Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy-Chapter 739

Even if transformation magic worked better with animals you were familiar with...

Among transformation spells, the kind that turned the mage’s own body into another living creature were especially difficult and notoriously hard to control.

After all, the caster had to preserve the identity of the soul while changing only the form of the body. Compared to other kinds of magic, that naturally made the difficulty much higher.

Because of that, transformation magic tended to connect more easily to animals the mage already knew well.

It was common in transformation training for a mage who had grown up tending sheep on a ranch to try turning into a shark and wind up becoming a sheep with fins instead.

Since the boy of House Wardanaz had been constantly taking care of the baby basilisk, turning into a basilisk in itself was possible.

But...

A basilisk isn’t exactly some earthworm!

Regardless of how familiar the mage was with it, the more powerful the magical beast, the harder the transformation became, and the difficulty rose exponentially.

If a monster could wield overwhelming power, that meant an enormous amount of mana was condensed into its body.

Even for a mage, reproducing a body like that exactly was no easy thing.

And yet that Wardanaz brat, who had only just started learning transformation magic, was already changing one arm into a basilisk’s head.

Professor Bendozol could not even imagine how far the boy might be able to go once he got used to it.

“I don’t think basilisk is the right choice, Wardanaz.”

“Right? I thought so too. It’s really inconvenient when I can’t control it properly.”

“Quit whining when you’ve got it that good!!!”

Professor Bendozol finally snapped, bellowed, and stormed off.

The students watched in confusion and started whispering among themselves.

“What’s with that?”

“The professor probably wanted to turn into a basilisk too. Who cares?”

“Yeah. Wardanaz, just ignore it.”

“......”

Watching his friends coldly dismiss Professor Bendozol, Lee Han found himself wondering for a moment whether this was really all right.

They seemed to be adapting a little too fast...

*****

Once this is over, it’s the weekend at least.

It had been the first week of the semester, and it had felt as long as eternity.

And this was with the full lecture schedule not even properly underway yet.

If it was already this bad, then once every class started running at full speed, the semester might really begin to feel endless.

Does Einroguard have time magic cast over it or something?

The lecture, <Elemental Magic and Its Linkages>, was held in the Room of Elements on the fourth floor of the main building.

Judging from the name alone, it was clearly a class that explored advanced stages of elemental magic.

Lee Han was not normally the overconfident type, but this time he felt a little assurance.

After everything Professor Voladi put me through.

There could not be anyone who had entered this class with elemental control drilled into them as thoroughly as Lee Han had.

Even against upperclassmen, perhaps he would not fall behind in this area.

“Good day, Wardanaz.”

“Princess.”

Spotting Gainando’s sister, Lee Han gave a light greeting.

When they had first met, he had been careful not to pick a pointless fight and ruin his life after graduation, but after spending more than a year together, he had come to understand that Adenart was not actually a bad person.

Adenart simply liked food, just like Gainando.

Completely unaware that the boy of House Wardanaz was thinking something so wildly disrespectful, Adenart was pleased to see him as well.

Unlike the other followers who treated Adenart stiffly and formally, Lee Han was much easier to deal with.

At first, Adenart had slightly misunderstood him because he said he would only take easy lectures, but after spending more than a year together, it had become obvious that the impression had been completely wrong.

The boy standing in front of Adenart was far more deranged about the academic pursuit called magic than even the princess was.

Adenart would not lightly admit inferiority to anyone in diligence or sense of duty, but this much had to be acknowledged.

It was still too early to predict the futures of the second-years, but when it came to the boy of House Wardanaz, everyone agreed on one point.

He’s going to stay at Einroguard forever.

Completely unaware that the princess was entertaining thoughts every bit as rude, Lee Han spoke.

“Then we’re in luck. Is <Elemental Magic and Its Linkages> a second-year lecture?”

“No. It’s a third-year lecture.”

“......”

Lee Han visibly wilted.

Apparently Adenart had also been dragged into a lecture a year above.

“You’ve got it rough too, Princess.”

“Pardon? What do you mean by that...?”

“Aren’t you angry that you have to take a third-year lecture?”

“I consider it an honor.”

“......”

Only then did Lee Han realize his mistake.

Come to think of it, Adenart probably was not taking many third-year lectures.

At most one or two!

No, but even if it’s just one or two, shouldn’t that still make you angry?

Lee Han looked at Adenart with pity.

This was obviously a situation where one ought to be upset, and yet Adenart was treating it as an honor.

“Princess. When you feel angry, you should let yourself be angry.”

“I-I’m not quite sure I understand...”

Adenart looked flustered, unable to tell what exactly Lee Han meant.

At that moment, one of the upperclassmen passed them and tried to open the door to the Room of Elements.

About a quarter of that upperclassman’s body had been caught by a petrification curse, and every movement came with the sound of stone knocking against stone.

“......”

“......”

“Grrk. Could you help me a bit. Grrk.”

“Of course.”

At the upperclassman’s gravelly, stone-clacking voice, Lee Han quickly opened the door. The upperclassman nodded in thanks—or rather, tried to, since actual nodding was impossible.

“!”

The Room of Elements was a bizarre place where dozens of environments coexisted at once.

Within a ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) space no larger than a clearing, the powers of countless elements had taken root and were causing endless transformations.

Behind one lizardfolk upperclassman spread lava and flame. At the feet of a human upperclassman nearby ran a stream and a waterfall. In a far corner of the room that everyone was avoiding, thunder and lightning crackled.

Even in Einroguard, where strange places were everywhere, it was hard to find a sight this peculiar. Lee Han and Adenart could not help being impressed.

“You still haven’t broken the curse?”

“Grrk. They said it would take some time. Grrk.”

