. This was just evolution; with elite optimization.

How on earth were they going to defeat something that literally learns from death?

A desperate thought clawed at my mind: if he couldn’t be killed, could he be sealed? Looking at the faces around me—the wide eyes, the sweating brows—I could tell they were all reaching the same conclusion. Sealing was the only answer left.

But then the "what ifs" started hitting me like physical blows. What if he had another hidden ability? What if he was holding back even now? If sealing was the solution, why didn’t high magus Arolion simply seal him away long ago instead of leaving him?

Possibilities and terrifying scenarios swirled in my head, attacking me from every angle. We were standing on the edge of an abyss, and the Dragon wasn’t just waiting—but he was pulling the ground out from under our feet.

Bagu pulled back a massive, crystalline fist, his grin mocking.

"To be fair," he rumbled, his voice vibrating through the shimmering, structural walls of the cube, "the Suffocation Cube wasn’t half bad. But fundamentally, this spell was designed by a man who was willing to die....its barrier walls are structurally weak."

"The only reason I didn’t shatter this cage the moment you cast it was a matter of biological priority: I was trying not to lose my breath. After all, if you can’t breathe, how can you truly go all out?"

He chuckled, a sound like grinding tectonic plates vibrating through the vacuum.

"But that problem is fixed now. My body has finished its calibration. I can punch this cube with everything I have... because I no longer need your ’third-dimensional’ air.

He let out a scream—a raw, guttural roar that finally carried through the void—and punched the interior of the cube. The impact was like a world shattering.

KRA-BOOOOOM

The shimmering planes of the prison just crack and they exploded into a thousand glittering shards of broken glass reality, raining down like diamonds and then to dust.

Bagu stepped through the wreckage of the "ultimate" spell, his crystalline battle suit glowing with a terrifying, rhythmic light.

"Breaking free," he whispered, his voice cutting through the dust as he stared directly into Zedd’s soul, "is the easy part."

He stood before us, unshackled. A mocking smirk played on his face as he closed the distance toward Lord Zedd.

The shock on Zedd’s face was no longer something he could mask; his entire body had gone rigid, his composure stripped away until only the cold, hard reality of his failure remained.

"Now, about you calling me an arrogant fool," Bagu said, tilting his head with the curiosity of a predator watching a trapped insect. "What is wrong with arrogance when you have the power to back it up, little Zedd?"

For the first time since the battle began, Bagu smiled—and it was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.

As if snapping back to reality, Lord Zedd stepped forward, his resolve reignited by sheer desperation. Morgana followed suit, her blade low, while Bratan braced his battered shoulders.

"Mr. Vulgabread," Zedd called out without looking back, "do us a favor and start thinking of ideas!"

"Right!" Father shouted, his mind racing. "Astraga, help your old man. We need a plan—anything! Think!"

As the exhausted mages scrambled to erect a new perimeter of barriers, the air grew heavy with the omen of another round. Bagu stood calm, facing the legendary trio once more. They whispered, trying to coordinate a final, synchronized assault.

They never got the chance.

In the blink of an eye—no, faster than that—Bagu vanished. What I saw was a mere afterimage of where he had been. Before Zedd could even complete the thought of a teleport, Bagu’s hand clamped onto his skull like a vice.

He hoisted Zedd into the air with one hand. As Morgana lunged forward with a flurry of desperate, diagonal strikes, Bagu didn’t even parry.

He used Zedd’s struggling, teleporting body as a living shield, thrusting the mage into the path of Morgana’s blades. Again and again, she had to pull her strikes at the last microsecond, her momentum shattering as she fought to avoid killing her own ally.

The message was resounding, vibrating through the very earth beneath us: You are beneath me. I have had my fun.

Bratan roared, charging in to punch Bagu’s head clean off his shoulders. Bagu didn’t even look.

He leaned—just a fraction—letting the massive fist whistle past his ear with a roar of displaced wind. Then, with the bored indifference of a man swatting a gnat, he delivered a casual backhanded slap to Bratan’s jaw.

