DC: Rise of the Kryptonian Tyrant

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.

W

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.

***

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