Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 151

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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 151
[Main Story] No. 3 Holy Sword Contention (4)

The moment the panicked man released the seal, the Dark World unraveled. “Huh—” “What—what was that?” Citizens sank to their knees, clutching at their rattled nerves. And he began to stumble away, fleeing blindly.
But how simple was it to escape when you couldn’t see?

Smack!

His head rammed straight into the wall and he crumpled. As he struggled to rise, I closed in and raked a Knee Strike across his skull.
But the Guard Unit wasn’t just anyone. “Nngh—!” He tried to get up again, drawing a blade and flailing in desperation. I dodged and delivered another Knee Strike. It took seven blows to the lower jaw before he finally went limp.

“Professor Dante!”

Leim arrived with a shuriken lodged in his ribs, Rebecca at his side.

“Are you all right?”
“A trifle. If I just yank it out—”

But the shuriken had barbed teeth along its reverse edge. It had caught him from the inside. Leim couldn’t pull it straight; instead, he carefully twisted it free, mindful of the blade’s direction.
Splash—
Blood spilled. “Mm…” Leim endured it with nothing more than a tight twist to his mouth. The blood poured dark and thick.

“Poison.”
“…I’m fine. My resistance to potent toxins is quite high.”
“That may be, but this opponent’s poison runs deep. Rebecca.”
“I know.”

Rebecca tried to summon divine power through prayer, but received no answer. The gathering particles of sanctity scattered twice before dispersing entirely. She twisted her mouth and produced a Detoxification Elixir, pouring it over Leim’s abdomen.

“…Your Highness. I can manage this myself.”
“Be quiet, Leim.”

While this unfolded, I had sealed the entire alley with Illusion Magic, blocking all sight from the outside. Citizens were calling for the security detail, but they would pass by as if nothing had happened.
Once Leim finished a hasty bandaging, he spoke.

“Professor, what was that man?”
“It seems the Nibelung Grandmother came to the Auction House herself.”
“The Grandmother? In person?”

I nodded. The Guard Unit never operated independently of the Grandmother.

“But why? And why target Her Highness?”
“As I’ve determined, someone fed her information about Rebecca’s movements.”

The two exchanged a glance.

“Damn. It’s likely an insider from the Religious Order who leaked the intelligence.”
“The Religious Order?”
“Yes. It’s a closed institution where secrecy is paramount. All external movements must be disclosed before departure, and if you fail to meet a priest when summoned without warning, you’re excommunicated.”

A strict place indeed.
The Nibelung Family’s influence in Hiaka ran deep enough that reaching into the Religious Order wouldn’t be surprising.

“Then what do we do with this one?”
……

Rebecca had asked the question.

“I have a good idea.”

⋮

Thirty minutes later. The man who’d come to stirred, scratching his head.

【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 3 : ‘Where am I….’ 】
【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 3 : ‘Right. How stupid of me. Walking down the street and getting hit by a car like that.’ 】

It had worked perfectly.
My Memory Falsification.

【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 3 : ‘…I got hit by a car…?’ 】
【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 3 : ‘…….’ 】
【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 3 : ‘Ugh, my jaw hurts so much.’ 】

After lamenting his own pathetic state, the guard got to his feet and decided to return to his quarters to rest.

‘What? Professor Dante. How did you pull that off? That guy, he suddenly lost his memory like….’

Leim asked in bewilderment.

‘Trade secret.’

After that, the three of us cloaked ourselves in the Illusion Magic of the Perception Suppression Veil and tailed him.
That’s how we learned the location of the high-end hotel that the Dark Starlight Seat had secured in this city.
We booked an additional suite in the room directly below theirs.

“Professor. I honestly have no idea what you’re doing anymore.”
“What do you mean.”
“Well, what’s the point of booking a room here? This hotel has a Mana Blocking Barrier, so we can’t get information from the floor below.”

It didn’t matter. The Script would emerge anyway. But I didn’t tell him about that.
Now that we had a place to rest, Leim set about properly dressing his torn abdomen himself, while Rebecca could only watch in dazed silence.
Meanwhile, I focused on the conversation above.

