Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 65

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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 65
EP18 – Over Snow-Buried Ruins, the Christmas Bell Tolls (10)

Three years smoke-free. And yet Collider, the senior professor, held a cigarette between his lips. The view simply demanded it.
Drawing the smoke into his lungs, he gazed upward at the wonder sprawled across the sky.
At the form of that massive tree, reaching toward the heavens.

‘Now I understand.’

After days of wrestling with his colleagues over the specifics, the purpose behind that colossal Illusion Magic was slowly coming into focus.
With this realization, Collider and the other professors began to grasp Dante’s intention.
Those professors who also held cigarettes remained silent.

Sustaining power, breadth, scalability—which of these three had been the primary strength?
It was a pointless argument now.
All three were at work.

“So… what’s the actual size of that thing?”
“Currently around a thousand meters, sir.”
“But there was an expansion circuit that would activate upon completion, wasn’t there?”
“There was.”
“And that was roughly how many times over?”
“Approximately twenty-fold, I’d estimate.”

Twenty times.
So a tree hovering at one thousand meters high would expand twenty-fold in length alone?
In terms of volume, that meant eight thousand times over—a cubic scaling.

‘And the fact that it can continue expanding after that… means outsiders can also participate.’

Why had Dante kept creating an Illusion Magic that would allow others to join in?

“…What could it be?”

The more one sees, the more one comprehends.
And the more one comprehends, the more one grasps one’s own ignorance.
So as Collider grasped Dante’s intention, new questions began to surface, one after another.

He’d heard that Dante had invested ten million Hika.
An absurdly massive sum for a single professor to invest in a mere Final Exam.
Yet Dante had pushed forward anyway.

“…What on earth is this for?”

While Collider still hadn’t grasped the answer,
something cold descended and touched his cheek.

“It’s snowing.”
“Ah, so it is.”

As the final days of December arrived,
the first snow began to fall upon the Academy.

* * *

At that very moment, Grey had grasped Dante’s intention precisely, and acceleration began to grip the Illusion Magic. Already, having created nearly the six-hundredth branch of the massive tree, her score had grown overwhelmingly dominant—first place by a wide margin. But now points and rank hardly mattered at all.
The subspace Illusory Realm had expanded multiple times over, drawing Grey ever upward to higher and higher places.

From that point on, Grey threw herself entirely into the professor’s assignment.
Her Magical Power stabilized. Her emotions no longer wavered.

And there was the assignment itself.
The professor had crafted a framework after long and careful deliberation.

What frame of mind had possessed the professor when he’d laid down its skeleton?
Why, among countless possibilities, did it have to be a tree?

Within this State of Absorption, Grey experienced something strange—the tree seemed alive, moving with its own vitality.

It was an odd sensation. Illusion Magic, after all, existed fundamentally as a sophisticated puppetry to deceive another’s senses. Wasn’t that very reason why the Habanero Family was once called the “House of Puppet Masters”?

Living, moving Illusion Magic couldn’t exist. And yet Grey felt it move—that stubborn, vital force of a thing that pierced even asphalt to root itself, desperate to live.

At the end of that meditation, Grey finally reached the last branch.

The moment she wove Illusion Magic into that framework and gave it flesh—

The Final Exam was complete.

── .

The Illusory Realm surrounding the students began to shatter.
As the hazy space dissolved, reality returned.

In that moment, every student looked up at the sky.
A shocking phenomenon was unfolding there.

“……!!”

Grey also clutched her chest—several kilometers away, a Massive Tree beyond all description was swelling, growing.

It had begun to pierce the heavens and shoot upward.

* * *

Ezekiel was a man who harbored no regrets.
He was a Grand Mage commanding Level 9 Magic; a Challenger ranked 171st on the continental rankings; a cadet branch of the Royal House. Tall besides, and his face had earned him renown as a handsome man.

“Well, I’m not certain, Dean Ezekiel.”

For someone who had no need to voice regrets anywhere in the world, this kind of position was a trial.

“The Council of Elders regrets to say we remain skeptical.”
“…….”

He had just proposed expanding Professor Dante Hiakaffo’s grand Illusion Magic nationwide.
He had requested an executive order from the Royal House.
And the Council of Elders had rejected it.

Adjusting his silver-rimmed spectacles upward with one long finger, Ezekiel pressed further.

“I confess I’m curious about the reasoning.”
“The reasons are frankly more than one or two. Conversely, if you hadn’t been the one proposing this, Dean Ezekiel, it wouldn’t have even reached the Council of Elders’ agenda.”
“Yet it is this very Ezekiel who has now submitted the proposal. I would hear it. Those reasons.”

