Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 12

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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 12
EP6 – The Witch of the Cemetery (1)

【 First-year Sleeper Student Rebecca: “There’s no need for that. Technology’s gotten so good these days that even corpses can talk.” 】
【 Handmaid Heart: “……!” 】
【 First-year Sleeper Student Rebecca: “But I’m curious. What was the Curse I placed on my missal?” 】

At the edge of the distance where the Script’s influence reached, I watched the situation unfold from behind a tree.
I observed it all, even the outcome.
I wasn’t particularly inclined to judge anything. But I did confirm one thing: my decision not to enter Sleeper Academy had been the right one.

┃ Relationship Status Increased: Rebecca [2] (▲2)
┃ Reward: Star Fragment × 2

The reward was solid.

Star Fragments accumulating, bit by bit.
I decided to head home for now.
Then a question nagged at me.

‘After a funeral, do they cremate the body?’

This was something I needed to think through carefully.
Cursed corpses often cause problems.
Rebecca attended funerals without fail every week, and she’d been doing it throughout the entire first semester.
If I calculated the death rate across Zone 0—roughly twenty people per week—I came up with approximately six hundred coffins just for one semester.
And if those corpses, infused with high-level Curses powerful enough to deceive even priests, were never cremated…?
A serious problem could arise.

So I made my way back to the Cathedral.

‘There it is.’

Luck was on my side—I spotted workers loading a coffin onto a wagon.
I slipped in among the mourning crowd and followed the wagon.
Night was falling as I walked.
After some distance, the wagon veered away from the crowd toward the Public Cemetery.

The coffin wasn’t cremated, as I’d expected. It was buried instead.
But the burial site was wrong.
It wasn’t the Public Cemetery.
According to the signpost, the actual Public Cemetery lay at least two kilometers further ahead.

For context, Hiaka Academy sits as a satellite city near the capital, housing a population of roughly three hundred thousand.
The Assassination Department’s Zone 0 has only about four thousand students, but a resident population exceeding forty thousand.
Overall, it resembles a city more than a campus.
Regardless.

Why would they bury bodies in abandoned land?

After the bereaved had departed.
I approached one of the workers and asked.

“Well… The truth is, we used the Public Cemetery until last year. But strange things started happening there in early spring, so…”
“Strange things?”
“Hmm. I’m not entirely sure… but they say some kind of monster started appearing.”

Inside the academy?

“And the department simply left it alone?”
“Well, I… couldn’t say that far.”

The worker, who had the bearing of an assassin, shrank back slightly. Then the senior worker approached. When asked what was the matter, the worker explained the situation.

“Ah, you mean the Public Cemetery at Byeolmatnae Mountain? The space there has become rather strange.”
“Strange space? But just now you said it was a monster.”
“There’s a strange monster living in that strange space. The department head and several senior professors went there, and apparently they decided to just leave it alone. Instead, they made the decision to relocate the cemetery outside.”

Curious.
Then the senior worker leaned in and whispered.

“From what I hear… there’s a witch there.”
“A witch?”
“That’s what they say! But here’s the strange part — this witch doesn’t come outside, and doesn’t kill people either. That’s why they decided to leave it be.”

He continued speaking with the pleased expression of someone sharing an arcane and mysterious tale.
No one truly knew the witch. Some said it was more of a monster than a witch. He went on to mention how a cadet who’d ventured there on a whim, and one of the senior professors who’d attempted to clear it, had both been injured.

I recalled the witch-like entities that could be summoned at gravesites. There were three varieties. All were monsters that emerged from dungeons.
But inside the academy, there was no dungeon — it bore the Protection of Harmonious Peace.

“A witch of the cemetery….”

My bewilderment grew.
If it was discovered at the start of this year, of all times.
It coincided with Rebecca’s entrance.
I decided to go see it myself.

So I summoned Adel, explained the situation in broad strokes, and decided we would take a car to Byeolmatnae Mountain.
Adel looked puzzled.

“Byeolmatnae Mountain is a restricted access zone, isn’t it?”
“If anyone asks, just say we went for research purposes.”
“I see… If the witch proves hostile, are you planning to assassinate it?”

I’m not sure.
I don’t know that yet.
That’s why I’m going. Because I don’t know.

I am a veteran of this game.
There is almost nothing I don’t know.

