Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 59

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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 59
EP18 – Over the Snow-Buried Ruins, a Christmas Bell Tolls (4)

┃ Relationship Increased: Valmond [35] (▲21)
┃ Reward: Fragment of Star × 21

I checked the log as I descended the mountain. The numbers were solid—more than satisfying.
Actually, they delighted me far more than expected, because the figure landed perfectly on an even hundred.

A quiet satisfaction settled through me.

One, two, three… Those painstaking days of gathering them like a mouse collecting grains of rice felt distant now. Three hundred. I’d actually reached three hundred.
From two hundred to two hundred fifty fragments, I could learn a Level 8 Ability. Which meant I could acquire one myself.
Currently, I was being praised as a strong contender in various circles, and in certain extraordinary circumstances I’d demonstrated genuine combat prowess. Yet my fundamental weakness hadn’t improved substantially.
If I distributed all three hundred fragments evenly across a Combat Techniques Ability or my stats, I could build considerable overall combat power.

‘But perhaps not yet.’

I had to think long-term.
Very long-term.

A Level 8 Ability ultimately becomes pitifully powerless before a Level 9 Ability of the same category.
Take an example.
Against every Illusion Magic Studies professor in this academy, I’d lose in a one-on-one brawl.
But if we conducted an Illusion Magic duel instead, even if every single one of them attacked me together, I could suppress them overwhelmingly.
That was the gap between 8 and 9.
So I’d put off spending the fragments for now—let them accumulate a while longer.

‘I should finish designing the exam questions.’

When I arrived at the Research Office, a letter was waiting.
It came with a thank-you note informing me I’d become a VIP member at the Central Auction House in the capital of Hiaka, along with the payment for the sold items.

+++
▷ Auction House Item Sale Proceeds
– 14,939,006 Ħ
+++

It was the payment from selling the stolen goods I’d obtained after killing those Croitz covert operatives who’d been trying to murder Forte.
Twelve rare pieces of equipment and five heroic-grade items, sold in full. After their commission, the proceeds amounted to a staggering fifteen million Hika.
It was equivalent to the money a student would earn for killing a professor.

‘I’ve become rich overnight.’

The one item I hadn’t sold was an accessory of Legendary I grade—a ring, to be precise.

I’d sent it to the metropolitan religious order.
It came back in a second letter.

+++
▷ Ring 「Mountain Echo」 Curse Removal Complete.
– Cost: 552,000 Ħ
+++

After transferring the funds to the attached account,
I picked up the ring to examine it.
Fortunately, I hadn’t done anything so reckless as swapping out the Assassination Studies Department professor’s belongings.

The ring itself was unremarkable at first glance—a plain gold band set with a teal-blue stone. But what truly mattered was its function.
I’d been lucky.
It was exactly the sort of ring I needed.

* Mountain Echo [Legendary I]

The ring’s primary function was Mana Amplification.
Every magical element channeled through this ring would gain increased potency in its manifestation. The multiplier was roughly 4.3 percent. And that was an absolutely staggering number.

In this world.
Mana was
an extraordinarily independent resource.
It differed somewhat from other games.

One: there was only one method to recover Mana—time.

Admittedly, certain rare conditions and situations existed, but no practical way presented itself in ordinary play. This was why mana potions didn’t exist in this world. And this was why assassins operated on a system of explosive output followed by complete depletion.

Two: there were almost no means to augment Mana itself.

I mean concepts like Mana Amplification, Sustenance, Transformation, and Condensation. A caster could certainly accomplish these alone, but finding equipment that actually provided such assistance was like plucking stars from the sky.

Those “stars” were precisely what Mountain Echo represented.
I slipped it onto my finger at once.

Excellent.

Merely an accessory, yet it added nearly seven thousand to my overall combat power.
This was high-tier even among Legendary I items.

Well, that concludes the matter of funds and equipment.
Now came the time to craft the final examination questions once more.

For nearly ten days afterward, I secluded myself entirely, devoting every hour to research and composition.

I plumbed the depths of World Forgery to profound levels, treading into realms of Illusion Magic sophistication that surpassed anything I had attempted before.

Until now, Illusion Magic had been merely a tool to me. Like flint or scissors. When I needed something, I’d use scissors to cut; when I needed something, I’d craft it with Illusion Magic.

