Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 117

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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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Chapter 117
EP27 – Starlight Meeting Mountain Redevelopment (7)

Curse Number 51, the Curse of the Target, is a curse that continuously exposes the location of a chosen victim.

It’s what assassins use when they mark a single target and converge on them en masse.

The activation conditions are somewhat tricky—you need actual physical contact to designate a target.

But I hadn’t made contact with anyone just now. At that moment, I realized the curse-caster had used the 8-Circle advanced spell Mana Assimilation, and I could deduce that any group capable of wielding 8-Circle advanced magic would be extraordinarily powerful.

I checked my Mini Map.
Something was approaching.

But the movement pattern was peculiar. Not assassins. Rather, they were closing in with deliberate slowness, yet with an unsettling precision.

Then lines connecting them appeared on my Mini Map, and watching the mesh tighten into a net, I recognized it—a skill of the Heavenly Net Formation variety.

It’s not a technique typically used against assassins. Assassins who’ve perfected Movement Technique can leap across space itself, and those who use Alchemy simply burrow underground, rendering such skills meaningless.

I gathered the pieces together.

1. They were warriors.
2. They were experienced at killing assassins.
3. They knew something of my combat abilities.

In a flash, I made my decision.
I had to fight.
I loaded countless tactical scenarios into my mind.
And even as I did, I posed one last question to myself.

‘Did Rebecca send them?’

That much I still couldn’t know.

I drew up my Magical Power and, simultaneously, drew the Colossus Soldier Sword ○. He’d been irritating, but since the trial was still underway, there was no room for complications.

Then I waited.
For the warriors to draw near.

Clank…

At last, a man emerged from the darkness.
Clad in a full plate mail so black it reflected no light.

“…Hello there, friend.”

My gaze fell on the massive sword strapped to his back.

● Kashan, Commander of the Knights

The Kashan Knights.
Rebecca had mentioned them as the Royal Knights, and they were one of the Crown’s silent blades—those who removed obstacles to the throne. Hidden knives, employed to thin the ranks of those who threatened the realm.
Kashan ranked 512th among the fifteen million warriors of the continent. Even among the Grandmasters, he was mid-tier. A formidable force indeed.

“You’re a promising professor, but you’ll have to die here.”

Shriiiing—!

He drew forth a massive greatsword with both hands—a weapon so absurdly proportioned it resembled a giant’s maul.

“So you’ve come to kill an assassin with a mace?”
“Weight doesn’t matter. I’m strong enough. Since you handle Grandmaster-tier Illusion Magic and above, I brought the largest blade I have to widen my surface area.”
“In that case, you should have brought a whip.”
“That would lack style.”

The knight radiated composure. Combat of this sort was clearly his domain.
In the meantime, I had read his Script.
And I realized the situation was stranger than I’d anticipated.

“…So that’s how it is.”

It wasn’t Rebecca.

“Has Cheongru betrayed us then…. Though I suppose he was always the sort to turn traitor eventually.”

I’d merely muttered that to nudge his thoughts in a certain direction.

“What?”

He quickly masked his expression. But a man’s true heart cannot be hidden.
He was startled. He must have believed I couldn’t know.

“What nonsense is that?”
“Stop feigning ignorance. I already know everything.”
“…Know what, exactly?”

He asked back, playing dumb.
I decided to tell him.
To draw out more information.

“You received intelligence about me from Cheongru. That’s why you came prepared with countermeasures against an Illusion Magic assassin.”
“…….”
“The knight subordinates you brought—you plan to use them only for the Heavenly Net Formation. Quite arrogant, considering they wouldn’t be enough even if they all rushed me at once.”
“…This professor’s a funny one. What, you’re running ahead on your own? I haven’t….”
“Enough. There’s no need to try deception. The Royal Knights’ methods are already familiar to me, and I know precisely when you and Cheongru boarded the same ship.”
“……Huh.”
“Shall I tell you a truth here?”

I spoke before that hardened face.

“You cannot kill me.”

Kashan’s face stiffened.
A first impression can tell you much about a person’s character across their lifetime.
The composure that seemed to have carried through Kashan’s entire existence began to waver now.
With that, my objective was achieved.

“Come.”

Shing—
I drew forth the Colossus Soldier Sword ○.

“I do not evade assassination. Not from an assassin, nor a knight, nor the Crown.”

At this, the rigid knight Kashan let out a hollow laugh.
He shook his head slowly.

【 Kashan: ‘…So that’s why.’ 】
【 Kashan: ‘I see. So that’s what all the fuss was about.’ 】

What fuss exactly, he didn’t know—and it seemed he had no intention of dwelling on it further.

