Doomed to Die in 3 Minutes

The Useless Master Magician

“MWAHAHAHA! Hero, you’re finished! Playtime is over!”

The Demon Khan Dejan began to float above the fallen armoured man on the ground until he was standing above the houses surrounding the city centre. He rose his right hand’s index finger to the heavens and on the tip a small flicker of golden orange flame manifested.

Then it expanded. It was now an orb the size of a basketball.

The Demon Khan was a man with long black hair tied back and falling to the end of his neck. He had a sharp moustache and a thin but detailed beard. His skin was as pale as death and his eyes were the colour of fresh blood. He was coated in black armour with a 

BOOM. It grew to the size of a small car.

BOOM. It morphed into the shape of a gigantic boulder that could crush a bus.

BOOM. It now eclipsed the sun itself, casting a shadow that darkened the world below.

The people gasped in shock. The children’s eyes glimmered with crackling fire.

“Even you shall not survive this Hero Adil! This is the Supreme Spell Supernova!

"Nothing can survive its overwhelming power! A mere ant cannot resist the force of an exploding sun! 

"Perish along with this pathetic world and all those who would dare to defy me!”

He began to roar with mad and maniacal laughter! The Demon Khan flicked his finger downwards in a single scythe-like arc and the star began to fall, threatening to collapse and burn all life, scorching the world until there would be nought but ashes.

The Hero Adil, cloaked in silver armour, with a blue cape, a small shield in his left hand and a short crossguard sword in his right rose from his kneeling position and advanced forward.

“Everyone…! As long as humanity comes together we can defeat even the Demon Khan… we can even become mightier and brighter than the sun itself! Cheer me on! I’ll… win!”

Adil’s dark brown hair suddenly spiked upwards and glowed with light until it shifted into gold! 

He yelled a battle cry as he began to charge headfirst into and towards the sphere of destruction.

“You can do it! Go, Hero! We believe in you! Kick his ass! Don’t lose, Hero!” 

Cheers from the crowd with weeping eyes, belief that everything would be alright as long as they placed their trust into the man who dared to fight certain death. 

As their words grew louder and blazed with passion, Adil’s body began to shine even brighter than the false sun before him! 

 Crash!

The supernova smashed against Adil’s shield!

The man did not budge. He could not. He would not. He pushed forth with the weight of the world behind him! The desperate screams of hope gave him the strength to turn the tides! The sphere of flame began to travel back the path it had come from!

“Demon Khan… this is not the day man shall fall! Your tyranny over all the races, even your own ends here and now! Die monster! You don’t… belong… in this world!”

With a triumphant roar that even the king of beasts would cower before, Adil swung his sword at the sun. It bounced and flew back towards the one who cast it!

“Uuuuwwwaaaarrggggghhhhh! No! How could I… how could I… to a human… be defeated!? It’s impossible-! No, wait...

“I see… yes, it’s so clear now. I had failed the moment I underestimated what the mortals could do together. Sacrifices and hope have meaning because… ugh… your lives are short…!”

The Demon Khan was consumed by the agent of death he himself had created.

The orb rose to the highest point in the sky and then…

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Fireworks of every colour of the rainbow began to fill the clear blue sky. 

“Uwah…! Yayyyyy!”

The people, especially the children began to clap their hands and applaud as the flares of colour possessed the world above and created a display of shimmering radiance.

A single figure walked away from the swarm of what seemed like the whole population of the city.

He blew a stream of air from his lips as he found a nice alleyway to take a break.

He overheard the crowd singing the performances praises. 

His hair was dark blue and short, his eyes were orange, his face cleanly shaven and his overall build was perhaps just a bit below average for a man.

He laid his back against the red brick wall and reached into his black suit shirts chest pocket before stopping himself. “It’s been ten damn years and I still forget.”

He murmured to himself as he desperately wanted a smoke and wind down. 

Failing that ice cream or something particularly sweet would be nice, but that wasn’t particularly easy to get in this world either, at least not for cheap and not with the city in the state it was right now, you’d need a cellar or for it to be snowing. The lack of technology irked him constantly.

Well, at least it seemed the people liked the show. He took a little pride in that.

It was a very simple story and was somewhat childish at times but they did their best to make it entertaining, funny and serious. Their gamble paid off and the happy giggling of children was a nice form of payment. Along with the sounds of coins being thrown at “Adil’s” feet as he bowed towards his loving audience.

