Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 45

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 45
[Main Story] No.1 Betrayal and Collapse (2)

I was dumbfounded by this sudden turn of events.

‘…A Hotfix announcement?’

Now that I thought about it, what was that message I’d seen every time I entered the Error Space?

───
⧉ Tip: [Error Space]. This is a space where an error has occurred and is scheduled to be patched in future updates. You will be notified of the detailed schedule once it is finalized.
───

Thanks to that, it was something I’d partially anticipated.

‘I never thought it’d actually happen.’

But since I’d been living as if this were reality, the feeling was a bit strange.

‘…Right. Zinksite—this doesn’t make sense, does it?’

If I’m being honest with myself.

The reason our losses weren’t heavier in that first engagement with Zinksite was entirely because I was there.
Because I knew Zinksite’s habits and patterns, could read the flow of battle, and could devise countermeasures.

‘If I hadn’t been there…’

If only the five others had headed into the Error Space, they likely would have all died. They would have fallen to the Curse of Dominance.

If everyone had perished, Zinksite would have subsequently unleashed its curse across all of District 0 and wreaked havoc—dealing catastrophic damage.
That would’ve been excessive even for Hell Difficulty.
But thanks to the appearance of this announcement, my peace of mind had grown considerably.
I didn’t know how things would be *adjusted* or what compensation would be offered, but at least it meant there was a safety mechanism in place.

Thinking it over afterward, I found this announcement deeply significant. Beyond just suppressing the Zinksite crisis. It felt like it would impact my entire life within the game going forward.

‘I should get treatment first.’

I headed to the Medical Office and had my damaged eye treated.
Then I rested in the hospital room.
After a few hours had passed, a status window announcing the start of the main game appeared.

「 ⧉ [Main Story] No.1 Betrayal and Collapse 」

So it was really beginning now….
According to the information I’d gathered, it was supposed to be three days away.
Apparently, the appearance of Zinksite had pushed it forward by several days.
Outside, the Assassination Battle was likely erupting even now.

What followed unfolded exactly as I’d anticipated.

「 ⧉ Phase 1 – Disappearance of Neutral Professors 」

Neutral professors—assassins, warriors, and mages from Districts 0, 1, and 2—vanished en masse.

— Noooooooo!!!
— Air raid alert. Air raid alert. All students, faculty, and residents of District 0 are to evacuate to shelters immediately.

Soon after, amid the blare of sirens, a combat declaration echoed across District 0.

⧉ Phase 2 – Assassination Battle ⧉

Assassins from the hostile Kingdom of Kroitz had begun striking key facilities in District 2, the Magic Department.
Shaman, the head of the Assassination Department, along with regional commanders of the Black and White Path and roughly a hundred elite assassins who had been preparing for this contingency, moved out to intercept them.

Under normal circumstances, I would have slipped into that chaos to seize what I could. But circumstances had shifted.

By the next morning, Zinksite had regained not one but three additional limbs. And more crucially, enemy assassins had infiltrated inside District 0.

Standing atop the Medical Office building, concealed behind an illusory wall, I surveyed the landscape of District 0. Something invisible crossed the sky, leaving no trace upon the air.

● Kroitz Assassin Ketrak
● Kroitz Assassin Balhaka

Reading the Script, these were no ordinary facility-strike assassins. They had a target—a specific one.
Our Hiaka Academy harbors the son of a sniper who assassinated Kroitz royalty during the Second Assassination War.

And that student was mine.

“P-Professor! You shouldn’t be moving yet…!”
“Step aside.”

My eyes still throbbed with dull pain.
But I pushed past the medical staff and stepped out of the Medical Office.

* * *

The sky cracked open.

Something brighter than the sun pierced the clouds.
Its tail carved a vertical line across the heavens as it plummeted.

A small meteorite was falling toward District 2 of Hiaka Academy—Meteor, an eighth-tier class explosive spell.
Against it—

“D-Department Head—!!”

A mage shouted toward the bespectacled middle-aged man.

“Keep your composure.”

The middle-aged man was none other than Ezekiel Hiakium, the department head of Magic at Hiaka Academy and a Challenger-class mage.

He unfurled a colossal barrier spanning two hundred meters—the Hexaaqua Tortoise Shell Barrier. The nearby mages gasped as a translucent, turtle-shell-like expanse, covering an area twice the size of a football field, bloomed across the sky.

The meteorite hurtled into it.

