Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 127

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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 127
EP28 – How It Came to Pass (4)

Soldiers sprint across the grounds. Officers too, moving their heavy frames with surprising diligence. Shovels bite into the earth without pause, carving trenches, and dozens of cannons line the castle walls, all pointing skyward and outward.

From a window in the Earl’s Castle, Kaiser Truman gazed down at the preparations below, absently stroking his chin.

‘……’

One day until war.
Six days since communication with the outside world had been severed.

What was happening out there now? Kaiser, blessed with sharp instincts, needed little effort to imagine it.

An Isolation Barrier. A colossal creature of unknown origin. The setup was much like dropping fresh meat into a cage of ravenous beasts.

No one would blink at a single chicken placed before a tiger, but what if that chicken were thousands of humans?

The world would be gripped by shock. Every news outlet would be reporting this crisis.
And Hiaka Academy, now realizing their professor’s absence—what state must it be in? Absolute chaos. He could almost see Shaman’s jaw wobbling like pudding in his fury.

According to the professor, combat would erupt in twenty-four hours.
Truly astonishing. In mere days after that man had taken control of the entire territory, the forces had undergone a transformation so complete it seemed to defy belief.
Kaiser studied each soldier’s face, each officer’s expression. Gone was the look from five days ago, when they’d watched the communication tower crumble and simply raised their beers.
Now they carried tension heavy enough to weigh down their very core.

But that wasn’t all that had impressed him about the professor.
There was something else—something he’d accomplished just days ago.

“You summoned me, lord?”

One of the Secret Service agents Kaiser had dispatched hurried over and bowed.

“Well? Did you find out?”
“Yes. I couldn’t speak directly with all three, but I gathered considerable information from their retainers and associates.”

This was the question that had consumed Kaiser’s mind.
Three monsters dwelt in this Domain. Creatures whose spirits had been broken, who’d publicly refused to participate in the war.
The Earl himself had been refused.
Kaiser himself had been refused.
Everyone had been refused.
Despite offering fifty million in compensation, gold, and honor, they’d turned him down flat.
Yet Dante had brought all three in—in less than half a day.
Kaiser was consumed with curiosity about the principle, the method. He simply couldn’t bear not to know.
So he’d sent men to investigate.

“……How did Professor Dante bring in the War Hero, the Chief Professor, and the Champion all at once?”

The mystery gnawed at him.

* * *

Aemon had been a girl tending sheep in the countryside. About thirty years ago now.

Herding flocks to pasture, watching them graze—that was the life. She’d thought she’d grow old and die doing exactly this, until the day she beat a bear to death with a stick.

The bear hide fetched a decent price. The stuffed head brought the value of three sheep. Afterward, thinking it through, she realized she must be quite strong. Wasn’t it proof? When she was seven, that man had come to abuse her—and she’d simply torn his arm from his socket.

After that, Aemon went to the sword dojo on impulse, and wouldn’t you know it—bandits descended on the village around that time, attacking the townspeople. She stood among the militia members and swung her blade. Single-handedly, she killed half the bandits.

She was strong.
But strength alone wasn’t all she possessed.

Aemon’s eyes could read the flow of battle.

If there was a bear, she could predict its movements.
If there were people, she could predict theirs.
If there was a military unit, she could predict theirs.

It had made her the greatest strategist and war general of the Lewayan Region. Of course, she was discarded afterward like a worn-out shoe.

It was four days ago that this Aemon met Dante Hiaka.

Until then, countless people had come seeking her out. They’d grovel and flatter, begging her to return as a strategist. Money, titles, whatever she wanted. All that tiresome nonsense.
The reason was obvious enough. It was because of “that thing” looming overhead. But Aemon, someone who’d grown disillusioned with the Earl House, simply hurled her bottle at them.

‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Strategist Aemon. Join me in this war.’
‘Get lost. You’re ruining my drink.’

Dante was also thrown out at first. Though in his case, she’d found him somewhat interesting. Handsome. A good dozen years younger than her, but might be worth seducing. Now he had that killer’s look befitting an Assassination Studies professor, but if she pinned him to a bed, wouldn’t that harsh expression soften? That’s what she’d thought.

