Surviving the Assassin Academy as a Genius Professor - Chapter 89

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Episode 89
[Main Story] No. 2 Betting Table (5)

What in the world is he doing?
What’s Saojing even supposed to be?

Then he nodded at me as if to say, ‘That was something, wasn’t it?’ I wanted to smack this sixty-something man on the back of his head.
That’s when the Assistant Director broke into a grin.

“Ha ha! I see, is that so?”

And at this point, the reason why this main story was called “Betting Table” began to reveal itself.

“Precisely! Exactly right! You can’t do it with bare words alone!”

The reason I’ve always referred to the Empire as a casino is simple: the people here are mad for gambling.

“Then! I shall place the victorious professor separately in the Assassination Daily!”

The betting had begun.
I was about to cry out that I didn’t need any of this.

“Furthermore, I shall grant an entire page—all of page two of the Assassination Daily—to the nation of whichever of you two triumphs in the Illusion Duel!”

Wait.
That changed things entirely.
A single advertisement placed on one page of the Assassination Daily costs twenty million Hika, as far as I know.
If he’s handing that over for just one match……

‘No. What does twenty million Hika matter?’

It was an enormous sum, but just as I was trying to regain my senses, Horup lifted the microphone.

I was trying not to respond when Wilhelm, grinning ear to ear, shoved the microphone into my mouth like he was feeding me candy.

“Are you confident? Against a senior professor like myself?”
“…What?”
“I am a Grandmaster. A full member of the Total Natural Society, the continent’s highest academy of Illusion Magic. And I am the leader of the Illusion Assassination Unit. Do you truly believe you could stand against me?”

I shouldn’t respond—but the gazes from our side were intense. Wilhelm, the assistant professor, maid Lucy, Cheongru and Leim, even Rebecca was frowning. And Grey looked almost desperate.
This was impossible to ignore.

‘Ugh!’ Lucy the maid let out an involuntary cry before clamping her hand over her mouth.
Croitz’s team went rigid, while ours lit up with delight.
At the same moment, the crew was practically leaping silently with excitement.

【 ‘Oh! Well done, well done…!’ 】
【 ‘Wow, this shot is fantastic?!’ 】
【 ‘Hah! G-good, good! Fire this up! Fire!!’ 】

Then the corner of Horup’s mouth twisted.

“You seem confident. Assistant Director, allow me to make a proposal.”
“Yes! A proposal, sir?”
“Place the winning cadet on the cover.”

No,
this man was just as insane.
He’d just driven a tanker truck into a burning house.
Why were we and they in conflict? Because there were two people but only one chair.
In other words, we’d been groomed, engaged in an Illusion Duel, and interviewed for the sole purpose of deciding who would grace the main cover of Assassination Daily’s monthly edition.
And now Horup was spouting the lunacy of making it a wager.
As a bet, it was all in, literally. The already-excited crew from Assassination Daily surged to their feet and began to lose themselves.

“Oh!! Ah, this is excellent footage!!”
“So the loser dies…!?”

Anyone could see that beneath their professional restraint lay the edge of ecstatic frenzy.

‘This is madness.’

Yet all authority rested with the Director and Assistant Director alone. As leaders of this event, surely they would never entertain such an insane proposal?
That was when the directors answered.

“Agreed…!!”

Everyone but me had lost their minds.

* * *

And so the fourth round began, following the third.
The madness that was Assassination Daily—a company that would sell even its own executives for publicity—quickly assembled the stage and placed Horup and me upon it.

“I hear an enormous Illusion Duel is about to begin?”
“Where? Ah, those two?”

An added touch was recruiting their available staff—claiming this sort of affair needed an audience—though I couldn’t fathom why they kept announcing that some of them were Illusion Magic specialists.

【 ‘Ah, this is massive publicity! Croitz invested hundreds of billions of Hika into Illusion Magic, and now Hiaka’s senior professor faces off against their Chief Professor?’ 】
【 ‘Even if we can’t avoid releasing the result, editing the entire Illusion Duel as-is would send circulation through the roof?’ 】

The business calculations were already running behind their eyes. And that was the problem.

‘This cannot be made public!’

These madmen!
But now there was no choice.
So from this moment, I decided to cross just one line I had drawn for myself.

“You’re fortunate. What you’re about to witness is Illusion Magic that doesn’t come easily into view.”

Then Horup spoke to me in a voice brimming with confidence.
I did not answer, only stared at him.

