Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy - Chapter 701

“Among the schools, there are some unusual ones. Other than the schools you saw in your first year…”

“Do you not ask students taking four or more?”

When Gainando raised a hand and asked, Perseda sharply scolded him.

“Don’t waste my time, junior. Even if I am your senior, I can’t indulge all your jokes.”

“N-no…”

Gainando looked deeply wronged.

He had asked for a friend!

“Where was I? Ah. Unusual schools.”

“Do you mean schools like dark magic?”

At someone’s question, Gainando bristled.

But the one who had asked was Lee Han. Gainando immediately canceled the anger.

“The dark magic group doesn’t even count as an unusual school. There may be relatively few people, but the group keeps its numbers up, and the tradition keeps getting passed down.”

“The seniors told us in our year it might really get abolished.”

Perseda ignored Gainando’s words and continued.

“At Einroguard, an unusual school has to be something you’ve never even heard the name of, or at least something that makes you think, ‘Who would even study that?’ If you want to take it, it has to be at the level where you go find the Skull Principal and ask for a professor to be brought in, or where some fifth- or sixth-year senior happens to be researching it and you get lucky enough to learn from that.”

‘I know what that means.’

Lee Han nodded.

Music Magic, or Professor Voladi’s magic—though he wasn’t sure that could really be called a school—fell into that sort of category.

‘Wait. Does time magic have its own school?’

“Senior. I have a question.”

“What is it?”

“Does time magic have a separate school inside Einroguard?”

“Uh… hold on.”

Apparently Lee Han’s question was a difficult one even for Perseda. Perseda pulled out an artifact shaped like a conch shell and asked,

“Senior Yukbeltire. Is there a time magic school lecture this year?”

—No.

“When was the last time there was one?”

—Fourteen years ago. If there is a junior interested in time magic, tell that junior to know their place.

“Thank you for the advice.”

After hearing the answer, Perseda relayed it to the juniors.

“It disappeared because no one took it for a long time. If you’re really interested, in your fifth year you can personally…”

Perseda stopped mid-sentence and, before realizing it, clapped a hand over the mouth.

To think that such a horrifying thing had almost just been said to juniors!

“…Pretend you didn’t hear what I just said.”

“Fifth year?”

Perseda swung the wand violently. Gainando was struck by a silence curse and protested with frantic hand gestures.

“Juniors. If nothing else, remember this one thing. You don’t need to admire or respect your seniors, but in front of seniors, do not mention the year that is one more than four! Especially not in front of fourth-years!! Understood?”

“S-sorry.”

“We’ll remember.”

Perseda’s eyes looked like those of a desperate beast cornered with nowhere to run, and the second-years were overwhelmed by the force of it.

“Back to what I was saying. In your second year, lectures will now revolve mostly around the schools you picked. It’s not as if there are no required lectures or electives, but most of it will be decided inside your schools based on the interests you choose.”

Even within the same school, the goals pursued by mages varied wildly.

Even with summoning magic, one mage might specialize in spirits, another in inanimate objects, another in ancient relics…

That being the case, Einroguard’s mages had to know how to choose the lectures they needed intelligently within the schools they had selected.

“For reference, choosing will be pretty difficult.”

“Why is that?”

“Because there are an absurd number of lectures.”

Perseda dragged over a blackboard, then spread out a gigantic rolled-up sheet of paper on top of it.

Horrific Cases in Summoning Magic

Fire Spirit Summoning Magic and Elementology

An Economic Analysis of Golem Summoning

Why Summoning Magic Is Essential in Ancient Relic Research? (Second-Years Forbidden)

What Weaknesses Do the Skull Principal’s Summons Have?

…

…

Unlike in the first year, the lectures had no sense of unity at all, just a chaos of names in every direction, and the students went pale.

“A-all these lectures exist?”

“No. There are far more lectures that don’t exist.”

Before the juniors could get even more frightened, Perseda quickly explained.

At Einroguard, lectures were usually run by professors or the unhappiest fifth- and sixth-year students on the continent.

Every year, the professors and those miserable mages submitted lists of lectures…

…and even after the years passed, those lists did not disappear. They simply remained as they were.

“????”

“Uh, is that allowed?”

“No. Which is why for a good number of those lectures, there’s no professor to teach them and no senior to run them. And a good number of them are lectures that only start if you take them. No professor is going to run a lecture no one attends.”

‘Hmm.’

Lee Han thought there probably were some, but quietly kept silent.

“In the end, you have to check for yourselves. Of course, the best way is to ask the professor of your school. You get recommendations for lectures suited to the parts you want to learn.”

When Perseda waved the wand, the lecture lists on the paper changed.

Fire Spirit Summoning Magic and Elementology

Pyro-Botany

Using Fire Materials to Please Spirits

The Most Famous Fire Elemental Realms

“These are recommended lectures a professor wrote down a long time ago. They aren’t very different even now.”

“Senior. I have a question. Ver… I mean… not every professor seems likely to give recommendations that detailed.”

“Yes. I also know very well that Ver… not every professor gives recommendations that detailed. And you juniors are lucky. There happens to be one outstanding senior.”

Perseda spoke in a voice tinged with respect.

At that sight, Yonair cautiously asked,

“That senior… is that someone who has gone one year past fourth year?”

“That’s right. But that senior does not consider that painful at all. That is what is truly amazing.”

“Could that person possibly be Senior Yukbeltire?”

Lee Han asked, just in case.

Perseda brightened and answered,

“That’s right. How did you know?”

“Uh… I met that person outside once before. So that person is the one doing the advising? Lecture advising?”

“Yes.”

“……”

Lee Han looked revolted.

The things Diret had advised him about were still vivid in his mind.