She’d never imagined she could be persuaded. Her own life didn’t matter to her. She had no one worth caring about. The very thought of flattering someone now made her skin crawl.

‘You have to participate.’

But here was the thing—Dante didn’t flatter her. Remarkably, he treated her with clinical detachment.

‘I don’t want to. I’m not going. War? Let it all burn.’

Still, she dug in her heels, nursing her bottle.
Then Dante spoke, his tone almost casual.

‘I hear the three recluse talents in this Domain come from different backgrounds.’
‘What?’

Now that she thought about it, that was true.
One from the capital, one from the Nine Dragon Family, one from the Lewayan Region.
Dante smiled.

‘…The one from the Lewayan Region doesn’t quite fit, does it.’

With that, Dante turned away.

‘…??’

And alone with her thoughts, Aemon felt a sudden surge rise in her chest.
The only pride she’d ever held—with a life that didn’t matter to her, no family to speak of—was the title “war general born from a Lewayan provincial commoner woman.”
And that bastard had just touched it, hadn’t he? Who does he think he is?

‘Hey, Professor! What do you know about anything?’

She rushed after him to demand an answer… and when she opened her eyes, she was wearing armor, holding a map, gripping a spear.

‘…Huh?’

After that, Aemon tried to leave the Earl House several times, but as she stayed close by him, her thinking shifted. It was because Dante’s command style suited her remarkably well.
In mere days, he reorganized the unit structure. He recalibrated every military asset to match the massive creature, and even she found it astonishing. Sometimes she wondered if this really was an “Assassination Studies professor.”
For Aemon, who had spent her life watching every commander in the world and found them all foolish, it was a revelation.
Throughout the process, he would appear before her several times a day to explain how such units ought to be deployed, what characteristics those monsters possessed, and the like.

So that was it.
Well, I suppose…
In the end, she couldn’t bring herself to refuse.

How could she?

‘General, would you take command of all our forces?’

When a girl like that lowered her head to ask.

* * *

Currently ranked 215th in the World Ranking was a senior professor who had once competed for the position of department head at the Warrior Department of Hiaka Academy.

A man named Moong, 131 years old.

Around the time he lost his place as department head to a younger, talented man named Balkan, Moong realized he was finished as a warrior.

It wasn’t simply that he had been surpassed. Around that same time, his eyes had begun to slowly fail.

It ran in the family. His father and grandfather had both gone blind in their old age. Though that had happened a century ago, it was now happening to him as well.

All warriors live by their Main Force. A Sword Combat Rank warrior, no matter how godlike his level, would find himself helpless before a flying enemy.

He had been no exception.

There were warriors who fought using the Sixth Sense. But he was not one of them. Moong, who had spent a lifetime mastering only the Flow Technique, found himself unable to comprehend how or what to fight when he could no longer see.

‘One’s fate lies in heaven’s hands.’

And so Moong accepted his destiny. He built a small cottage in a remote corner and waited for the day heaven would claim his last breath.
It was around that time when a strange professor named Dante appeared.

‘Fight alongside us, please, senior.’

He was a senior professor from Hiaka Academy and addressed Moong as his senior.
The title of senior pleased him to hear—far more than when that disrespectful young viscount, Modrio, had approached him several times with similar requests.

‘There is a great deed in this world that only you can accomplish, senior. I know with absolute clarity that no junior could ever hope to match even your shadow.’

To be praised so lavishly—how could he not be grateful?
And yet he found it shameful to give this answer.

‘These white eyebrows of mine aren’t what make me who I am. The truth is, I cannot see. Neither enemy nor myself. Even if I were to set foot on the battlefield, I wouldn’t know whom to fight. I would be nothing but dead weight to you all.’

A man of a bygone age had value only in passing into the past. That was what Moong believed.
Besides, there were two others in this territory far superior to him.
One was a woman who drank herself into a masculine stupor. The other was a man with an odd temperament. Either way, they were far more capable than he.
He wanted instead to tell Dante to take them with him.

‘That is not so.’

But Professor Dante rebutted him with unwavering conviction.

