The Graduate Student Wants to Assassinate the Professor - Chapter 22

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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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Chapter 22

What Leoryna was aiming for was the moment when the Manager would shatter the defensive magic clinging to Khalid’s clothes.
‘When the Manager’s attack lands, I’ll secretly weave my own magic into it! Then he’ll die for sure.’
Leoryna watched the two of them with a sinister smile playing at her lips.
As the Manager flicked his staff, it transformed into a rapier.
“You’re going to stab him with that? You’re really going to stab him with that?!”
Khalid grumbled at the Manager’s increasingly menacing weapon, but the Manager simply scratched his ear and replied.
“And what exactly are you saying, Professor, when you’re the one wielding a scythe…?”
Then his form vanished. At the same moment, Khalid disappeared as well. All that could be heard was the sound of something colliding repeatedly in the empty air—their figures were nowhere to be seen.
Leoryna scratched her head.
‘It looks like they’re fighting while using short-range teleportation magic, but this makes it really awkward for me to intervene.’
But it didn’t take long before the two reappeared.
When they stopped moving, the tip of the Manager’s rapier was piercing through the protective magic that encircled Khalid’s body.
Khalid swung his scythe at the Manager, but the Manager caught it barehanded and pressed down with overwhelming force.
“Hey, you brute with ridiculous strength! What are you doing fighting with all your might like that?! What if the surrounding area gets damaged?!”
Khalid, who had been deliberately holding back his power to avoid affecting Leoryna, cried out in alarm, but the Manager’s rapier ultimately shattered his defensive magic.
“Aaaah! You madman!”
Just as Leoryna was unconsciously furrowing her brow, thinking Khalid would be pierced by the rapier’s blade, the Manager raised the weapon high and brought it down upon Khalid.
Thwack! Crack! Thwack!
The Manager didn’t stab Khalid with the blade. Instead, he was beating him mercilessly with the flat of the sword.
“Ow! Agh! Argh! Wait!”
Khalid screamed in agony, but the Manager’s assault was utterly relentless.
Leoryna stared at the absurd spectacle in stunned silence.
‘What kind of brute beats someone to capture them? And yet there he is.’
But she quickly came to her senses and raised her staff. Then, as the Manager lifted the rapier high, she cast her spell.
Crack!
The rapier came down on Khalid’s head, and with the sound of something breaking, Khalid collapsed on the spot.
He didn’t move. He had lost consciousness.
The Manager looked back and forth between the unconscious Khalid and his rapier, then scratched his head.
“Hmm.”
Then Leoryna burst out from behind a tree and rushed to Khalid’s side. She shook his fallen form and let out a wail.
“Oh no! Professor! What do I do now that you’re dead like this?!”
She wept bitterly, her body trembling.
“I begged you so earnestly to show restraint! But since you brought this karma upon yourself, there’s nothing to be done….”
“He’s not dead.”
At the Manager’s flat tone, Leoryna lifted her head and looked at him.
“He’s… not dead?”
“No. He’s breathing.”
Just as the Manager had said, Khalid’s chest rose and fell with each labored breath.
Leoryna narrowed her eyes upon witnessing this, tilting her head in confusion.
“But that shouldn’t be possible…?”
When the Manager delivered that final blow, Leoryna had infused his staff with enhancement magic—not merely striking, but channeling tremendous destructive force through it.
Had it connected properly, a skull should have been crushed like soft pudding.
‘So why is he perfectly fine?’
The Manager crossed his arms and addressed the bewildered Leoryna.
“Since you cast magic on my staff, I adjusted my strength accordingly.”
“Cast magic? What are you talking about?”
“You infused my staff with enhancement magic. I realized that if I struck with that much power, I’d kill him, so I held back.”
Leoryna blinked with an innocent expression, though internally her teeth were grinding furiously.
‘This dragon whelp has an uncanny sense for detecting mana flow!’
Leoryna’s mind raced to fabricate an excuse.
“That was… actually, I was trying to cast magic on Professor Khalid! I wanted to help you, so I thought I should assist the Professor. But since my magical skill is so poor, the spell must have landed on your rapier instead of the Professor.”
Leoryna steadied her wavering gaze and delivered the lie. Whether such a flimsy excuse would be believed, she couldn’t say, but she had to say something.
Leoryna moistened her dry lips with her tongue and buried her face in her hands.
“Because of my mistake, the Professor nearly died! Oh, I’m so ashamed! How can I call myself his student with such pathetic abilities?”
She made sobbing sounds while her shoulders trembled, and the Manager, flustered, tried to console her.
“Ah, no… it’s fine. Everything ended without serious incident anyway. There’s nothing that could really be called a graduate student’s fault…”
“Really?”
Leoryna looked up at the Manager with glistening tears in her eyes, and he quickly nodded.
“Of course, of course. Magical mishaps causing disturbances happen here at the Academy nearly every day, so something like this hardly counts as a fault.”
Confirming that the Manager had fallen for her deception, Leoryna felt profound relief wash over her internally.
‘Damn, that was close.’
After calming the ostensibly weeping Leoryna, the Manager produced shackles and fastened them around the unconscious Khalid’s wrists. Then, grabbing one of his legs, he gestured for Leoryna to follow.
“In any case, we can’t stay in this Greenhouse any longer without authorization, so the graduate student should come along.”
“Yes.”
Leoryna followed behind the Manager as he dragged Khalid away, secretly kicking his unconscious face as they went.
This man’s lifeline was remarkably resilient.

