Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 82

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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 82
EP22 – Hiaka District 4 Kiyulbu (1)

───
Imperial Security Investigative Log: Grey Habanero Assault Incident
Initial Occurrence of Attack #01 – Attack Classification: Multiple Unidentified Monsters Sighted / Location: Near Hiaka District 4 Airport
……
───

.
.
.

After sending Cain to the Imperial professors, I moved quickly. Tomorrow’s Assassination Daily News shoot meant I had a mountain of things to arrange.

The airport sits in District 4’s Hub District. It’s a bit removed from the Academy. Nearly all logistics and foot traffic connect to the outside world through here.
That’s why the Hub District has a massive Gate—a checkpoint where people’s identities and purposes are verified.

Normally you’d only need clearance at the airport itself, but the Croitz incident tightened identity control significantly. So there I was, queuing in front of the Gate.
I stood there blankly, waiting my turn, when a sudden shout erupted.

“What the hell are you doing? Hey! What did I do wrong? Why won’t you let me through?”

Some man was throwing a fit. Something had gone wrong during the identity check. A few staff members came to calm him down, but it only seemed to fuel his rage. “Let me go! I said let me go! What the hell did I do wrong?” His flailing struck a female employee hard enough to knock her down.

“Please calm down and cooperate!”
“Why should I listen to you? Get the manager! I want to speak to the manager!”

At that point, I could tell something was off, but when the staff drew Restraint Taser Guns from their belts, things escalated quickly. The man activated an ability—he began enlarging his body. It was Gigantification.

Bang!!

He kicked over a kiosk-like structure, and it shattered with a crack. Not content with that, he rushed at the staff members. Citizens screamed in panic, and the area descended into chaos.

“I’ll kill every last one of you!”

That’s when I stepped in. Subduing him wouldn’t be difficult. All I needed to do was draw the Gigantic Divine Weapon Sword ○.

It was an activation weapon, but activating it involved a giant hand drawing a giant blade. Even without activation, simply gripping the sword allowed the unseen hand to move.

“Ugh! What—what is this?!”

With it, I seized the man, who’d grown to roughly four meters tall. Then I drove his head straight into the ground.

Boom!!

To everyone else, it looked like the man had simply collapsed.
A minor incident.
What puzzled me, though, was this: Kiyulbu hadn’t shown up. The airport security staff had handled it themselves.

“Why didn’t Kiyulbu respond?”
“Pardon? Ah, well… I suppose they must be busy…”

The airport staff laughed awkwardly.

“Thank you so much, ma’am…!”

After accepting their gratitude, I blended back into the line, when a cadet approached me, tail wagging eagerly.

“Professor!”

It was Elise.
Beside her stood a friend who looked just like her—twin-tailed hair, features as bright as a puppy’s. I’d seen her around the academy a few times. A student of the White Path, if I recalled correctly. Her name was Mumu, wasn’t it?
I returned the greeting, and the two of them laughed, saying hello back. They mentioned they’d been playing in District 4 and were heading home.
Throughout the queue, Elise and her friend Mumu remained at my side, regaling me with tales of their day. I nodded along at appropriate intervals.
Then, at some point, Elise asked me something.

“By the way, Professor—did something happen today?”
“Yeah, yeah.”

Why?

“Well, your expression has been really off since earlier.”
“You seem pretty upset.”

I told them that was just how my face naturally looked, but they insisted it was different from usual. Mumu added that I reminded her of Elise when someone had stolen her bone—utterly dejected.
Perhaps. I had no sense of what my own expression looked like. I lifted my gaze to the metal wall before us. Even in that dented surface, my face reflected back without expression.
I assured them it was fine. That was all I said before sending them on their way.

“Would you like us to stay with you?”

A dog who loves humans cannot easily overlook such things. I told them it was alright and sent them off.

*

After passing through the Gate.

The Airport was unexpectedly quiet. I’d assumed it would be swarming with tourists because of the Cain Tree, but then I remembered—the royal family had recently built a new airport in District 9.
Most who still used the District 4 Airport were locals residing at the academy.

“Let’s go on a trip.”
“Yay!”

The airport was filled with families, lovers, and friends. Like Elise and her friend Mumu. Yet in that place where everyone laughed and chattered, I stood alone, visibly sullen.

So then—why had I come here?

I retained a precise memory of the investigation log within the fabricated timeline of the Espionage Starlight Seat.

There had been two crises threatening Grey.

The first of them occurred here at the Airport. According to the investigation log, on the morning of her departure, monsters erupted frantically, causing flights to be delayed.