A deafening explosion erupted; pillars of fire rose, and shards of rock scattered in all directions.

Yet nearly all of it—the sound, the tremors, even the fragments—dissipated harmlessly against Ezekiel’s protective magic.

To any observer, it appeared a perfect defense. In truth, it was not. The Peace Star’s boundary, which guarded the Academy, had shattered.

That barrier, which inflicted countless debuffs upon unauthorized foreign intruders, now lay fractured—and through its ruptures, assassins poured in.

“Hurry, move faster! Ugh….”
“Department Head…!”

Ezekiel had been rushing about, issuing orders left and right, when the recoil from the grand spell struck him—a crushing weight on his heart that drove him to his knees.
That was when the enemy’s infiltration unit assassins appeared.

“It’s Ezekiel!”

Damn. Already.
They came at him with blades drawn.

“Die, Ezekiel!”

The skull of the infiltration unit member leading the charge exploded.

Crack!

An Axe had driven straight through it.
The second infiltrator suffered no better fate. The ground beneath him seemed to give way—a sickening feeling seized him as he plummeted, and by thirty meters down, his body tore apart.

The Axe returned of its own accord, settling into a man’s grip.
Another man stepped forward beside him.

“…Too slow. You worthless rats.”

Ezekiel spoke, clutching his chest.

“Heheheh. Quite the sight—a Challenger mage on his knees, is it?”

Baekwa, branch head of the Assassination Department’s Black and White Path and senior professor.

“…Stand, sir. There are watching eyes.”

Betelgeuse, branch head of the Assassination Department’s Black and White Path and senior professor.

Behind them came an elite contingent of professors.

“These miserable rats….”

The great rat, cursed as a defector for decades.
He stepped forward.

“What foolish words. Of course we’ll fight.”

That label had followed Shaman his whole life.

Coo, coo, coo, coo, coo…….

It was then that Ezekiel found himself thinking.

Hiaka truly was a cursed nation.

The conflict between the Black and White Path was nothing more than an ancient turf war—the kind only idiot assassins kept alive. And compared to other nations, Hiaka’s version was particularly conspicuous.

According to reports, Baekwa and Betelgeuse—those chief fools—had been scheming to fight each other just three weeks prior. Yet the moment a crisis emerged, they came together without hesitation.

Truly a cursed nation, Hiaka. Cursed profession, assassination…….
He clicked his tongue.

……Yet it wasn’t entirely without merit.
When the time came to fight together, they rose to the occasion.

The same held true for the professors, languid and indifferent as they’d been.
By now, they would surely be moving with furious purpose.

‘Must protect it.’

The nation’s future.
The students.

Must protect them.

Ezekiel rose to his feet.
The directive that had come down from the Director days earlier was clear: Ezekiel would command this operation. He had already issued orders to the three supreme assassins and the assassination corps.
Even as he did, urgent communications flooded into his channel.

A bitter taste filled his mouth. His oversight. Battles never unfolded as planned.

‘……Hold out as long as you can.’

Ezekiel chose to place his faith in the professors remaining in District 0.

Shaman’s battle cry rang out.
At last, the Assassination Battle had begun.

* * *

The incident began with a siren wailing during a make-up student training session.

Eeeeeeng……!

At that moment, Forte, Dominic, and Hwaru found themselves with a neutral professor named Gulla.
Gulla reported that the nearby barrier had been breached, and dozens of assassins were pouring in.
Overwhelmed by numbers, they evacuated immediately to a nearby shelter.
Forte remained composed, but Hwaru trembled with fear, and Dominic too felt the grip of panic.
The administrator managing the shelter tried to calm Hwaru.

“Student. Student! Calm yourself.”
“Y-yes, yes…….”
“You’re safe. Everything’s fine. Don’t be afraid.”
“Y-yes…….”
“You’re safe here in the shelter! No outside assassins can get in here! You trust me, don’t you? Absolutely—”

—Crack.

The speaker’s head exploded.
Hit by stray gunfire pouring in from the distance.

Blood sprayed across the faces of the three cadets and Professor Gulla alike.
Hwaru simply collapsed where she stood.
Too gripped by terror even to scream.

“Damn it…. Everyone get inside…!”

Gulla urgently locked the shelter’s door, then herded the three of them toward the basement.

“Hell… Damn it… I thought it was just some rumor…. I never expected something this crazy to actually happen….”

First priority was finding refuge.
It was then that Dominic spoke up.

