Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 49

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

Episode 49
[Main Story] No.1 Rebellion and Collapse (6)

“I’m s-sorry, Your Highness…. I don’t really know what’s happening….”
“Be quiet.”
“Y-yes…. I apologize….”

Rebecca didn’t ask what was happening. She simply swallowed her irritation.
So I moved. Stepping past Elise, I positioned myself before Rebecca at the foot of the stairs.
Elise was tall, and Grey was quite short. Rebecca fell somewhere in between. Standing before me—over 190 centimeters—they all looked small.
Tyrant or not, Rebecca was nothing but a young cadet, diminished and dwarfed.

“The Assassination Tournament in Zone 2 will soon reach its end. Have you given thought to what comes after?”
“…….”
“The coming age will demand many professors in Hiaka. Even those who took no part in the rebellion—neutral faculty—will have ample role to play.”
“…I’ll forgo the lecture.”

Rebecca spoke with her face still covered.

“…I only came to kill the senior professor.”
“I forbid it.”

I bent closer to her.

“If you truly devoted yourself to the nation, you would stop here. Do so, and I won’t hold you accountable.”

Rebecca lowered her hands from her face. Then she stepped toward me and looked up, her crimson eyes bearing down with unsettling weight.

“What if you do hold me accountable?”

Her breathing grew ragged with fury. Her hands trembled, and even the corners of her eyes quivered faintly. Killing intent seeped from her.

“Then what happens to me?”

But I am external pressure. I do not yield.

“You’ll be shoved from my hand and plummet into hell.”

It was no idle threat. I know much. I know several ways to destroy her—princess or otherwise.

“Do you think I’ll go alone?”
“Then we fall together.”

Already compromised by her vulnerability, Rebecca seemed to grasp that this was no jest.

“…….”
“…….”

A few seconds of silence passed.
With her expression held tightly in check, she spoke.

“Professor.”
“I’m listening.”
“Ever since I became princess, there hasn’t been a single moment when I couldn’t do exactly as I pleased. Not one.”
“…….”
“I’ve had everything I wanted. I’ve killed anyone I wished to kill, whenever I wished. This is Hiaka Kingdom, and I am its most noble princess.”

She forced down her trembling breath, her voice fraying at the edges. Rebecca continued.

“You’re the first person to disappoint me like this, Professor. To frustrate me not just once, but twice.”

Once, when I rejected the position of faculty advisor at Hyacca Academy.
Twice, it seemed, was now.

“What should I do? I’m starting to dislike you, Professor.”

If that’s the nature of my relationship with the princess, I find it acceptable.
I, too, am beginning to take a disliking to Rebecca.

“You’ll have to grow accustomed to it.”
“For how long?”
“As long as you remain a student here. And in the days to come, Hyacca Academy will need me all the more.”

Rebecca stared at me blankly for a moment.
Then she answered without emotion.

“Don’t fool yourself. I don’t need you anymore.”

With that, she turned and began descending the stairs, her footsteps sharp and deliberate. Elise, who had been watching anxiously, took on a stricken expression and hurried after her. ‘I’ll come with you, Your Highness….’ But an irritated reply came back.

“Don’t follow me.”
“B-but, Your—”
“I don’t need you either. You worthless thing.”

Elise went rigid where she stood.
That was as far as Rebecca’s assassination attempt went.
Yet it seemed that even a relationship rooted in contempt was still a relationship.

┃ Relationship Chart — Rebecca [20] (▲17)
┃ Reward: Star Fragment × 17

The increment was substantial. Not bad at all.

⋮

‘……Should I head back?’

I turned and made for the Research Office.
As I did, a message arrived.

— Assassination Department: The Assassination Tournament in Zone 2 has concluded.

The Assassination Tournament was finally over.

