Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 128

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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 128
That day, Song Chien of the Eternal Starlight Seat ascended toward the Floating Island suspended high above. It was to meet the Challenger Starlight Seat.

The moment before the monsters broke free beyond seven Isolation Barriers—humanity’s final hour approaching.

The Eternal Starlight Seat, who held mortals dear, could only wring her hands in anxiety, praying that as many as possible would survive.

“Well?”
……

The Challenger Starlight Seat, whose ability to perceive and read specifications ranked second only to the Systematicity Starlight Seat, finally broke the silence.

“The Empire’s situation is manageable.”
“Manageable?”
“The Freezing Starlight Seat is trapped within the Isolation Barrier, and there are four Challengers caught alongside her. The monster there will be subdued quickly.”

Yet she clicked her tongue. Combat weakened a Starlight Seat; the Freezing Starlight Seat’s ranking would plummet for certain.

“…And the others?”

The Challenger Starlight Seat gazed toward a more distant point. Far across the flat earth, she sensed the presence of an Isolation Barrier stretching up to the heavens.
The Croitz Kingdom fared well enough. Fortune had smiled there. The Cross Starlight Seat was trapped within that barrier too—a man who dressed and presented himself like a woman.
A Starlight Seat was caught in the Khan Federation as well, and Hitahitana and Sombania seemed safe. Both had key military installations trapped inside their barriers.

“The truly dangerous places are two in number.”

The Horance Duchy, and……

The Hiaka Kingdom.

……

The Eternal Starlight Seat’s expression hardened.

Within the Isolation Barriers of both nations, there was no Starlight Seat—not even a single Challenger. The Horance Duchy, being a minor power, had never possessed a Starlight Seat anyway, but the Hiaka Kingdom had simply been dealt a cruel hand by fate.

……

The Eternal Starlight Seat fidgeted with her hands, anxiety gnawing at her.
Perhaps—

the mortals trapped within those two Isolation Barriers would perish entirely this very day.

“…It begins.”

Within seven stages, each watched by all creation itself.
What lay embedded in the air like taxidermied prey begins to stir.
Simultaneously, the gazes of two Starlight Seats turned skyward.

“This is…”

The stars themselves began to look down.
Upon the seven stages.

[Incursion] One-horned Demon Vomittekka (1)

As the clouds parted, Vomittekka’s form was revealed. A jet-black head the size of an ultra-high-rise building, with a horn sprouting from its center. It bore a striking resemblance to the form Dante had created with Illusion Magic and shown to everyone.

The creature wedged itself into a fissure, its body suspended in midair. It was deliberately positioning itself to exploit the advantages of the Projectile Arts—from greater heights, one could rain destruction across a wider swath of ground.

The commander gritted his teeth.
The thing possessed intellect, despite being a colossal beast.

‘Damn it all….’

Then a communication came through from Dante.

Bomiteka’s assault began the moment its maw gaped open. The mouth split from cheek to ear, and jet-black spheres poured forth in a torrent.
The commander’s mind flashed to insects frantically spilling their eggs—the sensation was disturbingly similar, except these orbs were thousands of times larger.
Hundreds of spheres, each the size of a merchant’s wagon, cascaded downward.

Shrieeeek—!!

The hundreds of spheres that poured from the sky bore down upon the Earl’s Outer Castle Gate. They were, in effect, eggs—and upon impact, they ruptured, spilling forth Hornless Demons within. Siege Bodies they were called: towering creatures three to five meters tall.

Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!

The colossal brutes charged toward the castle gate, intent on shattering it beneath their own bodies like living cannonballs.
The commander drew a sharp breath and bellowed across the walls.

“Intercept—!!”

They had to kill as many as possible before they reached the walls. The cannons mounted upon the fortifications roared to life.

Crack-crack-crack-bang!!

At last, humanity and the Demonic Race collided.

Warriors capable of Gigantification expanded to three meters and raised their shields as a living barricade—but the Siege Bodies were larger still. The knights at the vanguard were hurled backward as if gored by wild boar.
Above them, a deluge of firepower rained down.

“Intercept! Intercept—!!”

The battle pressed on.

Nearly thirty minutes of it.

⋮

A comrade fell. Enemies fell too. In the midst of this mutual slaughter, one warrior felt vertigo bloom in his skull.

Then, high above the outer wall, a burst of flame erupted. A single cannonball screamed through the void, crossed the battlefield, and caved in the skull of a Hornless Demon—a Siege Body. Yet the headless thing still moved, its jagged cervical vertebrae and spine driving upward to pierce the throat of the Gigantified warrior.