The Demon King Dejan was in fact just an actor called Corai. He had come to this world ten years ago. He had simply been spirited away without explanation after he fell asleep on a train.

At first, really hated the inconvenience of a feudal world. On top of that, he hadn’t been given some so-called cheat ability like characters in the novel he used to read did.

Or to be more accurate it was an ability that didn’t mean anything.

He had access to every spell this world had to offer from the get-go, all he had to do was yell the proper name and he could cast it without a problem.

Just one small problem, he had a magic stat of 1. It hadn’t budged an inch in all the time he had been in these strange and familiar lands. His strength stat was mediocre. His speed was average at best.

His defence? A paper shield. The only two stats he had to work with were HP and MP.

By themselves, they were sort of useless for actually doing anything.

Early on he had gone on many quests as an adventurer and it turns out having low defence and high HP resulted in being able to endure many hits but feeling the full pain of each one.

MP in this world was basically ammo. Though you could funnel more MP into a spell to make it bigger, it was still affected by the magic stat. He could say, throw a miniature sun at someone but in truth, it’d do at best a single hit point of damage.

He couldn’t cut it as an adventurer. Sure he could make distractions and use tools but anyone could do that if they tried. He thought maybe he could use debuffs and buffs instead but even the effectiveness of those were influenced by the magic stat. 

He had grown thirty levels and magic had never changed. Not even once.

He was brought here as a master of every spell but couldn’t do anything useful with it.

After years of experimenting an idea came to him.

Theatre. The type of shows that would rake in cash and the adoration of the entire world.

To open the audience's eyes to narratives that would blow their minds and capture their hearts.

It worked. Well not at first. When he played the Hero he wasn’t popular because he was too powerful. Then he did all types of things to scale things properly but the results were middling at best. So if you can’t be loved by the audience, they can love to hate you.

So he turned into the villain. The villain wielding power that looked like it could ruin civilizations overnight, defeated by the hero who overcomes the odds. It worked like a charm every time.

Still, it did make him, the actor, the caster of these illusions to be in an odd place.

Obviously, he was popular and they needed him but sometimes people attribute the characters to the person and that mess was heartbreaking at times.

Especially from children, he winced remembering some harsh moments such as rotten fruit being thrown at him by kids who really didn't know any better.

Then the earth trembled in fear.

Corai looked upwards by instinct and saw a bone-chilling sight in the distance.

The cheers of the crowd grew louder as they too witnessed it.

A gigantic monster, standing on two legs, with two clawed arms, coated from head to toe in glimmering steel armour. Almost every inch of it was covered in metal.

Corai then shrugged and brought his head back down to the ground.

“Strange, we hadn’t planned a giant monster fight show today. That was supposed to be next week on the day before the holidays end.” 

He murmured to himself and was wondering if the Lady had flipped the script without telling anyone as she was known to do much to the frustration of her actors.

“Oh wait. Only I can make giant monsters which…” 

Somehow it had taken him a full minute to realise the truth of the situation and began to sweat bullets from every pore in his body as he looked back up to the hulking titanic threat.

The Terror opened its jaws as it approached and unleashed a howl with all the force of a tornado.

“Oh, f**k. That’s real!”

Oh, f**k me. No. This isn’t happening. It’s got to be a trick! A Terror in armour showing up out of nowhere? In the middle of a populated city? A city made to be a holiday retreat for nobles?

It had to be more likely that someone was f*****g with us. I mean, which is more likely?

That a giant armoured monster appeared to ruin my day or that there’s some extremely petty mage out there which can use Supreme spells deliberately trying to make a mess of a bunch of stage performers?

...The monster roared and the damned crowd cheer. Oh, god they think this is just the second act of the show! This is going to be a bloodbath! Oh, f**k. f**k. f**k.

“Uwah! It looks so cool!” Oh no, the boys are loving it!

“Ew! It’s so gross! I can’t wait for the Hero to squash it!” The girls are screaming for Adil to charge at it! s**t! That guy isn’t much better than C Rank Adventurers!

A Terror is at least an S Rank monster! And this one looks like freaking MechaGodzilla!

Ahhhhhh! Okay. I guess I should run! Yup. Just leave. 

Maybe I can get a headstart and the thing will be too busy destroying the city to bother with little old me. The camp isn’t too far, I can gather up all my stuff and be out of here before anyone else realises that I didn’t make that terrifying nightmare slowly walking towards us.

