The Academy’s Unrivaled Professor - Chapter 8

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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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Academy’s Absolute Professor Episode 008
You must provide the proof
Honestly, I was disappointed.
The lack of Inner Energy was unavoidable—they simply hadn’t learned proper Martial Arts—but why was their lower body so woefully weak?
‘Not even the basics down, these lot.’
To assess a person’s fundamental constitution and capacity, you needed at least a sturdy frame capable of holding Aura, or some Presence worth emanating.
But this….
They were nothing but stones tumbling across bare earth, and even splitting them open wouldn’t tell you which one held a hint of rough gem.
‘Besides.’
What was with those eyes?
They were an entirely different quality from those in the Murim.
There, even the weak possessed a certain mad gleam—a hunger for the Martial Way burning in their gaze. But….
These ones just looked pure.
The irritation, the annoyance, even the arrogance in their eyes—to Kang Hyun, it all seemed almost endearing.
Glug, glug.
He drank more Whiskey.
If before he’d drunk to numb the pain, now it was something else—a kind of weary melancholy.
He was supposed to stop an Asura bent on destroying the world with these fragile children at his side?
“Haah.”
The long exhale carried the sharp scent of alcohol.
‘Look on the bright side, at least.’
Who knows?
One of them might have the exact constitution he was looking for.

* * *
Meanwhile, Cha Yu-sik’s eyes narrowed.
‘What is this?’
It didn’t add up.
Anyone trained in Martial Arts carried a distinctive Presence—a certain unmistakable aura.
Even a C-rank Hunter radiated an Energy plainly different from ordinary people.
‘But.’
The professor standing before him emanated nothing of the sort.
This meant one of two things.
Either his Realm was so impossibly high that he’d completely concealed his Aura, or else he was simply an ordinary person who’d learned nothing at all.
Cha Yu-sik had seen the first case before.
‘Father.’
When he spent time alone with Cha Ha-rang, he’d sometimes felt that same unsettling disconnect.
‘Surely not.’
Could this disheveled, whiskey-reeking man actually be an S-rank Hunter?
Impossible.
The Republic of Korea had exactly seven S-rank Hunters.
Cha Yu-sik had met all of them at least once, standing at his father’s side.
‘The rumors were right, then.’
A parachute appointment forced in by the Management Bureau.
But what on earth was he?
What could possibly make both the Bureau and the Dean advocate for such a man?
Could he really have backing from the President?
‘Even the Dean disappoints.’
A pristine warrior of integrity and rectitude, they said—nothing but rumors chasing empty clouds.
Corrupted by politics, surrendering a teaching post to this incompetent fool.
“Professor.”
Cha Yu-sik stepped forward and spoke, his voice cutting across the Training Ground.
Though contempt burned beneath the surface, his bearing remained outwardly respectful.
A contract position or not, the title of professor was still his to claim.
“I noticed something in your syllabus. You wrote that you teach the way to become strong—for those with the resolve to die.”
His voice echoed through the Training Ground.
“May I ask something, then?”
“Go on.”
“Do you truly believe you have the ability to make us strong?”
The cadets, who had been holding their breath, felt their eyes widen at this bold provocation.
Kwak Do-jin, watching from the sidelines, let out a quiet laugh and nodded in agreement.
‘So Cha Yu-sik really is a madman.’
The other cadets felt a strange satisfaction at his words.
‘He’s not wrong, though.’
‘How could someone looking like such a wreck even think about teaching?’
‘If he wants us to be ready to die, shouldn’t he at least prove it himself first?’
Though they were cadets facing expulsion, they carried the pride of being students of the National Hunter Academy.
They had no desire to grovel before some mystery contract instructor.
But Cha Yu-sik had just scratched that itch perfectly.
Only one person.
Yoon Hyun-jong alone watched Kang Hyun with a worried expression.
But Kang Hyun still wore an indifferent face.
“So, what are you trying to say?”
“Prove it to us, sir.”
Tap.
Cha Yu-sik gave his sheathed sword a light pat.
“If you’re going to set such grand conditions, you should at least be able to subdue one of these students easily, shouldn’t you? Contract position or not.”
“Hmm.”
Kang Hyun stared at Cha Yu-sik for a moment, then let out a soft laugh.
“I thought I’d just gathered a pack of tailless dogs, but there’s one that knows how to bark.”
Cha Yu-sik’s brow furrowed.
Just as the ambiguity—praise or mockery—twisted his nerves.
Clang!
A sword was drawn from Kang Hyun’s sheath.
It was a mass-produced Iron Sword of the sort you’d find at some cheap weapon shop in the neighborhood.
‘He’s drawing without hesitation?’
Cha Yu-sik’s pupils trembled.
A normal instructor would brandish some hollow authority at this point, or stumble through excuses.
But this man was different.
And what was even more shocking.
‘The trajectory—I lost sight of it for a moment.’
The Sword Draw was too fast.
If that shabby Iron Sword had flown at his throat instead of empty air—
‘I’d have been cut.’
His neck would have been severed before he even registered that the blade was drawn.
For the first time, tension settled across Cha Yu-sik’s face.
Of course, Kang Hyun had drawn without any thought at all, but Yu-sik couldn’t have known that.
Kang Hyun wasn’t even looking at Cha Yu-sik.
He let the blade’s point droop downward.
Scraaaape!
He drew a long line across the sand-dusted floor of the Training Ground.
The twenty cadets, frozen in bewilderment, watched as Kang Hyun finally spoke.
“The proof isn’t for me—it’s for you.”
The moment he raised the Whiskey bottle and poured the last of it straight down his throat.
Whoooosh!
A terrible Killing Intent erupted from Kang Hyun’s entire body, engulfing the Training Ground like a tidal wave.
“…Gasp!”
“C-cough!”
The pressure of oxygen vanishing from the air in an instant.
Cha Yu-sik, Kwak Do-jin, and the cadets behind them all instinctively stepped back.
It felt as though the instructor’s blade would sever their necks any second now.
“Just First-class Level Killing Intent.”
A faint smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“Come across. You have ten minutes.”
The condition for enrollment.
Those prepared to die.
“Those who cross this line have the right to receive my teaching, but those who cannot—turn around and leave. You need not return to my class again.”
In the Murim, if word spread that he was taking disciples, countless aspiring masters would arrive with treasures and rare medicines, bowing their heads in supplication.
By comparison, these students were truly fortunate.
All they had to do was cross one line to seize the opportunity of a lifetime.
‘Let me see what you’ve got, then.’
The bare minimum will to seize fortune freely.