【 Kashan: ‘I can tell just from a first glance.’ 】
【 Kashan: ‘A man far too valuable to let die.’ 】
【 Kashan: ‘But….’ 】

Confidence still brimmed in him, yet there was something he didn’t know. Cheongru was a Royal Knight, but that amounted to little more than serving as the princess’s guard. He had never once participated in the university’s most important positions.

“You there.”

Kashan pointed at me with his colossal blade.

“…Sorry.”

In the next instant, he stamped down with explosive force.

Crack!

The ground erupted beneath him, launching that enormous mass of metal and man toward me.

* * *

The knight holding the net of Magical Power stiffened.
His Adam’s apple bobbed.

Gulp.

An inexplicable tension settled over the place.
At last, the battle began.

“Ha-aah!!”

Kashan rushed forward, swinging his sword like a mace. But the blade’s edge glanced away into empty air.

Clang!

He possessed a National Treasure and Illusion Magic. Something invisible had burst forth from nowhere and deflected the sword’s path.

Kashan used the rebounding force to spin, kicked off the ground, and charged again.

Clang-clang-clang-clang-clash!

The colossal blade drove through empty air, scratching a path through it. Brilliant sparks burst and cascaded several meters across the void.
But it was no mere flurry of strikes.

『 Sword Sense 』

Nerves extending through the blade were sensing. With each strike, the Form of the hand was becoming clearer.

The moment it could all be read, the Shadowless Starlight Seat’s advantage of being “unseen” would vanish.

Knowing this, the assassin swiftly withdrew his hand immediately after impact.

For knights who had witnessed someone else wielding the Colossus Soldier Sword ○, the speed was disconcertingly fast—yet it hardly swung the tide of battle.

“Running away like a rat?”

Kashan pursued Dante with unhurried ease.

‘Nothing unusual here.’
‘He’s outmatched. Can’t create any distance at all.’
‘We’re overwhelming him completely. The captain lives up to his title.’

At this moment, the knights anticipated the familiar pattern. The pattern of an assassin against a warrior was predictable, after all.

He would widen the distance or deploy concealment. He would attempt Illusion Magic to cloud their vision.

One way or another, he would try to secure the assassin’s critical distance, only to have it shattered by the power of Heavenly Net Formation—Opened.

An assassin who overextended was captured in a warrior’s grip and crushed.
It was always the same choreography.

‘…Of course, an assassin always has one desperate gambit.’

Pressed into a corner, the assassin would attempt to flip the momentum with a flurry of explosive attacks—four or five in succession.

Kashan, familiar with such tactics, would brush them aside or evade with casual grace. He possessed many gifts for doing precisely that.

It unfolded as expected. The battle proceeded along the script they had written, and one knight let out a laugh.

‘This contract will end easily, just like the last….’

But then.

As the fight dragged on, something began to twist out of place.

‘What?’

The assassin moved and stopped, moved and stopped—yet somehow the gap between them never narrowed.

‘That’s strange.’
‘Why isn’t the distance closing?’

It wasn’t quite the assassin’s killing distance. Yet neither was it the warrior’s range.
Somewhere in that twilight space between, Professor Dante simply would not be caught.
He wasn’t moving faster than other assassins, nor was he using traps or Illusion Magic to confuse them.

‘What trick is he pulling…?’
‘Why can’t the captain keep up….’
‘Odd. Even my sense of distance feels… off somehow.’

And when he finally closed in,

Clang!!

The Colossus Soldier Hand blocked and deflected the strike, and Dante quickly withdrew it, concealing its Form.

Someone blinked. Something was wrong. The captain charged at tremendous speed, yet appeared strangely sluggish, while Professor Dante maintained a steady pace and continued widening the gap.

And it seemed the strangeness wasn’t felt by them alone.

The Heavenly Net Formation—Opened was a high-tier ability that shared consciousness and emotion among its participants.

Within it,

‘…The commander is panicking.’

No matter what he tried, the distance refused to shrink. He burst forth with blade energy, hurled wind pressure to shatter any Illusion Magic at work, deflected invisible strikes with brutal momentum—and still, it made no difference.

The distance simply would not close.

‘Is it Illusion Magic? But if it were, the wind pressure should have torn through it….’

They did not know. They could not fathom how an overwhelming Illusion Magic—one that had climbed to the threshold just below a Starlight Seat—could work so subtly to distort their very perception.