Even before the Elders, his royal bearing did not bend.
As Ezekiel posed the question, the Elder grew uneasy and answered.

“First of all, if you’re going to make such a proposal, shouldn’t ‘Professor Cain’ come here in person?”
“…I believe I mentioned it. Professor Cain is a person of the highest importance to the Academy, and his safety is being protected.”
“I see. Well, it’s certainly good news that the foundation of Illusion Magic has crumbled with the traitor Glumi’s escape. But even so, this hardly shows respect to the Royal House.”
“…….”
“Furthermore, I’m skeptical about this nationwide event involving that grand Illusion Magic and the participation of Illusion Mages. Is it really worth all that trouble?”
“Of course it is. If you look at the materials I’ve provided, you’ll see it’s far more than mere Illusion Magic.”
“I doubt it. That’s only impressive to those who do their research in some dusty corner.”

The elder swept the meeting materials aside with a flourish.
The papers fluttered down to settle on the table.

“With the Croitz Kingdom’s air raid already casting a pall over the citizens and dealing an economic blow, what possible help can a mere grand Illusion Magic participation decree provide?”
“Please review the materials. Approximately twenty years ago, when Abracadabra—once called the God of Imperial Illusion Magic, the ‘Brilliant Star Sovereign’ of that era—first succeeded in Virtual World Forgery, it caused a sensation throughout the empire’s economy.”
“That only makes sense because it was Abracadabra. Are you saying this ‘Professor Cain’ fellow is capable of Abracadabra’s level of skill?”
“The Illusion Magic he’s unveiled this time is a new one approaching that same realm. If you would examine the materials——”
“No. No. No. No.”

The elder sighed. Ezekiel’s eyes twitched with visible irritation. Yet the old man would not yield.

“My apologies, but I’d rather not hear any more about the materials. The Royal House. Our Council of Elders. We trust you understand our skepticism toward the unproven.”
“…….”

Ezekiel had tasted sweet potato once in his youth—a famine crop that common folk ate. That root food that only the poor consumed.
He hadn’t even finished one before it made him feel suffocated and breathless, so he’d never touched it again since.
Thirty minutes into the meeting room.
As he kept facing rejection no matter how well he explained, it began to feel like he was choking down three sweet potatoes at once.
He was frustrated enough as it was. He knew how magnificent that grand Illusion Magic was. His students all knew it. Anyone who’d witnessed it would know. From the moment it became clear there was simply no way to explain it to these elders.
And now—they won’t even look at the materials?

“If you wish to propose something to the Council of Elders, prove its value.”
“To prove its value, the Council of Elders would need to grant at least minimal permission, wouldn’t it?”

Irritation began to creep up his spine.

“I’ve already said it a dozen times—there’s only a week left. And you keep demanding I prove value? There’s only a week left.”
“There you go, being emotional again. It’s been decades. You’ve always been this way, Dean.”

He caught himself too late.
If he disrupted the meeting, there’d be justification for their rejection.
That was the Council of Elders’ true goal.
But what was he supposed to do when he was so frustrated?

“Emotional or not, you already have your rejection decision locked in, don’t you?”
“Then can you prove its value?”
“Do you enjoy repeating yourself, Elder?”
“So you cannot, is what you’re saying.”
“Are you toying with me?”

Bang!

The thick pile of documents moved of their own accord and struck the table hard.
The elders flinched—it was Telekinesis of the highest order.

“Don’t patronize people. There are limits.”

Even in his anger, Ezekiel maintained his arrogantly crossed legs as his voice rose.

“How many times am I going to have to say the same——”

Just as anger was about to claw its way up Ezekiel’s throat—

—something shifted.

Something caught in his finely attuned senses.

“……?”

A sensitivity so keen he could detect a few drops of blood falling into a still lake.

Ezekiel turned his head slowly, as if waking from a dream.
Toward the direction of the curtain that hung like a tapestry.

Then it happened.

“I too am curious.”

A hearty voice rang out.

Ezekiel rose swiftly and bowed his head—to his half-brother, his elder.

“Your Majesty. Welcome.”

The entrance of a great one. At that, every elder and attendant in the conference hall rose and bowed their heads.
Hair of brilliant gold. Eyes of rose. Above all, that stern, dragon-like countenance. The greatest sage-king in history, who had raised a crumbling nation from the ashes. Rebecca’s father.
A tree Ezekiel—wanting for nothing in the eyes of any man—could never climb, no matter how far his life extended.

