Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 56

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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 56
EP18 – Over Snow-Buried Ruins, the Christmas Bell Tolls (1)

There are things that come equally to everyone.

Death, for instance. Loneliness. The passage of time. Or the falling snow of a deep winter.
Even the richest man, the most powerful tyrant—the snow does not part to avoid falling upon his head.

It was the first snow.

Over Hiaka Academy, now scattered in ruins across its grounds, the first snow fell—covering all the grime beneath a mantle of white.
I made rounds through District 0 and the Memorial Hall in District 2, where the Assassination Tournament had erupted. I did so even though they were places of little concern to me.
The Memorial Hall had begun its demolition in earnest—two weeks had passed since the tournament’s end. The Academy needed to rise again, bearing those scars.

So this time, I headed toward the Common Cemetery.
At the center of the Common Cemetery stood an enormous monument. Upon it were inscribed the names of all those who had died in the Assassination Tournament against Croitz.
There were many.
Far more than I had expected.
Beyond that place, I saw the gravestones.
I walked slowly through that distance, examining each stone.

Among many portraits and wreaths, stones lay scattered alone.
Before them, people wept.

I read the words inscribed upon that grave.

There was no particular reason.

I simply wanted to read.

⋮

My mother passed away when I was around ten years old.

Having no father either, I was entrusted to relatives who were not kindly disposed toward me. It was only later I learned that a meager security deposit was placed in their name—that was how the law worked then.

What I remember is that rats sometimes appeared on the cold stone floor. I would always crouch there, still. When the man came home, I had to remain unseen.

Wandering through snowy streets, I remember the bitter cold and the sting of it—the melted snow seeping through holes in my shoes, relentless and numbing.

Yet there was something captivating in it all.
The view through a nearby house’s window.

A home that looked warm. Gift boxes stacked everywhere. A Christmas tree glittering with beautiful lights. A television always on. I couldn’t linger long at that window—it was someone’s private home—but it made me imagine. Endlessly.

What was happening in there?
What child and parents?
What lay inside the largest box?

Crouching before that wall, filling the silence with such thoughts, time would slip away.

I didn’t hate it. There was no envy, really……. Instead, because of it, venturing out at Christmas became something almost pleasant.

Could I build something like that someday? Could I share such a warm space with someone standing beside me? That’s what I wondered.

Why does that thought surface now? People I had nothing to do with have died. Perhaps that’s something I’ll never fully understand.

Death is an instant, but loss is eternal. Still, I know one thing: those left behind must go on living.

And I know what they need to survive.

“Adel.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“I have some research to conduct alone. Don’t look for me for two weeks.”

The faculty will normalize classes soon. Until then, they’re taking time to recover the Academy.
So many buildings had collapsed into rubble. So many had died. It was only natural.
And word went out to the professors: those teaching the final exam in two weeks should begin their preparations.

I intended to prepare for it.
The final exam.
There would be only one question.

‘The Holy Birth Festival.’

Not a Christian festival like Christmas in the real world.
But this place too had a celebration for the birth of the Holy Mother.

‘……If I sell off all the Magitech Devices I acquired from the enemy assassin, the funds should align.’

Preparation was necessary.
I would need to buy vast quantities of materials, invest considerable time, and master the revolutionary understanding and implementation of Illusion Magic.
What I intended to create from now on had to be grand, enduring, and flawlessly realized.
More importantly, since the Academy was still in disarray, I would have to build it while fulfilling my duties as a professor.
Two weeks would be grueling.

『 World Forgery: Form Forgery [Basic Particle] 』

It began as a single, tiny point.

* * *

War is terrifying because it can shatter the foundation someone believed would last forever.

“What? What did you say? No, what the hell―”

Like Kendrick Drake upon hearing that Drake & Gunz—his family company, which he’d thought would be eternal bedrock even unto his grandson’s grandson—was shutting down.

“What the hell, do you call that talking?! What about Father! What about Father?! If you can’t even keep that, what are we supposed to do?!”

As an arms manufacturer, Croitz had become their target.

“I need the medicine! I need it!!”