‘You’re telling me this person is someone capable of advising anyone about anything?’

He suspected there might actually be another person with the same name.

Wasn’t there also another Professor Verdus? Maybe there could be another Senior Yukbeltire too.

The two of them even seemed kind of similar in personality…

“I’m going to start the advising now, so do not say anything useless. Senior Yukbeltire hates having time wasted no less than I do.”

“Senior. I, perhaps…”

“Quiet! Get in there.”

“…Yes…”

*****

It was usually hard to tell, but there were in fact advantages to spending more than five years at Einroguard.

One of them was that most of your seniors and classmates graduated.

Yukbeltire did not particularly care about the own infamy, but the fact that most of the Blue Dragon Tower students still remaining were all Yukbeltire’s juniors definitely helped the reputation.

To be blunt, the way juniors saw someone and the way classmates saw someone could not help but differ a little.

To classmates, Yukbeltire was “Verdus’s direct disciple,” but to juniors, Yukbeltire was “the greatest mind in the Blue Dragon Tower and a senior worthy of respect”!

Yukbeltire’s indifference, contrasted against several wicked seniors, had been packaged as kindness.

And Yukbeltire’s madness toward magic, to juniors who would never come into direct contact with it, simply looked like extraordinary intelligence.

After all, if you only saw him from a distance and never had to deal with him personally, wasn’t even the Skull Principal just a magnificent grand mage of the Empire?

Yukbeltire placed a clock artifact with an intricate structure on top of the table.

The clock artifact was so enormous that it looked as if it belonged in a bell tower rather than on a table.

‘When are they coming in?’

The reason Yukbeltire was helping the second-year juniors with their vast lecture selections was not out of any sense of responsibility as a senior.

To begin with, no such sense of responsibility existed inside Yukbeltire.

The only reason Yukbeltire was helping with lecture selection was because of a deal made with friends in the third year.

—You’re going to use this Orbidos’s Tears all by yourself, Yukbeltire?!

—It’s not as if the rest of you could use it even if you took it.

—…That’s true, but we gathered this together. Yukbeltire! Three of us got thrown into the punishment ward to steal it out of the Skull Principal’s storehouse!

—Then let’s make a deal. What do you want? If you wish, I can give advice on your small airship research.

—I don’t need it, I already finished it! …Wait, though. Does it look like I need advice? Is it really that lacking?

—By about ten percent.

—About ten percent… If it’s only lacking by that much, that actually sounds pretty decent?

—No. I mean the research is about ten percent complete.

—……

—…Yukbeltire. That one does not need advice on small airship research.

-W-wait. I think I might need it.

-What we want is for you to help the second-year juniors a little. This year’s lecture catalog is especially chaotic. Eighty percent of the lectures not existing—does that make any sense?

-Why are you asking for help with something the juniors should handle themselves? Do you have relatives among them?

-I do have some relatives, but that’s not the only reason. Yukbeltire. I want to help them as a senior. It’s a matter of noble honor.

-I’m royalty, yet never once have I thought that such pointless caretaking had anything to do with my honor. Are you perhaps mistaken about what honor means?

-…Ah, enough! Are you taking the deal or not?!

-I am.

-Are you serious? It’s going to take quite a while.

-It would take less time if I created an artifact to handle it in my place.

-As expected… wait. Yukbeltire. Then I’m adding a condition.

-What is it?

-Until you graduate, help the second-year juniors with their lectures a little.

-Have you finally gone insane?

-Then forget it. And Yukbeltire, do not think about stealing Orbidos’s Tears. If this deal falls apart, I’ll smash it right now. You think we don’t know what you’re planning? We may not be as good at magic as you, but we’re still Einroguard students too.

-…!

Yukbeltire opened the closed eyes.

Even now, thinking about it again, it had been an extremely unpleasant deal. Never before had Yukbeltire been blindsided like that by classmates.

Thanks to that, Yukbeltire had been placed in the position of having to match lectures for talentless second-year students until graduation.

“Greetings, Senior!”

“Place the hand on the artifact. Think about the schools you are taking, and think about the interests you have within those schools.”

“I-is that all I need to do?”

The student asked in confusion. Instead of answering, Yukbeltire simply stared.

Perhaps feeling pressured by that cold gaze, the second-year student hurriedly placed a hand on the artifact.

Then, with a series of CLACKING sounds, the clock produced a daily lecture schedule.

“…!!!”

The junior stared at the artifact in shock.

Amazingly, this lecture schedule contained not only the schools being taken and the interests already held, but even lectures the student had not thought of.

“H-how is there a lecture ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) on fluidity in the water element…? I’m not interested in that.”

“This clock analyzes your abilities as well. If your abilities are lacking, it also recommends lectures that will fill in those deficiencies.”

“T-that…!”

“Do you intend to keep standing there?”

“No! Thank you!”

The junior hurriedly wrote down the lecture names, then went outside.

When the next junior came in, Yukbeltire closed the eyes and repeated the same words spoken moments earlier.

Then to the next junior, and the next, and the next again…

“Greetings.”

A voice was heard that sounded as if it had been forcibly distorted somehow.

But Yukbeltire was not the kind of person who opened the eyes just because a junior’s voice sounded a little strange.

“Place the hand on the artifact. Think about the schools you are taking, and think about the interests you have within those schools.”

“Yes.”

Relieved that the insane senior was not looking at him, Lee Han let out a sigh of relief and placed a hand on it.

The plan was to get this over with quickly and run.

TING!

“…?”

When the clock clattered for a moment and then stopped, Lee Han looked flustered.

As Yukbeltire began to open the closed eyes, Lee Han reflexively threw off the cloak.