Hiaka’s victory had been overwhelming. Most of Croitz’s assassins were either killed or had fled.
In a fight between assassins, after all, whether an ambush succeeds or not is the greatest determining factor of victory and defeat.
There’s even a thesis arguing that an assassin’s combat output rises by as much as seven hundred percent during a successful ambush.
Conversely, when an assassination is perfectly countered, the assassin becomes nearly powerless. That was precisely what happened to Croitz’s assassins.
Hiaka, having anticipated this situation, had prepared accordingly, so casualties remained relatively light.
Thus, almost without fanfare, we’d arrived at the core of the main storyline.

“What is it. Why are you following me?”

Someone was padding after me silently through the corridor.
It was Elise.

“I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I can’t either.”

After sending Rebecca away, Elise grew deeply anxious.
To put it in perspective, she resembled a dog that had destroyed its owner’s prized porcelain. I’d intended to send her anyway, but when she insisted she’d rather die than return to Hyacca Academy, I brought her to the Research Office instead.
And then she started acting out.

“Elise. What in the world are you doing?”

She suddenly opened the trash bin and climbed inside.
With the lid placed over her head.

“I’m sad.”
“Never mind sad—why are you climbing into that filthy thing in the first place?”
“I don’t know….”

Then Elise, still wedged in the trash bin, held up an empty coffee can and a used cosmetics container, speaking morosely.

“Trash…”

What was I supposed to do about this?
At least the Research Office bin was clean, or I’d have had a real problem on my hands.

“When are you planning to leave?”
“I’m not going.”
“You’re returning to the Academy before nightfall.”
“I don’t want to.”
……
“I don’t want to, I don’t want to.”
I said nothing in response.

I wondered if this was some kind of separation anxiety.

【 Elise : ｡°(´∩ω∩`)°｡ 】

I decided to let it pass.

When the time came, I received a message from the department asking when the solo Zinksite conquest would begin.
We arranged to match the conquest timing exactly.
There were currently three hours remaining until Zinksite’s complete summoning.

There was one hour until the Hotfix Event.

“Professor, I’ve arrived— Oh? What are you doing over there?”

Adel had just arrived at the Research Office, so I left Elise in her care.

Then I stepped outside—to the Outdoor Training Ground nearby. It was completely empty at the moment.
I decided to test the Colossus Soldier’s Sword I’d recently acquired during my free time.

＊ 「Shadowless Star○」 Colossus Soldier’s Sword [Legendary II, Starmark]

Looking at it again, it was an incredible weapon.
Finally, I switched my main weapon from the Liberator⁺₊⋆ to the Colossus Soldier’s Sword.

The Liberator⁺₊⋆ had been 18,000.
The Colossus Soldier’s Sword was a full 42,550.
A National Treasure without a single enhancement or option—and yet its grade was this impossibly high.

‘…This is outstanding. A weapon that every soul in the world covets, and it rests in my hands.’

First, I decided to examine its options.
The Attack Power was considerable, just as I’d anticipated…….

No—considerable wasn’t the word. Not merely exceptional. It was abnormal.
The previous Liberator⁺₊⋆ had high attack power, sufficient to be called a cannon; but this was as though thirty cannons had been fused into a single weapon.

Yet it made perfect sense.
The Colossus Soldier’s Sword was originally a siege weapon, after all.

The Starmark belonged to the Elise Clan: the Shadowless Star. It too was an unseen weapon.

Shing—

As I drew the blade from its sheath, a remarkably plain sword emerged—one that belied the very name “National Treasure.”
For a longsword, it was somewhat short in length. Unremarkable in form.
Yet a million glittering trinkets could not hold a candle to it.

Every legendary weapon possesses an Activation Incantation.
By reciting it, I would awaken the blade.

“Rise, O soldier of the Colossus—”

The instant I channeled mana into the sword, the space around me began to resonate.

─── .

In that moment, I felt something profoundly strange: my senses expanding outward.
To put it another way—I was like a marionette suspended by invisible strings, standing here.
The “I” that exists now is tethered to the “greater I” that dwells behind me.

This was the sensation of Summoning-Taming.
The essence of Summoning-Taming is making something other than yourself fight in your stead. Within it exists the concept of the Puppet.

This was the ability of that sword.

