How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 90

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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How to Survive as the Second Son of a Magic Family (90)

“…Why isn’t he coming? There’s less than 10 minutes left now.”

Leo muttered while looking at his watch.

The two Class 1 students who went to the cafe would arrive soon, so that was fine, but Lucas should have been here by now.

“I should go check now. Wait here.”

At Leo’s words, Narke stood up from his seat.

“No, I’ll go check.”

Just then, the Class 1 students who arrived at their seats asked with puzzled faces.

“Huh? Where’s Narke going?”

“Oh, I’m going to look for Lucas.”

“What?! Lucas is missing? Without him…!”

“No~ He might come soon… I think it’s better to go check directly. I’ll be back quickly.”

“You have to come back fast! You know the coordinates over there, right? We ran back and forth because we didn’t know the cafe coordinates.”

“Hey, you can’t warp to the laboratory… Is there any chance our team gets disqualified?”

A Class 1 student stopped his friend.

Warping to the competition participants’ laboratory was prohibited.

It was a regulation to prevent people from falling onto other teams’ laboratory tables if they memorized the warp formula incorrectly.

Narke nodded with a smile.

“I know. I’ll run there and back quickly.”

* * *

Saying he’d run there and back wasn’t just empty words.

Narke ran with all his might and summoned Fai onto his shoulder.

“Uwaaah!”

Fai, hanging on his shoulder, barely managed to regain balance.

‘I don’t know for sure, but it seems like something’s wrong.’

In this situation, there was no need to unnecessarily warp and give grounds for disqualification.

The same goes for running with magic power in his legs. It was a natural regulation since accidents from running too fast were more frequent than warp accidents.

‘But… it’s fine as long as it doesn’t get caught by the magic detection network. There’s no problem if it’s not a person warping.’

―”Fai.”

“Huh?!”

―”Warp to our team’s laboratory. Lucas will probably need your help.”

“Really?! Got it!”

Narke chuckled at that energetic response and stood in front of the laboratory building.

When he departed, there were less than 8 minutes until the test started, so now the clock attached to the building showed 5 minutes before the competition began.

‘Hmm, the time is already…’

Just then, he made eye contact with someone.

The person standing on the first floor stairs confirmed Narke’s face and was startled, stepping back.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

“…”

Narke nodded at those words and headed toward his team’s laboratory. Meanwhile, the person standing on the first floor hurriedly left the building.

Narke looked in the direction where he had gone.

‘What a surprising situation.’

Someone who wasn’t a competition participant, another student from a participating school, or a teacher was involved in this situation.

And he knew for certain. Lucas was trapped in our team’s laboratory.

‘To deliberately trap the student who became the biggest topic of this competition…’

It hadn’t even been three days since Lucas caused a big stir in what used to be an unremarkable bonus point competition.

Though he had a guess about who was behind it, the idea was certainly surprising.

Click―

‘As expected.’

He tried turning the handle, but it wouldn’t open.

It was a common locking spell that prevented opening from both outside and inside.

It was magic that would automatically unlock after a certain time, and if solved with conventional dispelling methods, it would take nearly 10 minutes.

Of course, that was by other mages’ standards, and I could solve it in about 3 minutes, no, give me just 1 minute.

‘But if I destroy this… the evidence will disappear when we report it.’

It was just intuition, but Lucas seemed to have something in mind anyway.

If it were students’ pranks, he would just destroy it, but since it wasn’t, carelessly opening the door would surely mess up the future.

Even if it caused some commotion, it was better to leave this to Lucas’s judgment.

Narke turned his head.

Though not visible from here, there was a caretaker’s office at the end of the first floor hallway of the opposite building connected to this one.

‘It would be good to inform the people here about the situation.’

Just as he was about to go to the caretaker’s office, Fai climbed onto his shoulder again.

“Narke!”

―”What about Lucas?”

“He wants you to answer this question quickly. Yes or no?”

―”…Hmm…”

Actually, since I can’t see his face, it’s not exact, but given the situation, there’s only one thing he would ask.

―”It seems to be yes.”

“Got it!”

Fai warped and disappeared.

When Narke started running toward the caretaker’s office, Fai warped back to Narke’s shoulder again.

“Hmm~?”

“Narke, Lucas wants you to pass along a message.”

