Countless Catochrists marched towards the city.

A mysterious masked man stood before them.

"Ryujeen...?"

"It's Ryujeen."

He was wearing a silver mask that emitted a beautiful radiance, but his build made it clear that it was G-rank adventurer Ryujeen from the newbie training program. (Despite wearing a mask, Ryu's outfit was the same, so it was obvious.)

The Catochrists, seeing Ryu standing in their way, unleashed their petrifying gas as if to get rid of him.

And...Ryu didn't even try to avoid it, he took the gas full on.

His body slowly turned to stone.

"I told him not to go out there! What is he doing?!" Iraira was annoyed, thinking that was it, but then something amazing happened.

Ryu's petrified body started to return to normal.

Then, in a flash, Ryu drew a menacing blade and began cutting the Catochrists down, one after another.

Even without petrifying gas, their tough feathers, scales, powerful beaks, and claws, strong enough to pierce steel, were terrifying. But Ryu was wielding a magic sword, or a holy blade, something that cut through the Catochrists like butter.

...

Thanks to the Silver Mask's valiant efforts, the Catochrists were wiped out, and the city was saved.

The Silver Masked Warrior restored Iraira's body, which had almost been completely petrified.

And the warrior revived the knights who had been turned to stone, one by one.

"Ugh...This is...

...Impossible. Normal healing magic can't cure petrification..."

"I've heard rumors that someone at the level of the Pope can use a status ailment removal spell that can cure petrification...but can Ryujeen use that level of healing magic?"

The truth was, Ryu hadn't used time rewind magic this time. He had tried using a technique to reverse the petrification itself. He thought it might work, and as expected, it was successful.

When the stampede had happened, the trainees had been forbidden from leaving the guild. Those who did would be disqualified from training and lose their adventurer status.

But of course, he didn't care. Ryu had left the guild. He'd been observing the knights fighting the Catochrists from a distance. He had been curious about the Catochrists' petrifying gas.

It petrified not only animals but also plants, which don't have lungs. So it wasn't as simple as just not breathing it. It even petrified inorganic materials like stone, earth, and metal. It couldn't be just a chemical substance like poison gas.

Ryu activated the Divine Eye and analyzed the gas the Catochrists breathed...it wasn't a physical gas, but a gas filled with mana, more like the majority of its components were mana.

And as he observed, he noticed something strange.

He used the Divine Eye to observe the petrified humans, and he realized that they weren't dead, even though their entire bodies had turned to pumice.

It was a strange state. Their bodies, from the inside out, were made of pumice, but they weren't dead. In fact, he could sense a faint consciousness, though it was weak.

Ryu scrutinized the mana in the petrifying gas using the Divine Eye. He realized that petrification occurred because the gas, which was a lump of mana, stayed inside the body and continued to act.

That meant that if you could remove the mana in the gas, you could reverse the petrification.

And somehow, he felt like he could reverse it. He couldn't explain it, but it felt similar to how he used space magic even though he had no mana normally.

The complex mechanism of how the petrifying gas, no, the petrifying mana turned its targets to stone was too complex for him to understand, but he felt like he could destroy and decompose that mana, turning it into nothing.

He tried it on a nearby petrified person, and their petrification was reversed, and they came back to life.

...

The Silver Masked Warrior walked around, healing the petrified knights. He was showered with words of gratitude as he revived one knight after another.

Then Nerina called out to him.

"Thank you, Ryujeen! You truly saved us. You're amazing!"

"Ryujeen? Who is that? I'm the mysterious masked man, Silver Mask!"

"Huh? No, but...yeah, kinda...?"

Knight: "Are you Ryujeen? Thank you, you saved us!"

"No, I am the mysterious man, Silver Mask!"

Next Episode

Silver Mask takes further action!

Stay tuned!