The impact sent the Commander spinning through the air like a broken top. But Bratan wasn’t finished. Even as he spun, he used the violent momentum of his own displacement to kick off the air, creating a pressurized slipstream that thrusted Morgana forward with doubled speed.

It was a perfect, improvised combo. But Bagu had already calculated the trajectory.

As Morgana attempted a high-speed blitz aimed at his throat, her blade a blur of killing intent, Bagu never even raised his guard. He simply flicked her longsword aside with a single claw, the sound of steel meeting crystal ringing out on steel.

K-TANG!

Before she could even register the parry, Bagu’s hand came down like a falling boulder. With a sickening thud, he slammed her entire body into the forest floor, the earth cratering beneath her weight. He pinned her chest down with his jagged talons, the pressure of his foot cracking her black armor, while his other hand remained locked—unmoving and unbreakable—around Zedd’s throat.

He held them all in the palm of his hand—literally, figuratively, and cosmically. The battle was over. He had won.

But then, Bagu did something inexplicable.

He suddenly released his grip on Zedd, placing the gasping mage on the ground with a delicacy that was more terrifying than his rage. He lifted his foot off Morgana’s shattered chest, stepping back and turning away as if the two S-Rank warriors had simply ceased to exist.

Then, Bagu raised his own hands.

With a sudden, jerky motion, he began to smack his head. At first, it looked like a twitch, but the strikes rapidly accelerated, becoming more brutal and rhythmic.

THUD. CRACK. THUD.

Everyone stared in paralyzed disbelief. Was the divine pressure too much for his own mind? Was he trying to kill himself?

The strikes grew more violent, his crystalline claws carving deep furrows into his own face with every blow. Then, with a final, sickening CRUNCH that echoed across the clearing, he drove both hands inward. He completely crushed his own skull.

I watched, sickened, as golden ichor and brain matter were forced through the gaps in his claws. For a heartbeat, the towering, multi-limbed god stood perfectly still. Then, like a puppet with its strings cut, the headless corpse slumped to the ground.

He was dead. Again.

One could have argued he had been driven to insanity, but they would have been wrong. Bagu hadn’t lost his mind; he had simply forgotten the most fundamental law of the jungle: There is always a snake lurking in the shadows.

And then, he appeared.

Emerging from the edge of the clearing was the most insufferable royal to ever walk the earth: Greyjoy.

He didn’t look like a man who had just witnessed a divine suicide. He looked like a man who had finally finished a tedious chore. Beside him, his mana beast—a massive, undulating serpent of liquid fire—radiated waves of heat so intense they distorted the air around them, making the forest shimmer like a mirage over a sun-scorched desert.

In a blur of shimmering heat-haze, they arrived at the front lines, standing over the cooling, headless corpse of the Dragon or was it even a dragon anymore.

This revision sharpens the tension between the desperate S-ranks and Greyjoy’s oily confidence, emphasizing the "Mind Control" reveal and the looming threat of Bagu’s inevitable return.

"Took me a while to get the spell conditions exactly right," Greyjoy said, casually petting the obsidian scales of his mana beast.

He looked down at Bagu’s mangled, headless corpse and smirked. "But I’d say it was well worth the wait."

Shock rippled through the survivors. My heart hammered against my ribs with a single, haunting question: Will he come back? We had seen him die before, and every time, he returned as something worse.

Commander Bratan didn’t wait for a royal explanation. He lunged forward, his massive hand bunching Greyjoy’s pristine silk attire into a fist. "You idiot! Do you have any idea what that monster is? Do you have any idea what his ability does every time he ’dies’?"

Greyjoy didn’t flinch. He simply jerked his shoulder, shaking off the Commander’s grip with practiced arrogance. "What you should be saying, Bratan, is ’thank you,’" he replied. Beside him, the fire serpent coiled, baring fangs that dripped with liquid heat, ready to slag the Commander where he stood.

Lord Zedd stepped forward, his eyes narrowed behind cracked lenses. "I assume your mana beast possesses a high-tier mind control ability? You forced the ’bagu’ to commit suicide."

