DC: Chapter 130/131

Chapter 130

The next morning.

The sun remained unchanged. warm, radiant, while the air carried the crisp chill of winter.

The season had shifted.

In Manhattan, people had begun bundling themselves in thick coats, wrapping scarves tightly around their necks. Each exhale sent out a misty breath, a visible sign of the dropping temperature.

Some individuals might be undergoing personal changes at this very moment.

But for most, life continued as it always had.

Blissfully unaware.

Lucky? Or unfortunate?

Perhaps ignorance brought them peace.

But Bardi didn't see it that way.

To him, ignorance was a sin.

When danger arrived, those who lacked knowledge couldn't control their own fate. They wouldn't even have the ability to resist.

There was no happiness in that.


---

Zatara arrived, bringing with him an extensive collection of magical artifacts, ancient staffs, scrolls, gemstones, bones infused with magical energy, withered branches, noble swords encrusted with jewels, intricate incantations, arcane symbols, sacred inscriptions, and runes.

More than 120 languages from various races detailed the formation of magical circles, each inscribed with knowledge passed down through the ages.

With a wave of his hand, Zatara transformed the luxurious sofa and glass coffee table of the Presidential Suite into a massive, gray, spectral hand. The conjured appendage swept all the furniture aside, clearing space.

Then, with another flick of his wrist, an enormous pile of arcane relics, glimmering noble swords, exotic talismans, and countless strange artifacts descended onto the soft carpet.

And this was just the beginning.

If Bardi couldn't comprehend the foundational principles of magic, there would be no need to present him with anything more advanced.


---

The windows of the suite were wide open, allowing sunlight to flood the room.

Standing in the brightest spot, where the golden rays shone the warmest, Bardi's silhouette was solitary yet resolute.

The fate of the magical world and perhaps the entire Earth now rested upon him.

His eyes flickered under the sunlight as he reached into his coat pocket, retrieving a solar capsule.

Opening his mouth, he bit down.

The stored solar energy surged through his body, absorbed by his cells.

But this time, he did not allow it to simply replenish his strength.

Instead, he directed all of it toward his brain, channeling every ounce of energy to enhance his mental processing.

At that moment, Bardi felt an intense pressure swell within his skull.

His mind expanded.

It was as if the floodgates of his consciousness had burst open, his synapses firing at an unimaginable rate.

The entire world around him seemed to shift—hum—as if he had stepped into a clearer, more refined reality.

He became acutely aware of everything.

The exact composition of the air.

The microscopic movements of dust particles.

The warmth of the sunlight.

Even the way molecules vibrated around him.

It was all crystal clear.

An irresistible pull gripped his mind, like an ant itching at his consciousness, like a black hole drawing him toward the depths of knowledge.

This was understanding.

A rush of calculations, endless variables, a flood of thoughts flashing through his brain at breakneck speed.

Even the faint breeze stirring through the suite, Bardi could now calculate the precise number of dust particles it carried, track their trajectory, and predict exactly where they would settle.

His mind had become a supercomputer, firing at speeds beyond comprehension, surpassing a billion calculations per instant.

This was the level of cognition Superman had once displayed, able to read and memorize every medical textbook on Earth in just five minutes, mastering in moments what would take a human a decade to learn.

Now, Bardi could do the same.

Though his genes were flawed, his intelligence was unmatched.

He had broken past the limitations of Kryptonian biology, exceeding even the expectations of his own kind.

And under the sun's radiance, his brain already formidable was further strengthened, his synapses crackling with energy.

He took a moment to stabilize his thoughts, suppressing the sensation of his mind swelling beyond its limits.

Then, he spoke.

"Let's begin."

Zatara nodded.

"The most fundamental aspect of magic originates from spiritual power."

"If we compare it to the physical body, spiritual power is like the hands and feet, acting, shaping, and casting spells."

"The heart and brain represent the soul, its core essence."

"Magical bloodlines exist because they are naturally attuned to specific forms of magic, allowing spiritual power to be harnessed with greater efficiency..."

Zatara did not cloak his words in mystery.

Instead, he explained the foundations of magic in a way that made it accessible, using metaphors where necessary.

He detailed the requirements for spellcasting, the essential components, the significance of magical bloodlines, and how they influenced the user's abilities.

The sunlight bathed Bardi's face, illuminating his sharp features, casting a soft halo around him.

Silently, he listened.

Absorbing.

Processing.

In his mind, magic was taking shape, a system, a structure, a science.

To him, magic wasn't some unfathomable force.

It was merely another branch of science, one that dealt with the spirit and soul, intertwining the forces of nature, the universe, and the mind.

Of course, Bardi knew he couldn't wield magic himself.

He lacked the ability to cast spells.

But that didn't matter.

