Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy - Chapter 581

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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 581

Whooooooosh-

As the wind grew stronger and the blizzard swirled, visibility narrowed.

“Sharkan. I’m counting on you.”

Lee Han summoned the jade leopard to check the path.

Since the familiar terrain features that could serve as landmarks were disappearing, they had to be even more careful.

Fortunately, Lee Han and his friends were already well-armed with winter gear.

“Thanks to Professor Garcia.”

“Didn’t you make it during Professor Verdus’s class?”

At Durgyu’s question, Lee Han pretended not to hear and turned his gaze away.

Just then, Sharkan returned. The leopard nodded as if to say it was safe to proceed ahead.

“Wait. We still have quite a way to walk, and we can’t keep carrying them the whole time.”

“Wardanaz. Even if it’s annoying, we can’t just throw them off the cliff.”

Giselle spoke up, wanting to tease Wardanaz for once.

However, Lee Han and Durgyu showed a different reaction than Giselle expected.

“No…”

“That’s a bit…”

“…It was a joke.”

“Oh, right.”

“A, a joke. I thought so too.”

“Hey. Just both of you shut up.”

Giselle resolved never to joke with these guys again.

“So Lee Han? Do you have a good method?”

“Rise, skeletal warriors.”

Lee Han waved his staff and chanted the spell. Three skeleton warriors slowly carried the apprentice knights on their backs.

“This should work.”

“Oh. But Lee Han.”

“What is it?”

“What if the knights here wake up?”

“…Can you give me some blindfolds?”

Lee Han not only tied up the apprentice knights but also put blindfolds over their eyes.

Only then did he show a relieved expression.

“Now it should be fine, right?”

“…”

“…”

Giselle and Durgyu looked at the scene with complicated expressions.

The sight of putting the knights to sleep, tying them up tightly, and having skeletons carry them looked like…

‘He really looks evil.’

‘Like a dark mage from old stories.’

“Why are you staring like that?”

“I, I was admiring your skeleton utilization method.”

“What’s the big deal about something like this.”

Lee Han was slightly embarrassed by Durgyu’s praise.

* * *

“Ugh.”

Labda woke up in pain.

He couldn’t remember well what had happened.

He was definitely sitting in the carriage, but then there was a sharp pain in his solar plexus…

“Gasp!”

Labda and the apprentice knights opened their eyes.

They were inside an unfamiliar cabin.

Though fierce wind sounds came from outside, a roughly made fireplace was burning brightly, driving away the cold…

The pantry was well-stocked with canned mutton and some eggs, peas and marmalade, sugar, salt, tea leaves, coffee grounds, and so on.

‘Where is this??’

“You’re awake!”

Lee Han, who had been holding a ladle and checking inside a pot, rushed over when he saw the apprentice knights wake up.

“I was worried. You all collapsed!”

“Wh, what happened, Wardanaz? Where is this place?”

Lee Han hesitated. It looked like he was exchanging glances with Giselle.

“Don’t you remember? The carriage was attacked! A monster attacked the carriage!”

“Did… did that happen?”

“Yes. We barely managed to escape with you guys.”

Lee Han and Giselle enthusiastically explained how fierce and bizarre monsters living in the mountain range had attacked the carriage and tried to devour the apprentice knights.

Durgyu silently kept his mouth shut and chopped onions.

No matter how he looked at it, he didn’t have the confidence to lie like that.

“Th… thank you. How shameful. To only receive help. We should have blocked the front.”

“It was an unexpected ambush, so it couldn’t be helped. The mountain range is a dangerous place.”

“Were there giants too? I heard rumors that there are giants here.”

“…Well, I think there might have been giants too…”

Lee Han raised the level of the monsters as the apprentice knights wanted.

If that made them feel better!

“Then this place is?”

“Probably a hunter’s cabin.”

“There are hunters here too?!”

‘Seems like we convinced them well.’

Lee Han exchanged meaningful glances with his friends.