But this examination would demand a different approach.

Attending the funeral, slaying the ghoul, facing Valmond, watching countless students and professors depart—through it all, I had pondered what the students truly needed.

In conversation with the faculty, they expressed that the students and the Academy itself required hope. I agreed. This was why I consented when they asked if Grey’s efforts could receive credit for resolving the corruption incident, and why I approved the suggestion to feature her in the Assassination Daily News.

This examination reflected the same principle. For someone as self-interested as I, this was my first venture into something that earned no profit. Yet there exists in this world something that numbers alone can never grasp—a truth the ten-year-old version of myself understood perfectly.

Before being a professor, one must be a teacher.
Someone who has lived before, who has experienced life first.

If having once despaired, I learned anything at all
If that lesson was how to kindle hope

Then I would gladly share it.

⋮

⋮

After a week of research and construction, at last.
The final examination questions were complete.

“…It’s finished.”

The result was nothing more than a single sheet of paper with questions on it.

Yet the material cost alone came to ten million Hika, and it was filled with dense Illusion Magic formulas, magical circle circuits, and symbols.

But whether this was truly a complete and flawless exam I could not say. Since it was an Illusion Magic of a form that had never before existed in this world, there were experimental elements to it on my part.

I thought it would work, at least in theory.
Whether it actually would was another matter entirely.

We know it well: when a writer puts forth his work, however delighted he was in crafting it alone, he often finds himself humbled before an audience.

Someone might find a flaw. Isn’t scholarship advanced through such criticism? And so I decided to send it to the other Illusion Magic Studies professors for verification. Though I only knew one.

“Professor.”
– Dante? What brings you to me?
“Would it be possible to ask for your help with verification?”
– Verification?

I sent the exam sheet to Cullaider, the neutral senior professor.
A copy, of course.
And I added a word as I sent it.

“I’d appreciate it within five days.”

Since it was the final exam paper.

* * *

‘What a sight. That bastard….’

Cullaider, the neutral senior professor of Illusion Magic Studies.
He was a man who had devoted his life to Illusion Magic.

His fascination with it began some forty years ago, when he was seven years old.

In those days, the capital of Hiakium held what was called the “Illusion Magic Show,” where performers demonstrated Illusion Magic much like a circus. Young Cullaider was captivated by that beautiful spectacle.

Afterward, he began studying Illusion Magic in earnest, earned excellent grades at the Academy and was selected as a scholar. He went on to study abroad at the imperial Academy, Hatengraju, where he was once instructed by Abracadabas, the ancient master of the highest Illusion Magic assassination arts. (Three days, roughly…….)

And so the man he was now could command eight-Level Illusion Magic, not just one. He had over forty papers with his name as first author.

And so he was fundamentally different from the mediocre professors gathered here, the ones who had crawled in just to see money. He was an elite.

That elite’s heart was now troubled.

‘Dante, asking me for verification…?’

It was now common knowledge among the faculty that Professor Dante Hiaka possessed considerable depth in Illusion Magic.
Unlike the vague impressions held by the students, Cullaider, observing from the sidelines, had come to recognize that the professor’s mastery was offensively profound.

Yes, it was offense he felt. And the reason for that offense was simple: he couldn’t grasp it.

The unmeasurable is always disagreeable. Not knowing how vast something might be left him imagining catastrophe, his own mind inflating the threat.

‘Of course, it must rank below me, but…!’

True, the output seemed formidable enough, but wasn’t the essence of Illusion Magic precision rather than brute force? In that regard, the elite felt certain of his advantage.

And yet, while harboring such competitive thoughts, that man had sent him a sheaf of papers—asking him to check the answers.

“…Tsk.”

Cullaider opened the paper envelope and withdrew the exam sheet.

He’d agreed to look it over.
An exam crafted by a professor with no foundation, no less.

With absolute! Utmost!! Rigorous standards!!!
That’s what agreeing amounted to.

But then.

“…What? Just this one page?”

A final exam, he’d said?
And yet merely a single sheet.
A single problem.

“What the—”

Pompous fool. Look at him, putting on airs.
What, does he think he’s some chief professor?

Still, he proceeded to read through the problem at last.

“…….”

As Cullaider read the exam sheet, his head began to tilt in confusion.

