Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy - Chapter 781

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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 781

“Sigh. Fine. Let’s just set up camp.”

Unaware of Raphadael’s inner shock, Gainando spoke with a dejected expression.

Because of his summoned creature being reverse-summoned, everything in the world seemed gray no matter what he did.

“Y-you bastard. Are you suddenly trying to act dignified all by yourself…! How cowardly!”

“What are you talking about? I said let’s set up camp. Do you want to see Lee Han get angry?”

Gainando was dumbfounded when Raphadael started talking nonsense.

He was already troubled because one of his summoned creatures had been reverse-summoned, so what was this gibberish?

“Grr, grrrk. Don’t think this is over.”

‘Did this guy drink something wrong?’

Gainando wondered if his friend had inhaled some hallucinogenic powder while passing through the forest area.

Why did he keep talking nonsense…

“Call your summoned creature and have it dig around here.”

By their second year at Einroguard, whether they were of noble or slave origin, students had gained the ability to camp anywhere they went.

Gainando checked the surrounding terrain and pointed with his finger as he made the request. It was convenient in many ways to dig a small moat near the campsite.

“Your summoned creature would be more convenient, wouldn’t it? Since it’s bigger…”

“Was there such a thing?”

Gainando played dumb. Of course, it didn’t work on Raphadael.

Since Gainando had bragged about it 131 times a day after making the contract, it wasn’t easy to forget.

“The big one with thorn gauntlets. That guy would be perfect for this kind of work.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right! Thorn Revenant. That was the name.”

“…It got reverse-summoned! Are you satisfied!”

Gainando got emotional and threw a bone.

Despite getting hit in the face with the bone, Raphadael was flustered instead of angry.

An undead summoned creature being completely destroyed and reverse-summoned.

This was quite a serious matter for a dark mage.

Not only would it take quite a while to recover, but even after recovery, it was hard to know if the contract would be maintained properly.

Undead summoned creatures were vile and violent, so they didn’t understand mages’ circumstances well.

“W-was it that fierce a battle? I’m sorry.”

“…Forget it. Just help me with the work instead.”

“I-I can’t either.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

Gainando was puzzled when Raphadael hesitated.

Since Raphadael was also from the Black Magic Academy, he had contracted summoned creatures too.

“Did yours get reverse-summoned too?”

“No… that’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

“…It-it looks tired today, so I want to let it rest.”

“…”

Gainando doubted his ears.

An undead summoned creature looks tired so he wants to let it rest.

…What the hell was this…?

“What… what are you talking about. Is that part of the contract?”

“No… I didn’t make that kind of contract.”

“Then order it.”

“It-it’s pitiful…”

‘…How much does he cherish his undead summoned creature??’

Gainando was horrified.

Raphadael was the most doting dark mage toward his summoned creatures that he had ever seen!

“You said dark magic is just a means! When you contracted the undead summoned creature, you said you were just hiring it to know your enemies!”

“That’s what I intended to do!”

“Then call it! Why are you letting it rest!”

“Th-this is… right. I’m trying to make it let its guard down and deceive it. If I treat it well, it’ll let its guard down…”

“…You’re lying!! You expect me to believe that!”

Gainando and Raphadael fought for nearly 10 minutes with ‘admit you like undead’ versus ‘no, I hate undead.’

And then they acknowledged they were running on parallel lines.

“Huff, huff huff… Fine. Let’s both not use our summoned creatures…”

“R-right. I’m glad you understand. …Then how are we going to dig around here?”

“Are you good at earth magic?”

“No… are you?”

“I’m not good at earth magic either…”

The two stared at each other blankly.

There was only one method left.

* * *

“??”

“Why are you guys doing that with shovels?”

Friends working on the other side looked puzzled at Gainando and Raphadael.

Why was a mage holding a shovel and doing that?

“It’s, it’s a secret of dark magic.”

“Oh… really?”

The friends thought dark magic had summoned creatures, but they let it slide for now.

They had their own work left to do, and they didn’t know much about dark magic.

“…Why are you guys doing that with shovels?”

Of course, they couldn’t fool Lee Han. Lee Han looked at Raphadael with puzzled eyes.

Gainando didn’t have summoned creatures so that was understandable, but why that guy too?

“…My summoned creature actually got reverse-summoned too…”

“Lee Han! This bastard says he won’t make his summoned creature work today because it looks tired!”

“Hey!”

Raphadael was horrified, but Lee Han had already heard everything.

Lee Han looked at Raphadael with a gaze of shock.

“I-I see. Raphadael. I understand you. Well, it’s good to cherish your summoned creatures.”

-Wow! What a kind dark mage!

“No! That’s not it!”

Rather than being mocked, being spoken to so warmly made Raphadael feel even more ashamed.

A descendant of the Grall family being misunderstood as an undead enthusiast!

“I’m really doing it to use them later!”

“Right… well, I understand…”

Lee Han left the wailing Raphadael behind and continued checking the campsite.

‘By the way, the quality seems to improve each time we do this.’

Unlike other grades where each tower played separately, the current Einroguard second-years had many experiences of being (forcibly) together in crisis situations.

Perhaps because of that, their level seemed to keep rising when they built campsites like this together.

In the past, it was just digging pits in front, sprinkling powder to block poisonous insects and snakes, and huddling together near a campfire using large rocks as windbreaks…

The current campsite had a moat dug at clean angles with water mixed with repelling potions flowing through it, campsite walls built without gaps had boundary magic cast on them, and inside, a tall watchtower was erected to send signals so students who hadn’t arrived yet could see…

“Isn’t the campsite wall too crude?”

