Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy-Chapter 736

“Hey. It’s a trap.”

“Markang. Get a grip! It’s a trap!”

At Alde’s shout, the students in the other solitary cells sensed something suspicious and tried to stop Alde.

No matter how they thought about it, the situation was strange.

Someone wandering around the punishment cells calling Alde “upperclassman”?

Logically, it made no sense.

“It’s not a trap! A junior who worked with me came to see me!”

“......”

“...This idiot got drunk on the lie and started believing it too!”

The other students sighed.

When Alde had bragged about having contraband stashed outside, they should have slapped some sense into Alde then and there. Instead, they had let it go, and now the symptoms had worsened.

Because the punishment cells were such a lonely and miserable place, students locked in them often fell into madness.

“Markang. I don’t especially like you, being from /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ another tower and all, but as a fellow punishment-cell comrade, let me give you some advice. Of all lies, the very worst kind is the one you fool yourself with.”

“That’s right. The first time I got thrown into the punishment cells, I lied and said I’d ended up here after breaking into the Principal’s office. One lie led to another, and in the end I actually had to break into the Principal’s office.”

“Which idiots are you calling insane?! It really is my junior!”

Naturally, Alde flared up.

A worthy junior from House Wardanaz had come to see Alde, and these vile bastards were slandering that junior.

“Markang. Put a hand on your chest and think about it. If you were the junior, would you really break through this dangerous, incomprehensible punishment-cell maze just to come see you? Honestly?”

“That one’s right. It’s a trap. Could even be the Principal’s new servant.”

“......”

Alde began to waver slightly at the words of the others in solitary.

Now that Alde thought about it, even if the brat was talented, it was hard to believe a second-year who had only just become a second-year could break all the way through the punishment-cell maze and come here.

Could it really be a servant sent by the Skull Principal?

“...But if it’s disguised like that, what’s it even supposed to do? There’s nothing it can do. We’re already in the punishment cells.”

“It just wants to watch you suffer and enjoy it. That’s the Principal’s hobby.”

The plausible answer made Alde waver more and more.

At that moment, Lee Han came down the stairs and reached the end of the corridor.

Seeing the upperclassmen filling the solitary cells on both sides, Lee Han let out a sigh of relief.

“So you were all here.”

“...!”

“!!”

Without anyone needing to say it, the students quickly turned around and faced the wall.

If it really was the Skull Principal’s new servant, merely interacting with it was dangerous.

“Upperclassman Alde?”

“......”

“Are you perhaps angry because you got locked up?”

Alde held onto the shaking heart and pretended not to hear.

Lee Han found it odd, but since he had already come this far, he started taking out the things he had come to do.

“I brought some snacks. I’ll leave them here, so eat them if you get bored.”

Inside the basket were freshly baked white bread, honey for dipping, strawberry jam, simple sandwiches with ham and eggs, canned pork, canned beef, and more.

Outside, Lee Han would have charged money for them, but even so, Lee Han was not cold-blooded enough to demand payment from an upperclassman who had sacrificed for the success of the operation.

“Does anyone want some? I brought plenty. No gold coins. Just take it.”

“......”

The upperclassmen’s fear reached its peak.

A servant luring them in by offering food without charging gold coins.

They could not even begin to guess what kind of trick this was.

“Are you all angry? Then I’ll be going. Upperclassman, I’ll see you once you get out of the punishment cells.”

When no one answered, Lee Han tilted the head, puzzled, then turned back toward the stairs.

The Death Knight coming down from above spotted Lee Han and shouted loudly,

“Wait!”

“!”

“That way isn’t the fastest route. The hidden path behind that wall is quicker.”

“Thank you.”

As expected!

Instead of arresting Lee Han, the Death Knight had given directions. That only deepened the students’ certainty.

Only after the junior had completely disappeared did the students in the punishment cells breathe out heavily.

“Whew. What a vicious trap.”

“I almost answered without thinking.”

“Markang. Don’t eat it. I guarantee that’s poison.”

At first, Alde thought the same and did not even touch the basket.

But it was not easy to maintain that kind of restraint in the punishment cells.

After trying every spell possible to check the contents, Alde finally took a bite of bread.

“...This is delicious?”

“What? Don’t tell me you ate it?”

“This is fine, and this is fine too... you idiots!! It really was my junior!!!”

Only then did Alde realize it had truly been a junior and shout at them.

But the other students still could not believe the claim.

“What kind of nonsense is that? A junior brought you food?”

“It’s probably a slow-acting poison.”

“Markang. Then explain this. If that junior really was your junior, how did the brat get in here, and how was the brat friendly enough with the Death Knights for that to happen?”

Alde burned with frustration, but could not argue back.

It was entirely too reasonable.

Damn it. How did the brat get in here?

*****

As Lee Han came out after finishing a lecture, Lee Han spotted Upperclassman Perse and Perse’s friends.

“Hello, upperclassman.”

“......”

Perse could not answer, staring blankly into space. The friends standing nearby explained instead.

“Sorry. In the last lecture, Perse accidentally transformed into an invertebrate, so I think the aftereffects are still lingering.”

“I... see.”

But even taking into account that the upperclassman’s friend had transformed by mistake, their expressions still looked dark and exhausted.

Trying to encourage them, Lee Han said,

“Hang in there, all of you. The weekend is almost here.”

“...I have class on the weekend too.”

“!”

The upperclassman’s gloomy reply startled Lee Han.

Class on the weekend?

How does that make any sense?

“Why do you have class on the weekend?”

“Who knows. Too much to teach? Not enough training? Professor went insane?”

“Even so, that seems a little excessive...”

