Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 57

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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 57
EP18 – Over Snow-Buried Ruins, Christmas Bells Ring (2)

The Ghoul Lord, stripped of its core, crumbled to dust.

“The boss is dead!!”
“It’s finished! Finished!!”

The Discipline Committee members gasped and leapt to their feet.
Indeed, it was a Boss Kill. At that moment, explosive Growth Mana poured in according to my contribution, seeping into my being.

They say reading is what sates the soul. I couldn’t vouch for that, but this sensation—this was undoubtedly satiating mine.
I was experiencing that rare moment when the soul overflows to fill the entire body, suffusing it completely.

The numbers were equally gratifying—a surge in combat strength impressive enough to draw a player’s admiration.
This was precisely why I had deliberately chosen the Colossus Soldier’s Sword among all the national treasures. At this stage, it was the only weapon capable of letting me solo a boss—my current physical abilities simply had no other option.

In any case, following this incident, some thousand ghouls began disintegrating and plummeting earthward.
If there was one broken damage mechanic in this game, the Fall Damage Judgment was among the most absurd.

“Casualties!”
“Fall back!”

I too created distance.

Crash-crash-crash-crash-crash-BOOM!!!

The ghouls cascaded like a landslide, shattering and dying as they fell, while those beneath were crushed under the weight of those above.

“Reinforcements from the Warrior Department and Discipline Committee are arriving!”

With the arrival of backup, the crisis drew to its close.

“Thank you, Professor!”
“If you hadn’t been here, the medical building would have been destroyed. There are hundreds of patients in there…”

I nodded, accepting their gratitude.
If there was anything miraculous about this whole ordeal, it was that no one had died. Not a single critically wounded person was in mortal danger.
Yet even as the crisis ended, there was one who couldn’t seem to come to their senses.

“Why are you doing this!”
“Just hold still, you stubborn fool!”

The Discipline Committee members swarmed in to restrain someone.

“Let me go! I’m going to fight too!”

It was none other than Valmond.

“You’re done here! The warriors have arrived!”
“That’s right! Mind yourself! Don’t you see the state of your leg?”

The Discipline Committee members were correct. Whether Valmond had scraped against rebar when he fell, his leather armor was torn and blood streamed freely down his leg.

“I’m fine, I tell you! I can still move!”
“Listen! Stop spouting nonsense and get yourself to the infirmary, will you!?”
“But seriously, what’s gotten into this kid lately? You look possessed. Calm yourself down. Don’t you see there are plenty of people working hard here besides you?”

At that, Valmond’s eyes blazed with intensity, and he grabbed the collar of the Discipline Committee member—a man easily ten years his senior.

“If we just sit and wait? Will the Discipline Committee save everyone in the world?”
“What!? You little bastard…. Aren’t you from the Black Path?”
“Black Path, Dark Path, whatever—if I just sit around waiting, is the Discipline Committee going to save a hundred victims?”
“Is the Discipline Committee your friend, you punk!?”
“Yes! And we can save all hundred!”
“Then who saves the hundred and first!!”

Valmond spat out words raw with anguish.

“Then who saves the hundred and first? If one more person lives for every move I make, then I have to keep moving, don’t I!?”

At this point, I felt the need to intervene.
As a professor of the Assassination Studies Department.

“Don’t step in, Valmond.”

The tendons standing taut in Valmond’s jaw eased as he turned to me, releasing the member’s collar and bowing with crisp precision.

“…Yes.”

It was no wonder confusion bloomed in the Scripts of the members—【What, this guy?】, 【Gave in that easily?】

“You show respect to the Discipline Committee.”
“…Yes. You’re right. I apologize, members. My emotions got the better of me.”

Valmond bowed before the Discipline Committee members, his torso at a perfect right angle.
They accepted, though not without reservations.

“Let me see you for a moment.”
“I apologize for the commotion, Professor. And thank you for helping me…no, it was an honor. What you showed us just now was truly, truly….”
“Never mind that. Come here.”

I led Valmond to a corner, sat him down, and leaned in to apply First Aid, just as I had done for Rebecca.

“Professor, please don’t…. I can just go to the infirmary….”
“You’re to stay silent.”
“Yes.”

In truth, it was a calculated move—playing the part of an impressive professor to raise my Affinity. How utterly selfish I was.
How selfish indeed.
As I applied the dressing, a question occurred to me to ask.