“Should we try changing the color with magic?”

Perhaps because everyone had gained some leisure, now there were students wanting to paint and decorate the campsite barriers, and even students wanting to place monuments at the entrance.

‘…Though I wonder if we really need to draw the Skeleton Principal.’

Lee Han shook his head as he watched his friends painting murals of defeating evil skeletons on the walls surrounding the campsite.

It was a waste of stamina and mana, but they looked so happy that he couldn’t bring himself to stop them.

“Wardanaz. Over here! Over here!”

Friends who had finished working on their sections called Lee Han from inside the campsite while brewing tea. A pot on a small campfire was bubbling and boiling.

“We were talking about tents. It would be convenient to have a tent with spatial magic.”

The current campsite was much better than before, but his friends still set their goals high.

How comfortable would it be if they could place tents with spatial expansion magic inside the campsite?

At that point, they wouldn’t need to do such large-scale work anymore. They could simply block the surroundings and stay inside the tents.

Lee Han was slightly impressed by this.

‘I hadn’t really thought about it. Everyone’s so proactive.’

“That would be nice. But spatial magic artifacts are really difficult to make, aren’t they? Do you have a plan?”

Creating large artifacts was already high in difficulty, and adding spatial magic made it even harder, so even for Einroguard students, it was an item that was difficult to obtain.

“Hehe. We do! Wardanaz!”

“Oh. What is it? Are you planning to cooperate with upperclassmen to make it together?”

Lee Han felt the reward of learning magic from various schools for once.

If it was this kind of work, Lee Han wanted to participate too, and he felt like he could contribute.

‘I really want to have a tent with spatial expansion magic.’

“If we’re going to work on it, I’d like to use the workshop at the Sacred Workshop. The facilities there are decent. Professor Verdus’s workshop area is the best, and we can secretly use it when the professor isn’t there. Which school are the upperclassmen from?”

His friends looked embarrassed seeing Lee Han speaking so enthusiastically.

“Actually, we were talking about stealing one from upperclassmen…”

“…”

Making one seemed impossible even until graduation, so stealing from an upperclassman who already had one seemed like the only viable option.

“…I, I see. Right.”

“We were going to ask you to lead us, Wardanaz…”

Lee Han’s group remained silent for a while, sipping their tea.

Asan, reading the mood, opened his mouth to lighten the atmosphere.

“Actually, I heard something about an artifact with spatial expansion magic.”

“Oh, really?!”

“What is it, Dalcard??”

“It’s an ancient relic, a tent about the size of this sleeping bag, but when you go inside, it’s about half the size of this campsite…”

“!!”

“Where did you read that!? Which dungeon is it in?!”

The students shouted with determination to immediately enter that dungeon and find the ancient relic.

“…An, an upperclassman has it.”

“…”

“…”

His friends fell silent again. Lee Han finished his tea and said.

“Well… there’s no law saying we absolutely can’t steal an upperclassman’s belongings.”

“Wardanaz!!”

“That’s right!? I knew we could count on you!!”

‘Shouldn’t these kinds of guys be joining the Position Movement Club?’

Lee Han pondered slightly to himself.

* * *

While they set up camp and waited, summoning school students arrived one by one.

Once everyone gathered, Asan cleared his throat and pulled out a map.

“Alright. Everyone. While we were waiting, I surveyed the height and length here, roughly…”

Swish swish swish-

“…”

“…”

Looking at the newly drawn map and the vast blank spaces on it, the students sighed deeply.

To survey and fill in a map of this size, they would need to spend the entire semester exploring this dimension.

“Let’s start by going up to the central area peak. Everyone, gather your strength.”

“Professor Milay is disappointing too. How can she tell us to do this for a whole semester?”

“Maybe all professors are like that originally. We just never noticed.”

‘What a commendable thing to say.’

Lee Han strongly agreed with what someone had just said.

Professors were indeed racially evil. Sometimes there seemed to be benevolent professors, but that was usually just students’ misconceptions…

“Huff, huff huff. Wardanaz.”

Among the group that set out to survey the central area peak, Lee Han was at the front.

For this kind of exploration, it was easier to handle emergencies when skilled mages were at the very front and very back.

Asan approached Lee Han, who was leading the way, breathing heavily.

“What’s wrong?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just.”

Asan hesitated as if slightly embarrassed while trying to speak.

“The Wardanaz family are famous dimension specialists in the Empire, right?”

“I… suppose so?”

“Well… among the stories I heard before, there was one about the Wardanaz family leaving markers everywhere while exploring dimensions…”

Leaving markers containing information about the surroundings for other mages who might arrive later was one of the things dimension-exploring mages often did.

True to being from a family that had served as Imperial treasurers for generations, Asan was quite knowledgeable about such rumors.

“Right. That would be the case.”

“…Is there any possibility we could find such markers here?”

“…Asan…”

“I, I know! I do know!”

Asan’s face reddened as he made excuses.

Even he thought it was too unrealistic an expectation.

Finding markers left by the Wardanaz family in one of infinite dimensions would have lower odds than finding a needle in a haystack…

“Even so, that’s going too far. How could we find such markers? You’d have better odds hoping to meet family members?”

“There are much more markers left behind, so probability-wise the chances are higher…”

Asan said, unable to give up hope.

That’s how terrifying the map they needed to fill seemed to him.

“Give it up, Asan. I used to calculate the probability of meteors falling on Einroguard sometimes too, but it was meaningless. …Huh, brother?”

Lee Han was startled to see his second brother, Arsil Wardanaz, in the distance at the peak of the central area, writing in a book with the help of spirits.

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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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