* * *

[The Round of 16 will begin in 2 minutes. All students are requested to remain at your positions.]

“…”

“Wh-wh-wh-what do we do? It’s time for them to come now.”

The Class 1 students trembled like aspen leaves.

The surrounding tables and spectator seats were also openly looking this way. It was natural since there were only three people when there should be five.

A Class 1 student asked Leo, who had a dark expression.

“What happened? Why did you say Lucas didn’t come?”

“…He said he was going to get past exam papers. He left them in the laboratory.”

“Th-that takes this long? It’s a 2-minute run there.”

“Exactly.”

That’s what I want to say. Leo sighed deeply and ran his fingers through his hair.

The Class 1 students muttered with pale faces.

“Narke said he’d run there and back, so why isn’t he coming?! It’s already been 5 minutes.”

“…This is terrible. We’ve basically forfeited already…”

The student’s face was so stiff that now even his voice was shrinking.

Leo shook his head.

“Let’s wait until the very end. If they still don’t come, we’ll have to manage somehow on our own. We can’t give up already.”

“…No way, we don’t know the formulas, how can we do it?”

“We don’t know nothing at all. We’ve all learned these things.”

Leo comforted them.

But even while doing so, he couldn’t shake off his anxiety.

‘…We’re the only regular school that made it to the Round of 16.’

If we practiced one formula 10 times, the specialized school students here probably practiced it 50 times.

Until now, we were able to maintain this pace thanks to me and Narke setting the framework while Lucas immediately provided the formulas.

‘Without Lucas… we can’t keep up the speed.’

Though he comforted them with words, the difficulty was real.

Moreover, everyone looked psychologically broken.

Perhaps lacking the energy to manage their expressions, the Class 1 students were biting their lips with pale faces.

Students from other specialized schools just watched us with faces that said they were about to witness something amazing. That seemed to amplify the anxiety even more.

‘What happened to Lucas?’

Otherwise, there was no reason he wouldn’t come even after 20 minutes had passed. He wasn’t the type to just skip out on his own.

“Only 30 seconds left now…!”

“…Hey, everyone… well, good work getting this far.”

At the Class 1 student’s dispirited words, Leo furrowed his brow.

“What?”

“Leo, you worked hard too. Students from other schools were wondering how far the team with royalty would climb, so you probably had more pressure than us.”

At those words, Leo frowned and said.

“No, don’t think about giving up already…”

[In a moment, we will begin the round of 16 for the 151st Bavaria High School 2nd Year Magic Potion Experiment Competition.]

Leo closed his mouth.

The students’ faces were already ashen.

With the situation like this, the journalists’ cameras that hadn’t bothered me before became particularly annoying. The murmuring of the spectators was the same. It was probably just noisy because the test hadn’t started yet, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were all talking about our team.

“…No.”

Leo whispered quietly as if steeling his resolve.

I shouldn’t be like this too.

Even with only three of us left, we had to do it without regrets. While the pre-start precautions were being announced, I had to encourage my friends and somehow try our best until the end.

In the distance, I could see the host picking up the microphone.

At that moment, a thin noise that seemed to tear at my ears rang out.

Beeeeeeeep―!

“Ah!”

“What?!”

Several tables simultaneously squinted their eyes.

The noise continued. The students’ faces became increasingly distorted.

‘…This isn’t microphone feedback?’

Wooooooong―

Now other alarm sounds began overlapping, and Leo covered his ears and looked up.

[A fire has occurred. Please evacuate immediately to the emergency exits.]

* * *

Back to the laboratory.

Whoooosh―

[A fire has occurred. Please evacuate immediately to the emergency exits.]

‘…Phew.’

Success.

I avoided the stream of water pouring down on my face and threw the three now-soaked and extinguished matches into the trash can.

‘Used them well.’

For melting the sprinkler solder, that is.

Actually, they were meant to be used with alcohol lamps, but what was the point of being picky now?

Since this was a laboratory, the sprinkler here was connected to the emergency alarm.

And through the window, I could see the same emergency alarm ringing in the gymnasium.

‘…It’s really ringing all the way over there.’

Though they weren’t connected buildings, it seemed to be because they were right next to each other.

As soon as I thought that, the emergency alarm stopped.

Actually, considering it would ring all the way there, I had warped Fai to Narke.