"Whatever it is," Morgana interjected, clutching her side as she staggered to her feet, "I believe it won’t last. We need to seal him. Now, before his body starts again."

"Sealing him is the problem," Zedd countered, his voice tight with frustration. "The only structures capable of binding a Dragon of his caliber are the Paths of Binding spells, and those require ritual preparation and magical tools we simply don’t have. We’re out of time and in a never ending battle."

"Whoever you are, you’ve got a sharp mind, lady," Greyjoy said, casting a dismissive glance at Bratan’s audacity.

But Zedd’s expression remained grim, his eyes fixed on the headless heap of crystal. "You shouldn’t have interfered yet, you fool. By forcing his hand now, you’ve given him the one thing he needs: data. Upon rebirth, he will likely be completely immune to your beast’s mental intrusion."

Greyjoy scoffed, looking at them as if they were speaking a foreign tongue. His smirk suggested he believed he could simply trigger the "suicide" command whenever he pleased—but he was about to learn a hard lesson in Dragon biology.

On the ground, Bagu’s corpse began to twitch.

The golden ichor didn’t flow out; it pulled back in, defying gravity. His head wasn’t just growing back—it was reforming into something else. The bone structure thickened into a dense, anti-magical lattice, specifically designed to insulate his brain from the exact frequency of Greyjoy’s mind control. He wasn’t just healing he was also patching a flaw in his previous form.

"Shit," Morgana hissed, her knuckles turning white as she gripped her fractured hilt. "It’s an endless cycle. Look at the plating on the skull... he’s insulating his own mind. Here he comes again."

Greyjoy’s composure finally snapped. The smug royal mask slipped, revealing a man terrified by the monster he had just "killed." He stabbed a finger toward the twitching, regenerating mass of crystal.

"Don’t just stand there!"

In a blur of movement, he flashed to the front lines, his fire serpent coiling behind him. He looked back at the exhausted S-ranks, his face contorted with panicked rage.

"Are you all brain-dead? Keep attacking! I don’t care if he can regenerate—he can’t adapt if we keep reducing him to cinders! Damage him! MORE!"

Greyjoy’s mana beast moved with blinding speed. The serpent coiled around Bagu’s headless, thrashing form, its body constricting with bone-crushing force. The dragon’s clawed hands tore desperately at the obsidian scales, trying to rip the constriction away.

"Stand back!" Greyjoy signaled, his eyes gleaming with a manic, flickering fire. "Now, baby... burn him to a crisp!"

Like an unleashed sun, the snake set itself ablaze. The flames roared upward in a localized pillar of white-hot plasma, burning so intensely that the light itself became a weapon. The heat was a physical weight, a wall of pressure that forced us back ten meters.

Bagu’s body began to struggle violently as the fire intensified. Without a head to scream, his movements were jagged, mindless, and visceral. It looked like it was actually working—the flesh was charring, and the crystalline scales were turning to fine, gray ash.

"How are the flames only going upward?" Morgana asked, shielding her eyes against the blinding glare.

"His flames are selective," Greyjoy shouted over the roar of the inferno, a smug, desperate grin on his face. "They only consume those I command them to. Right now, that monster is experiencing heat so absolute I can’t imagine anything surviving. He’s being unmade!"

But we all knew Bagu wasn’t just anything.

I turned to my father as the serpent continued its relentless, fiery constriction. "Father, is there any way to seal him?"

"It’s possible," father replied, his voice heavy with a grim certainty. "But it’s a mission that We need high-level catalytic tools—anchors for the mana. Right now, on this battlefield, we don’t think we have a single relic capable of holding a energy that heavy."

Greyjoy stood with his hands on his hips, silhouetted against the white fire. His mana beast was pushing past its limits, maintaining the inferno indefinitely, but the strain was starting to show in the beast’s fading glow.

"Come on, people! Think!" Greyjoy shouted, his voice cracking. "Since you say he just keeps coming back, how the heck do we seal him? How can we have ’Elite Mages’ here who don’t know a single major binding spell? fuck!"