“That’s why I told you not to open relics carelessly.”

“Grrk. I know, all right. Grrk.”

“It’s Professor Benmalpa, right? I’m a little uncomfortable around that professor.”

“I’m uncomfortable too.”

“Come on. Still better than some of the others.”

“?”

At the upperclassmen’s conversation, Lee Han focused and listened carefully.

If he wanted to survive safely in perilous Einroguard, he had to keep his ears open for information like this at all times.

Professor Benmalpa?

It was not a professor Lee Han knew.

In truth, unless a professor had a personality as kind as Professor Garcia’s, ordinary students at Einroguard rarely got the chance to meet them.

If the professor taught a class unrelated to you, there were cases where you never met that professor even once before graduation.

No idea what sort of person that is.

“Good day, seniors.”

“Oh, a second-year?!”

“A second-year taking this lecture... that’s impressive.”

The upperclassmen were glad to see Lee Han and Adenart.

The Blue Dragon Tower upperclassmen immediately began boasting.

“See? This is what tradition and bloodline—”

“Then why didn’t you, with all that tradition and bloodline, take it in second year instead of taking it now?”

As the upperclassmen started arguing among themselves, Lee Han chose not to intervene and quietly asked what he wanted to know.

“Seniors, what kind of lecture is this?”

“Hm? Exactly what it sounds like.”

The Empire’s schools of magic, as they existed now, were closer to classifications the Empire’s mages had arranged for convenience.

Long ago, in the age of the Three Kingdoms, there had been times when schools of magic were divided by element. But modern Imperial mages regarded that classification as highly inefficient.

Even magic from the same fire-element line could still be split according to entirely different principles—enchantment, summoning, illusion, transformation, and more. Because of that, they considered other forms of classification far more rational.

For the same reason, when Einroguard students studied elemental magic, unless they had a very specific reason, they usually did not try to specialize in a single element and completely master everything within it.

Instead, what they typically did was learn whatever elemental spells and applications they needed at the moment, according to their goals and magical research.

<Elemental Magic and Its Linkages> was a lecture meant to help with exactly that.

The reason the Room of Elements was flooded with so many kinds of elemental energy was to encourage students not to cling stubbornly to just one thing, but to handle a range of elements flexibly and expand their thinking freely.

Wait. This is way too normal.

To Lee Han, who had spent last year getting attacked over and over just to learn one branch of elemental application, it sounded almost suspiciously normal.

“Senior, then what purpose did you sign up for?” 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

“I needed to practice linking water element and earth element a bit. I’m working on something right now, but since my elemental control keeps falling short, it keeps failing halfway through.”

“If it’s water element... do you mean things like controlling multiple water orbs at once, instantly changing water’s form, or additionally imbuing it with rotational properties?”

“...I wasn’t planning to go that deep into it...”

The upperclassman looked taken aback by Lee Han’s answer.

The plan had simply been to pick up a few specific water-form changes needed for ongoing research and leave it at that.

“But won’t you need that eventually?”

“Unless you’re planning to go around killing monsters with water element alone, I don’t think so.”

“......”

At the upperclassman’s reply, Lee Han’s expression darkened.

For the first time, he had the uneasy feeling that maybe the lecture he had taken last year had been more wasteful than he realized.

From what he was hearing, the upperclassmen were not obsessively drilling down into one element. They were just learning the parts they needed, when they needed them.

...Was that actually the right approach?

...No. Going deep wasn’t a bad thing. It’ll definitely help when I’m handling other elements too.

If it turned out not to help, Lee Han might end up grabbing Professor Voladi by the collar.

“Junior, then why did you sign up for the lecture?”

“Hmm...”

Lee Han hesitated, thinking The artifact made me do it probably was not a very good answer.

Before he could say anything, Adenart answered first.

“I enrolled in order to control rare-aspect elements and strengthen my elemental command overall.”

“Ah. Same here. Also the ordinary elements.”

Thinking that sounded like a good answer, Lee Han adopted it on the spot.

In truth, Lee Han was an unusual case. He handled rare-aspect elements like darkness, lightning, and cold far more often than ordinary ones.

Thanks to that, every time he used fire, he still tensed up.

Hearing those answers from the two juniors, the upperclassman assumed Adenart must be the better student of the two.

In Lee Han’s case, the fact that he said he needed to strengthen even the ordinary elements seemed to mean he still had plenty of shortcomings.

“To your places!”

With that energetic, powerful voice, the professor of House Benmalpa strode in.

A human professor, Jorzik of House Benmalpa wore a splendid mustache shaped like a seagull, and together with the professor’s distinctly gentlemanly attire, looked more like the host of some highly active Imperial social club than a professor.

Since many professors at Einroguard dressed however they pleased, a figure like that was unusual in its own way, and Lee Han found it odd.

Is that why the seniors said that professor made them uncomfortable?

“Delighted to meet you, ladies and gentlemen! I am Jorzik of House Benmalpa, the future principal of Einroguard!”

“?!”

While Lee Han and Adenart stared in surprise, a few upperclassmen who were seeing Professor Jorzik for the first time blurted out in alarm,

“The principal’s heir?!”

“No!”

“...But you just said you were the future principal.”

“One can become the future principal without being the heir, ladies and gentlemen! Someday, by command of His Majesty the Emperor, I shall replace Lord Gonadaltes and become principal of Einroguard!”

“......”

“......”

Only then, seeing the professor’s open declaration of coup in that voice and with those ambition-filled eyes, did Lee Han finally understand why some of the upperclassmen found Professor Jorzik uncomfortable.

And inwardly, he thought:

This one is even crazier than Professor Verdus.

He was absolutely the kind of person Lee Han needed to stay far away from.