‘Those two cannot accomplish even half of what you can, senior. First, your Flow Technique—the Taegeuk—is not greatly constrained by the enemy’s position. When activated at the moment a projectile is launched, you can perfectly control and deflect it. Furthermore…’

As Dante continued with such explanations, Moong could hardly contain his joy. This young man understood his abilities with perfect clarity—abilities born from a warrior of that old era.
Remarkably precise.

‘…Your words ring true, but what good does it do me? I cannot see my enemy. If I cannot see, then how can I….’

Yet the deeper the other understood him, the greater his shame became. And remarkably, Dante had brought a solution for that as well.

‘Introduce yourself.’
‘Yes, sir.’

A girl’s voice came through.
It was bright and soft as cotton candy.

‘Hello, grandfather?’

He could not see her face, but something came through to him.
Kindness. And yet something steadfast beneath it.
A remarkably strong child.

‘From now on, you will be bound to this child by a single cord tied about your wrists, and she will guide you.’
‘…….’
‘This child carries in her blood a natural gift—the ability to guide those who cannot see. You can navigate together through conversation, and she can lend you aid.’
‘…….’
‘Would you fight alongside her, please?’

Moong, the former head of the Warrior Department, felt astonishment wash over him.
He knew who the child was.

‘Then you are…. the daughter of Xicos…?’
‘Yes? That’s right.’

At the end of her bright laugh, something small seized his wrinkled hand.
And so the old man and the assassin shook hands.

‘I’m Elise. It’s good to meet you.’

Moong understood then.
He had thought himself helpless.
But there was still something he could do.

‘I am…. let me see…. I took office in the year 411, as the chief professor of the Flow Technique division in the Warrior Department. That was then, but now I’m just an old man in some forgotten village. They call me Moong.’

No—something had come into being for him to do.
His junior colleague had made it possible.

‘I look forward to working with you.’
‘Me too!’

* * *

“Truly remarkable…. So you’ve brought those two stubborn ones along through such a method….”
“Yes, sir.”

Kaiser stroked his chin. He had assumed the professor must have secured them through some negotiation or technique.
But it was not that at all.
Professor Dante had moved their hearts.

‘……I would have been brought along too.’

In Kaiser’s estimation, the professor was that kind of person. Always had been. To the eye of others, he wore a sharp expression and treated people like objects, but in truth he was the one who treated people as people more than anyone else.
Kaiser knew this. It was rare among the professors. Rarer still among assassins.

A person who treats people as people.

“……And the last one? How did you negotiate with him?”

A war general. The previous Head Professor. Fine. But the last figure was rather peculiar—a man who called himself a “hero.”

And why did he call himself a “hero”?

Because he went around saying “I am a hero” himself.
And the entire world, including Kaiser, had no idea what “hero” meant.
Which meant, plainly speaking, he was a madman.
The problem was that this madman was known to be extraordinarily powerful.

“Professor Dante negotiated with him. But the process was rather… unusual.”
“Unusual?”

That sounded entirely plausible.

Glory the Hero.

When Kaiser had looked into him beforehand, the man was decidedly odd.
For one thing, he was stunningly handsome, yet he wandered about dressed like a beggar. He spoke very little, had no close friends, lived on alcohol and cigarettes, and slept rough whenever he felt like it.
He would vanish to somewhere, then reappear drenched in blood—blood that was almost never his own. It was mostly monster blood.
Yet he posed no threat to those who approached him, so the Earl simply left him be.
Many had tried to use Glory to their advantage, but he’d never allowed himself to be used by anyone.
He was famous for this incident in particular: even before the Earl himself, who had once invited him to a decadent drinking gathering, Glory had spoken thus—

“This is not right.”

And then he’d flipped the table, ended the gathering, and left. That such a capricious and strange man had been brought in by Professor Dante—Kaiser was intensely curious about the method.
Kaiser wanted to know how it was done.

“Even so. Tell me everything you know in detail.”
“Yes. Um, well…….”

“…….”

Then he simply followed Dante.

For the extinction of humanity.

⋮

EP28

How We Came to Rule

END

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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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