Of course, I don’t know about characters like Kaiser or Elise who were added in the DLC.
But I know all the events Kaiser spoke of — like the founding of the assassination squad, the assassination of the emperor.
And regarding Elise’s house, the Ksikos Count House, I know it extremely well.

Now that game knowledge has been converted into reality through Synchronization, I must know every basic interaction in this world.

But there is something I don’t know.
On that mountain, Byeolmatnae.

“Mm~ Ah, we’re almost there.”

Yet while Adel hummed to herself, I caught sight of red dots on my Minimap.
There were quite a lot of them.
We were heading deeper into the mountain road.
When not hostile, every red dot on the minimap marked a monster.

“Adel. Stop the car here for now.”
“Why?”
“There seem to be monsters ahead. I’ll scout and come back. You keep accelerating—shake them off if they pursue.”
“Understood.”

I stepped out and climbed the mountain path.

『 World Fabrication: Form Alteration [Sedan] 』

Then I wove an Illusion Arts over it, making the car move of its own accord.
The red dots that had paused began to stir.

‘I can’t use Concealment….’

The reason I’d dumped a thousand points into Illusion Arts was simple:
it could handle any situation.

『 World Fabrication: Form Alteration [Black Dome] 』
『 World Fabrication: Phenomenon Alteration [Forest Scent] 』

I erased both scent and form.
Hidden inside the black dome, I peered out through a narrow gap.
Creatures galloped like beasts in the distance, chasing the car.
Their true nature was:

● Ghoul

Undead born from curses in graves, growing by consuming corpses.

‘This is because of Rebecca’s Curse.’

Almost certainly.
When people appeared, they must hide underground nearby.
When people vanished, they’d move to new gravesites.
Then they’d feast on freshly supplied prey.

‘The ghouls’ attention has been drawn to the vehicle….’

The instant I thought this,
a red dot appeared on my minimap.
Right behind me.

– Grrruuul….

I spun around and froze in terror.
A two-meter-tall monstrosity with grotesque features reared its head—its spine laid bare, protruding from a twisted, hunched frame.

Natural Summoning.
An undead generated when curses were consumed spontaneously.
And it had to materialize right behind me?

– Grrrrruuul….

I held my breath.
The creature had just been born and was ravenous, but
the Black Dome and Forest Scent kept it from sensing me.

— Crrrrrrrunch….

Yet still, as if sensing something in the soft, vulnerable flesh of a fragile human, it continued circling the area.

Ah, but then.
On second thought, there was no reason to be afraid.
I’d prepared something for exactly this kind of situation.

‘Crusade mobilization.’

『 World Fabrication : Phenomenon Alteration [Radiance] 』
『 World Fabrication : Form Alteration [Priest] 』
『 World Fabrication : Form Alteration [Inquisitor] 』
『 World Fabrication : Form Alteration [Holy Knight] 』
『 World Fabrication : Form Alteration [Saint] 』
『 World Fabrication : Form Alteration [Angel] 』
⋮

Holy light split the sky. And there, as if by miracle, the forms of the Temple Order materialized before me.
First came the priest, radiating brilliant luminescence. Then the inquisitor, wielding cruel twin blades.
Next appeared the holy knight, his armor and shield gleaming with sacred light and sanctity.
In that manner the saint appeared, and the angel too—a massive aggregate of countless eyes. All of them descended upon the earth.
The ghoul, startled out of its wits, suddenly went rigid and hid among the trees, pretending to be a tree.

“There! A ghoul!”
— Krek? (How did you find me?)
“It’s running! Catch it!”
“Get that bastard!!”

And so the Illusion Arts crusade came charging in, chasing the poor little ghoul clean away…….

‘The path is clear.’

At last, having secured my safety, I climbed up the ridge.
On the flat ground in the middle of the ridge,
I found the Public Cemetery.
And beyond it, I discovered the “strange space” the worker had mentioned.
It was obvious at a glance.
It was far too strange.

‘……What is that.’

In the center of the Public Cemetery
was a jet-black sphere.

It was hard to see in the night, but when I lowered my posture and used the stars as backdrop, it became clear.

A jet-black, light-devouring, enormous sphere loomed before me.
Like a black hole half-sunken into the ground.

‘…….’

Not a dungeon.
Not magic or any supernatural ability.
Not even a Curse.
My status window wasn’t even appearing.

‘What on earth is that……?’

I drew closer to inspect it.
Then I measured its width.
It was truly enormous—wide enough to blanket an entire mountain peak. By my calculation, the diameter stretched to roughly a thousand meters.