“Why the urgency?”

Valmond was a loyal Doberman, sharp and alert.
He grasped the substance of my question at once.

“I’m not entirely sure myself. Until a few days ago, I was just at the academy. But lately it’s been driving me mad….”
“In detail.”
“Simply put, I can’t sit still. I feel like I have to do something, but I don’t know what….”

He raised both hands to shield his eyes and face. The man who had once groomed himself with such refinement now writhed like a butcher on the verge of collapse.

“Something’s gone wrong, hasn’t it…? But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. The Academy—Hiaka is falling apart, and I just… I don’t know what to do….”

To judge by his behavior, it was compulsive.
If I had to compare it, it was like a child suddenly smiling brightly and acting cute in the face of their parents’ impending divorce—a similar psychology altogether.

“So I came out and decided to do something useful—to save people. I asked Kaiser, and he said that would at least ease my mind….”
“How’s that worked out for you?”
“Well, at least moving around puts my mind more at ease than sitting still…. But then, once I started, I realized I couldn’t stop. The moment I sit down, the anxiety creeps back in…. My head keeps spinning…. I’m—sorry, forgive me…. What am I supposed to do here…? Hiaka Academy is already destroyed??”

His fingertips trembled faintly.

Pausing to consider, I realized this was connected to Valmond’s family circumstances as well.

A secret not widely known to the world: traditionally in the Nibelung Family, only women can become the Grand Mother as boss. (Shadowless Starlight Seat favors women)

Since the sex chromosome exists only in males, any man who passes his seed to produce a male child is considered to have defiled the Grand Mother’s body and is executed.

In other words, from the moment the boy Valmond was born, his father would have been marked for elimination by the Nibelung Family. As I understood it, he had eluded them well until Valmond turned nine, then vanished without a trace. It wasn’t difficult to conclude he’d been assassinated.

Afterward, every time Valmond watched those around him swept away by the tide while he remained powerless, he must have suffered unbearably. As his mind grew, he gained experience changing things through his own strength—so now that impulse had calcified into compulsion, the conviction that he must do so again.

I paused, then opened my mouth.

“First, what I want to tell you is this: it’s all right.”

Valmond looked up blankly.

“…All right?”
“Yes. The situation isn’t nearly as bad as you think it is.”
“But, Professor….”
“The Assassination Revolution has already ended. The Ghoul will disappear soon enough. And yes, the Academy’s circumstances are indeed worse than they were before.”
“…….”
“But a man holding ten million Hicas has simply become a man holding eight million. Do you consider a man with eight million Hicas to be unfortunate?”
“No. Eight million is… better than I’d expected…. Even richer than me….”
“If you measure only what has been lost, then yes, he is an unfortunate man. Strange, isn’t it? In the same circumstances, he is both unfortunate and fortunate. So tell me—what makes him unfortunate?”
“…The one who judges…?”
“Then I ask you: just now, who was judging your world?”
“…….”

Valmond spoke quietly, as if crawling into himself. ‘It was me.’

“Valmond Nibelung. Stop overthinking.”
“…….”
“The human brain trapped in a small room echoes only its own thoughts, never letting them escape. You are confirming and distorting your own endurance, your rejection, your collapse—and in doing so, you torment yourself.”
“…….”
“You don’t have to think so much.”

Valmond’s mouth opened slightly.
His head lowered.

“…….”

When a problem breaks out in the mind, people try to control it with even more thinking. But there are things that settle simply by stopping thought.

“…Thank you.”
“Yes.”

I figured I should wait and observe the situation a bit longer.

Then, some Black Path students emerged from the alley, smoking cigarettes, and began staring vacantly in our direction.
And their eyes met Valmond’s.

“Hey, you bastards! Hey!!”

Valmond suddenly shot to his feet, blazing with fury.

“What are you gawking at? Stop staring like that!”
“…Huh? What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you see the professor is here? Aren’t you going to greet him!?”

What is this?
The students startled, stubbed out their cigarettes hastily, and approached with bowed heads.

“Ah… Good day, Professor!”
“Good day! We apologize for our late greeting…!”

I accepted their greeting and sent them on their way, though I found myself somewhat bewildered.