There was also Kaiser, standing before the memorial portrait of an old friend—someone he’d grown up with in the same neighborhood, known for years.

…….

A friend who had kept his secrets hidden until the very end, yet had sworn that the moment this tightrope walk was over, he would be the first to know everything.
The man who worked at the Magitech Military Factory in District 2 had rushed into a burning building and died in the flames.
Hoban.
The one he’d always traded foolish words with. A coward through and through—so why had he charged into that inferno?

………….

Kaiser fell to his knees.
What had he done? What could he possibly have done?

Meanwhile, there was another who ran with breath coming in gasps.
Valmond.

“Gasp, gasp….”

There had been something, presumably the work of Croitz. Ghouls were proliferating explosively from the Memorial Hall, gravestones, and surrounding areas.
And it was happening in the places closest to civilians across all of Districts 0 through 3, so someone had to respond.
But the warriors and mages were slow to mobilize, unable to react quickly enough.
Valmond had requested military reinforcements from the Discipline Squad to compensate for the shortage of hands.

But the urban setting was the problem. A chronic weakness of Sniper Techniques: in city streets or dense forests, Valmond couldn’t fire freely.

So there was nothing for it but to run with the speed of a man with fire at his heels.

“Shriek!!”
“Ahhh! Run, run!!”

The ghouls that burst forth attacked civilians indiscriminately, their massive forearms smashing through buildings.
Among them—

“Mom!”
“Aileen!!”

A small child who had lost her mother’s hand fell to the ground.
Behind the child’s back, a ghoul approached. It lifted that enormous arm—the same one that had shattered the building’s wall—high into the air.
In that moment, Valmond held his breath until he thought he might burst. Then he tried to squeeze the trigger of Siegfried—

Slip!

In the snow-covered street, his foot lost its footing. ‘Damn it!’ But even as he slipped, Valmond steadied his breathing once more.

It cleared.

Twang—

A bullet laden with darkness streaked black across the daylight sky, smashing through the Ghoul’s skull. Crack! Because the shot was perfectly placed, the creature’s body flew backward.

“Th-thank you! Cadet!”
“Get up! This place is dangerous—head for the shelter, quickly!”

Even as Valmond spoke, the communications channel kept screaming. Street after street. Building after building. Ghouls by the dozen. For days now, there had been no respite, no mercy, night or day.

Yet today the frequency of attacks had dropped considerably, and those who had been laboring nonstop were finally catching their breath. Could it be that this Ghoul outbreak was drawing to a close?

That hope shattered spectacularly.

Boom—

Without warning, a wave of magical force rippled through the air.

“Ugh…”

Valmond clutched his chest and glanced nervously at something, prompting another member of the Discipline Squad nearby to ask,

“Hey! What’s wrong, Valmond?”
“Demonic Energy…”
“Demonic Energy?”

A malevolent aura was spreading outward.
And there were two of them!
Valmond, sensitive to magical fluctuations, could sense it immediately.

“What are you talking about? I don’t feel anything…”

Then it came.

A sinister transmission erupted across the channel.

“Over there!”
“Right, got it!”

A chill ran through them. Valmond raced forward with the rest of the Discipline Squad, and there—with an almost unreal quality—a massive silhouette emerged from the darkness.

A Ghoul Lord.

Dozens of Ghouls had fused into a single component, their grotesque mass taking shape in the dead of night—a colossal beast standing eight meters high.

“Aaaah!”
“Run! Run away!”

The moment it materialized, it began demolishing every structure around it, and no amount of the Discipline Squad’s charge could change that.

Crash!!
Crash!!!

Buildings crumbled with each blow, one after another.

“Die—”

Finally, Valmond too drew his breath and unleashed Shocking Thunder, his seventh-tier power, in a brilliant arc.

Bang! Crackle-crack-crack—

A bullet like a cannon shot tore through the air trailing black lightning, and it smashed clean through the Ghoul Lord’s skull.

Splurch!!

The massive head shattered.
But it was futile. Other ghouls swarmed into the crater, filling it back in.
The other Discipline Squad members hacking at its limbs faced the same grim reality.