The situation was handled by Wilhelm, the senior professor accompanying Grey, and personnel from the Kiyulbu. The problem was that Wilhelm’s mana reserves had been depleted.
An assassin is a missile—one who expends explosive force in short bursts and then runs dry. Wilhelm was just such a person.
Senior Professor Wilhelm had been forced to accompany the group because of his connections to the Empire, but he’d exhausted himself here, leaving him unable to properly deploy protective magic once they reached the Empire.

‘I have to prevent it beforehand.’

An eruption of monsters meant a Rift was present. So now I was searching for it using my Minimap. But since the Minimap only displays the X and Z axes, I wouldn’t find it easily.
If a Rift could remain hidden in the middle of an airport and suddenly burst open, it would surely be concealed deep underground or high in the sky, making it difficult to locate…….
Ah.
Found it.

‘What is this?’

Closer than I’d expected, right there among the people, a Rift lay drawn plainly visible. Just then, a passing couple spoke:

“Dear, isn’t there a crack in this building wall?”
“There is. The paint probably chipped off.”

Just as they said, at first glance it did look like a building crack. Without the minimap, I probably would have walked past without a second thought. But had I come here even once with survey equipment, I should have recognized this as a Rift. That was what puzzled me.

Why was it just sitting there, exposed?

I checked several more spots, moving through the Airport. Most were indeed well concealed, but three places showed themselves openly just like this one.

……

Irritation suddenly surged through me.
It was the kind of exasperation you feel toward administration when you realize a wild beast has been let loose in a crowded street and nobody’s done anything about it. And there wasn’t just one such beast here.

What exactly had Kiyulbu been doing?
I thought it through. When did the Rifts appear? When the Harmony Starlight Seat’s barrier protecting the academy shattered. Which meant… a month ago, when Croitz’s Meteor fell.

“Huh?”

That was when a toddler in a tiny outfit approached and looked up at me. The little one, barely able to walk, was unsteady on their feet.
The child squeaked with each step, then suddenly toddled right toward the Rift.
They were staggering badly—about to fall, weren’t they?
No. Right over the Rift.

“Ah, ah!?”
“Taylor!”

As the parents gasped in horror.
Vines blooming from the ground wrapped around the child and lifted them up.

⋮
『 World Forgery: Form Forgery [Vines] 』
⋮

“Thank you, Mage. Oh, little Taylor….”

After sending off the child and parents, I realized my own heart had lurched harder than theirs. Some Rifts are extremely sensitive to stimulation.
So when I tested it, this one wasn’t like that.
But what difference did that make?
The real question was how this had been left alone for a month. And in a place where people’s feet constantly passed.

……

I headed straight for the Airport Kiyulbu office. I needed to ask about the past month, and besides, this was far beyond what I could handle alone. There were too many Rifts.
When I arrived at the Management Office, there was an Agent with a shaved head sitting at the desk.

……

He looked up at me.
The interior was empty. At seven in the evening, it looked like everyone had already clocked out.

“…What can I help you with?”

He didn’t recognize the senior instructor badge. It was exclusive to the Assassination Department.

“I came to ask about something.”
“For incident reports, please go to the right counter.”
“It’s not an incident. I found Rifts.”
“Ah, we don’t take anything that’s not an incident.”

He waved his hand dismissively, and in that moment I sensed something had gone seriously wrong.

“Agent. There’s a Rift, as I said.”
“A Rift inside the Academy? Come back during daylight hours. The emergency standby unit doesn’t accept calls unless it’s a formal case report.”
“If we wait until tomorrow, it’ll be too late. We need to discuss this now.”
“Yes, yes.”
…….

Swish, swish—he waved his hand again.
The absurd part was how natural it looked.
As though he’d always been this way.

I paused, searching for the right words. I couldn’t find them, but I had to say something anyway.

“…Agent. When was the last patrol shift in this district?”

His indifferent expression changed at the mention of patrols. It turned slightly sharp.

“Why do you ask?”
“Do you conduct patrols at all?”
“Why? Has something happened?”
“Not yet, but… as I’ve mentioned, there’s a Rift. And Kiyulbu has an obligation to cooperate when residents are in distress.”
“I’d prefer you find your obligations during business hours. Now please leave.”
…….

The conversation hit a wall.
I tried to coax more cooperation from him after that, but the agent wouldn’t budge.
If anything, he began to show irritation.

“Why do you keep repeating yourself? I said no.”
…….
“Now, leave.”

I closed my mouth.
I was stunned. It was a breathtakingly irresponsible and insincere response.
So I looked around the station. I spotted a poster boasting the lowest crime rate in District 10.
Of course—with sparse population in an Airport Hub that people only passed through, who would commit crimes here?

“Sir. Won’t you leave?”
…….
“Kirion!”
—What?
“Come out a moment. There’s some old man out here being stubborn!”