Morgana suddenly pointed. "Greyjoy—your face!"

Blood was trickling from his royal ass nose, steaming before it could even hit the ground.

"It’s nothing!" he snapped, but the words were cut short as he doubled over. He coughed violently, a thick spray of crimson hitting the floor as the backlash of his beast’s output began to reach his limits.

Suddenly, Morgana froze, her eyes falling upon her own blade. "I think... I may have a way."

Lord Zedd’s eyes widened. "I thought as much. So the legends about Wood-Steel are true?"

"Yes," Morgana replied. "It has the unique ability to absorb and store dragon essence."

Her gaze shifted away from her shattered weapon and landed directly on me—specifically, the raw log of Wood-Steel she had entrusted to me earlier.

"The anchor," she breathed, her eyes widening. "But it has to be Wood-Steel that hasn’t been refined into a weapon yet. It needs to be pure, raw, and receptive."

She rushed to my side, taking the heavy timber from my hands. For a brief second, she gave me a quick, reassuring pat on the head, her touch steady despite the chaos. When she turned back to the others, her face was a mask of grim determination.

"I can do it, but I need time. This isn’t a simple spell, and there is no certainty it will hold Bagu," Morgana warned, her eyes lingering painfully on the broken hilt of her beloved longsword. "The core problem is the anchor. For the seal to hold, the Dragon’s essence cannot be forcibly shoved into the Wood-Steel. It has to be drawn in."

"I see," Lord Zedd replied, his voice dropping to a somber tone. "The target must be willing to inhabit the steel—or be weakened to the point where the Wood-Steel becomes his only path of least resistance. That’s what you were trying to achieve with Zuchin before she was consumed, isn’t it?"

Morgana nodded, her jaw tight. "Yes. If he had been absorbed then, the Wood-Steel would have evolved into a complete, sentient God-Slaying weapon. But he broke the cycle."

"But," Zedd continued, his voice low and heavy, "now we aren’t creating a weapon. We’re creating a prison."

Morgana nodded, her eyes fixed on the raw, unrefined timber. "To bridge Bagu’s soul to this wood, I’ll have to sacrifice my own blade to complete the ritual. Zuchin’s spirit will act as the lure."

"And if you do this," Zedd added, the realization weighing on him, "there will be no way to ever retrieve Zuchin. She will be fused with him forever."

The reason she hadn’t suggested this before was finally clear. Wood-Steel was unique—it could absorb a Dragon’s essence. Father had mentioned that dragon tools were instruments forged from their magic, making them the most effective weapons against the species. But I had never understood the gravity of it. If the essence is absorbed correctly, it creates a Living Weapon—the ultimate dragon-slaying tool.

But Morgana wasn’t looking for a power-up. She wasn’t looking to gamble her mana beast life.

Greyjoy blinked, his panic finally overriding his royal manners as he glanced at the shattered remains of the battlefield. "Who the hell is Zuchin?" he blurted out, gesturing wildly at the flickering inferno behind them. "I don’t care about a sword’s name! I think even Zuchin—or whoever they were—would slap you in the face right now for hesitating! Look at the hell we’re in! We’re all about to die!"

Lord Zedd looked at him, his brow furrowing with cold disapproval. "There is no guarantee a seal of this magnitude will hold Bagu. Do not pin your hopes on a miracle. This is her decision to make. You have no idea what she is being asked to give up. What she feels is hers alone to understand. If you were asked to sacrifice your mana beast, you wouldn’t just hand him over, would you?"

Greyjoy went silent, his mouth snapping shut.

"No," Morgana interrupted, a sad, sharp smile touching her lips as she looked at her sword one last time. "He’s right, Zedd. Zuchin would have definitely wanted me to go ahead with this. She always hated my sentimentality."

She turned her gaze back toward the dragon, the grief in her eyes replaced by a terrifying focus. "Today, I’ll finally see things your way, Zuchin."

She tightened her grip on the raw Wood-Steel, her knuckles turning white. "The partner I knew wouldn’t want to exist in a world reduced to ash and controlled by monsters like him. Let’s do it."