* * *
One minute had passed.
The Training Ground was filled with suffocating silence.
Not a single person moved.
Rather, they couldn’t.
“Ugh, huh…….”
“Please……save me…….”
“Please.”
More than half of them had already collapsed, their legs giving out beneath them.
Between the pant legs of several men, dampness pooled and soaked into the sand.
They had lost control of their bladders.
It was merely first-class level aura, yet hothouse flowers could never withstand the genuine killing intent of someone who’d wallowed in the Murim for twenty years.
“Tsk.”
Kang Hyun’s tongue clicked bitterly.
Scritch-scritch-scritch.
The sound of sand being dragged cut through the silence.
His gaze turned toward the noise.
Someone was stepping forward.
Remarkably, it was not Cha Yu-sik or Kwak Do-jin who moved first, but Yoon Hyun-jong, standing in the corner of the Training Ground.
‘Huh?’
Kang Hyun’s eyes narrowed with interest.
He remembered.
The one whose blood had been twisted not long ago.
‘I thought his frame was just mediocre back then?’
People, it seemed, could only truly be known by being tested.
You had to strike them down like hammering stone to see what lay within—whether easily crumbling mud or steel that threw sparks.
“Grrrrgh.”
Yet the man walked forward with his complexion pale as a blank page.
Kang Hyun understood how much courage that must have cost him.
The next to move was Cha Yu-sik.
His eyes were painted with shock and disbelief.
‘I can’t breathe.’
An aura that flayed the skin with each step—such presence!
Cha Yu-sik had experienced something like this killing intent only once before.
‘Father.’
When the Guild lost a member in the Dungeon, it was this exact aura.
No—if anything, this man’s menace ran even deeper.
The conclusion was clear.
‘He’s an S-rank Hunter.’
Not some incompetent nepotism case, but surely someone the Management Bureau and the Dean had deliberately concealed and planted in the Academy for reasons of their own.
Cha Yu-sik’s teeth clenched.
Truth was, the reason he’d left the Academy recently was that the professors were barely A-rank level.
He’d thought there was nothing left to learn from them compared to the Guild.
But if this man were S-rank?
‘Everything changes.’
He had to learn.
This was an opportunity, actually.
The Dean, the Academy’s only S-rank, didn’t teach the students.
‘I’m going in first.’
Step.
Watching Yoon Hyun-jong’s back as he walked ahead, Cha Yu-sik forced his rigid legs to move.
And then there was the other one.
“Wait… wait a second, ah, damn it! This isn’t… this isn’t right……. Huurgh!”
Kwak Do-jin remained pressed to the ground, shaking violently.
His mouth spewed curses ceaselessly, but his body refused to obey.
A mad dog?
What mad dog in the world tucks its tail between its legs before death itself?
At that moment, Kwak Do-jin was nothing but a dog crawling in the dirt, clinging to life.
His mind screamed at him to get up and run, but his legs refused to obey.
‘I’m going insane. I’m actually going to lose it…….’
That’s when, through the haze of his terror, Yoon Hyun-jong came into view.
The junior from twenty years below—the one he’d grabbed by the collar just moments ago.
‘This bastard. He’s actually going?’
Kwak Do-jin’s face flushed crimson in an instant.
He was terrified.
Just seeing that professor’s eyes made him feel his heart would burst.
But still—he felt ashamed.
The junior he’d written off as worthless was walking forward with his head held high, while he, a so-called senior, lay sprawled on the ground?
‘That can’t happen.’
Kwak Do-jin clenched his teeth once more and pressed his palms against the floor.
He didn’t have the strength to stand.
So he crawled.
Scrape. Scrape.
Cold sweat poured down like rain, but he clawed forward toward the line with stubborn determination.
Kang Hyun watched this display with a look of pleasant surprise.
‘There are more interesting ones here than I expected.’
Pitiful and squalid as the sight was, that kind of raw stubbornness was itself a talent a true martial artist should possess.
And besides.
‘When a demon descends, dignity and honor mean nothing.’
When Asura came, countless masters who had once ruled the Murim went mad or took their own lives.
The only ones who fought to the bitter end were the stubborn few who’d clawed through the mud.
‘Hm.’
Kang Hyun’s gaze shifted slightly to the side.
Behind the crawling Kwak Do-jin, two more figures were visible, their bodies trembling violently as they forced themselves to move forward.
Kang Hyun was genuinely surprised.
He’d expected perhaps one to make it, or maybe none at all.
But five were moving?
The corner of Kang Hyun’s mouth curved upward.
He began to think that choosing this academy might have been the right decision after all.
‘Five out of twenty isn’t bad.’
Ten minutes passed, and the moment the Killing Intent that had pressed down on the Training Ground dissipated.
“Ugh, hah!”
“Cough, cough!”
Exactly five had crossed the line.

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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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