How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 199

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

How to Survive as the Second Son of a Magic Family (199)

“…What is this?”

The professors watching the situation from the examiner waiting room all widened their eyes simultaneously.

The scene they were witnessing was not easily understood. No, it was an incomprehensible sight.

One professor stared blankly at the screen and spoke as if he didn’t know what he had just seen.

“Cover his eyes during an exam?”

“….”

In the video, Student Lucas retightened the loosened cloth and began conversing with his teammates.

Meanwhile, in Team 1’s video….

All the students were frozen around Student Narke with shocked expressions on their faces.

The Professor from 1st Education Institute who was in charge of the main examination unconsciously muttered.

“…There was a breakthrough.”

“There was indeed.”

The Professor from 2nd Education Institute in the back row continued his words. It was Professor Johannes Rohn, the homeroom teacher of Class 2.

The Professor from 1st Education Institute nodded as if entranced.

There was a breakthrough.

None of the professors had expected there to be a breakthrough.

They hadn’t even thought of such an option.

Without realizing it, the corners of the Professor from 1st Education Institute’s mouth gradually rose. He opened his mouth as if to confirm what he had seen once more.

“…If he covers his eyes, his mind would be filled with confusion. A battle mage who had been blind for a long time could act skillfully even in situations where he couldn’t see well, but for that student who isn’t, everything will be imprinted as important information.”

“That would be the case.”

Even a single breeze brushing past his ear would be received sensitively.

If so, the information that Student Narke Farnese reads would not be judgments about the field or strategic conversations with teammates, but would be filled with external environmental risk factors surrounding Student Ascanien.

For example, something catching on his toes, or a teammate’s mana being felt behind his back.

Completely useless information.

Not only useless, but information that would interfere with Student Narke’s movements.

Wouldn’t it be like solving exam problems while someone whispers useless words in your ear?

“….”

“Hehe… Well now.”

Someone who had been staring blankly at the screen, at a loss for words, burst into hollow laughter and shook his head.

He had properly landed a blow.

Not only had he landed a blow on Team 1, but also on the faculty watching this match.

Now Team 3 was no longer a team destined for defeat.

Student Lucas Ascanien’s unexpected judgment had transformed this one-sided game destined for loss into a game worth playing.

‘It was the same during the 2nd exam.’

From our examiner’s perspective, it was an easy problem, but for students who hadn’t experienced real combat, it was a perplexing difficulty level, which he solved instantly from our perspective.

Moreover, no matter how seasoned a mage might be, if they had to be dropped into Chukspitze with no preparation, no guidance, and deal with two rampagers with their bare body, they probably wouldn’t have been able to make judgments as well as that student in that situation.

That wasn’t the quick thinking and judgment that students who hadn’t been using magic for even 20 years could show.

Moreover, unlike other students, hadn’t that student just started learning magic?

‘He’s a raw gem.’

Accurate and swift judgment that rivals—sometimes surpasses—the experience of those who have been in the field for a long time, the ability to come up with answers that no one else could find in less than a minute, and the boldness to take on risks without a moment’s hesitation for greater gain.

This is exactly what talent is.

Everything else pales in comparison to this.

The talent I had confirmed previously in Chukspitze was neither my mistake nor coincidence.

The Professor from 1st Education Institute’s gaze continued to follow Ascanien.

Then, Professor Johannes Rohn in the back row muttered while watching the screen.

“He really resembles him.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Ernst.”

The professors’ gazes turned to him. The Professor from 1st Education Institute spoke thoughtfully.

“Hmm, I heard that he greatly helped in getting you out, Professor.”

“Yes, that’s right. Even in a situation where no method to prove innocence was visible, he proved my innocence.”

“Ah, it’s a similar situation. Even now, no answer is visible…. To say he resembles someone who helped you, Professor, would be praise that would make the student very happy. If we polish him well at our foundation, that friend will also become like Ernst.”

At those words, the professors nodded with pleased expressions.

During this time, the eyes of the 2nd year Class 2 homeroom teacher never left the screen.

The Professor from 1st Education Institute also looked back at the screen and said.