Because at its core, magic had rules.

And rules could be understood.

Zatara continued his explanation, and gradually, Bardi began to see it, the framework of magic itself.

It was no different from physics.

It followed the same principles, force meeting force, particle fluctuations, spell frequencies, infrasound wave manipulation.

The arrangement of runes and incantations in a magic circle—to Bardi, they resembled the circuitry of an electronic board.

It wasn't electricity that powered them.

It was spiritual energy, the soul, the activation of magical bloodlines.

This was what made magic so mysterious and unpredictable, its fluctuations in mental energy were too polymorphic, too elusive to be measured scientifically.

"The human spirit, the soul, has carried inherited information since ancient times, passed down through the mother's placenta. From birth, it absorbs vast amounts of knowledge from the natural world, embedding it into the bloodline. As individuals grow, this manifests in different magical affinities, some excel at controlling elements, others at manipulating animals and plants, and some at influencing the mind. Each bloodline is unique."

As Bardi listened, an unconscious thought surfaced.

On Krypton, all life forms were artificially engineered.

Kryptonians were not born from a mother's womb.

They did not inherit genetic information through the placenta, nor did they receive the ancestral imprints passed down through generations, those subtle, intrinsic transmissions that shaped the soul and mind of a species.

Kryptonians were powerful.

Yet their minds were an invisible weakness, easily manipulated by magic.

Perhaps there was a reason for this.

Their rigid genetic engineering had produced physically superior beings, but their souls had never undergone the natural process of inheritance, never received the instinctual knowledge that biological species acquired through the bond between mother and child.

If that was the case…

Was the Kryptonian mind fundamentally flawed?

Bardi considered the possibility.

Perhaps his ability to break free from Kryptonian genetic limitations was due to his soul, a reincarnated consciousness.

Perhaps Kryptonian-engineered beings followed a different developmental path.

Their bodies were shaped first, dictated entirely by genetics, while their consciousness and souls formed later, if they even fully formed at all.

It was a theory.

A strong one.

But Bardi wasn't yet certain.

Because this was only the beginning of his understanding of magic.

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Chapter 131

At night, darkness had already fallen. From the high-rise presidential suite of the Four Seasons Hotel, the bustling nightscape of Manhattan was still visible, illuminated by the dazzling city lights.

Zatara stepped out of the suite, his expression filled with disbelief and doubt. His brows furrowed slightly in confusion.

He had just explained the fundamental principles of magic to Bardi, breaking down the composition of spells and the effects of incantations.

There was no denying Bardi's intelligence, his ability to grasp new concepts, absorb information, and immediately apply it was astonishing. But at the same time, it left Zatara unsettled.

Because of Bardi's questions, he found himself unable to provide clear answers.

Having a difficult question to answer was one thing. After all, magic was inherently mysterious and full of inexplicable phenomena. That was something he had accepted since childhood.

However, when examined through a scientific lens, when considering every particle, every fluctuation, and every question Bardi posed, it all seemed strangely logical and justifiable.

Bardi's questions rattled him:

"If spiritual loops are guided by spiritual energy, can they be converted into raw power?"
"How much force does spiritual energy exert due to external friction?"
"From a physics standpoint, is magic driven by mental power?"
"If spiritual energy is a manifestation of the soul, does it behave as a wave or a particle?"
"Is the only difference between wave-like and particle-based spiritual energy just the speed of spellcasting?"
"Without the resonance of a magical bloodline, how long can pure spiritual energy remain active in the atmosphere?"
"Is spiritual energy itself a form of energy particle?"
"From a genetic perspective, does the existence of a magical bloodline indicate hereditary information?"
"Has anyone attempted to analyze magic from a scientific perspective?"
"Have you ever extracted and studied the genetic information of your own magical bloodline?"

Bardi's relentless inquiries shook the very foundation of Zatara's understanding of magic.

Magic was magic. It was enigmatic, filled with incomprehensible wonders. No one had ever truly deciphered its essence because magic, by its very nature, was mysterious.

Magic was supposed to be unknowable. Yet Bardi's reasoning was disturbingly convincing even Zatara found himself questioning if it might be correct.

The inheritance of magical bloodlines was something deeply arcane and unexplained. But to Bardi, nothing was beyond explanation. He dissected magic with a clarity that profoundly challenged Zatara's worldview.

According to Bardi, magic wasn't just something to be used, it could be understood at its core.

For generations, magicians had merely followed the spells left behind by their predecessors, making only minor, superficial modifications. The foundations remained unchanged, as if magic followed a fixed formula, an immutable rhythm set by the universe itself.

But Bardi's words struck like a bomb in Zatara's mind.

He was proposing a new rhythm for magic.

Magic, in Bardi's eyes, was just another branch of science.