King Hiaka III entered the Conference Hall.

The king gazed down at the elders with the stern, unyielding eyes of an enraged dragon.

“Let the Council of Elders be ashamed.”

At those words, every member of the Council flinched.

“You know his temperament is prickly, yet you continue trying to provoke and expel him? How is it that your bodies have grown soft with age, yet your minds still show no maturity?”
“We beg your pardon, Your Majesty.”

The elders echoed the apology in unison.

“Ezekiel. You are no different. When will your judgment deepen? That is precisely why these decrepit fools in the Council still hold you in contempt.”
“I am ashamed, Your Majesty.”
“Pathetic.”

The king proceeded naturally to the seat of honor and sat.

He was a man of few unnecessary words.
He launched straight into the heart of the matter.

“So. This Illusion Magic is supposedly so magnificent? Magnificent enough that you, who fled the Royal House more than fifteen years ago rather than look upon me, have now crawled back on your own hands and knees?”
“…Yes, Your Majesty.”
“A Grand Mage of your caliber should have been able to bring back even a fragment of something so great.”
“I apologize, Your Majesty. I was not able to.”
“Why not?”
“Because even at my level, it is impossible to replicate the Illusion Magic itself.”

The king’s expression softened slightly as he posed his next question.

“Those who ask you to believe in the invisible are invariably charlatans. What can you show me?”

He demands of Ezekiel the same thing.
Show it.
What Ezekiel had never been able to present until now.

But Ezekiel had known from the beginning.
That it was a reasonable request.
Of course one must show it to be believed.
He knew that too.
Which is why he’d had nothing to say until just moments before.

“……If Your Highness must see something, then.”

Now the circumstances had shifted.
Ezekiel rose abruptly and walked toward the heavy curtain. He waved off the attendants rushing to help him, then grasped the fabric with his own hands.

“I will show you directly.”

The Council of Elders frowned in bewilderment, unable to comprehend what Ezekiel was saying.
Show us directly? But he’d spoken of a Massive Tree. Wasn’t it nearly twenty-five kilometers from the Royal Palace to the Academy?

Whoosh—!

But the instant Ezekiel tore the curtain open.
The Conference Hall plunged into a maelstrom of shock.

“No, that can’t—!!”

* * *

“What…?!”
“How… what on earth is that…?!”

The moment the Illusory Realm shattered, Forte gasped in disbelief, Dominic felt his skin prickle, and Hwaru’s legs gave way beneath her—she sank to the floor where she stood.

Once, during one of Dante’s lectures on the Illusion Magic unit, he had said something. ‘Illusion Magic can only manifest what one has experienced.’ Then what had the senior professor Cain experienced?

Far in the distance, at the edge of Zone 9, in the Magical Forest, some four thousand meters above the ground.
A tree of impossibly stupendous scale materialized, blocking out the entire sky.
Its roots sprawled outward with such magnitude that they seemed to bury the city beneath them, embedded in pockets of empty air.
The form of the tree that rose upward was overwhelmingly, catastrophically vast—as if mountain ranges had been stacked layer upon layer.

“…….”

Confronted with a tree whose scale defied all description, the cadets were overwhelmed by its mere presence.

Something that transcended wonder itself.

The sensation of beholding something unknowable, something cosmic and monstrous.

And yet it inspired no fear. The tree was suffused with a warmth so profound, it felt as though a god who loved humankind had descended into it.

Everyone understood it: this was Illusion Magic. Even the warmth and softness that touched their skin was nothing more than manipulated sensation. And yet for all that—it was familiar as a mother’s embrace, as intimate as a tree grown from a sapling in the garden of a beloved home.

It was an Illusion Magic that the twelve hundred cadets assembled here had created together.
They knew which portion of that tree they had each crafted.

And at that moment,

a brilliance flashed—

Tens of thousands of pre-made lights burst forth from every corner of the Massive Tree, illuminating the night.
As variegated light washed over them all—each hue designed to scramble the senses of flesh—Dominic understood with sudden clarity what the answer to this Final Exam had meant all along.

“A Christmas tree…….”

Of course. Tomorrow was already here.
Christmas.

The clock had already struck midnight.
The Illusory Realm shattered, and some twelve hundred cadets gathered in the clearing before them.
Thirty professors appeared in the air, dressed in formal black examination supervisor attire, lined up in a single row.

Dante, standing at their center, spoke.

“The examination is concluded.”

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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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