Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 115

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 115
EP27 – Starlight Meeting Mountain Redevelopment (5)

“…….”

The moment I drew the blade, the witch’s body staggered. She stumbled backward a few paces before crashing down hard on her backside. Blood wept from between the folds of her grass-green dress.
Just then, Laim rushed over and pulled a First Aid Kit from her Subspace Pocket.
If there was any mercy in the moment—and I wasn’t sure there was—it lay in this: from a medical standpoint, the wound wasn’t deep. The witch possessed exceptional physical regeneration.

“Let me handle it.”
“…All right.”

As Laim approached without a word, the witch furrowed her brow in obvious displeasure.
Yet each time Laim took a step forward, the witch would scuttle backward on her seat, widening the distance between them.
It was the same pattern as always. She rejected the approach of anyone but me.
But the witch had, for some reason, closed her eyes and lost consciousness. So Laim carefully tore a piece of burlap and began dressing the wound.

In that moment, my thoughts scattered in a thousand directions.

Emotion is,
after all, a hyperfast response system to external stimuli.

I felt revulsion and the urge to pierce her, so I stabbed the witch.
I felt a sudden urgency to save her, so I saved her.

But emotion, for all its speed, errs constantly.
Now it was logic’s turn to speak.

I posed a question to myself.

Q. Was saving the witch the right decision?
If I didn’t kill her now, I might be releasing a calamity upon human history. And yet—was it right to spare a Two-Horned Demon Race?
The fact that the witch hasn’t committed murder is only the record up to this point. The future is unknowable.
But she was a being who, despite the wound she inflicted on me, showed no aggression toward me. At that moment, it felt wrong to strike.
So was saving the witch truly the right decision? I couldn’t be certain.
I was still being guided by emotion. Therefore, this remained undecided.

Q. Then did I have any logical basis for sparing her?
There was one thing. The Voyeuristic Starlight Seat.
This contrary, perverted Starlight Seat’s spirits are always seeking out amusing spectacles, but they rarely ever watch demons.
Because demons aren’t amusing.
A law student studying all day finds little entertainment in the routine. But a demon is like a law student preparing for an exam on homicide.
Because of this,
I concluded that this witch possessed something beyond the ordinary demon.

Q. What was the witch to me?
I couldn’t recall anything. She seemed connected to that “species,” perhaps.

Q. Why did I forget the witch?
……Before I could answer that, I needed to conduct an experiment.

“Laim. Stay here for a moment. Attach the Dog-ear Headband Model to your head.”
“Yes.”

I left Laim and the witch there and descended the mountain.
Once I’d put sufficient distance between us, my status window began flooding with messages.

⋮

As though locked in combat, two status windows continued to flicker back and forth.

The curse receded.

“…The Witch of the Graveyard. Eve.”

The memory remained.
As expected, I possessed nearly complete immunity to mental attacks—within the protective barrier of the Systematicity ⧉’s ‘Game System’. So why had I forgotten? I turned the question over in my mind.
Thinking it through carefully.
When exactly had the Game System shut down?

‘Ah.’

A hotfix.
Suddenly, I recalled the final status window just before the hotfix.

Since the ‘Game System’ was the force keeping me anchored to this land, it disengages when I perform a Logout—
There must have been a delay. The ‘Curse of Forgetting’ exploited that gap.
It was infuriating.
A systemic bug had created this mess.

Q. Why did I forget the witch?
Because of the delay in the Game System’s shutdown.

“Laim.”
“Yes.”
“Can you file a report with the Systematicity ⧉?”
“It can be attempted.”
“File it. Forget bug patches and everything else—tell them to fix the logout delay first.”

I refrained from adding some harsher commentary about the pathetic state of this game’s management.

“I’m not certain I understand, but I’ll convey it as you’ve stated it.”

One last thing.

Q. Then, will I continue to forget the witch whenever I logout?
…It appeared that way for now.
Unless the curse was broken.

“The dressing is complete. What will you do now?”
“…….”

Right. What now.

“Should I send her home?”
“How would you know where home is.”

Laim drew something from a pocket.
A Dog-ear Headband.

“I can track scents quite well.”
“…….”

And so Laim, having followed the scent to its source, discovered the space where the witch dwelled.
It was inside a cave.
The interior was surprisingly orderly.
There were luminescent gems that shed light.
A few plain iron swords lay scattered about.
Something like a bed made from piled dry grass sat in one corner.
There was no smell at all.
Yet for some reason, a sacred aura lingered here—not just the impression of holiness, but an actual property of magic that carried faint traces of sanctity.

What in the world was holiness doing in a demon’s home?
Just then, the sword’s scabbard trembled with an eerie resonance.

Worthless blade.
I stuffed it into my inventory.

“You’ve done well. Sit for a moment.”
“Yes.”

I sat down and thought for a while longer.
What was I going to do with this demon now?

* * *

Strange scrawls covered the cave wall.
What they meant, I couldn’t say.
As I stared blankly at them, Laim spoke up.

“Shall we head back, Professor? It’s getting late.”

The unconscious witch didn’t wake.
I’d thought about trying to communicate with her if she came to.
According to Laim’s assessment, it was likely due to psychological stress.
With no better options, I was about to suggest we leave.

Rustle.

A sound made me turn my head. I spotted a plastic container—apparently salvaged from some trash heap—on the ground.
Curious, I peered inside and found a squirrel.
How it had managed it, I couldn’t fathom—the creature was hugging pine cones with both arms full.
Flinch!
When our eyes met, it stiffened.

“What is it?”
“A squirrel, it seems.”
“Is she keeping it as a pet?”
“…….”

A peculiar intuition struck me.

“…This looks like a thieving squirrel.”