“Since Team 1’s initial plan has collapsed, they’ll have to pull out a different plan, but now they have no choice but to face Team 3 directly. Starting with all their established plans rendered useless, we’ll be able to judge both teams’ abilities in their raw form.”p>

The professors, who had been colored by bewilderment and surprise, nodded with serious faces as if nothing had happened. Even so, some excitement remained faintly from the earlier impact.

The Professor from 1st Education Institute who had been in charge of the main examination looked at them with gleaming eyes.

“This is just the beginning, so let’s watch carefully.”

* * *

Lucas slightly lifted the bandage covering his eyes to look at his friends.

He could see the light of hope on his teammates’ faces.

They could have made expressions asking why he would go to such lengths, but perhaps because they had experienced a hopeless situation once, such criticism didn’t come. Instead, only the thought that ‘we’re now in a situation worth trying’ seemed to dominate their minds.

‘Good confidence.’

Lucas smiled at his teammates.

Then, the exam start notification sound came from the artifact hanging by his ear.

[Notice. A residual damage report has been received. Three secondary rampage victims have been confirmed in the area. Please promptly rescue the victims and warp them to the Imperial Central Hospital. Notice again….]

Now it was really the full-scale beginning.

Lucas turned around, untied the cloth, and retied it tightly.

He could feel his teammates moving behind him to observe the situation below.

Since he couldn’t see ahead, he was concentrating on the flow of mana, and through this method, he could easily tell where people were.

This was actually thanks to Leo too.

Thanks to Leo’s persistence in not ending training even after pushing him until sweat flowed into his eyes and he could no longer see ahead, his ability to identify opponents’ positions through mana flow instead of sight had been trained to avoid getting hit by mana.

‘Thinking about it makes me angry, that bastard….’

Anyway, thanks to that, he could use it like this, so he would make good use of it.

Lucas thought this way and concentrated on the air currents around him. As soon as he finished preparing, Cheringen’s voice was heard.

“Lucas.”

“What?”

“Amazing. I didn’t expect you to cover your eyes though.”

“Me too. Lucas, what are you really?!”

Oswald jumped over to Lucas’s side with an excited voice.

“What do you mean what? If I can’t stop thinking ahead, I just won’t look. Right?”

“Hahaha! …Yeah, that’s right. As expected, Lucas, you always….”

“Always?”

“No.”

Lucas could feel Cheringen’s mana pressing toward his face.

Based on past experience, it was obvious what he wanted. Lucas lightly slapped his hand.

Then Cheringen’s cheerful laughter was heard.

“Let’s do well once more.”

“Yeah.”

“Ah~ Guys. It’s touching, but we need to assess the situation first.”

Elias clapped his hands to focus their attention.

“You can tell at a glance what kind of field this is, right? Team 1 must have figured this out too, so I’ll just tell Lucas. This is Berlin, and there’s one more Town Square Clock Tower to the east.”

“One more?”

“Yeah. It’s like they copied part of the city center and pasted it right next to it. Or maybe they reversed it.”

“It’s reversed. The second hand of that clock tower over there is turning the opposite way.”

That was Auguste’s voice.

“Oh~ Good observation.”

“Not really. There’s the Spree River to the north, and to the south… nothing much to see. To the west, there’s the Reichstag and the Victory Column. Beyond the Victory Column, there’s a barrier so you can’t see. To the east is Alexander Plaza, and there’s the city hall building there, right? There’s one more of that next to it. It seems to be duplicated with Alexander Plaza as the boundary.”

“Mm, good.”

Victory Column to the west, Alexanderplatz city hall to the east. And then the plaza’s city hall, Victory Column.

So this is the structure.

This range should be enough.

Lucas nodded slightly and gestured.

“Alright, guys. Cast sound-blocking magic and revise the strategy first.”

“How did you know we need to revise our strategy~? Well then, see you later~”

Elias flicked his finger.

Lucas doesn’t need to know the strategy. We’ll take him along directly.

It seemed somewhat unreasonable, but it was all what he wanted. Anyway, Lucas could come up with quality countermeasures even after something confronted him directly, and only this way could they prevent the insane situation where Narke would read thoughts in advance and position team members in front of us. No matter how much Narke could read thoughts, she couldn’t avoid surprise attacks.

Elias left Lucas behind and approached the team members, opening his mouth.

“Now, we have a total of three victims to find. There’s no way to confirm the victims’ locations, and this tower will close in 5 minutes, no, 4 minutes now.”

