What Happens In The Dark Mage Return To Enlistment Spoiler?

Power Fantasy with twist. This dark mage is anything but the typical edgy anti-hero. He’s pretty much all business and is very pragmatic in how he deals with things. He’s even somewhat amiable to those around him. Watching him manipulate the enlistment system and eventually take over is fun. Most of his initial work in the Story is detail oriented and tedious such as polishing magic cannons, but he manages to tweak them to make them vastly overpowered. His interactions with other characters are great as well, especially with the gruff drill sergeant who begins to suspect that something is amiss with this recruit. Their exchanges are both tense and very funny.

The meat of the novel is in the world-building. As the dark mage protagonist begins to investigate the darker side of the military’s control of magic, he discovers that there have been terrible experiments performed on conscripts in order to augment their magical abilities. As he joins the rebellion against the wicked military authorities, he finds himself increasingly fighting for a just cause. The final battle is immense, with the dark mage summoning an army of undead warriors, including a legendary king. And in a twist, the heads of the military beg him to join them in fighting an even greater threat. Is the dark mage of the title wicked, or is it the system he is rebelling against?

I found another web novel, ‘The Dark Mage Returns to Enlistment’. At first glance it appears to be a very typical reincarnation story. Dark mage from another world, transported to a world of magic, except instead of being celebrated, magic is now a highly controlled force, and most of it is restricted to military enlistment. However, as the story progresses it takes a very sharp turn for the unexpected. The main character is slowly re-building his strength, and trying to hide his true nature as a dark mage. It’s quite entertaining in the early stages, but then he is slowly revealed to be manipulating events to his advantage while hiding his true identity.

It’s gotten a lot more tense after he was found out by the military. In one of the best parts of the story so far, he’s sent to a war game simulation where he “by accident” unleashes a few illegal spells and wipes out the entire enemy team. The folks who run the war games are absolutely horrified, and spend the rest of the arc trying to figure out whether or not he intended to do what he did. Later, he makes a sort-of deal with a group of disaffected military personnel who are keen to cause some unrest. That’s led to some great politics-intrigue storytelling, and the ending was very bittersweet for the protagonist. After regaining his title of “Dark Mage”, he’s destroyed a bunch of friendships. We’re left with a cliffhanger that suggests that he’s going to topple the entire system of magic-in-the-military, and I’m highly looking forward to that.

This was a very funny story that also had a lot of depth to it. The mage’s deadpan reactions to the most obvious bureaucratic red tape (i.e., filling out paperwork to use “approved” spells) were just the best. But then, in a rather large spoiler, the mage started up a secret training program for “forbidden” magic within the military and had a group of recruits who adored him, never realizing they were just being used as pawns by the mage. But the twist didn’t make the mage a bad guy. Instead, it raised a very interesting question about whether or not it was worth doing bad things to bring down corrupt systems. And the story ended on a rather open note, implying that the mage’s actions would have a rather large impact and possibly even be the spark for a magic revolution.