“My Illusion Magic is extraordinarily special, you see. I command vast and intricate formulae that cannot be found anywhere else. That is why those who have engaged me in an Illusion Duel invariably gain tremendous insight.”

From those words alone, I understood that his primary ability was the Fantasy Garden.
Illusion Magic itself has several schools of thought.
There is one that pursues illusions as close to reality as possible. (myself)
And there is one that pursues exaggerated illusions, as though induced by some intoxicant. (Horup)

“Illusion Duel—”

In the silence that fell over everyone, only Horup and I stood facing each other at the center of the studio set.

“—begin!”

The signal dropped, and magical power erupted from Horup’s entire body.
Like a true assassin, like a missile, he seemed intent on crushing and suppressing me with a single, explosive outpouring of power.

Crack-crack-crack-crack-CRACK—!!

Magical power of terrifying magnitude began to shake the entire studio set.
And at its culmination, something remarkable began to unfold.

“Wh—what!? Th—that—!”
“What, what is this—!?”

The studio set was expanding. To put it another way, a space that had been no larger than a single room was now stretching to the size of an indoor gymnasium. It remained the same in reality, of course, but the manipulation of spatial perception and presence was so precise that I myself felt astonished.
Yet that was merely the beginning. The space that had grown to the size of an indoor gymnasium expanded twice, three times more, until it now loomed as vast as a concert stage.

After that, his body began to transform.
It was as though he had set a matchstick the size of an apartment building ablaze. His form became an impossibly colossal inferno, and gradually took shape into something unmistakable—a dragon.
A scale of easily a hundred meters in length, absurdly vast beyond measure.
An Eastern-style dragon, its tail coiled and spinning as it soared skyward, reaching toward the heavens.
And finally, it turned its gaze down upon me.

—Screeeeeee—!!

The monstrous creature released a terrible cry from its throat.
Yet there came with it a sense of overwhelming pressure, as though heaven and earth themselves trembled.

“Ah, ah, ah—aaaahhhh—!!”

Those of weak spirit might lose consciousness from this crushing sensation alone.
It was truly formidable.
This, then, was what a Grandmaster was.

At that moment, the dragon’s consciousness descended upon me like the voice of a god, resonating through my mind. It was the Injection technique—a formula of Illusion Magic that forcibly manipulated another’s perception.

Horup’s power to interfere with my very mental structure through it was a confirmation that even those here who might not understand it, I would recognize: his mastery was extraordinarily profound.

There was one thing I had to acknowledge. His magical power reserves were three times my own—and that was a conservative estimate.
Had I been in his position, my reserves would already be depleted by the time I had fabricated a space of this magnitude. And yet he still overflowed with surplus power.

But……

“Professor Dante! Why do you not move?”
“You’re admitting defeat!?”

The spectators cry out.
In an Illusion Duel, victory is decided when illusions collide—so I must look defeated, having drawn no illusion at all.
But that isn’t the case.

A weary voice rings through the mind.
But I’d held back because I’d never witnessed illusion magic at the rank of a senior professor—anyone but myself.
I merely watched out of curiosity about others’ research. Seeing it in person was genuinely remarkable.

But now the observation was over.

He’d consistently insisted on grandeur and spectacle.
But was that truly the answer?

And so, what I drew forth was a small Glassy Butterfly.

Flutter, flutter….

A butterfly taking flight.

Horup, transformed into a dragon, seemed uncertain whether to even count it as Illusion Magic.

Something massive, brilliant, and surreal began to open its hollow mouth wide.
The butterfly fluttered upward. Horup the senior professor sought to obliterate that worthless thing, drawing breath laced with flame. The dragon’s enormous belly swelled.

Soon he moved to manipulate the vast phenomenon. But my formula had now reached completion.

I called out to him.
Forcing my voice directly into his mind.
In that instant, the dragon’s arrogant face crumpled violently.

He’d received a tremendous shock.

World Forgery doesn’t inherently possess a formula called Injection.
Even so, there’s only one reason I can cast Injection on him.
I reverse-engineered his Illusion Magic formula of Injection and transmitted my consciousness directly into his mind.
It’s a technique reversal born from the pure mastery level difference in Illusion Magic.

It was enough to stagger him.
Injection is one of the most extreme one-directional techniques among all formulas.
No student injects memorization into a teacher.
The caster holds absolute authority. And yet I’m performing the impossible in reverse.

At last he asks. There was fury in it, but beneath that—a glimmer of genuine scholarly hunger.