⋮
『 World Fabrication: Perception Forgery [Shrinking Ground] 』
⋮

In the continuing exchange of blows, it was the commander who grew weary.

Clang! Clang-clang! Clang!

Unable to read the pattern, he could not anticipate.
Unable to anticipate, he could only react and follow.
Following the strikes left no time to read the next.

Kashan was being dismantled completely.
And it was being done by ‘the method a warrior uses to catch an assassin.’

The professor—an assassin by trade—was exploiting Kashan the warrior using a warrior’s own methods against him.

At this, one of the knights’ jaws fell slack.

‘So that’s why…?’

At first, when they were told they would dispatch a single Chief Professor, they had wondered at the need for seven of them.

A Chief Professor, however formidable, was at best a Master-rank fighter in the 2,000s.

Yet Kashan, the commander of the knights, was a powerhouse—one who, matched even against other Chief Professors, emerged victorious more often than not.
No matter what National Treasure the target possessed, its effectiveness always hinged on the wielder’s skill.
So why would seven be necessary at all?

That reason,
was now unfolding before their eyes.

Whoosh!!

A massive greatsword swept through empty air.

“Ugh! This is infuriating.”

Unable to bear it any longer, the commander halted and bellowed.

“Listen here, Professor! Why do you keep dodging so perfectly?”
“What do you mean?”
“What?”
“You were sluggish before.”
“…Don’t be ridiculous. Tell me straight—what have you done to me?”

At Kashan’s outburst, the knights gasped.

‘That’s impossible!’

A Grandmaster of Kashan’s caliber was in a state where he didn’t even understand what was happening to him.

‘The commander… has no idea what’s going on?’

Kashan’s brow furrowed.

“Hey. You lot, that’s enough.”

This command was directed at the knights. Because of the Heavenly Net Formation—Opened, emotions and consciousness were partially shared among them. The knights caught themselves and quickly composed their thoughts.

“Professor Dante. You’ve fought quite a lot, haven’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to keep playing dumb and trying to get under my skin?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know it, Professor! You know I’m one of the faster warriors. So right now you’re using Illusion Magic to tamper with my perception. You’re drawing me into a mid-range war of attrition. Hoping I’ll throw out one big attack? That’s when you’re planning to do something, isn’t it?”
“…….”

The knights froze. They had paused mid-combat to exchange words. Their commander hadn’t done anything like this in months.

He was more than just someone who killed assassins. Kashan was a professional assassin hunter. But it wasn’t simply because he killed well that he’d earned that title.

It was because he enjoyed killing assassins.

He was like a hunter who found pleasure in going to the hills to slaughter wild boar.

The pork, the village’s peace—of course these mattered. But the knights who knew Kashan understood that wasn’t the true nature of the man.

For Kashan, hunting assassins was sport.

Yet what was this sight before them now?

That mad boar was leaping over traps, dodging bullets, and continuing to toy with the hunter.

“I had no such plan.”
“Pardon?”
“I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular.”
“…….”

Yes. It was toying with him. And toying, even when you know you’re being toyed with, turns a man’s insides to ice.

“…Ha.”

Kashan split his face in a grin.

“Go on then. Let’s keep going.”
“…….”
“I know you. But you don’t know me.”

Then Kashan planted his foot once more and tore through the void. This time too, the distance refused to close properly—and Kashan unleashed a massive wave of force, checking all around for Illusion Magic, and only after confirming there was none—
It was the work of an instant.
Kashan’s body began to bend backward in an utterly unnatural way.
From his toes to the crown of his head, bones and muscles and sinews twisted into angles that should have been impossible, and his entire frame drew itself taut as a bow drawn to its limit.
And then—
The eighth-level Movement Technique of a man who had once been an assassin burst forth.

『 Bow Spirit Bullet Shadow 』

Even through the corrupted perception, his body shot forward like a bullet, crossing the twenty-meter distance to strike Dante on the far side of the ridge.

‘I have you!!!’

The knights trembled at that moment.

Bang!!!

The sound of an explosion tore through the air.

──── .

At that same angle and speed, Kashan’s body rebounded violently backward, slamming into the Heavenly Net Formation—Open. Like a baseball struck by a bat and caught in a net.
Boom!!
Yet the net remained intact, though Kashan’s body convulsed inward.

“Ugh!!”

The commander who staggered to his feet coughed up blood.

‘This… this cannot be!!’

All the knights reeled inwardly at the sight.
Dante walked toward them from across the distance.

“You’re wrong.”

His stride was utterly composed.
And his voice fell heavy with certainty.

“You don’t know me at all.”

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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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