Flinch…!!
The squirrel tensed even more.
Or perhaps that was merely my impression.

“A thief? How did you know?”

It wasn’t the squirrel speaking—it was Laim.
When I turned my head, a parrot was now perched on top of mine.

“What is that?”
“A Communication Parrot. It can engage in Non-verbal Communication through gestures, expressions, magical energy, and vocalizations.”

…Just how many “auxiliary devices” could there possibly be?
At that, the squirrel seemed to realize something and grew flustered.

“The creature is scheming an escape.”
“But it’s grown fearful of the professor.”
“For some reason, the house’s owner—that is, the Two-Horned Demon Race—seems to have a shallow acquaintance with you. It appears there’s been considerable conflict over pinecones on a regular basis.”
“The squirrel insists it’s had a fair number of pinecones stolen from it.”
“Therefore, it takes the position that this is not theft, but rather rightful recovery through self-defense.”

…….

At that moment, my head was already muddled enough without delving into the squirrel’s circumstances, yet as I listened, I found it strangely compelling and remained silent.
So the witch was a pinecone thief.

“Wait a moment.”
“Yes.”
“Non-verbal Communication?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can also ask it questions?”
“That is correct.”

This was intriguing indeed.

“Can you ask about the witch?”

As I’ve said several times before, the Curse of Forgetting applies to the world and to people. To be precise, it applies to ‘the world surrounding a person’.
But it doesn’t apply to animals or Starlight Seats.

…….

Then Laim lowered his head and brought it close to the squirrel’s, and the parrot on top began to dance, thumping rhythmically. It was utterly incomprehensible to me.

“It says it doesn’t know much about the house’s owner—that is, the Two-Horned Demon Race.”
“Ask if there’s any animal that does know.”

Thump-thump.

“There is, it says.”
“Who?”

Thump.

“It says it’ll bring them if you overlook the pinecone-taking.”

And so, five minutes later, the squirrel returned with its friends—an old-looking bird among them, and there was someone I recognized.

“You’re Mini Mini Moong.”
“Yip yip!”

It was Elise’s baby puppy, whom I’d seen a few times passing through the Academy. When it came and wagged its tail, I stroked it.
But the puppy knew nothing about this—it had merely followed its friend—and the old bird began to tell its story. Chirp, chirp…. Chirp, chirp….

“…….”

Laim hesitated for a moment.

“What’s wrong?”
“…You see, this isn’t actually translating words. Rather, it’s reading the mana flowing through consciousness. Since it’s second-person speech, it feels a bit unfamiliar. …To summarize, it’s like this.”

This parrot had been watching the witch for quite some time.
Among the countless humans who approached, most came with hostile intent.

“…The aftereffects of the Curse of Forgetting, I suppose. She gives off an ominous feeling.”

Among them all, there was one human who approached with goodwill—for the first time.
That was me, apparently.

“So how many times have I come to find the witch?”

According to the parrot’s account, just the meetings it had witnessed numbered over twenty. Each visit was brief, but the parrot also mentioned that later on, the witch seemed to have waited eagerly for these visits.

……So I’d been coming all that often.

Yet I still didn’t know why, and something felt off about it.
Why had I been visiting a Two-Horned Demon Race member so consistently?
Had I been biding my time to kill her?
For the same reason, I still couldn’t find logical certainty about whether I should keep this witch alive.
Why had I come here in the first place?

“Look there, Professor. A turtle.”

A turtle?
Sure enough, an actual turtle was crawling into the cave.
What was a turtle doing on a mountain?
As it drew closer, I realized it was a Spirit Beast.
It seemed the creature had come, as an acquaintance of the squirrel, to offer its own words.

Ohhh… ummmm… chiiiii… iiiish…

Laim spoke slowly, and the turtle bobbed its head in response.
About ten minutes later, Laim spoke.

“……According to this turtle, which is about 1,100 years old, the witch has a task that must be completed here on Starlight Meeting Mountain. If she leaves this place, she enters a state akin to death.”

This is….

The moment I heard those words, I realized the situation was far more dire than I’d thought.
To proceed with the Starlight Meeting Mountain Redevelopment, the witch would have to be driven away. But if she left, she’d enter a state close to death.

“…Does that have anything to do with why I’m here?”
“Wouldn’t it? And the turtle says it never knew the witch had horns on her forehead.”

Hm?
That sounded oddly significant.
It didn’t know she had horns?
I turned to the parrot.

“It didn’t know, apparently.”

I turned to the squirrel.

“I didn’t know that.”

I asked Mini Mini Moong.

“Mini!”
“I’m glad to have learned.”

Which meant she didn’t know either.
Right. The hood came off because of the Voyeuristic Starlight Seat’s interference. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have come loose.

‘Hold on.’

Then, suddenly, a thought struck me.
A particular hypothesis took shape.

‘Wait—this is something I didn’t know about either, isn’t it?’

I raised my hand and carefully obscured the witch’s head.
If I’d only come because I didn’t know she was of the Two-Horned Demon Race.
If I covered the horns, the witch would look entirely human.
If she were human…

I approached slowly and placed my hand against Eve’s fingertips where she lay sprawled. Then I checked my status window.

───
Eve Lemontre [3.0]
───

Ah!!

In that very instant,
everything crystallized in my mind.

1. This ‘Potential status window’ only appears for humans. It doesn’t show for demons or monsters. Which meant the witch was part human!

2. I understood why I’d come here. A Potential of [3.0] was shockingly high. High enough that the moment I saw that number, I felt an overwhelming desire to possess this witch by any means necessary. A Starlight Seat? A top-ranked position? None of it mattered. With a Potential of 3.0, she could become overwhelmingly stronger than all of them.

Something crucially important.
And what was that, you ask…

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