“Guhhh—!!”
“Andrei!!”

A comrade urgently severed the creature’s leg, and it toppled to earth—but still it writhed, its arm contorting to strike again.

Crack-bang!!

A cannonball punched through its torso, and at last it stilled. ‘Good!’ the warrior cried out, fist raised—but the world around him darkened. ‘What—?’ When he lifted his head, the Siege Body’s maw had closed around him, engulfing his skull. Inside the beast’s monstrous gullet, he could see teeth and, beyond them, veins dark as pitch.
The creature’s grotesque mouth and the blackened blood vessels within its maw were all he could perceive.

‘Ah.’

I am—
I’m being eaten alive.
Now the jaws are closing.

Crunch!

Then it happened. The Siege Body’s head suddenly snapped away and flew off.
Had I survived?
As my legs gave out and my body began to collapse, someone seized me by the collar and hauled me upright with brutal strength.
Black hair. Pink eyes. And blood streaming down from the forehead.
The overall commander of this war—someone I’d glimpsed from a distance only a few times.
It was Professor Dante.

“Snap out of it.”
……
“Snap out of it now, or you’ll die. Come on.”

His voice dropped to a growl as he tapped my cheek sharply, twice. That light impact jolted my dazed mind awake.

“Ah… ahh…”

I pushed strength into my failing legs and held firm. The professor in dark clothes spun away and leaped high, sword drawn, toward another part of the battlefield.
A commander. He could have sat back and issued orders. Instead, he was fighting on the front lines.

……

I had to get up. I had to fight.

* * *

It was different from the Jinxxytte battle before. Now my combat strength held its own against the others. I could direct operations while still performing my role as a senior-grade assassin.

All the while, I kept calculating countless metrics. My mana. My assassination unit’s mana. Vomittekka’s mana. The state of our forces and the overall flow of battle itself.

All conflict is a collision of intentions.

No true fighter throws a punch merely to throw a punch. To win this engagement, I had to read Vomittekka’s intent.

If I had to compare this situation, it was a one-on-one strategy duel between Vomittekka and me, unfolding while a supreme AI like Eamon commanded the armies.

Right now, it was testing the waters with straightforward offense.

Vomittekka’s eyes rotated independently of each other, never ceasing their motion. It was searching for something—analyzing me, probing for weaknesses.

But it wouldn’t find them easily. I was keeping my cards hidden. Conversely, I already had a clear read on its hand.

This straightforward offense felt crushing due to the weight class difference, but straightforward it remained.

At least to me.

A colossal boss monster inspires fear only at first. For someone in my position, who has conquered it dozens, hundreds of times over, it is nothing but a chess player seated across the board.

Beneath that grotesque mask lies only the truth: a being of intelligence no different from myself.

It stumbles now, confused in my swamp.

‘But…….’

Yet something continues to gnaw at me. This unease belongs only to me—to the veteran, to Dante, to someone so thoroughly versed in this world, so armored in certainty.

Our forces must be buckling under even this predictable onslaught. From here on, it is a matter of human will—something no veteran, no Dante, no version of me can control.

All I could do was trust them.

* * *

Meanwhile, elsewhere, someone was crying out in psychological agony.
Gulla, a professor newly placed in command of the Artillery and Magic Unit on the First Layer.

“Intercept! Intercept them!!”

Gulla’s voice shredded as he screamed the order. Even as Hornless Demon Siege Bodies kept crumbling under their barrage, one seized an unexploded cannonball and hurled it back. The explosion detonated with a tremendous bang, and Gulla was thrown clear. ‘Damn it!!’ Am I dead? He ran his hands over his body. Blood trickled from his forehead, but he was intact.

“Commander!!”

Panicked fortress officers rushed toward him, but Gulla roared.

“Idiots! Don’t look at me—keep commanding!”

He scrambled to his feet and kept surveying the battlefield. His legs would not stop trembling, however hard he willed them.
And a terrible thought seized him: why was he even here?

‘…Can we actually win this?!’

Then Gulla remembered Dante’s words.

– I must be candid. This battle is absolutely unfavorable. The enemy is approximately three times our strength.

Conventional doctrine forbids engaging any battle with win odds below eighty percent. Yet Dante had assessed their chances at roughly twenty-five percent—pronouncing such despair with unsettling calm.