I was now manipulating a puppet.

The invisible arm and sword of the Colossus Soldier that stood at my back.

The Colossus Soldier now held a sword in the same stance as I, yet even I, who controlled it, could not grasp what form it took.

The Star of the Shadowless Star—it symbolizes secrets, the hidden, the vanishing, the concealed, the forgotten, and all that escapes memory.

Elise inherited only a Fragment of its Starmark from her father, yet she wields ultra-high-level Concealment capable of deceiving the senior professors. The Colossus Soldier at my back belonged to that same category.

‘As expected—the Colossus Soldier and I cannot move simultaneously.’

This was the weapon’s limitation.
When I move, the Colossus Soldier cannot.
When the Colossus Soldier moves, I cannot.
Next, I wanted to test its power.

I thought with all my might.
A slash.

In an instant, an impossibly colossal invisible blade began to sweep through the air.
Calling it a “blade” felt wrong—by sheer size, it was as if seven enormous buses had been chained end to end.
The larger something is, the slower it moves. The Colossus Soldier’s Sword was no exception to that rule.
But its sheer weight made itself known to me soon enough.

Air rippled outward from the ground. Unable to judge its full length, the blade’s tip swept across the guardhouse that stood far down the training ground and crushed it flat.

Crack ────!

The whole area turned to devastation. Air compressed and shockwaves erupted. The guardhouse, built from steel framework, was utterly pulverized.
Like a giant from ancient myth wielding a blade against monsters, my single strike didn’t merely destroy the guardhouse—it drove deep into the earth itself, tearing a massive fissure across the ground.

The destructive force was staggering. From what I knew, even if a grenade detonated on hardened earth, it wouldn’t gouge out more than a few inches. Yet the Colossus Soldier’s Sword had burrowed roughly three meters deep—and that was from a slashing motion, not a piercing thrust.

‘Hah….’

Truly, formidable power.

With a weapon like this, assassination of even those supposedly too large to kill would become possible.

Take, for instance, the Empire’s Sword Masters—some among them could use Gigantification, their bodies swelling to twenty-five meters tall. With skin a full eighty centimeters thick, killing one of them by conventional assassination methods was nearly impossible.
But with this, I thought it could be done.

‘The limitations.’

There were three major ones.

Limitation One: While wielding the Colossus Soldier, I cannot move.
Limitation Two: The attack is discrete, but not fast.
Limitation Three: The blade itself is somewhat fragile.

Ting, ting.

I tested the blade’s flat against my knee. It was slightly stronger than an ordinary sword, but only marginally.
In this world, weapons are consumables.
I would need to avoid direct combat whenever possible.
The moment it breaks, this blade’s power ends. The Starmark will vanish with it.
But even without that risk, aren’t I fated to die if I’m drawn into direct combat?

‘A blade that suits me perfectly.’

I was genuinely satisfied.

Yet simply having acquired a good weapon was no reason for untempered joy.

A high-pitched hum….

An eerie vibration emanated from the blade’s tip.

A true masterwork selects its own master, and without mercy abandons those unworthy of it.

This blade is the same. The Colossus Soldier’s Sword will continuously test me from here on. And I must prove to it that I am its rightful master.
Only after I’ve passed its trials will I be able to attempt unlocking its hidden secrets and true applications.

* * *

A scarred hand gripped a cigarette—a cheap one, entirely unfit for a noble princess.
She struck a match several times. But her hands trembled with fury, and the flame wouldn’t catch easily. At last, after struggling, she managed to light it, and she drew the smoke deep into her lungs.
They were still on the stairs of the Medical Facility, but Rebecca didn’t care. She continued exhaling smoke. If she didn’t do this now, if she didn’t calm this impulse this very moment, she would do something truly, terribly vicious. This was the only way to keep herself under control.
Just then the Crystal Orb chimed. A call.

“What is it.”

The elderly guardian knight Cheongru. One she’d known for years—a man who could read her mood from his voice alone.

“Speak. And skip the pleasantries.”

“Ah, yes.”