And then it clicked—the security officers at the Airport Kiyulbu station overlapped in my mind. The faces of those men struggling and sweating as they’d shifted the heavy cargo earlier came flooding back.

Next, the agents from Hiaka District 2 crossed my thoughts. Those figures who endured Valmond’s harsh words in silence, then headed out to catch the Ghoul while supporting an injured colleague.

Then came Grey’s image from within the Espionage Starlight Seat’s records. That scarred face. The scrunched eyes and trembling voice.

I had reasoned there would be sufficient cause for injuries of that severity.
It made sense that way, I’d thought.
If Grey had seen a future where she’d slipped on a discarded banana peel and become a vegetable, wouldn’t that be absurd?
And that was precisely what I faced now.
Merely because of these agents’ negligence, Wilhelm had lost his Mana in battle, and the consequences had left Grey returning as a critical patient. In my gut, it felt no different from a banana peel.

“Come now, sir. We’re working people too, yes? Don’t make this difficult.”
…….
“We’re already busy with Hiaka District 9 these days—don’t bother the agents. Come back during the day. Understood?”

Before long, the Kiyulbu agents had swelled to three.
Their bodies pressed forward in a crowding motion.
From within that tension, a handful of words had slipped through my teeth—half impulse, half calculation.

“Where’s the Kiyulbu Director on duty here?”

The informal speech tumbled out abruptly.
All three agents went rigid.
They scowled, exchanged glances among themselves, and spoke.

“…What are you doing right now?”
“Sir. Why the informal speech?”

I checked the Minimap once more before answering.

“I asked where the Director on duty is. Shouldn’t the night-shift officer be visible during work hours?”

Then one of them laughed. A dry sound.

“This is ridiculous. Who exactly are you?”
…….

The man stepped toward me in a single stride.
He was tall—roughly my height.

“How dare you talk down to a Kiyulbu agent from the Management Office. Besides, what does it matter to you where the Director is or isn’t? Huh?”
“Your patrol discipline is sloppy.”

He lifted his chin, trying to look down at me.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

I met his gaze without flinching.

“Arrest this bastard.”
“Yes, sir.”

The agents beside him began pulling out handcuffs. In that moment, I realized this situation couldn’t be resolved through conversation.
Or perhaps my mind had already gone elsewhere—because before I knew it, I’d drawn the Gigantic Divine Weapon Sword ○ from my Inventory.

“What?!”
“A sword? Is this lunatic insane…! Put down the weapon!!”
“You draw that, you die! Do you understand?!”

They recoiled in panic at the sight of a single blade. In this world, all weapons tended to be lumped together as gun-like objects. They couldn’t tell what it was.

“Put it down, you psycho!!”

I almost laughed. The contrast struck me—how I’d remained composed even in the face of Rifts, yet here I was. Monsters were a hundred times more dangerous than any blade.

“Stop smirking! Put down the weapon!!”
“You insane bastard, are you mocking public authority?! You want a bullet through your skull?!”

He wasn’t wrong. Even the most audacious criminal avoided crossing the Kiyulbu. Once you brought down an agent, commanders appeared. Strike a commander, and higher officers emerged. More agents kept flooding in. Against a system like that, an individual had no chance.

But I was different.

“While I’m still asking nicely—cooperate. Bring the Director here. Now.”
“Shut your mouth! Drop that sword, you bastard! You don’t put it down in three seconds, you’re dead!”

Click-click— three gun muzzles snap up toward me in rapid succession. Whirrr—! Mana overheats. The Mana Bullets are ramping up their output to kill me.
But I don’t answer. The moment I spotted that abandoned Rift, I knew this was how things would unfold.

“Three!”

My gaze was fixed on the reception desk. I couldn’t fathom why they’d need a desk that didn’t receive anyone—but since there was another Rift on the Management Office side, the considerable distance made that desk a perfect target.

“Two!!”

I moved the Gigantic Divine Weapon’s finger. Something high in the distant sky plummeted toward the desk.

“One—”

Just a single finger descending and striking. Yet the force was far more than simple.

Craaaaaaash ────── !!

The Management Office exploded.

It was invisible, whatever it was. It shattered the building’s ceiling, pulverized the reception desk, and didn’t stop there—it obliterated the floor and earth beneath, gouging a massive crater into the structure’s foundation. A violent shockwave detonated outward.

The blast reduced the office to utter chaos. Every window burst outward; everything atop every table scattered; the gun-wielders themselves had no choice but to be knocked flat to the ground.

Dust billowed thick through the air. But it didn’t linger. Half a beat after the shockwave subsided, the three of them lifted their heads. None of them, however, uttered a curse.

Now they were ready to talk.

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