At those words, Oswald laughed and said nonsense.

“Ah, it would be nice if we could just stay here.”

“That would be too advantageous~ But the school is closing, so what can we do. Anyway, if the field is this wide, even your sense of smell has limits, right Oswald? It’s not like we have someone capable of finding even approximate locations here.”

Elias looked around at the team members with a playful smile.

“So, you know what we need to do, right?”

Julia raised her eyebrows with a confident smile. The other team members’ expressions weren’t much different.

Elias grinned and stared at the distant clock tower, saying.

“From now on, let’s go find Team 1’s Heike Einsiedel.”

Team 1 will definitely utilize Haike’s unique ability.

The ability to read the past of objects – isn’t that perfectly optimized for this field? The school deliberately set up multiple rampage incidents without telling us which streets had rampage incidents. If we know where the rampages occurred, we can roughly know the locations of secondary victims too.

We naturally have no intention of just drooling while watching that great ability.

* * *

“Bandages~?!”

Narke, who had been using her ability while holding her head, suddenly shouted and pulled out the medical kit she had stored in her waist clutch, emptying it.

Gauze bandages that could wrap around a head three times and still have some left came into her hands.

“…Ha… haha.”

It was so absurd that laughter kept spilling out.

Without needing explanation, Team 1 members who saw it understood what had happened.

Hildegard, who had come up from Team 4, pressed her forehead and turned around.

“…Damn it….”

“No, who the hell thinks of covering their eyes during an exam?! Are his eyes really covered? Narke isn’t misreading, right?”

Ulrike, who had been frozen in bewilderment, burst into laughter and looked back and forth at the students. She seemed to hope someone would say something positive.

However, no one answered. Ulrike gave up and let out a hollow laugh while spinning around in place.

“…I felt it during the competition too… but that guy really isn’t ordinary. Really? This is really happening?”

“Whew….”

Leo, who had been pressing his brow, took a deep breath and looked around at the team members with sharp eyes.

“…It’s already happened. It’s more surprising that Ascanien wasn’t prepared for even that. Let’s quickly re-establish our strategy first.”

The students gathered around Leo again with serious faces.

This can’t end like this.

Anyway, this also means one person is out from Team 3’s forces. We are six and they are five.

Even if not, since all of them were confident in their skills, even if they had to face six, there would be no problem.

They just wouldn’t gain an advantage.

There was enough time to return to basics and start over.

“We’ve prepared dozens of countermeasures so far, but our preparation for the possibility of not extracting meaningful information from Ascanien’s thoughts was insufficient. Then you know what we need to do now.”

“We need to think about how Team 3 will move.”

Heike Einsiedel said quietly.

Thinking about how we’ll move first would be foolish.

We need to know how the opponent will move.

Leo ran his hand through his hair and closed his eyes.

Then, after a moment, he opened his mouth.

“Good. First, Team 3 will mark you, Heike Einsiedel.”

“….”

Haike nodded.

“Lucas and Oswald, who trained with you for the past two weeks, know that you can read memories by touching objects. They don’t have anyone with unique abilities capable of finding victims in this extensive field. That means they’ll come toward this area where our team is.”

“Right.”

“Now let’s think about Ascanien. Lucas Ascanien will stay as far back as possible. Since he might unknowingly rack his brain and come up with some strategy while briefly removing the blindfold, he’ll try to keep it on continuously. Since he can’t see, direct fighting would be too difficult.”

Leo looked at the team members and lowered his voice.

“We can’t let him hide his body like that.”

“Right.”

“Exactly. So you’re thinking of sending one or two to find Ascanien? I’ll go.”

Leo was momentarily speechless.

Does she think she can win? Even with his eyes covered, Lucas is still Lucas. His skills aren’t something just anyone can break.

Of course, he couldn’t say that out of courtesy.

Leo shook his head with the same expression as before.

“Not at all. Act as if Ascanien doesn’t exist. Don’t even worry about him.”

At those words, the team members exchanged glances.

Then?

If we just remove Ascanien’s blindfold, victory would be right around the corner. Even if he tries not to think, he’ll find the answer, and from the moment we destroy and block that answer first, that team will lose pace and walk the path to defeat.

Besides, didn’t Leo also say earlier that ‘we can’t let him hide his body’?