Fortunately, they had overcome the biggest obstacle.

We had no choice but to accidentally discover this mountain lodge!

‘We just need to stay here for one day.’

The apprentice knights discussed among themselves.

“Hmm. Is it okay to use a place like this?”

“We have no choice. Since it’s come to this, let’s prepare to face monsters. The professor said they would come looking too.”

“?”

Lee Han hesitated.

“What did the professor say?”

“Hmm? That there are monsters in the mountain range, so we should prepare thoroughly to face them.”

“Didn’t you just say they would come looking?”

“Ah. That’s right. That monsters would come looking. But that’s natural when entering a dangerous area, isn’t it?”

“…”

Of course, Labda’s words weren’t wrong either.

In a dangerous area, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say monsters would come looking.

But Lee Han’s senses, honed at Einroguard, were inferring a different meaning from those words.

‘Something’s strange?’

Thump thump thump-

At that moment, someone knocked on the cabin door. Durgyu lifted the wooden board that was placed over it and checked outside the window.

“!”

Surprisingly, it was other White Tiger Tower students.

The White Tiger Tower students, half-buried in snow and shivering, pounded on the lodge door and shouted.

“He-help us!”

“Please… please open the door! We’re going to freeze to death!”

“Bartrek, Clteran?! You guys. How did you get here…?!”

“We were attacked! It’s co-cold. Please open the door!”

Durgyu hurriedly opened the door.

Then the White Tiger Tower students outside tried to enter the lodge.

“Be paralyzed!”

Lee Han swung his staff and cast a paralysis curse.

As curse magic had the fastest casting speed and widest hit range among all magic, the paralysis curse struck the White Tiger Tower students directly.

“Ugh… argh!”

“!?”

Durgyu looked at Lee Han in shock. He couldn’t understand why Lee Han had cast a paralysis curse.

Sliiiiide-

The White Tiger Tower students’ bodies collapsed like slime. Then they writhed and transformed into grotesque monsters.

“Shape shifters!”

Giselle shouted in a voice filled with horror.

Shape shifter type monsters possessed the powerful ability to freely transform their appearance.

The most representative was the doppelganger, but it wasn’t the only one with such abilities.

The Shifting Slime before their eyes was also one of the notorious shape shifter type monsters.

And quite an advanced one at that!

“Be careful, don’t let it penetrate! If a shape shifter gets into our formation, it becomes troublesome!”

Giselle drew her twin swords and created distance. If that slime got in and used its transformation ability, things would become very complicated.

The slime seemed panicked as its appearance changed repeatedly. After mimicking the White Tiger Tower students several times, it seemed to notice Lee Han and transformed into him.

“Don’t attack! I’m your friend!”

“Right!”

Giselle cheerfully thrust her sword into the face of the slime that had transformed into Lee Han. It was the most beautiful and clean strike among all the sword attacks she had ever seen.

Stab!

After being hit by both the paralysis curse and an enchanted sword strike, the slime seemed to have taken considerable damage. It hurriedly retreated outside the lodge door and threw itself into the piled snow.

‘It’ll be troublesome if we let it escape!’

“Sharkan. Go!”

The leopard growled and leaped out. Sharkan, who reacted with his sense of smell, was much more advantageous when dealing with such shape shifter monsters.

Not satisfied with that, Lee Han summoned skeleton warriors and positioned them in front of the door. It was to prepare for any possible intrusion.

Crunch!

Sharkan precisely bit the ankle of the Shifting Slime trying to burrow into the snow.

The slime abandoned its ankle part and attempted another transformation. With so much snow piled up, it wasn’t easy to catch the creature.

“Snow, transform into sand!”

Lee Han urgently chanted the spell.

He had practiced transforming sand into rock or rock into sand many times, but he had never practiced transforming snow into sand.

Recalling the properties of snow and sand on the spot, Lee Han completed the magic.

Then the piled snow scattered and transformed into sand.

‘It worked!’