“You’re the one taking magic from every school. If anything’s excessive, it’s that.”

“......”

Lee Han was wounded by the upperclassman’s words. One of the other friends scolded Perse.

“Why are you taking it out on the junior just because your lecture’s cursed?”

“Hmph. It’s true.”

I shouldn’t have bothered saying hello.

Lee Han decided that in the future, if an upperclassman looked tired, it would be better not to speak first.

The more exhausted they were, the sharper they usually got.

This must be Professor Bendozol’s lecture.

Turning the gaze to the next lecture, Lee Han saw the title <Viciously Beautiful Creatures>.

Just from the name alone, it felt overwhelmingly likely to belong to Professor Bendozol.

Even the lecture location was far from the main building: the western Nightmare Echo Forest.

That forest already had a terrible reputation even among the second-years, because last year a few students from White Tiger Tower and Black Turtle Tower had nearly disappeared after going there to look for food.

All sorts of evil spirits and spiritual monsters rampaged there, trying to drive out intruders.

Most of Einroguard’s professors were not normal, but even among them, a professor willing to hold a lecture in a place like that was rare.

Lee Han followed the trail forward. The path itself was not especially difficult, since Lee Han had come here several times before.

Entering the mountains would be another story, but a second-year Einroguard student was not the sort to get lost on level ground.

It’s strangely quiet.

Lee Han had recently gone into the Dark Forest with Diret and stumbled into a trap left behind by some mad mage’s duplicate, so Lee Han found the caution rising for no good reason.

“Sharkhan.”

After summoning the summon, Lee Han moved slowly while scanning the surroundings.

Lee Han did not stop at summoning Sharkhan. A light orb floated above the wand, and other enhancement spells were cast as well.

Yet even after going that far, nothing happened.

Was I being overly sensitive?

If there had been any threat or enemy, it should have shown itself already. Since there was no ambush and no enemy within Lee Han’s senses, Lee Han began to wonder whether the whole thing had been imagined.

How long had Lee Han walked like that?

A wide clearing appeared in the forest. It was the destination, the site of today’s lecture.

Sure enough, Professor Bendozol was standing there with arms crossed, waiting for the students with a displeased look.

“Professor. Hello.”

“...Huh? What is this?! How did you get here?!”

At Lee Han’s greeting, the professor shouted in shock.

Professor Bendozol had never expected a student to arrive this quickly.

That reaction left Lee Han even more confused.

“Class is about to begin. Of course I got here. But...”

Looking around the clearing, Lee Han belatedly realized that no one else was there.

Something was strange.

If this had been a dark magic lecture, taking it alone would have made sense. But no matter how insane Professor Bendozol was, a lecture with a title like <Viciously Beautiful Creatures> was bound to have at least some popularity.

So why was there no one in the clearing?

“Why is no one here?”

“They haven’t arrived yet, obviously. Was that even worth asking? More importantly, how did you get here?”

“...Were there traps on the way here?”

“Traps? What nonsense! You can’t even call those traps. They’re more like a test!”

Faced with the shameless professor saying something Lee Han felt had been heard somewhere very recently, Lee Han kept pressing for answers.

As a result, Lee Han came to understand, at least a little, what sort of lecture <Viciously Beautiful Creatures> was.

This lecture was always held in dangerous places throughout Einroguard’s territory.

Professor Bendozol could have simply brought those creatures in and shown them to the students directly, but instead chose to be more thoughtful.

The rarer and more powerful a creature was, the more likely it was to live somewhere dangerous, so taking students directly to that location and showing it there was, in Professor Bendozol’s mind, helpful.

Of course, the students were not so easily persuaded by that thoughtfulness. Many students always arrived late or got filtered out along the way.

There were times when those insincere students made Professor Bendozol heartsick, but Professor Bendozol had steadfastly maintained that educational direction.

Hadn’t Professor Bendozol, in fact, chosen the Nightmare Echo Forest for today because the mana pooled in the forest would be strongest on this date, and because the monsters there would not be stirred up into being even more savage?

Without a personal philosophy of education, it would have been hard to remain that diligent.

...This is bad. This lecture is even crazier than I expected.

Lee Han felt the heart sink.

From the moment Lee Han guessed it was a Professor Bendozol lecture, a certain amount of madness had already been expected, but this went beyond that.

Every lecture involved traveling into a new dangerous area?

“Why aren’t you answering?! I asked how you got here!”

“I just walked.”

“You just walked? What about the attacks? Evil spirits? Ghost swarms?”

“There weren’t any.”

“......”

Professor Bendozol stared at Lee Han with eyes full of shock and disbelief.

After all that careful preparation, Professor Bendozol could not believe none of it had affected a student in the slightest.

“That’s impossible! Those evil spirit bastards. Don’t tell me they’re so low that they pick their targets before attacking!”

While Professor Bendozol fumed and tried to analyze what mistake had been made, Lee Han asked another question.

“Professor. I have something I’m curious about.”

“Griffin? Basilisk? Unicorn?”

“It’s none of the three.”

“Then what are you curious about?!”

“It’s just that, if all the students arrive late, how does the lecture proceed?”

“If I can’t finish teaching everything, then I hold class on the weekend.”

Professor Bendozol answered curtly.

Professor Bendozol did not particularly want to spend weekends teaching students, but according to Einroguard’s rules, there was no helping it.

A truly regrettable state of affairs.

“I see.”

“Come here for a second! I need to check why the monsters didn’t even show up—”

Mid-sentence, Professor Bendozol realized the boy from House Wardanaz had vanished back into the forest.

Amazingly, the boy had gone to bring the other students in.