“What are you doing?”
“…Sir?”
“Why are you correcting the students’ behavior?”
“Ah, I apologize… Those bastards were completely ignoring you even though you were right there… Surely they should have offered their respects, shouldn’t they?”
……

I decided to let it pass.
But then.
For some reason.
It felt wrong to leave him like this, having merely calmed him down.

“Will you walk with me for a while?”
“Yes, Professor…”

I set off somewhere with Valmond in tow.
What had just happened was merely the temperament peculiar to the Nibelung Family coloring the atmosphere of the Black Path—I could excuse that easily enough. Yet separately from that, it was unmistakably clear that Valmond appeared quite unstable. He wasn’t normally prone to such emotional outbursts.
I wondered: could I do something for him here? For all my pretense, I was a professor in name only, after all.

……

What allowed me to remain undisturbed amid these trials was that I had learned, through living, the way to find peace. In that sense, I was someone who could say something.

* * *

Grey was dreaming.
A very strange dream.

A dream in which a man appeared.

Why was it so strange? Because men almost never appeared in Grey’s dreams.

Outside, she’d readily grab a man’s hand if it suited her, and whenever she caught someone staring, she’d casually display a tattoo from some intimate place—that was her nature.
The confusion on their faces was amusing, and she enjoyed playing with people.

But the truth was.

Grey had no interest in men.
Not to say she only cared for women—it was simply that she spent all her time thinking of Illusion Magic, so wasting time on men or whatever was pointless; and looking around, all she saw were failures like Kendrick, invalids like Kaiser, bores like Valmond, and who-knows-what like that one guy. There was simply no one worth her attention.
She couldn’t fathom why so many girls chased after such worthless specimens.
For a man to appear in dreams like hers was truly an exceptional occurrence.

She didn’t know who he was.
His face had never been visible.
Still, he seemed to possess rather unusual tastes.
Without warning, he’d approached and begun to bind her.

“Ugh, no… Why are you doing this…?”

Grey resisted.
The man didn’t seem hostile toward her—but wasn’t the situation itself peculiar? So she fought back desperately, yet strangely her limbs wouldn’t obey.
The strength simply wouldn’t come.

“Look, you don’t understand me right now anyway. Just move your arms. They’re getting in the way while I apply the Nakatasm.”

What was Nakatasm?

“No, stop… Don’t… It hurts….”

Wasn’t this strange?
Perhaps it was the dream—her strength simply wouldn’t gather.

Years ago, when she and Elise had fought and their relationship had soured terribly, Grey had thrown a punch at her in a dream. But it had come out strangely soft, like cotton. Now, too, she could only watch helplessly as something bound her.
She was forced to be a mere witness to her own restraint.

“Why do you keep trying to touch me? Curious about my tattoos?”

Since he seemed well-disposed toward her, she tried to engage him calmly in conversation—but instead he pressed her against the wall. Her body struck it with a dull thud, and suddenly she was pinned completely immobile, unable to move….
After that, the dream grew hazy, dreamlike.

Who had that man been?

Well, it was probably just that sort of dream.
That was all Grey chose to think about it.
Because it was morning by then.

“Grey, Grey!”
“…Huh?”

Lucy, a maid at Zamryong Academy, approached in a rush, searching for Grey.

“Wake up! What time is it? You’re still sleeping?”
“…Why? Why? What time is it?”

Still drowsy, Grey flailed and waved her hand dismissively. Lucy frowned and pressed her cold fingers—chilled by early winter frost—against Grey’s stomach.

“Yaaah!”

Grey bolted upright.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you insane? Did you soak your hands in ice water?”
“Hey! This isn’t the time for that! Now get yourself together! It’s a big issue, okay?!”
“A big issue?”
“The Assassination Daily News wants to come shoot an interview with you!”
“……??”

Grey’s eyes widened as she lifted her head.
Then she let out a snort of derision.

“…What are you talking about, Lucy? You’re waking up a sick girl over something like that? It’s common knowledge that the Assassination Daily News is full of idiots—even that dumb Elise knows that…”
“What, this idiot?”

Maid Lucy struck her chest. As if exasperated.

“That’s not it at all! Are you seriously not listening to anything?”
“Listening to what?”
“You’ve got a cover model shoot scheduled for the monthly magazine!”
“Huh? What? …Why?”
“Why what! Because of the Biased Fairness Incident! They’re in absolute chaos over there right now!”

Grey’s mouth fell open in a daze.
Her protruding front teeth jutted out prominently.

“…What?”

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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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