【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 5 : ‘Pathetic fool. Getting hit by a car of all things.’ 】
【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 3 : ‘Damn it. How was I supposed to know this would happen. What happened with the deal with those Auction House people?’ 】
【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 2 : ‘It’s not easy. Those Empire bastards have been throwing their weight around for ages. ……But that strategist fellow is truly a monster.’ 】
【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 3 : ‘A strategist? Ah, you mean that guild leader? What about him?’ 】
【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 2 : ‘With nothing but words, he had this branch’s leadership eating out of his hand. Thanks to that, the Grandmother was able to hold talks with the Auction House leadership.’ 】

I furrowed my brow.
The Grandmother’s objective was indeed the Holy Sword.

【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 3 : ‘This won’t be easy for us to simply take.’ 】
【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 3 : ‘That thing called the Peacemaker†.’ 】

Given how things stood, my plan to peacefully obtain it at the VVIP Auction four days from now seemed to be crumbling to dust.

‘The reason they targeted Rebecca has nothing to do with this auction.’

They’d meant to seize a hostage while they were at it.
A hostage useful for future negotiations with the royal court.
Touching royalty would mean all-out war, they say, but Rebecca was nothing of the sort. A half-blood and a headache.

“…Still, something feels off about this.”
“What is it.”

I paused to think it through.
The Nibelung Family coming here—that’s plausible. They could have come to bid on something they fancied. Or perhaps they sensed that the Holy Sword was an extraordinary weapon.

But why is the Grandmother negotiating with the Auction House leadership?

‘That’s strange.’

You could tell just by looking at the one who’d ambushed us earlier, or Valmond himself. The Nibelung Family is a remarkably straightforward organization. They take what they want by force.
Even backed by a Starlight Seat, the Empire wouldn’t find it impossible.

Troubled by these suspicions, I spent the next stretch of time eavesdropping on their conversation.
And at the end of it, I caught something unsettling.

【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 3 : “But sir, what about those ‘glass pillars’ that suddenly appeared outside?” 】

Glass pillars?

【 Nibelung Grandmother’s Guard No. 1 : “……I’m not sure either. Even Mother looks unsettled by it.” 】

Even they didn’t know—these glass pillars.
And because of them, the Grandmother had shifted her strategy.

‘Ah.’

Something clicked into place in an instant.
A wave of dread swept through my mind.

“I need to step outside for a moment.”

I had to see it myself. And so I rushed toward the door, but Rebecca followed.

“Stay here.”
“Let me come with you. I have a feeling about this.”

* * *

The evening air was crisp. In the golden city ablaze with neon signs, two figures climbed the stairs together.

Rebecca and Dante made their way to the Hotel’s Rooftop Lounge.

Where the infinity pool stretched out, couples were splashing in the water, but the two of them sat perched on the edge of the roof railing beyond the fence.

“What is that out there?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ll find out now.”

Rebecca followed Dante’s gaze toward the distant reaches of Golden Field.
To the naked eye, there was nothing to see.
Dante seemed to feel the same. He’d been staring into empty space for a moment before lowering his gaze.
What Rebecca didn’t know was that the glitched Minimap was showing the location of ‘something’.

At that moment, Rebecca felt she had to do something. And so she concentrated. Looking far into the distance. Straining to see better. From childhood, Rebecca had possessed the ability to ‘see’ things clearly, and that hadn’t changed now.
From the distant reaches of the city, something translucent began to come into view.

“…What is that, exactly?”

Something appeared in the empty air far away.

“What do you see?”
“…A triangular pillar made of something transparent, like glass.”
“How large?”
“Absolutely enormous. The height alone must be thirty meters or more.”

Dante then asked for more detailed specifications. Rebecca answered: ‘Thirty meters high. Seven of them. And triangular. Oddly curved.’

“And… the mana is arranged with remarkable purity.”