“Damn it!”
“The thing won’t fall to ordinary attacks!”
“Fall back! Fall back! Call the senior professors!”

One member suddenly flew backward like a mosquito swatted mid-air and crashed against a building wall.
That alone would’ve been manageable. But then a grave crisis emerged—the creature was closing in on the Medical Station, their evacuation shelter.

“Hey! Turn its attention away!!”

The Medical Station held the wounded.
That place had to be protected.
Valmond fired round after round as his power reserves allowed.
The monster didn’t stop.
And then, at the moment that fist—house-sized and terrible—rose high to bring the Medical Station crashing down—

Crash!

The Ghoul Lord’s body split clean in half from shoulder to waist. A creature eight meters tall, cleaved and shattered in a single blow.
What in the world—?
Everyone stood frozen at the impossible sight.

“Stay sharp, all of you! Severed ghouls become independent entities!”

At that command—that cry—Valmond spun around and spotted a figure, then shouted.

“Professor!”

Charging through the darkness was none other than Professor Dante Hiaka.
He couldn’t say what had transpired, but that last strike—there was no doubt it had been his doing.

“Valmond! Go and gather the wounded!”
“Y-yes, sir!!”

But then.
Valmond’s heart dropped like a stone.
The dead ghouls, feigning retreat, were converging toward a single point.
Far in the distance, another Ghoul Lord was beginning to coalesce.
It was absorbing the corpses of the fallen ghouls wholesale, swelling into something far more massive—easily reaching fifteen meters in height.
A supremely oversized variant even among Lords.
Merely crouched and summoning itself, it already matched the bulk of the first monster.
Only a mage who’d reached the highest rank could possibly handle such a colossus.

“W-what in the hells—!!”

At that impossible scale,
those who spotted it began to panic.

“This won’t work! W-we can’t—!!”
“Retreat, everyone! E-evacuate the Medical Station!”

The terrified members of the Discipline Squad began to flee.

“Professor Dante! You must avoid that!!”
“Professor! You have to go!”

Not only the Discipline Squad members, but even Valmond stepped in front of Dante, panic-stricken.

“What are you all doing? Don’t fall back!”
“P-Professor?”
“Go and do what you need to do!”
“But—”
“This is far too dangerous!”

As all of them scattered past him and receded into the distance.
Yet somehow, the professor stood with a serene expression, merely raising his blade.
A longsword so unremarkable in appearance, gripped in reverse.
Dante closed his eyes.

“Raise thy sword—”

A cold, numbing voice.
It was an Activation Incantation—one that roused the slumbering Soldier of the God.

“Soldier of the God.”

In the next instant, the air around them inverted.

If the assault before had been merely a simple unleashing that required no Activation Incantation, this was different.

Boom-boom-boom-boom—

A presence so monumentally vast that neither the Discipline Squad members nor Valmond could comprehend it erupted from Dante’s entire being, shaking the surrounding area.

────── .

Everyone at that location dropped their jaws. Something invisible, yet undeniably present, began to pour forth an overwhelming pressure.
Valmond, whose senses were keen, began to tremble—the very sky, the world surrounding him, was shifting.
Within it dwelt a single weapon. Yet Valmond questioned his own perception: was it right to call it a ‘weapon’?
It was too vast to be called a weapon, destructive to the point of monstrosity. It would be more apt to call it a calamity itself.
Then it moved—as if a celestial god were bringing down a blade to sever a dragon’s head. It thrust through the air, crushed the world, and struck with perfect precision at the Ghoul Lord’s skull.

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

The shockwave shattered every window in the surrounding buildings. Glass sang as it fell! The falling snow scattered dozens of meters through the air, and the world crystallized in that instant.
The fifteen-meter-class Ghoul Lord tried to raise its head, but its body was driven downward—and before the divine retribution, even a frame of fifteen meters could do nothing.
From its head onward, its flesh was crushed and began to crumble. In the end, the invisible force shattered even its heart, the core of that abomination.

All of this had transpired in a single blow.

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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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