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[HP] 96: You Call That a Mage?
🕑 Added 2025-08-11 17:17:11 +0000 UTCAs the figure froze in place, the final lottery result appeared.
Though the image had flashed by in an instant, Louis’s sharp memory let him clearly make out who it was.
It was a young man with silver-white hair, handsome and smiling cheerfully, holding a staff nearly as tall as himself. But the staff looked rather unusual—on closer inspection, it seemed to be a sheathed sword embedded upside-down at the top.
Then came the system notification:
> [You have received Legendary Character Template: Grand Caster – Merlin]
Merlin's template!
Louis’s eyes lit up.
Was he finally about to escape his Muggle status? With Merlin’s template, his magical talent had to skyrocket, right?
Sure, tricking people into thinking he was a wizard had been amusing…
But seriously—who wouldn’t want to be a real, honest-to-goodness wizard?
Even if he trained in dark magic and made a hobby of deception, Louis firmly believed: he was a good person.
Eagerly, he read on:
> You have obtained the Template: Merlin Ambrosius
> You have obtained Bloodline: Incubus (Dream Phantoms born from Moon and Earth, unbound by time or space)
> You have obtained Spell: Summoning (Limited to Artoria’s Phantom Image)
> You have obtained Curse: Unqualified Grand Caster (Casting too fast may cause you to bite your tongue)
> You have obtained Curse: Beast’s Grudge (High chance of being kicked when encountering feline creatures)
> You have obtained Passive Skill: Master Swordsman
> You have obtained Skill: Reality Marble – Avalon
> You have obtained Skill: Clairvoyance (EX) (Clairvoyance synergizes extremely well with Fate Eye)
> You have obtained Skill: Item Creation
> You have obtained Fate: King’s Sculptor
When the notifications ended, Louis stared ahead in stunned silence.
That was it?
That’s it?!
Where was the magical talent? He’d take even a beginner spell! Light spell? Fireball? Anything!
So this is what a “Grand Caster” looked like—no real spells, just swordplay and fantasy nonsense?
Not even a lumos?
And what the hell was Master Swordsman doing in a mage template?! Did he just spec entirely into melee?
“…So this Grand Caster uses a sword?” Louis rubbed his face, completely overwhelmed by how cursed this outcome was.
You call this a mage?!
Even Gandalf was more qualifiedhe at least had a light spell!
And if no actual magic wasn't bad enough, the template came with two utterly ridiculous curses:
- Chant too fast, and you bite your tongue?!
- High chance of being kicked by felines?!
…Wait.
Felines?
Louis paused, eyes slowly turning to look at the orange tabby curled up on his sofa.
As Louis looked up, he saw the Devourer Beast’s gaze suddenly shift. It sprinted toward him with a running start—and launched a perfect flying kick.
“Meow meow meow meow meow!! (Merlin must die!)”
SMACK!
Louis grabbed the creature by the scruff mid-air with a deadpan expression and shook it. Judging by the speed of his hand, the Devourer Beast’s brain was probably about to get scrambled.
After a good thirty seconds of shaking, he finally set it down.
The Devourer Beast stumbled in circles, eyes spinning like spirals. After a few turns, it collapsed onto the sofa, finally regaining its senses.
It looked up at Louis in a daze, feeling like it had just lost consciousness… but then gave up thinking, rolled over, and started lazily licking its balls.
“Ugh… what a mess,” Louis sighed and returned to examining the abilities from the Merlin template.
Putting aside the ridiculous curses and the unexpected Swordsmanship Mastery, what intrigued him most was the Incubus Bloodline.
“Not ‘Nightmare’ (梦魇), but ‘Incubus’ (梦魔)... Though they’re the same word, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”
The system’s language used “梦魇” (Nightmare) for the quest name Nightmare and Wizard, but the actual bloodline was labeled “梦魔” (Incubus).
Clearly, whoever first called Louis a descendant of Merlin had mistaken him for a literal nightmare entity—understandable, since nightmares were terrifying.
The Incubus bloodline’s main power was dream manipulation: entering dreams, shaping them, inducing obsession or illusion... and most importantly, Dreamwalking.
The first few abilities were similar to illusion magic. But Dreamwalking was different.
It allowed Louis to physically enter dreams in his real body—and move across locations through dreams.
As long as there were dreams somewhere, he could step into them and travel instantly.
Additionally, Incubi had a racial trait: as long as dreams existed, they could not truly die. Though that didn’t matter much to Louis—he had better resurrection options already.
“Incubus, huh…” Louis glanced around.
Even inside the Room of Requirement—supposedly isolated—he could see faint dream spheres drifting in the air.
And if he wanted, he could step into any of them at will.
“Damn, Incubus powers are badass.”
He blinked, then turned off his dream-vision ability to prevent sensory overload and returned to reviewing Merlin’s other skills.
Clairvoyance, Item Creation, and Reality Marble: Avalon…
This version of Clairvoyance didn’t just mean “seeing far”—it also included foresight, bordering on prophetic vision.
Originally, this ability was ranked fairly low—only allowing glimpses of possible futures.
But now, with the Fate Eye enhancing it, Louis could accurately see future events with 100% clarity.
…Which, to be honest, was too much.
He forcibly disabled the power for now—it showed him too many futures at once and blocked his normal field of vision.
Besides, seeing the future all the time was exhausting.
Item Creation, on the other hand, was a nice surprise. It granted Louis advanced insights and intuition for making magical tools.
Not Harry Potter-style spell tools—but his Black Qi magic-based artifacts.
With guidance from Hermes, Louis felt he was getting closer to crafting his own magical gear.
Then there was the Reality Marble, limited to Avalon—Merlin’s ideal utopia.
He could deploy it to pull both allies and enemies into Avalon.
While inside, his allies gained immunity to fatal injuries, and any existing wounds would rapidly regenerate—making it an extremely powerful large-scale support ability.
Finally, there was Summoning.
This one… felt a bit like a joke.
Still, Louis gave it a shot—muttering the incantation softly and quickly.
“Artoria, come fo–(mph, bit my tongue).”
A howling gust of wind tore through the room.
Suddenly, a valiant figure clad in battle armor, sharp-eyed and holding a holy sword, appeared before him—the phantom of Artoria Pendragon.
She didn’t have a mind of her own, but stood at attention. Louis could issue simple commands like “Attack” or “Protect.”
The projection would last about five minutes before dissipating.
Louis nodded in satisfaction.
These powers were strong—very fitting for Merlin’s name. Though the swordsmanship and biting-your-tongue curse were definitely mood killers.
Still, thanks to the Twelve Talismans he already had, Louis was no stranger to melee combat. Even if he wasn’t a traditional wizard, he didn’t need to chant spells—so the curses didn’t bother him much.
What did catch his eye, though… was the entry labeled Fate.
> Fate: King’s Sculptor.
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