That denial led to the biggest turning point of the story: the Terminalia Festival.
The Terminalia is held every New Year, when the Magia Vander reinforce the barrier over the false sky that protects humanity from the Celestial Host and the darkness beyond, with the entire country celebrating across all races and classes.
During this festival, though, the Gothia cult launched a coordinated invasion, opening portals across Regarden to flood the city with monsters, all with the aim of destroying the false sky. They used mage slayer swords, which negate magic. What made things worse was that the Magia Vander were out of commission after redoing the barrier. So one of the main lines of defense was the mages from the school.
The threat was so real that the tower even broke its own laws, allowing the dwarves to join the fight despite it being forbidden for them to wield weapons.
But things went from worse to tragic when the Gothia cult introduced a monster that makes the Grand Duke look like a tutorial boss. The Devander.
For context, the Grand Duke came from around the twentieth to twenty-fifth floor of the dungeon. The Devander comes from the fortieth floor. It has killed Magia Vander in the past, and it possesses the ability to absorb the energy of fallen monsters to evolve even further. Because the entire city was already a battlefield, there was endless mana and death surrounding it, meaning the Devander just kept getting stronger, evolving into a form that neither magic nor brute force could damage.
So what was needed? Wand and sword. Will entered the fight, and he was pretty shaken by the devastation.
At least his best friend Rusty was okay.
And then Rusty wasn't. Will's roommate dissolved into blue mist, exactly the way an ice clone dissolves.
The only other person who can use those spells besides Julius is Elfaria.
Nothing about this is stated outright, but there is a ninety-nine percent chance that Rusty was never human. He was literally a magical puppet the entire time, a super high-level magical construct secretly controlled by Elfaria from the top of the tower. Meaning that this entire time, Elfie had basically been remote-piloting a fake roommate just to stay close to her boy. Watching over him. Living with him. Bathing with him every night.
You know what that means. Elfie is more down bad for Will than he is for her.
The moment Rusty died, Elfaria opened her eyes at the top of the tower.
Meanwhile, the battlefield only got worse, as Will's spirit shattered after losing Rusty, and then after seeing Professor Workner seemingly sacrifice himself to save him. With his dying breath, Workner told Will what he had always wanted to hear.
"You can use magic, my boy."
Sadly, he didn't finish his sentence on what Will's magic truly is. But Finn arrived and told Will that Workner, even wounded like that, would somehow live.
More importantly, Finn dropped a massive bombshell, finally giving Will the tutorial on how to use his innate power. It doesn't come from mana. It doesn't come from emotions. All he needs is a silver light, meaning a sword, and a little willpower, meaning his heart. That internal energy is what fuels Wis, which means that every time Will fights for somebody, protects somebody, or refuses to give up, his power grows stronger.
Because Will's true magic is courage. Colette had been right all along.
Will was skeptical, since courage can't actually manifest into magic. However, Finn dropped his sword to the ground, charged it up with his blood, and then laid down words Will would never forget.
"Those who cannot change themselves will never have any hope of changing the world. You're a sword who wants to become a wand. Chase the horizon, but remember your roots."
And with those words, Will's memories of what he was fighting for flashed through his mind. In an instant, Will once again leveled up, pushing past everything. His limiters came off.
This transformation is absolutely ridiculous. Unlike his previous activations of Wis, where he primes existing magic, this is a complete removal of any physical limits placed on him. Finn's blood itself can also be seen as a power that represents the pinnacle of physical prowess, and now Will had primed and absorbed it, making it his own.
Another way to look at this transformation is that Finn's blood is the key to Will's true sword self, and Mercedes is the key to unlock his wand self. Once both are unlocked and mastered, Will will truly become sword and wand.
For now, though, in this form, Will's hair grew longer and turned completely white, while his entire body radiated with overwhelming aura.
The second this happened, the entire battlefield changed. Will obliterated the invading monster army almost instantly, basically ramming through them and erasing them. Every one of them became a joke. And then he turned his attention toward the Devander.
By this point, with his limiters off, all the students, even those who had looked down on him, were now cheering for Will to save them.
But this fight was no joke. The two of them went head to head, and the Devander's skin was just too tough, which caused Will's sword to break.
Then, during this final clash, Will's number one supporter and future wife, Elfaria, finally intervened directly from the top of the tower.
As though the two of them shared some spiritual connection, she fired a specialized ice spell all the way down toward Will. Synchronized, Will primed his broken sword and formed an ice blade, the Albis Wis.
Fully charged with Elfaria's magic, and with his limiters off thanks to Finn, Will at this point was both sword and wand. So what is usually impossible was now possible. And this sword is absurd, because it can directly cut through mage slayer weapons, meaning even anti-magic defenses can't stop it, which then allowed him to unleash one of the strongest spells seen so far, Fruzil Cardinia.
With that attack, Will finally killed the Devander.
After this battle, everything changed permanently, because there was no more denying Will. No more calling him a failure. No more dismissing him as dead weight. This is the moment his reputation as the laggard officially died. The students who mocked him now respected him. The professors who doubted him acknowledged him. Even the Magia Vander themselves began recognizing Will as a genuine force capable of changing the world.
And what makes the next part even crazier is that after saving the city, Will still had to prove himself yet again.
For now, though, Will had done it. There are two ways to qualify to advance to the tower. One is to earn seven thousand two hundred credits, which Will had failed to do. But the second way is to invent a new spell, which Will had technically done with the spell of courage.
So after five years, he was about to be reunited with his girl, and they could finally see the sunset together.
Before he headed up, the dwarves gave him a brand-new violet blade called Wis Set Silver. A new sword for a new adventure.