And the terrifying part was, there were countless aspects of magic that Zatara couldn't even explain, he merely followed established incantations, sigils, and rituals passed down through generations.

He knew that misusing magic could lead to a backlash of spiritual energy, causing pain, injury, or even death.

But from Bardi's perspective, this was no different from a circuit board burning out due to an overload. That stripped magic of its mystery, making it feel far less arcane.

To him, modern magic was primitive, lacking innovation, creativity, and merely maintaining the knowledge of past sorcerers without further exploration.

There was too much mysticism attached to magic.

Take the summoning of heroic spirits, for example. Bardi theorized that in this world, the consciousness and information of past souls were imprinted within the planet's complex informational field. When frequencies aligned, one could extract the will of a heroic spirit, integrating its memories, emotions, and fragments of its existence into oneself.

It made perfect sense.

Zatara couldn't deny it, yet he felt conflicted. He lacked the scientific knowledge to fully grasp Bardi's logic, leaving him uneasy. However, he wasn't angry—Bardi wasn't trying to undermine magic's mystery but was offering a new perspective on it.

Zatara's entire worldview had been shaken.

Magic was like a goddess draped in elegant robes. But under Bardi's scrutiny, those robes were stripped away, revealing physical properties, electromagnetic reactions, emission dynamics, genetic information, kinetics, fluid mechanics, elemental particles, information theory, quantum mechanics…

Clues were everywhere, making Bardi's conclusions difficult to dismiss.

To him, magic wasn't mysterious.

It was merely knowledge, knowledge of spiritual energy, souls, and incantations now bringing Bardi immense enlightenment.

Magic reveals clues through science.

But it is a different kind of science, an ancient knowledge system distinct from Bardi's understanding, a separate framework for perceiving the world.

This framework could be called the ideal system.

Or, the soul system.

A way of perceiving reality, of comprehending the universe.

For the next week, Zatara continued to introduce Bardi to various forms of magic.

At first, he simply explained the basics, but time and again, Bardi countered with questions that blended scientific reasoning with magical principles, questions so precise that Zatara often found himself unable to answer. By the end, their discussions had evolved into something more: analyzing spellcasting mechanics, magical volatility, and effects. At times, Zatara even found himself humbly seeking Bardi's insight.

In just a few days, Bardi had become a theoretical master of magic. Though he lacked the ability to cast spells, his understanding of magic's principles was solid and precise.

His deep foundation in science made everything seem logical, well-supported, and incredibly professional. He was someone who seamlessly grasped both magic and science, an anomaly in the magical world, an extraordinary kind of magician.

Over these days, Bardi hadn't just absorbed Zatara's magical knowledge, Zatara's teachings merely provided a foundation.

What truly enriched him was the knowledge passed into his mind from Raven.

Raven came from Azarath, a lost magical world—a once-thriving, highly advanced mystical civilization far beyond Earth's magic. On that planet, magic was as common as technology was on Earth. Everyone was a magician. Magic wasn't just a skill; it was a fundamental part of life.

As a result, Bardi gained an even more extensive, detailed, and profound understanding of magic.

This gave him an unparalleled depth of magical knowledge. By the final day, he could even assess Zatara's strength with clarity.

From subtle magical cues, he could infer which disciplines Zatara had trained in and which spells he had mastered.

If he were to face the Zatara he encountered back on the island, he would now instantly understand how the Kabbalistic armor functioned, recognize the chanting frequencies in Zatara's incantations, and predict the precise mechanics of his magical formations.

If the current Bardi had been on that island, Zatara wouldn't have been able to escape within ten steps of him, he wouldn't have even had the chance to cast magic in midair.

The Magic System.

From a different perspective, from the lens of magic, Bardi gained a new understanding of himself.

And what he discovered was, his Kryptonian body was fundamentally unsuited for magic.

His genetically perfected physique, with its incredibly resilient genetic chain, completely restricted the external release of his spiritual power.

His raw spiritual energy was fully integrated into his genetic structure, manifesting as the cellular force field.

What people called flight, the manipulation of force fields, was actually just the interaction of mental energy within his cells, controlling the force field that allowed him to fly.

In other words, Bardi's soul, willpower, and spiritual energy were undoubtedly strong, but due to his body's force field, his spiritual power couldn't be externally projected. That meant he was inherently incapable of using traditional spiritual magic.

Essentially, it was like a magical bloodline but one with extremely low magical affinity. A total magic-rejecting physique.

A magic-wasted bloodline.

But Bardi didn't feel regret. Instead, he felt relieved.

Now that he understood his weakness, he knew he could correct it and in the future, he would perfect himself into a true god.

But for now, that would have to wait.

Because... time was running out.

There was no time to fix these flaws.

The time to face Trigon had arrived.