Could I enter it?
I was reaching out cautiously to touch the black membrane when—
A tip window suddenly materialized.

───
⧉ Tip: This is an Error Space. The area is currently experiencing a system malfunction and will be patched in a future update. Details will be provided once the patch schedule is finalized.
───

This was… utterly unexpected.
I’d thought it was something beyond my knowledge, but—

‘A bug? An update?’

I’d known all along that I was inside a game, of course.
But to have words like “bug” and “update” suddenly surface—terminology that belonged to real-world games—was jarring beyond measure.

‘Wait… my hand’s already inside.’

In the midst of my thoughts, one of my hands had already penetrated the black sphere—the Error Space.
I pulled it back, and it came free without resistance.
There was no obstruction at all.
So I carefully pushed my head through.
Again, no problem.
Inside the Error Space lay a cemetery.

‘The black sphere acts like a boundary drawn only at its surface.’

I advanced slowly, step by careful step.
Then I began climbing the hill.

As I ascended, strange things came into view. Using a Light Source to illuminate them, I saw they were fragments of weapons—utterly shattered and ruined.

‘There were attempts to eradicate it, weren’t there?’

Before the area was sealed off.
Scholars from the academy leadership, senior professors, and cadets had come and been destroyed, or so they said.
Yet Shaman Kroitz, the head of the Assassination Department, was a Challenger-ranked assassin—one of the kingdom’s strongest fighters.
To put it in terms students use, even if they were as skilled as the finest, facing him one-on-seven they’d all be dead within a minute.

‘Even he couldn’t assassinate it easily, so it was left alone.’

Yet through it all, the witch hadn’t killed anyone.
Sometimes she’d simply withdrawn instead.

Why had she fled?

…That creature there.

Right ahead of me.

Some twenty meters forward, atop a burial mound larger than the rest.

Something wrapped in filthy burlap was perched there, silhouetted against the moonlight.

True to her name as a witch, she bore human form.

As I drew closer, the figure turned her head toward me, and I stopped at a comfortable distance.

“…….”
“…….”

I understood now why some people called her a monster.
She didn’t feel human.
The sensation of encountering an unfamiliar predator—pure danger.
In the darkness, she watched me from beneath her hood with eyes the color of deep blue.

And yet, oddly, I found myself recalling the cautious posture one adopts when meeting a strange dog.
I crouched down slowly, at an angle.
Giving her time to take my measure.
Even as I did, I checked her nameplate.

● Eve 『Curse of Oblivion』

Eve. That was her name.
One I didn’t recognize.
This meant she was a character included in the new DLC.

Beside her name was written “Curse”.
The Curse of Oblivion—a Curse that erased one from the world’s memory and the memory of all people. It was an ultra-high-tier Curse that only the highest-ranking demons could cast.

‘So that’s why the information was written so hazily.’

I could see the line of her jaw and her lips beneath the hood.
Even her ankles and bare white feet were visible below the hem of her garment.
And yet, nowhere did it explicitly say “person”.
Those who retained even fragments of memory had described her as a witch.

Then Eve began to move toward me.
Descending from the great tomb, slowly.

It was somewhat frightening in the dead of night.
Still, I waited.

When she finally drew near.
My Light Source illuminated her face beneath the hood, just barely.

Unexpectedly, I saw the face of a woman in her early twenties.
It was like when I had looked upon Rebecca.
The face was absurdly, almost bewilderingly beautiful.
Hair the color of sky blue, long and flowing; eyes as clear and blue as a still lake; a pale, delicate face that the grime of earth could not diminish.
But this was not the moment for idle admiration.
In that instant, if I had indeed felt an illusion, it was the sensation of a colossal creature looming over me—as if I were sinking into a deep blue abyss.
Eve slowly bent forward and crouched down before me.
Then she raised her head.
Observing me.
And in doing so, the angle between our gazes shifted.

I wanted to know her potential.
I needed to make contact.
But I wasn’t certain if I was permitted to move yet.
For some reason, even the Script window wouldn’t appear for Eve.
I slowly reached out my hand, palm open. If I could at least brush her clothing, I would be able to see her status.
At that, Eve tilted her head curiously and blocked my hand with her own palm.
Don’t touch me.
She withdrew her hand, curling her fingers inward as though even that contact disgusted her.
But it was enough.

───
Eve Lemont [3.0]
───

……A staggering number hovered before her eyes.

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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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