Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy - Chapter 551
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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 551
A moment later.
Professor Thunderstep grumbled as he stepped outside the cabin.
“You might not know this, Wardanaz, but originally professors and students at Einroguard don’t invade each other’s territories. Just like well water doesn’t invade river water…”
“I’m sorry, Professor.”
“Ahem. Don’t forget to organize the storage.”
In the end, Professor Thunderstep had no choice but to surrender to his persistently nagging disciple.
If it were any other disciple, it would be different, but Professor Thunderstep couldn’t easily ignore a disciple like Lee Han.
Since he was such a precious disciple who usually did a lot of work…
“Now then. Let’s go find the spirit.”
“Why exactly are you so obsessed with spirits? Hm?”
Professor Thunderstep couldn’t understand.
Of course, if one could receive help from spirits, a mage’s domain would become much broader.
However, no matter how he looked at it, Lee Han was a disciple who would live well without spirits, just like the Skeleton Principal.
“How many spirits have you contracted with, Professor?”
“…That doesn’t seem related to the current topic…”
“Let’s go quickly.”
Lee Han seemed determined not to listen at all to people who were even slightly more friendly with spirits than he was.
Professor Thunderstep had no choice but to shake his head and start walking.
* * *
“Everyone get back.”
The dwarf professor took out a crossbow and pulled the trigger. With a thud sound, the bolt tore through the surrounding space.
Crack!
A contaminated one that had a giant oak tree as its body’s core, looking like a tree monster, fell with a single strike.
Lee Han couldn’t help but be amazed.
Even though he couldn’t fully grasp all the magic cast on that crossbow, he could feel how incredible it was.
Moreover, the bolt wasn’t an ordinary bolt either. The core of the bolt, shaped like a short arrow, contained a long flask with alchemical solution sloshing inside.
‘Can’t I get one of those?’
“This is strange.”
“Yes?”
Lee Han flinched, wondering if his inner thoughts had been discovered.
“There are too many of them. If this were natural occurrence, they wouldn’t increase this rapidly.”
Professor Thunderstep was an excellent alchemist, but he was also an excellent ranger.
And few people were as sensitive to changes in their assigned territory as rangers.
The forest was now dark and gloomy like midnight even though they hadn’t gone far in. It was evidence that the power of dark elements was growing stronger.
Originally, contaminated ones don’t increase this quickly…
“Then perhaps the Principal…”
“It must be your upperclassmen’s mistake.”
“Ah. It must be the upperclassmen’s mistake.”
“Didn’t you just mention the Principal?”
“Did I?”
Yoner and Priest Siana, who were next to Lee Han, quietly turned their gazes away.
Professor Thunderstep shook his head and said.
“The Principal is certainly the type who would do this, but he wouldn’t have done something like this. Things like contaminated ones are too troublesome to clean up afterward.”
“Did you just say he’s the type who would do this?”
Priest Siana asked Lee Han and Yoner, doubting her ears, but the two nodded expressionlessly.
“You heard correctly.”
“He is that type of person.”
“!?”
While Priest Siana was shocked, Lee Han asked something he was curious about.
“When you say cleanup is troublesome, do you mean the surrounding contamination?”
“That’s right.”
Professor Thunderstep looked at his disciple as if he were proud.
Even though it was annoying to be dragged into student affairs, when he saw how his student understood ten things without being taught one, that annoyance would disappear.
“The Principal’s attacks change methods every year, but usually the cleanup is neat. Otherwise, he’d have to handle it himself. This is probably a student mistake.”
“I see.”
“It’s probably the dark magic students.”
“What?”
Lee Han was slightly offended.
Unlike upperclassmen from other schools, he thought of the dark magic school upperclassmen who always had drooping shoulders.
“No, whenever problems like this happen, is it always the dark magic school? Isn’t that too much?”
“Oh, no…”
Only then remembering that Lee Han was also studying dark magic, Professor Thunderstep said with slight embarrassment.
“I’m not automatically suspecting dark magic school students. Look here. These are dark spirit contaminated ones, aren’t they?”
“…”
Lee Han finally understood what he meant.
He immediately lowered his voice and whispered to Professor Thunderstep.
“Still, they’re all Einroguard students who have learned from you, Professor, so there’s no need to punish them too harshly, right? If you show some leniency, the upperclassmen won’t forget it either.”
“…”
‘Are they actually not that close?’
Seeing Lee Han immediately confirm the dark magic school upperclassmen as culprits, Professor Thunderstep suspected that Lee Han might not actually be that close to the dark magic school upperclassmen.
* * *
“I-Ilendil senior. Isn’t this dangerous right now?”
The 2nd year students looked at their dryad hybrid upperclassman with pale faces.
This student, whose soul was mixed with dryad blood, had the highest grade among them, but wore the most shabby clothes.
Wearing a coat that looked like it was woven from picked-up fallen leaves, with mud dripping from all over his body, it was hard to tell if he was a beggar or a mage.
“Hmm. Sorry about this, everyone.”
“…”
“…”
At Ilendil’s nonchalant words, the underclassmen’s faces turned tearful.
What the upperclassman was doing in the forest right now was a kind of experiment.
Inject dark elements into a primitive homunculus to create something close to an artificial dark spirit!
Of course, if it had gone well, they wouldn’t be here like this.
The homunculus grew beyond expectations on its own, then escaped and was causing dark elements to run wild throughout the forest.
Seeing contaminated ones already popping out of the forest, they shuddered at the thought of how terrible this year’s winter at Einroguard would be.
“We should have gotten help from the dark magic school after all.”
“No, the dark magic school wouldn’t have helped. Those people are eccentric and scary.”