After finishing, Rebecca glanced at Dante.
Wondering why he hadn’t answered.
When she caught sight of the professor’s face, she couldn’t help but feel a small shock.

“…….”

Dante’s expression had gone frighteningly cold.
His pink-tinged eyes gazed toward something distant, his jaw muscles tensing visibly.

“…What is it? What is that?”

The professor was silent for a moment. His gaze swept across the world around them, his pupils dilating and contracting slightly. Rebecca couldn’t explain why, but she thought Dante resembled a pilot sitting in a cockpit. Just as one might scan external readouts from an armored weapon, Dante seemed to be observing something and comprehending the world around him.

“Vision,”

the professor said then, opening his mouth.
His voice far more subdued than moments before.

“is the most passive of the five human senses. It depends entirely on external stimuli, and even then, we don’t fully accept what we receive—it undergoes dozens of stages of post-processing.”

Rebecca had taken Illusion Magic lectures in her first semester, but she’d never heard anything like this.

“…So?”
“It means it’s easier to deceive than the other senses. Just tilting the angle of a background line is enough—we can’t perceive length completely.”
“Is that so? I’ve always had rather good eyesight, so I never really thought about it.”

The professor then raised his index finger and drew through the air with Illusion Magic.
He created just two simple lines.

>——<

Rebecca's eyes widened.
Though the lines were the same length, the lower one appeared longer.

"Ah."

Rebecca felt a stir of interest. It was a simple visual illusion common in reality, but uncommon in this world.

"Those glass pillars are called the Prism Device. It's a apparatus that decomposes light, and seven of them are each aimed at the Casino. As a sort of Totem, it allows light to be combined far more freely."
"Why target the Casino? For the money?"
"Hard to say. My guess would be that it's the safest place in Golden Field to store something of utmost importance."
"……What is it?"
"A sword called the Peacemaker. The reason you were drawn here in the first place, the Nibelung Grandmother, and the person who erected those glass pillars—it means they've all converged for one reason: something kept in a warehouse beneath that Casino."
"……."

At this, Rebecca found herself experiencing surprise despite her reluctance to admit it.
Whenever facing an unfamiliar situation and someone posed a question, it was always she who drew answers through intuition.
Except for Kaiser, whose intuition matched her own, she'd never encountered anyone with keener instincts—until now. It was Professor Dante.

"Still, this is the Empire, isn't it?"
"It is the Empire… but the laws and norms that humans create are only upheld when both parties are reasonably satisfied. Didn't you yourself speak of assassinating the Emperor?"
"What won't be satisfied?"
"Can't you sense it yourself? That a time of chaos approaches for humanity."
"……."

At that, Rebecca's suspicion crystallized.

"But this 'light'……. Could it be……?"

Among the reasons the Nibelung Grandmother would grow tense and contact the upper echelons, only one bore any connection to "light."

"Could it be Agion, the Luminous Starlight Seat?"
"If he'd come alone, we wouldn't need this many Prism Devices."

Dante lowered his voice.

"The entire Luminous Legion has arrived."

* * *

Dante's words became reality.

"What? That's…."

The next day, while Grey moved throughout Golden Field under Dante's orders, she encountered a sight that defied reason.

In the Abandoned Factory near Golden Field. Inside an empty container. A massive crowd had gathered.

They clutched empty glasses and clinked them together, stood guard in pajamas holding nothing, laughed and spoke to empty air. All of it.

Cross-referencing their faces revealed hundreds of security personnel who guarded the VVIP clients and Auction House, along with dozens of officials and administrators.

Chills raced across Grey’s skin. Before her eyes, a thousand people were all trapped in Illusion Magic. Simultaneously, a thousand people in reality had been replaced by illusions.
And those Prism Devices spread out in the distance. Agion’s objective was simple.

War with the Casino.

Anticipating this, the Nibelung Grandmother had allied herself with the Auction House to stop Agion. Two titans were about to clash over the Peacemaker, a conflict of staggering proportions.
And then came Dante’s order.

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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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