‘I couldn’t evacuate 10,000 people just to report that someone was trapped here.’

I had asked Narke to ‘go straight to the caretaker’s office,’ and fortunately Fai seemed to have properly conveyed my request.

‘Actually, I thought about waiting for Narke…’

If time was wasted on various processes, time would definitely be tight, so I couldn’t just wait for him to come.

And it really would have been late by just a few seconds.

When I triggered the sprinkler, the clock hand was already pointing to 30 seconds before the test started.

Of course, melting the solder wasn’t just because of that.

Bang― Crash―!

“Lucas!”

Beyond the rain-like pouring water, there was Narke laughing as if amused.

Unlike him, I could see the laboratory caretaker standing beside him with a serious face.

‘Is it because I damaged property when there wasn’t even a fire?’

“No.”

Narke cut off my thoughts with a single word.

Just then, the caretaker raised his voice so as not to be drowned out by the sound of water and asked.

“How long have you been trapped here?! Do you know who did this?”

“Since 20 minutes ago. I don’t know who did it.”

“Goodness… The start has been delayed because of the alarm right now. Run.”

At those words, Narke grabbed me and ran.

As I exited the building, I glanced back and muttered.

“…I should contribute to the fire department budget here.”

“Haha, that’s really strange to hear from a high school student’s mouth.”

Really?

I thought this guy, being from a noble family, wouldn’t know reality either.

Like that, squeezing out all my strength to run, I was able to reach the participant entrance inside the gymnasium in 3 minutes.

“…!”

“Oh, oh!”

In the distance, at our team’s table, two Class 1 students and Leo were looking this way with surprised eyes.

Since everyone already knew that two people had disappeared from our team, other teams were showing similar reactions.

One Class 1 student left his seat and came running.

“Waaaah! Why are you only coming now! I really thought it was over like this…”

“Sorry. I was trapped in the laboratory.”

“Huh?!”

“I’ll explain later. How many minutes until it starts?”

“Hey, it was postponed by 10 minutes right before the test started. Isn’t the timing amazing?!”

Leo, who had been listening to the conversation between the Class 1 student and me, sighed with a face that aged ten years, then looked me up and down.

“…Why is your gown wet? Don’t tell me this…”

“What.”

“You set off the alarm?! No way, right?”

“Wow, that’s generally a hard thought to have, but you’ve adapted now~”

“…”

At Narke’s words, Leo laughed, now drained in a different sense.

He was probably thinking about evacuating 10,000 people and such.

It couldn’t be helped, but I understood since I wasn’t comfortable with that part either.

Leo seemed to just give up and asked me a different question.

“…So, what do you mean you were trapped in the laboratory?”

“Exactly what I said.”

“Who, don’t tell me someone did that to prevent you from coming?”

Leo said that while looking around at the surrounding students.

Our team’s students also seemed to have the same thought now, as their expressions were hardening.

“…What? To make our team drop out…!”

“Who knows.”

That was my first thought too. In case the culprit was a student from another school.

Since I had broken everyone’s expectations by taking first place in the academic competition, students from other schools couldn’t have dismissed the praise my teammates were giving me about this experimental competition’s results as mere nonsense.

‘If the culprit was a student from another school, I could just consider it kids doing crazy things because their brains aren’t fully developed yet…’

The real problem is the other case.

What if Hyung, who has been constantly bothering me ever since traces of Pleroma appeared in the Papal States, was trying to find out whether I can use magic or was trying to make me spend the remaining week at home?

‘Is Hyung involved in this incident in any way?’ That’s what I asked Narke.

And I heard the answer ‘Yes.’

When I turned my gaze to the right, I could see cameras from various news agencies and cameras for recording and broadcasting the test.

I simply shook off my wet gown and hair. With my appearance in this state, and since the organizers would soon come out to investigate the truth, news that I was the one who set off the sprinkler would spread quickly, and it would probably reach Hyung’s ears too.

‘Good.’

That’s what I wanted when I set it off anyway.

If Hyung truly was trying to find out whether I can or cannot use magic, I have no intention of giving him the answer he wants.

‘And earlier, I thought I just needed to make it to the quarterfinals…’

That didn’t work out.

Now that it’s come to this, there’s no way I can end it here.

“Hey guys.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not thinking of ending it at the quarterfinals, right?”

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