“This isn’t the time for that, Ilendil senior.”
One of the 2nd years spoke up firmly.
“Let’s quickly erase our traces and run.”
“…You…”
The students looked at the friend who had spoken up.
Then they patted his back as if he had spoken well and shouted.
“Well said! Right. Let’s quickly erase our traces and run away!”
In their confusion, they had forgotten Einroguard’s basic rule.
If problems arise, erase the traces and run!
“Hmm. But… if we leave it like this, the forest will become too dirty and we need to stop it.”
“No, senior. If we get caught, it’s the punishment room until the end of the semester! We’ll have to take final exams in the punishment room! Is the forest important or are you important, senior!”
“If I had to choose, the forest is more important, right?”
“…”
“…”
The underclassmen belatedly remembered that this outstanding alchemist had an unusual way of thinking and lamented.
“Senior! You have to come with us!”
“We have no choice. Grab the senior! We have to take him with us!”
Bang!
“?”
“…?!”
When the familiar bolt sound and space-tearing effect appeared in the distance, the students were horrified.
All Einroguard students feared professors, but among them, they feared their major professors the most.
“It’s Professor Thunderstep!?”
“No, why did he come all the way here?? There’s no cabin here???”
“Are we caught!? Did someone snitch!?”
“Scatter! Scatter and run! Senior, you need to escape!”
“Yeah. Got it. Everyone run.”
The next rule after Einroguard’s rule ‘If problems arise, erase the traces and run’ was ‘If caught, scatter and run.’
The students quickly scattered and began to flee according to that rule.
* * *
“Those ungrateful bastards!”
Professor Thunderstep raged while tugging at his beard.
Lee Han was puzzled. Professor Thunderstep was looking at that distant empty area and getting angry.
“Ah. Are there seniors there by any chance?”
“Yes!”
“Are they seniors majoring in alchemy by any chance?”
“…Yes!”
“Professor! I told you the dark magic seniors are innocent!”
Professor Thunderstep didn’t have the mental capacity to point out that Lee Han was changing his words.
He gritted his teeth and prepared to catch those ungrateful disciples.
“I clearly told them not to experiment recklessly in the forest… Track them down!”
“Wait. Professor…!”
Lee Han panicked when Professor Thunderstep rode the spirit deer to track down the seniors.
They had almost reached where the spirits were!
“Should we go by ourselves? We’re almost there anyway.”
“We should.”
Lee Han nodded at Priest Siana’s words.
He was quite anxious since they didn’t know when the spirits might return.
“Darkness, gather here.”
Lee Han chanted a spell to clear away the dark fog spread around them.
As if proving it was one of the most alien elemental attributes, the dark element itself approached as a hostile obstacle to life.
Even ordinary fog in the forest became a deadly trap that drained vitality when combined with dark elements.
Fortunately, Lee Han was a rare dark element user even among the dark magic school.
Lee Han swung his staff to draw in the fog.
The dark elements that were so hard to gather outside were easily collected in this forest.
‘I should clear it away.’
Though it was such a rare element, paradoxically it became less useful in the forest.
Since they were contaminated ones combined with dark spirits, the dark elements themselves didn’t deal much damage.
“Wait wait wait!”
“????”
Priest Siana screamed “Eek!” and hid behind Lee Han.
A person had suddenly appeared from thin air.
“Don’t throw away those dark elements! Could you put them in this bottle?”
The other person had an appearance reminiscent of Professor Puiona Willow, a banyan tree spirit hybrid. They were definitely a plant-type hybrid.
“Who are you?”
“Put the dark elements in first. They’ll disappear soon!”
“They won’t disappear.”
Lee Han skillfully controlled the dark elements and aimed them at the other person. It was clearly an act of wariness.
Dark elements were harder to control due to their alien nature, but there were exceptions for a few naturally gifted mages.
Lee Han maintained the dark elements like a spear at the tip of his staff, ready to respond immediately.
“Wo, Wardanaz sir. Isn’t that a senior?”
“Priest Siana. Seniors are actually more dangerous. It goes principal, professors, then seniors in order of danger.”
“Bu, but…”
Priest Siana, still bound by common sense, hesitated as if afraid of the act of aiming at a senior.
Yoner also looked worried.
“Wait. I’ll apologize. But I really didn’t intend for this to happen.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
“For this entire situation…?”
Ilendil tilted his head as he spoke.
The three first-year students realized everything upon hearing those words.
The culprit was right in front of them!
“Attack! Attack!”
“Lee Han, give the signal!”
Ilendil panicked at the underclassmen’s intense reaction and waved his hands.
“I didn’t intend for this…?!”
“Intention or not, you’re saying you summoned all of this right now!”
The dryad hybrid senior pondered for a moment on how to persuade them, then made a decision.
He gave up.
“Um… you can attack, but couldn’t you put the dark elements in the bottle?”
“…”
“He, he seems crazy.”
Priest Siana muttered from behind.
* * *
Lee Han lowered his staff for now.
The other person seemed crazy, but at least didn’t seem like someone who would launch a surprise attack.
Ilendil, who explained what had happened in a slow manner of speech, looked at the three and asked.
“So what brought you all the way here?”
“Uh…”
“Well…”
Yoner and Priest Siana unconsciously looked at Lee Han. Lee Han answered firmly.
“We couldn’t just stand by and watch the spirits being chased by contaminated ones, so we came in here.”
“You…”
Ilendil showed an intense reaction for the first time today, opening his eyes wide.
Even among Einroguard students, it was rare to find someone who showed such interest in forests or spirits.
“What a truly kind person!”
“Not at all. It’s simply what’s expected of a mage.”
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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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