Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy - Chapter 530
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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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Chapter 530
His friends sent wary glances, thinking Lee Han was testing them.
However, Lee Han looked at his friends with genuine puzzlement and asked again.
“What are you all doing here?”
“You…”
“Forced us to…”
“We were fighting…?”
Lee Han paused at his friends’ resentful answers.
“I forced you to fight?”
“Yeah.”
“What nonsense.”
Lee Han chuckled.
“Are you guys the type to listen when forced?”
“…”
“…”
His friends felt breathless with indignation.
What was more frustrating was that his words were somewhat true.
It was right, but…
It was right, but…!
“Lee Han really did make us do it!!”
Gainando shouted with a voice full of injustice.
“Look at this!!”
“?”
Lee Han looked at the blue bruise around Gainando’s eye and asked.
“Did you get that from fighting?”
“No. This is from when that White Tiger Tower student hit me while dodging an attack earlier. Not that, but here, my clothes. My clothes are torn.”
“I see. The fight wasn’t very intense then?”
The students reacted violently to Lee Han’s words.
“No!”
“That prince bastard was just lucky!”
“Don’t you see the bandages right now!”
At the heated outcries, Lee Han waved his hand as if understanding.
“I get it. I get it. Wait… ugh.”
Lee Han belatedly felt a headache coming on.
Like recalling events from sleepwalking after the fact, the sensation of severed memories returning flooded over him.
Drinking suspicious spring water, suddenly having his mind filled with certainty, calling his friends and rushing here…
“Huh. Why did I do that?”
“…”
“…”
Some of the students wanted to curse but held back.
If they cursed, the Wardanaz from earlier might reappear and attack them.
Yoner asked with a worried voice.
“Lee Han. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. It seems the duration has completely ended. Knowing the future is certainly dangerous…”
Knowing something intellectually and experiencing it directly were indeed different.
After being enchanted by the future once, he could feel that the blind sensation wasn’t entirely positive.
Someone might ask what was so wrong about moving along the optimal path toward the most rational future, but…
‘That’s not necessarily good.’
Seeing his friends around him with bandages and splints made him think it could indeed be dangerous.
“From what I can see, predicting the future really does seem dangerous. Wardanaz.”
“I think so too. We mages need to be even more humble.”
Seeing the White Tiger Tower students, who usually had no interest in magic, talking at length showed they had definitely developed a fear of prophecy magic.
Yoner spoke up to change the atmosphere.
“But looking at the positive side… we somehow broke through the obstacle! It would have been impossible without that spring.”
“Meikin. My ankle is broken.”
“Meikin. My neck won’t turn sideways since earlier.”
Pretending not to hear his friends’ words, Yoner pointed ahead.
“Aren’t you all curious about what’s behind there? Such a strong enemy was blocking the path? There must be treasures left by the upperclassmen.”
“Certainly…”
Even the students who had been groaning from their injuries perked up with interest.
Having spent nearly a year at Einroguard, the students’ common sense had crumbled quite a bit.
Even with broken ankles and twisted necks that wouldn’t turn, they would check for loot first.
“Right?”
Realizing his friends’ mood had reversed, Yoner nodded.
Then he whispered to Lee Han.
“But what’s inside there?”
“I don’t know either.”
“…Huh?”
“I don’t know either. I haven’t been inside.”
“…”
Enhanced-prophecy Lee Han had intuitively judged that ‘the most urgent thing to do now is defeat the statue, break through the underground passage, and find what the upperclassmen left behind,’ but Lee Han with the effects worn off couldn’t understand why he had made that judgment.
“Maybe there are records left by upperclassmen about the exam they took first?”
“That would be… kind of disappointing.”
“What? What could be more important than that?”
Lee Han was shocked at Yoner’s statement.
What could be more important to a student than study-related information?
“I hope there’s meat. Pork.”
“I’d prefer alcohol.”
“Then pork marinated in alcohol?”
“No. You idiots. You can get meat anywhere. Sweet stuff is the best! Cake.”
“Prince, you ate candy during the day too, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t?”
“No. You did. You showed off waving it in front of us.”
“…I didn’t?”
Hearing the conversation from behind, Lee Han said firmly.
“Those guys are the weird ones.”
‘Lee Han, you’re a bit weird too…’
Yoner thought so but swallowed it for the sake of his struggling friend.
* * *
Creeeeak-
Fortunately, there were no particular traps after the statue disappeared. The students carefully opened the heavy door and entered.
The large underground space that had been used as the upperclassmen’s storage smelled of dry dust.
“Wind…”
The Imperial Princess summoned wind to clear the dust. Gainando, who was beside her, coughed and glared at Adenart.
“Check the shelves first.”
“Wait. Be careful of traps.”
At Salko’s words, the Black Turtle Tower students asked back.
“What kind of magic should we use to check?”
“Wait a moment.”
The students cast respectful glances at their reliable leader’s response.
One of the qualities a leader must have is ability.
Only someone who could immediately provide solutions when facing difficulties was qualified to be a leader.
“Wardanaz. Do you sense any mana from that shelf over there?”
“Not particularly?”
“Hmm. Thanks.”
Salko returned and spoke to his friends.
“No traps apparently.”
“…”
“…”
The Black Turtle Tower students pulled out items from the shelf with complicated expressions.
This is…
Is he really… competent?
“Hmm.”