“…What is this?”

Wondering if he’d misread something, he started again from the beginning, even fitting a Mana Magnifier to his eyes.

But even reading slowly a second time, his mind filled with nothing but question marks.

“…What kind of problem is this??”

The exam content itself wasn’t difficult.
There was an initial ‘framework.’
The test was to layer flesh upon that framework.
Of course, both framework and flesh were Illusion Magic.

There were strict criteria for what was layered on.
Points were awarded according to those criteria.

“So, so… roughly, it feels like…”

Crack!
Lightning sparked from Cullaider’s fingertips.

『 Illusory Embrace 』

In an instant, Mana gathered in the empty air.
Every Illusion Magic Studies professor’s research office always had a plaster statue on display.
Cullaider had used Illusion Magic to add a magnificent mustache and hat to the curly-haired man’s face, and placed a cigar between his lips.

“Like this—mustache is three points, hat is four points, cigar is seven points.”

This was the nature of Dante’s exam question.

He grasped the rough outline well enough.

The problem was.
The exam material needed for everything up to this point took barely three lines.

Yet there was an entire page of test paper with exactly forty-five lines of circuits and formulas written on it.
Cullaider had no way to determine what the remaining forty-two lines were for.

Was Dante an idiot who’d wasted space? No, that wasn’t it at all.

“…This man does handle Illusion Magic well, I’ll give him that….”

If he’d assigned the same task to an ordinary teaching assistant, those three lines would have stretched to thirty.
But he’d compressed it masterfully, interlaced the elements with precision, and reduced it to three lines.
Up to this point, it was genuinely impressive—far more intricate than expected.
But then.
As Cullaider descended into the remaining forty-two lines, he could only feel profound confusion.

‘What on earth… is this…?’

Expansion? Proliferation? Enhancement of duration? No… that’s partly right, but it doesn’t feel right.

‘It doesn’t feel like something written with such simple concepts….’

It baffled him.
No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t grasp the overall concept.

‘I understand the individual pieces well enough, but….’

He hadn’t created something entirely new, something miraculous that didn’t exist in the world. Everything was already established knowledge.

‘The fourteenth line is just the Parheron Equation with altered form. The twenty-fourth line cites the Githian Matrix Three. The magic circle is a variation of Hegal’s Inequality….’

The problem was that he’d mixed them all together.
To put it in perspective: this madman had taken chocolate cookies, pickled radish, roasted beef, and smooth pebbles, thrown them all in a blender, and ground them up.

‘…No, this is driving me crazy! Why does the Githian Matrix Three even appear here?!’

Dante had asked him to verify the calculations, but how could he verify anything when he didn’t understand the foundation?

And he had no idea whatsoever!

“…….”

In the end, even as that day drew to a close, he had not come to a perfect understanding of the contents of those 42 lines.

“…….”

Three in the morning. A single candle burning in the Research Office. Cullaider stuck a cigarette between his lips, frustration mounting.

“…….”

Then, suddenly, a memory surfaced—a conversation he’d had over the phone with Professor Dante.

– Hello?
“Dante? What brings you to bother your old senior like this?”
– Esteemed Professor Cullaider. Might I trouble you for some assistance with verification of calculations?
“Verification? Hmph. Well, I’m listening!”

After this exchange, the fellow had made his request.
And he’d set a deadline.

– Within five days, if you please.

At the time, Cullaider had let out a scoff.

“Five days? What nonsense. Verification for some final exam problem? A day or two is more than enough!”
– The matter concerns an unfamiliar implementation, so the equations do carry considerable difficulty. It won’t be simple.
“How insulting. Are you suggesting you doubt my abilities?”
– Not at all.
“Just joking! Trying to butter me up, are you? Well, never mind. A problem like that? I could verify it with my eyes closed!”
– …Eyes closed?

Dammit.

– Indeed, most befitting an elite senior professor. Reassuring.
– I’ll trust in you and wait.

Dammit. Damn it all!
Cullaider’s face went blank.
Why on earth had he spouted such bravado?
A day or two. And already one of them had passed!

“Oh no…….”

Twelve years into his career as a professor at Hiaka Academy.
He had never felt quite so utterly caught out.

“…………………………………………………….”

As an elite senior professor.
This was the crisis of his life.

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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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