The entire world rumbles with every step as the colossus approaches.

It’ll be on all of us in maybe a minute at this rate. Okay, screw my bags and money.

Just get the hell out of dodge and pray the whole road out of this mess. I’ll get out of this country and as far away from the shadow of death before it can catch me.

Then the foot of the monster squashed the front gate into dust.

 A momentary silence before chaos erupts.

Screaming their heads off, people of all ages were beginning to realise this was a real threat.

The crowd begin to run and I’m stuck trapped in this alleyway.

I spent too much time worrying and now I’m going to properly die.

Either by rushing mob or by the toe of a metal kaiju. My luck sucks but my decision-making skills are downright horrible as well. I can’t believe I’m going to die like… actually, no.

I knew my death would be due to my own stupidity someday.

Siggghhhhhhhhh…! A long breath leaves my lips.

My heart is slowly dropping. I’m not the type to panic, at least in the screaming and running madly way. For me, it’s like a giant weight is placed on my heart. It falls slowly and then crashes fast and hard. My blood goes cold. My veins burn for a few moments before turning to ice.

Like venom is all I am, and then I melt and die without having moved at all.

“Well. That’s it then. It wasn’t the worst life I guess. Game over. Out of credit. Finished. Ding dong the witch is dead... maybe I’ll get another do-over? Though I can’t see why I would get one.”

I look back to the monster which is now past the main gate.

Arrows and elemental spells are being slung at it but it’s useless.

Terrors are immune to everything that isn’t at least a Supreme Spell.

If that wasn’t enough that armour looks like it’d repel anything which isn’t at least made of mythril.

There wasn’t a prayer in the world. There’s no one capable of slaying this thing, not here, not now, in this remote seaside vacation town.

I could float up and try to get away doing that but that’d probably be asking for my death.

If I remember correctly, Terror’s tend to prioritise flying targets. The species aren’t usually aggressive but when they are… it’s like they absolutely cannot leave survivors.

“s**t. I’m so f****d. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll reincarnate or something to a better world with better powers. Or I’ll just wake up in a hospital bed back on Earth. That’d be nice… but it looks like I’m…”

The Terror roared. It sounded like the screeching of bats multiplied by the whirling howl of a typhoon paired with the cackle of death itself.

“I’m doomed.” Something flashed before my eyes. Something I hadn’t seen in quite a while.

A message from unlocking a new spell.

Doom. Single Target Supreme Spell. The target will suffer their final death after three minutes. If the target has a high enough intelligence they will know they have been doomed. If they have enough magic or MP they will know you are the caster.

...I can’t believe it. My hands begin to tremble. This isn’t like the other spells.

A faint hope begins to blossom in my heart and burn everything inside of me.

Spells such as Death required a magic check to bypass the target’s defences.

Stat modifiers and ailments also required a magic check in the same vein and had their power scale with the magic of the user. Slow for me did less than even 100th of a second when I cast it. Haste was the same in the opposite direction. Time Stop barely did anything and was only marginally useful that one time I helped a martial artist win a fight.

...Every spell mentioned the magic stat in someway as a modifier.

Yet this spell which I had somehow completely forgotten didn’t.

I feel my mana become an inferno.

“Supreme Spell: Doom!”

With those words flying out of my mouth with fear for the future… the Terror stopped and its head turned. Its gaze lined up to where I was hiding.

“Three minutes until the target suffers its final death.”

My right hand burned and a timer manifested as if someone had inked it as a tattoo that could move by itself.

3:00

2:59

2:58

All I have to do is run-!

The screams of the people suddenly seem much clearer to me.

The Terror slowly began to walk towards my general direction.

I’ve been in this city for a while. This world has a huge class problem.

This place is different though. It lets people of all origins kick back and forget their worries.

Tons of parents here spend their rare downtime with their kids.

I want to fly away, spin my wheels for three minutes and do whatever it takes to live…

Yet for some reason… I find myself beginning to cast the disguise spell.

I’ve played the villain quite a lot over the last few years but…

Who knows? Maybe the audience would love a cowardly hero.

I’ve got just the character to play…

I’m so f*****g stupid. I shouldn’t do this but… I cast the Amplify spell on my voice as my magic begins to craft a costume and apply makeup over my body.

“Ladies and Gentleman! Are you ready for the greatest show of your lives…!”

I begin to rise like a bird taking flight.

Well, it’s too late to run now. Just keeping telling yourself that…

Showtime.