* * *

“…So that’s how it is.”
Zigzagel lay sprawled across the four-seater sofa, coughing incessantly.
“In the end, we didn’t get the medicinal herbs, and a meeting with the Chancellor is scheduled for Monday?”
Khalid spoke confidently to Zigzagel, whose gaze was one of utter exasperation.
“It’s fine! I’ll take care of you.”
“I don’t think nursing care is what’s urgent right now.”
“It’s fine, I’m telling you.”
“No, I’m the one who’s fine.”
But Khalid paid no heed to Zigzagel’s protests and dashed off to the Kitchen, declaring he would prepare congee.
“Are you really sure about this?”
“Well, it should be fine. He’s done nursing care so many times he could do it in his sleep.”
Zigzagel answered Leoryna’s question, which was tinged with unmistakable doubt, and adjusted his position on the sofa. Leoryna placed an ice pack on his forehead and asked casually.
“When you say he’s done nursing care so many times, does that mean there were sick people around you, Professor?”
Zigzagel realized too late that the fever had made him say something he shouldn’t have.
“There were.”
“Who?”
Leoryna had never seen any sick person on the list of people around Khalid that the Information Department had provided. If it was someone he’d met recently or someone important, they would have definitely included that information.
Zigzagel closed his eyes tightly instead of answering.
“I’m sleeping.”
“Oh, yes. I’ll keep quiet.”
Leoryna sat awkwardly, unable to wake the patient again, then scurried over toward Khalid.
Khalid was simmering a congee with beaten eggs for easy digestion.
The way he stirred the pot with a ladle actually looked quite competent—until he began adding something with a tail like a rash-covered skin, a brilliantly colored mushroom, and a mucus-like substance to the pot.
“…What exactly was that just now, Professor?”
Leoryna’s expression grew serious as she watched warily, and Khalid shrugged.
“It’s a medicinal ingredient with fever-reducing and cough-relieving properties.”
“A medicinal ingredient? Looking at it from any angle, it seems like eating it would cause problems.”
“That’s why I added an antidote to it.”
‘So it definitely has toxicity,’ Leoryna thought.
She found him truly unreliable. It was even suspicious that he possessed knowledge to handle such apparently toxic ingredients without being a pharmaceutical professor.
“You’ve made this before, haven’t you?”
“Of course! What do you take me for! This is my special recipe that I’ve made hundreds of times over!”
“What were you making it for so many times? You said there were sick people around you—did you make it for them?”
“How do you know about that?”
Khalid narrowed his eyes, openly displaying his discomfort.
“Professor Zigzagel told me.”
“That loose-tongued fool….”
Khalid rubbed his eyes with the hand not holding the ladle.

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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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