– Both sides possess a Win Condition.
– Ours is to shatter Bomiteka’s jaw.

The logic was simple. Bomiteka was a creature that grew stronger by consuming. Destroy its jaw, and it would lose most of its masticatory function in an instant. Bomiteka would crumble.

– Conversely, Bomiteka has two Win Conditions.
– First: destroy both the outer and inner gates of the Earl’s castle. Should that occur, once Bomiteka seeps into the city proper, we have no means to stop it.

Gulla tried to picture it.

That monstrous skull—a metal-and-stone head two or three times the size of the five-story Assassination Studies building—flying through the air and rolling across the streets.

Who could possibly contain it?

The moment the gate fell, the city became a buffet for Bomiteka. They had to hold this outer gate at all costs.

That was his duty—Gulla, professor of the Assassination Department.

‘But, but, damn it…….’

From the start, nothing sat right with him. The reality of fighting a battle with only a 25% win rate—none of it.
Once they engaged, Dante’s assessment felt grimly real. Though Gulla had command experience and could read the tide of battle, he found himself steadily losing ground in this war of attrition.
Then came a moment when his spine went rigid. As the grinding stalemate wore on, the Siege Bodies grew steadily more ferocious.

This was not a battle between human and human. These creatures knew no fear. They did not hesitate even as their comrades fell. They charged forward even as cannons trained their barrels directly at them.
Wasn’t this wrong? As Gulla’s dread deepened, something shifted.
A Hornless Demon’s eyes—a Siege Body’s eyes—locked directly with his own.

A sound escaped his throat, strangled and involuntary.

His blood froze. It was looking at him deliberately. At him, singled out from among a dozen fortress commanders.
The Siege Body compressed itself, then exploded upward into the air—a creature the size of a house rose against the sky, growing larger as it crossed the expanse overhead.

A sound tore from his lips, wordless and raw.

Gulla stumbled backward without thinking and collapsed onto his knees. Then—

A deafening crack split the air.

A black flash streaked across the distance and sheared through the creature’s neck.
That blow—it was Valmond.
The problem was that the head came flying and landed directly beside him.

Gulla choked out a gasp.
Others around him cried out in horror.

The fortress commanders recoiled in shock. The severed head—a meter across, grotesquely massive—rolled across the ground, crushed a soldier beneath its weight, and then turned to face them. The eyes, almost human in shape, fixed upon them. The pinned soldier screamed in agony, flailing like a fish yanked from water before his body went slack. Something wet spilled across the stone.
Terror descended. The officers froze in place. For several seconds, nothing moved. In that void, the battlefield spiraled into chaos. <Sir, sir!!> <What do we do?!> Reports from his subordinates flooded through Communication, but Gulla was paralyzed by fear, unable to move.
His mind went white.
The world bleached away.
Sound retreated to a distant echo.
<Artillery, the artillery isn’t reaching them!!>
…What am I doing here right now? Why in the hell am I suddenly in the middle of a battlefield…?
<Sir, sir! The fourth unit has been wiped out!!>
…How did this war even start? Why do I have to lead? Why does it have to be me…?
<Commander Gulla—!>
…Who are you people? When did I ever agree to lead you…?
<Gulla—!!>
Then, a voice cut through the static—Professor Dante’s voice from the conference room echoed in his ears.

Do not be afraid.

Dante, who orchestrated all of this, had looked each commander in the eyes and spoken. Everyone here had their own role, he’d said.

You commanders need only focus on the task I’ve given each of you, on your own local engagement.

Do your part.
If you do only that,

then I will lead this war to victory.

It struck him like cold water poured over his head. Clarity returned in a flash. Gulla surged to his feet. He turned to survey the battlefield and shouted into Communication.

“Third unit, adjust fifteen degrees left! Second unit, bind their ankles with Freezing Bullets! First unit, abandon that wall section and move to zone seventeen now!”
“Y-yes, Commander Gulla…!”
“Get up, all of you! Now—!”

After bellowing at the fortress commanders, he pressed forward with orders through Communication.
His heart trembled. His jaw shook. His fingers trembled. Yet his voice did not. If it wavered, he drowned it beneath a roar.

“Don’t falter! Don’t lose your nerve, you bastards! We have the advantage! Keep firing the cannons! Pour on the magic—!!”

In that moment, Gulla understood with perfect clarity what he had to do.

“For Hiaka’s eternal—”

He cried out as though his throat would tear.

“Glory—!!”

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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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