Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 34

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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 34
EP11 – Professor Assassination: Illusion Magic (5)

Elise’s phantom hounds roamed throughout Zone 0.
Pups like Moong, Mini Moong, Mini Mini Moong, and the rest of them.
She let them run free during the day. They wandered across the sprawling expanse of Zone 0, playing from dawn to dusk.
That evening.
Interesting information arrived from one of the Mini Mini Moonbgs.

“Really? You’re serious?”
“Moong!”

Such fascinating news?
Elise rushed over and knocked on Grey’s door.

“What? All of a sudden?”
“Want to go see Professor Dante’s Illusion Magic right now?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Let’s go. I think we can see it now. How skilled the Professor really is at Illusion Magic.”
“Why would I—”

Before he could finish, Elise grabbed his wrist and bolted away, her grip possessing the strength of a monster.

“—wait. Hold on!”

Dragged out of the Dormant Dragon Academy, Grey pounded on Elise’s head in frustration. But it was like hitting stone.
Somehow he found himself mounted atop Moong, Elise’s massive phantom hound companion.

“Moong. Run.”

Elise lifted her head slightly and sniffed the air. Using a sense of smell that surpassed even that of the great hound, she picked up Dante’s scent and oriented herself toward him.

The now-invisible hound raced across the night sky.
Toward the abandoned forest at the edge of Zone 0.

* * *

There exists a concept known as the Uncanny Valley.

The claim that as an artificial thing resembles a human more closely yet imperfectly, discomfort increases.

According to one theory in evolutionary biology, humans evolved over millions of years to distinguish minute differences in the faces, voices, and behaviors of their own kind.

The selective pressure behind this evolution arose from the need to differentiate something subtly different — yet fundamentally alien — from their own kind, something that threatened them for hundreds of thousands of years.

Whether this principle applies to the world within this game, I cannot say. But now, before me, something utterly alien wore a human mask, pretending to be one of us.

Whether from instinct or from the fate of an inhabited player, from the moment I first saw ‘it,’ I felt something beyond mere revulsion—a nausea tinged with killing intent.

Then it spoke.

“……but Professor Dante. On our first meeting, must you speak so aggressively? I came here only to help those children in danger. If you’re going to be so threatening from the start…….”

I didn’t hear it. Didn’t catch the meaning. Honestly, I didn’t care. Only a single impulse surged through me—the compulsion to kill the thing before me.

“Professor Toxin.”
“Yes?”
“No need to dress your words so carefully. The truth is, I don’t even understand what you’re saying.”
“…How regrettable. When people misunderstand each other, shouldn’t they communicate and resolve it?”
“Forgive me. Even that last remark. I don’t quite understand what you’re saying. Even if it’s all fabrication, I’d like to hear it. But my mind simply refuses to comprehend.”
“…….”
“However, I’ll make you one proposal here.”
“What might that be.”

I asked the demon, my eyes slightly out of focus.

“Won’t you take your own life?”

It’s a reasonable proposal. Isn’t it rational? Filth must disappear, but if it can vanish of its own accord, why would I bother dirtying my hands?

“If you do, I won’t kill you painfully.”

Then the creature’s eyes went even more askew. Its mouth twisted at an impossible angle. And it answered.

“……You’re different from other humans. I should kill you with all my strength right now.”

Immediately after, a pair of wings like rotting leather tore through its back and erupted outward.

Flap—!!

Simultaneously, pitch-black mana poured forth, pressing down on the forest and the entire world with tremendous force.

Crunch——.

Even a hornless, lowest-rank demon—each individual possessed monstrous power that defied comparison to humanity. Each creature wielded military-grade force. It flaunted this fact, unleashing its strength without restraint.

“I see.”

I drew the Liberator⁺₊⋆ from my Inventory.
At last, I understood one thing.

“……You’ve refused, then.”

* * *

“Gahhh!”

The Killing Intent had seized his body. Because of the monstrous professor’s sudden emanation of Killing Intent, he couldn’t flee properly.

The students, watching the situation on trembling legs, could only collapse as the demon spread its wings.

Terror.

Primal terror descended upon that place.

Demons made humanity—which had long prided itself as the lord of all creation—into mere prey.

Derek felt an overwhelming dread, rendering meaningless the reassurance he’d felt just moments before when Professor Dante had approached.

‘Aaah……. What kind of monster is that…….’
‘I, I need to run but my legs won’t obey.’

The next instant, the demon spread its wings, drew a sword, and dove down.

Crash-crash-crash-bang!!

“Kugh!”

A swift strike that swept across the entire area. Half a dozen trees snapped and toppled in a single blow.

Yet Dante, whom the demon believed caught in the assault, had vanished without a trace.

He appeared elsewhere. Following the demon’s gaze, the cadets spotted him there.

“Wretched little rat——!”

The demon launched itself again, bounding toward Dante with a speed that made it nearly impossible to track with the naked eye at night.

Yet somehow, Dante vaulted across the space with such eerie calm, confounding the demon at every turn.

As if waiting for something. Composed. Deliberate. But the cadets could not fathom what he was thinking.

“We have to help too, don’t we?”
“Right, yes!”

The cadets believed they had a role to play in this delicate standoff.

That impulse would have brought disaster—but mercifully, it was cut short.

“…Do not move.”

A voice came from Dante’s Phantom Body, which had materialized directly before them. The cadets obeyed, quelling their urgency.