Lee Han looked around with a disappointed gaze.
A few bottles of alcohol brewed by upperclassmen that were also on the outer shelves, some potions that had already expired, and a bit of graffiti and notes.
The grand plan to defeat the crazy skeleton will soon be complete…
Kekeke… He’ll never even imagine what we’re plotting…
‘This is worthless.’
Lee Han frowned.
What Lee Han wanted was systematic information about the upcoming various lecture exams, not these lamentations.
Of course, thinking about it, this sight wasn’t strange.
The probability of finding something useful in a storage that people hadn’t used for a while was originally low.
But from the perspective of someone who had entered after a life-or-death duel with a statue, it was truly disappointing.
He had expected there would be something more useful than what was outside at least…
“?”
Lee Han, who was moving his steps, realized that only the inner part of the storage was unusually clean and organized.
Unlike other dusty spaces, this area was clearly protected by various magic circles.
‘What is this?’
Lee Han checked the inner area with curiosity.
Starting with magic circles that blocked dust, various barriers were protecting the inner space.
And occupying most of that space was a huge artifact of unknown purpose that he had never seen before.
The round-shaped artifact that easily exceeded human height looked like a gateway made by haphazardly weaving together miscellaneous items.
‘What kind of… artifact is this?’
-9/7
-The artifact absolutely won’t work! Damn it. I need to complete this before graduation. Otherwise, I’ll have no face to show the senior who passed this down to me.
-9/13
-Found a solution in the crazy skeleton’s storage. The orichalcon clasp solved the drive unit’s closure problem! Haha! Just wait and see. I’ll definitely solve the problem and tell the crazy skeleton to his face that I succeeded!
-9/15
-I’m trash who doesn’t deserve to enter Einroguard.
-9/18
-Shared some of the crazy skeleton’s brandy with friends and got my spirits back. Damn Einroguard. Damn magic. I can’t believe I’m already a golden year student. It feels like yesterday I was an iron-head. Can I really complete this?
-9/22
-Space magic is like a plague of Imperial magic. I should never have researched something like this in the first place.
-10/2
-Even though I completed the related magic formula, I absolutely cannot satisfy the mana requirement. How can I reduce the mana amount any further? Where do I get the insufficient mana? Should I even ask my ancestors for help?
-10/25
-Three weeks of suffering all went to waste. Even a behemoth’s heart couldn’t satisfy the mana requirement. Ah, if only I could use all of Einroguard’s mana at will like the crazy skeleton!
-11/10
-After giving up, I feel both relieved and sad. Burning down one of the crazy skeleton’s storages with friends was somewhat comforting. Maybe now that we’ve all improved our magic considerably, if we join forces together, we might be able to land a blow on the crazy skeleton.
-11/17
-Damn it. There was an even more terrible punishment room. Shouldn’t have messed with the crazy skeleton for no reason.
-11/20
-I stopped myself from destroying the dimensional gateway artifact. I couldn’t bring myself to destroy something passed down from a senior after all. It’s unusable trash, but I cast magic to keep it from breaking.
If there’s any junior who discovers this artifact, I earnestly want to ask them not to destroy it. Of course they’ll destroy it. I would have destroyed it too to take what I needed. But this is a truly amazing artifact that’s been passed down through generations to be completed…
“…?!!!!”
Lee Han, who had finished reading the diary stuck beside it, was shocked.
‘A dimensional gateway… artifact??’
The illusion that magic was a miraculous discipline that made the impossible possible quickly disappeared after just three months of learning magic.
Magic was a discipline that operated with rules and theories more terrible than reality, not a shortcut that ignored rules and order.
One of the examples that made this clear was spatial movement.
Spatiotemporal magic boasted such extreme difficulty that no school was formed within the Empire, and spatial movement, being a representative magic among them, boasted an even more brutal difficulty.
Even a magic that moved matter just one step forward would instantly shatter the brain and rupture blood vessels if cast by an ordinary mage.
And this difficulty increased exponentially as the distance lengthened and the number of targets increased.
As such, saying a dimensional gateway artifact was simply realistically ‘impossible’ wouldn’t be far from wrong.
‘No wonder it looked unstable, like it would collapse at any moment.’
He had wondered why the artifact was made to look like miscellaneous items haphazardly woven together, but it seemed to be a desperate attempt to satisfy the required mana and activate the magic.
Even with durability that would shatter after one casting, they had to do this because casting itself would be impossible otherwise.
However, despite such desperate efforts, the artifact was never completed. Lee Han was honestly thrilled by the obsession he felt from this artifact.
‘…To go this far just to escape from school.’
Looking at the artifact’s design and records, the original destination wasn’t very far from here.
The primary goal was simply to escape the school.
For something like that, there would have been many other methods, but insisting on this method was truly like a mage.
‘I understand.’
Lee Han understood the upperclassmen’s feelings.
Even if it started lightly at first, it gradually got completed, and then it was passed down, and in the middle the Skeleton Principal would sneer ‘would such a thing even be possible’…
When time dragged on, means could sometimes become the purpose.
Lee Han, who had been lost in sentiment for a moment, turned his gaze.
‘I should dismantle it.’
As the senior had left behind, this non-functional artifact had many precious materials.
Just leaving it alone would be wasteful.
Wooooooooong-
“?”
“????”
At that moment, everyone in the storage turned their gaze toward the massive roar coming from the artifact.
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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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