“Professor, what about heading to the Shelter?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, isn’t there a Shelter Port nearby? Connected to the underground bunker? And I believe you have a Port Key, sir.”
“…You bastard. How the hell do you know that?”
“Ah, I apologize. It’s information from ‘this line of work,’ so I’m afraid I cannot disclose the source.”
“What nonsense are you spouting? In any case, it’s impossible! We can’t go there….”

Gulla was, by nature, a neutral professor perpetually discontented with the state of the world and prone to shirking his duties. All neutral professors were somewhat like that, but he took it to an extreme.

So much so that he ranked third in the unfavorability poll among Assassin Town faculty.

“…….”

At that, Dominic frowned.
Descending into the underground bunker would guarantee safety.
It was a port prepared for high-ranking officials, but…. He knew that if they went, they would certainly survive. Then why refuse?
Was he looking down on them because they were merely junior cadets?

Thus the four of them were forced to spend the entire afternoon in the shelter’s basement. Above ground, gunshots and impact sounds continued to echo. For an assassination engagement, the duration was stretching unusually long.

Whenever footsteps sounded from nearby, the frightened Hwaru would begin to cry, and Gulla would scrunch his face into a scowl and berate her for not keeping quiet.

In that tension.
As evening fell.

Gulla began to mutter under his breath. ‘Damn it. Why do I have to be here like this….’ ‘Why am I stuck with these stupid repeat students….’ Words of that sort—which only made the three listening to him more afraid.

Then, as night approached.
An urgent message came through.

“Damn it! Hey! Everyone run!”
“What?! Why?”
“No time to explain—run! Get up! Run, damn it, move now!!”

Gulla led the three outside and they bolted, and before long the shelter where they had been took a direct hit.
District 0, emerged into after just half a day, was more devastated than expected, with buildings and infrastructure torn to pieces throughout.
Yet Gulla, able to sense killing intent, fled toward the mountains. The three cadets following behind.
As they did, Gulla’s face wrinkled more deeply, his muttering growing louder.

“Damn it…. Hell…. Why am I…. Why do I have to be dealing with these worthless brats who don’t give a damn about anything….”

It was the same rambling that had been echoing for hours.
Forte, who could bear it no longer, finally snapped.

“Professor. Is this really what you have to say about us?”
“What the hell? Are you lecturing me right now?”
“Just stop! Please, enough already! We all have ears too, you know!”
“Shut your mouth, you bastard! I’m pissed off enough as it is…!!”
…….

Forte had no choice but to fall silent, intimidated.
And with that, Gulla’s muttering only grew louder.
By the time they passed the largest tree nearby—the one with a watchtower built into its branches—he finally reached his crescendo.

“Damn it…! If I’d known it would come to this…! I should’ve taken the retirement offer last year…! Thought I’d squeeze out a little more research funding… the Peace Star!? They love talking about the Peace Star, those parasitic royal bastards…!”
“Listen, Professor—”

Forte was about to say something else when—

“Shut up, Asimov! You damned son of a bitch!”

Gulla spat out another volley of curses, then abruptly stopped dead.
Click.
He drew a gun and trained it on the three of them.

“…Professor?”

The three froze.

“What?! What are you doing!?”
“Professor Gulla. Were you a traitor all along?”

Dominic’s voice wavered with shock as he asked.

“Get out of here, now!!”
“P-Professor…! When did this… why are you doing this!? Don’t do this!”
“Why shouldn’t I!?”
……!!
“Why the hell shouldn’t I? Huh!? Why shouldn’t I abandon you worthless bastards, huh!? Why!?”

Gulla’s fury erupted.

“Get out! You washed-up repeat students! Get out! I’m done dragging worthless trash like you along! I need to save my own skin!”
“P-Professor……!”
“If you don’t leave, I’ll put a hole through your skull. Got it!?”

Hwaru let out a cry of alarm and burst into tears. But Forte gritted her teeth, grabbed Hwaru and pulled, and the three of them bolted, running for their lives.

“Damn it! Damn it all!”

After the three had fled into the distance.

The professor remained where he stood.

His expression had grown distant and hollow.

He did not flee alone to safety.

He simply stood there, utterly still.

“…….”

After a long moment, the professor turned around.

Far beyond the undergrowth.

Toward the assassins of Kroitz drawing near.

“…Damn it.”

And then he muttered.

“Why am I….”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————