Dante had begun weaving a Mana Distortion Field. Spheres of blue energy bloomed across the terrain, yet the demon simply bounded through them in strides of ten meters or more, evading effortlessly.

And when the Mana Distortion Fields multiplied, the demon launched itself skyward—rising nearly fifty meters in a single leap. Then it spread its wings wide and began to glide.

“What pointless tricks are these——!”

Only then did the demon understand: an assassin, not a mage, could never unfurl Mana Distortion Fields across such vast space. All of it—every last sphere—had been Illusion Magic.

Mana Overflow.

Having finally grasped its opponent’s method, the demon began channeling raw mana through the Throwing System, flooding the entire vicinity to obliterate every illusion in its path.

Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack——!”

They began to pour toward the ground in unison, intent on tearing out the throats of every cadet—Dante included.

Screeeeeech!!

“Gah!”
“Argh! Damn it!”

A wet crunch—fangs sinking into flesh as blood erupted across Dominic’s back. Derek too flinched as a slashing wing grazed his skull, drawing crimson.

“Get them off! Get them off!”

Haru rushed to slash the bat from Dominic’s back with her blade, but it was only the beginning. Beneath the starlight, a cloud black as pitch came cascading down. Someone had to hold the line—and here, that someone could only be Dante.

Keeeeeee—

The moment something engulfed the space. The bats that had been diving at the cadets suddenly twisted mid-air and shot skyward in unison.

“What are you doing!? Why are you fleeing!? Kill the humans!!”

Toxin, the hornless demon, roared in fury.
It was Dante’s doing.
It was an ability that human ears could not hear—something that could not be crafted with ordinary Illusion Magic. Yet Dante could forge it as a taboo.

World Forgery: Phenomenon Forgery [Ultrasound]

It was also a weakness inherent to the Summoning-Taming classification—summoned creatures cannot communicate directly with their summoner and become independent entities the moment they are deployed. Turned against the summoner, they could become a hindrance instead.

—!

The moment the ultrasound made the world feel like a solid wall, the disoriented bats swarmed around Toxin. ‘Damn these fools!!’ He did not strike back at his own creatures, but the gap he’d created gave the children precious seconds to flee.

“Hey! What are you doing!? It’s dangerous!”
“Don’t watch—run!”

The ultrasound erupted in rapid bursts.
The cadets who had stood frozen in shock finally broke into a sprint, and some managed to escape the field—but by then, Toxin had regained his senses and begun to adapt.

“K—i—l—l them all—!!”

Roar. He layered the ultrasound with the shredding cry of a beast.

At that moment, Dante moved.

Until now, he had been facing an impossible bind. A truly difficult problem.
Dante’s weapon—the Bright Divine Light rifle called Liberator⁺₊⋆—could fire only two shots.
Rounds that spread like buckshot. Yet no matter how wide the spread, one could not blanket the sky. There was no way to eliminate both Professor Toxin, soaring high and gliding through the air, and the countless bats blanketing the heavens in a single strike.
Not with two shots. Not with three.
That problem remained unsolved.

“Damn—they’re c-coming!”
“Blast—!!”

Meanwhile, the cadets were in peril. Faced with the tide of red-eyed bats pouring down again, all they could do was run on trembling legs.

“Ahhh!”

And then the soft-hearted girl, crushed beneath the demon’s mana, stumbled on a root and fell to the ground.

“Hey! Haru—!!”
“Run! Get up and run!!”

Haru’s head lifted slowly. Despair settled across her face. The bats were pouring down upon them now, close enough to touch.

In that moment, Dante finally completed the forged space he had prepared since the instant he sensed the demon’s presence—detonating an Ultrasound burst to buy himself the crucial seconds needed.

World Forgery: Space Forgery [Kaleidoscope]

Mana erupted from the ground, swallowing the entire forest and surging toward the sky.

Crack-crack-crack——!!

A space spanning forty meters wide and one hundred twenty meters tall—the dimensions of a skyscraper—was wholly forged into being.

A boundary plane stretched from a height above the earth all the way to the heavens, unfolding in its full expanse.

A tower composed of countless mirrors. Each reflecting and refracting against the others at angles so precise they were almost cruel.

Toxin, the wingless demon, had already begun his glide—and now, at this moment, he could not escape the field’s reach.

This was the answer Professor Dante had found standing before an impossible problem.

Now it was Dante’s turn. He fired his first bullet—one that carried within it the Sacred Mark of the Bright Divine Light itself.

———.

The bullet of pure radiance fractured into dozens of rays, striking mirrors and bending through refraction, bouncing between their surfaces.

It spread from five meters above the ground across all the earth below and towered into the sky, birthing a colossal pillar of light.

The pillar swept through two hundred bats and ground them to dust, its force undiminished—then it crashed down upon the airborne demons, shattering them.

——————.

The cadets, lifting their eyes belatedly, witnessed an impossible landscape unfold above their very heads.

Light that rose as if to shatter the firmament itself.
Monsters shattered into fragments, burning as they plummeted from the sky.

……It was as though a miracle had unfolded before them.

* * *

An overwhelming expanse of Illusion Magic shrouding the night sky. Truly surreal. Truly overwhelming.
If, when the divine once commanded light into existence across a dark world, this was the feeling it conjured—then perhaps this was it.

“…….”

In the afterglow of what seemed like a reverse meteor shower stretching toward the cosmos, one could not help but acknowledge it—denial was futile.
The chest swelled with emotion beyond control.

“…….”

Grey bit down on his lower lip.

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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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