“Lightning Spear!”

Lee Han summoned lightning to his staff and fixed its form. Thanks to Professor Boladi’s harsh training, he could now omit the long incantation.

Crackle!

As the lightning spear precisely pierced the slime, the slime could no longer maintain its form and melted away.

Basically, slimes were monsters with very simple structures, so if you dealt a certain amount of damage, their core couldn’t withstand it and they would collapse like this.

In normal circumstances, there would be no need to panic or be tense like this.

But this wasn’t a normal circumstance!

“…You’ve really become a proper Einroguard professor!”

Lee Han sighed.

Who else could have obtained this Shifting Slime and from where?

Professor Ingoldel must have asked other professors for help to get it. Since it was quite a rare slime, it couldn’t have been created without the professors’ assistance.

‘The days when we just fought magic-enchanted bulls were actually better.’

Lee Han thought he understood what Professor Ingoldel’s evil scheme hidden in the final exam was.

Scatter the students across the mountain range, then release pre-trained Shifting Slimes to attack the students.

Students who thought the cold winter was the test would let their guard down against slimes disguised as friends and suffer greatly.

“This… this is impossible.”

Durgyu still looked dazed.

“It definitely talked like Bartrek, didn’t it? How did it imitate him so perfectly?”

“The professor probably secretly trained it. He must have made it observe us when we weren’t looking.”

Lee Han, who had learned about Shifting Slimes from Professor Lightningstep, had some information about them.

Slimes were a kind of primitive collective organism incapable of advanced thinking.

Naturally, they didn’t think with intelligence but rather saw and imitated.

Durgyu was horrified.

“To that extent?!”

“I was surprised too. But if it’s an Einroguard professor, they’re certainly capable of that.”

Lee Han cleared away the slime’s remains.

Those remains were like the last fragments of trust he had in Professor Ingoldel.

‘Now I have to think of Professor Ingoldel as definitely an Einroguard professor too.’

While having very disrespectful thoughts, Labda was genuinely impressed.

“Everyone, you’re really amazing. We came to help, but it’s embarrassing.”

“Haha. Don’t worry about such things.”

Lee Han was slightly grateful to the Shifting Slime seeing the warm atmosphere.

If Labda had asked ‘why does my head hurt like I drank a sleeping potion,’ it would have been troublesome, but thanks to the slime, they could just move on.

“Wardanaz. I was really impressed that you immediately recognized it was a slime.”

“Right. You noticed that difference even though it wasn’t clearly visible.”

“Since we’re usually close, I naturally felt something was off.”

Durgyu was deeply moved by Lee Han’s words.

‘I couldn’t even notice it myself!’

Durgyu resolved once again to pay more attention to his friends in the future.

‘Was it a Shifting Slime?’

Lee Han was also surprised inwardly.

He had just thought other White Tiger Tower students had come to interfere and tried to subdue them, but they were actually monsters.

Einroguard truly couldn’t be taken lightly.

‘I’ll have to attack more aggressively from now on.’

“Eastern slope path.”

Giselle, who had been observing outside without listening to the conversation, spoke with a serious expression.

“Approaching this way. More than ten people.”

“…!”

Lee Han opened the lodge door and looked down below.

Surprisingly, more than ten students and apprentice knights were coming toward them.

“Let’s not let them approach.”

“Right.”

The two were in agreement.

Whatever they were thinking coming in such a group, they couldn’t fit them all in the lodge and it would be hard to handle the aftermath.

Especially if there were Shifting Slimes among them…

“…”

“…”

However, as the group approached closer and closer, Lee Han and Giselle’s faces hardened stiffly.

Lee Han, Giselle, and Durgyu were also among that group.

Fake Lee Han pointed at the real Lee Han and shouted.

“There are the fakes!”

“What the hell…!”

Lee Han was shocked.

Surely the slime’s intelligence should only be at the level of observing Lee Han, learning, and mimicking him, so how could it even incite like that??

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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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