But now he’s saying not to even worry about him?

The students’ questioning gazes turned to Leo.

Leo looked at them with an unperturbed face, as if he had expected even that.

“Haike.”

“Yeah.”

“From now on, east is south.”

“…?”

Haike’s mouth, which had shown no expression change, fell open.

The team members looked at Leo with bewildered eyes.

* * *

A street emptied due to the aftermath of the rampage incident.

Elias’s eyes were fixed on the sliding window in the corridor of an empty commercial building.

Two Team 1 students were visible outside. It was worth bringing Oswald to his side instead of deploying him for victim search.

Elias crouched down, brought his wand to the window gap, held his breath and counted.

‘Three, two…. One.’

Crack—! Crash—!

“Ah!”

“What?!”

“J-just now… something flew from above. The artifact broke…!”

“What?!”

The Team 1 student next to him quickly set up a barrier at the tip of his wand and raised it toward the sky. He was clearly trying to find where the magic came from and where the Team 3 student was.

‘That won’t work.’

Elias put his finger to his mouth, cast sound-blocking magic, and recited an incantation.

[But Yahweh knows all the ways I go.]

Blue mana got caught in the guidance magic formula, writhing intensely as it went under the barrier and surged up to the other student’s ear.

Crash—!

“Ugh! What?! Where are you?!”

“You got hit too?! “

Hearing that sound, Elias whistled and ran down to the lower floor.

Oswald could be seen gesturing quickly from the back gate, telling them to hurry over.

“Okay~ Two down~”

[Wow, you already broke two? Elias is doing well~]

Julia’s gentle voice could be heard.

Elias smiled and started showing off.

“What’s the foundation of combat? Shooting? Numbers?”

[Just focus.]

Despite Lucas’s scolding, Elias paid no mind and continued whistling as he spoke.

“Information, that’s what~ You need to know things to win.”

[…Right, well done.]

Lucas’s slightly resigned laughter could be heard.

“But Lucas, why did you connect the artifact? If Narke finds out, she’ll come to stop us immediately.”

[We were doing well but must have overlooked something, because if the connection cuts off, they’ll know right away too.]

“That’s true~ So? Why do you think Julia connected your line? There must be more to it than just that.”

[Haha, you’re quick, Elias. You should come here now.]

Between the two clock towers, next to Alexanderplatz, stood the Grand Hotel.

Julia, who had been crouched low on the hotel rooftop, touched the artifact at her ear and spoke to Elias.

On one side of the street Julia was looking down at, Heike Einsiedel was kneeling with her hands on the ground. Even though the hotel wasn’t very tall and didn’t offer a view very far, she was still within visible range.

Heike Einsiedel stood up from her position and placed her hand on her artifact.

“…Found it. West from the starting point. Below Alexanderplatz.”

Though faint, when she concentrated mana in her ears, she could clearly hear it.

Heike said this and waited at that spot for her teammates for quite a while.

The meaning was clear.

A rampage incident had occurred at that location, and there were still unrescued secondary victims in the area.

Julia, who had been watching him continuously, spoke to Elias.

“Elias, I found the location.”

[Good. Where is it?]

“Two blocks south from the Grand Hotel. That’s north from your position.”

[Good. I’ll be there within a minute.]

Julia smiled at those words and continued looking down.

‘…Hmm.’

That’s strange.

It had been over two minutes since Einsiedel contacted his teammates, but no one was coming.

Even looking far into the distance, there was no one.

“I don’t hear anyone coming.”

Just then, Lucas, who had been sitting beside her, spoke as if reading Julia’s mind.

“Right. I was wondering about that too, and sure enough, something’s off. Elias.”

[Huh?]

“Wait for now. It might be a trap. I’ll contact you again when Team 1 members come here.”

“No.”

Lucas shook his head.

Then he slightly lifted his eyepatch to check where Heike was standing.

“Elias, take Oswald and head north immediately.”

* * *

“…Wow~ They’re fast as expected.”

Narke lifted her head to look beyond the building.

East is south.

What could that mean?

It meant exactly that. East is south and south is east. And west is north, while north is west.

It was a plan to confuse the Team 3 students who could be hiding anywhere.

Narke placed her hand on her artifact and said with a smile.

“Leo. Lucas already figured it out. You’d better come quickly~”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————