Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy - Chapter 771
“Surely you don’t think I spread the poison, do you?”
For one thing, Lee Han had not set off the poisonous swamp on the sixth floor…
…and even if the poisonous swamp had not burst open, Lee Han was sure this <Gonadaltes’s Dark Magic Cloak>—no, this <Dark Magic School’s Protective Cloak>—would have sold well.
No matter how you looked at it, it was the kind of item that had to sell.
“Of course not, Wardanaz.”
Ogoldos agreed and gave a wink.
“…You’re not answering no on the surface while thinking yes underneath, are you?”
“Hm? Wasn’t that it?”
“No.”
Lee Han answered with a stony face.
What did Ogoldos take him for?
“Who would even do something like that?”
“Last year, Senior Diret and Senior Koholti spread poison together to lock down an area.”
“……”
Now that Lee Han thought about it, the upperclassmen of the dark magic school had once spread poison through a hallway to help hide giants underground.
Lee Han reflected on what Lee Han had just said.
Hmm. You really never know what people might do.
“Anyway, it wasn’t me this time.”
Even after Lee Han said that, the other students of the dark magic school looked ready to start debating whether that was really true.
Annoyed, Lee Han called everyone over.
“That isn’t what matters right now.”
“Oh, right. We need to make more cloaks. It’d be easier if the professor helped.”
“The professor disappeared. I think the professor ran away.”
“Should we call Senior Diret?”
Lee Han smacked the floor with a bang of the wand. The students of the dark magic school turned their heads in confusion.
“For now, don’t call Senior Diret.”
“Huh? Why?”
“If I said don’t call Diret, then don’t call Diret, damn it.”
Gainando shrank back when Lee Han snapped.
I was just asking…!
“The dye is already soaking, so once the basic process is done, we can keep working on the cloaks. I wasn’t talking about something that obvious.”
“Then what?”
“We sell something else while we can! Senior, do you really not see it?”
“I-I don’t. What is it?”
Ogoldos was slightly overwhelmed by Lee Han’s intensity.
Whenever Imperial gold was involved, this junior carried an aura that overpowered not only upperclassmen, but professors too.
“I mean antidote-related items! If we sell them cheaper than the cloaks, they’ll be competitive enough.”
Just because they had made cloaks and the cloaks were selling well did not mean selling only cloaks was smart.
Lee Han had no idea who had set off the poisonous swamp, but once an opportunity had appeared, the only sensible thing to do was exploit it as thoroughly as possible.
“What? So you mean sell things like antidote potions or poison-repelling liquor?”
“That’s right.”
Items like antidote potions, which temporarily protected against poisoning, or poison-repelling liquor, which kept poison from approaching.
They were essential items for adventurers exploring dungeons, but not quite as essential for Einroguard students.
As Lee Han had already said, unless the performance was truly exceptional, students had no reason to spend a large amount of money on them.
They could just go learn it themselves.
“Would anyone buy something that middling? Seems like they’d want to do it themselves or buy something better.”
“Senior!”
“??”
“Students from other schools don’t know much about dark magic!”
“……”
“So let’s stop assuming they’ll think deeply about dark magic items. If we just advertise them as good, everyone will believe it.”
Being hit so hard with the truth made Ogoldos’s face fall.
Now that Ogoldos thought about it, students from other schools probably really had no ability to distinguish between easy dark magic and difficult dark magic.
They had never cared in the first place…
“Wardanaz. One more thing.”
Agdung cut into the conversation.
“What is it, Senior?”
“From what I’ve heard, the poisonous swamp did burst open on the sixth floor, but it sounds like there are several swamps with weak toxicity and a lot of empty space between them, so if you know what you’re doing, it should be easy enough to deal with. Would consumables like that really sell?”
“Hmm.”
Lee Han listened to the advice from the upperclassman from Kalarogard and fell into thought.
Then Lee Han spoke.
“I think I’ll need your help with that, Senior.”
“Me? I can help with anything, sure, but what exactly would I—”
*****
“Everyone, please listen! I’m from Kalarogard!”
“Kalarogard? That’s the dark magic school, right?”
“That’s a relief. If it were Valdrogard, I was about to throw a rock.”
The students moving through the seventh floor stopped and pricked up their ears at the sight of a Kalarogard student.
What was this about?
“A poisonous swamp has burst open on the sixth floor, and it’s truly dangerous!”
“How is it dangerous?”
“…It’s very dangerous!”
“I mean specifically how? Does it restrict the use of certain elements, or interfere with mana control, or—”
“It’s even more dangerous than that!”
“???”
Agdung dodged the question and swung Agdung’s arms with exaggerated gestures.
“Do not go down to the sixth floor for a while, but if you absolutely must, then buy antidote potions from those dark magic school students over there! They also have poison-repelling liquor and protective cloaks!”
No sooner had the words left Agdung’s mouth than a boy with gold-colored hair came running up and collapsed to the ground.
“Urgh… the poison…!”
“Oh no! Here, drink this antidote potion!”
The students of the dark magic school hurried over, propped Gainando up, and forced a potion down Gainando’s throat.
“Everyone. Did you see that?!”
Agdung was inwardly relieved to be in skeleton form.
If Agdung had not been, the discomfort on Agdung’s face would have shown through the skin.
“If you go down to the sixth floor without preparing, you’re in danger!”
The students murmured among themselves, discussing what they had just heard.
Listening to the murmured conversation, Lee Han made a somewhat complicated face.
It was good that no one suspected it was staged, but the fact that no one even suspected it made Lee Han feel strange in a different way.
What kind of reputation did the dark magic school have for people not to even consider that the school might sell potions like this?
And they think Senior Agdung is the one who got this ready!
“I’ll take one potion.”
“Ah, yes. Here you go. Thank you.”
“I didn’t know the dark magic school could do something like this. This is a good thing. I’m rooting for you.”
“Yes…”
“You’re only doing this because it’d look bad in front of the person from Kalarogard, right?”
“No. It’s ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) just something we can do…”
“What are you talking about? You were always the ones spreading more poison.”
“…Actually, there used to be someone in our school named Koholti, and that person was the one leading that sort of thing. Koholti already graduated, so now we’re trying to do this kind of work instead.”
The students were dubious, but they still bought the potions.
The price was not particularly high, by Einroguard standards, and given what was happening on the sixth floor, there was no harm in being prepared.
“Gainando. In thirty minutes, can you go collapse over there again?”
“Heh. Got it.”
Standing beside Lee Han, Gainando brewed fake poison and studied how to make the act look more convincing.
Since everyone around them was a skilled mage, the poisoning symptoms had to look real.
“Senior Agdung, thank you. Without you, Senior, we never would have gotten results like this.”
“R-right.”
Agdung had definitely wanted to hear a student from another school say, Without you, I never would have gotten results like this…
So why doesn’t this feel good at all?
*****
All weekend long, Lee Han and the students of the dark magic school filled the vault and reshaped the school’s image.
It was such a shock that people were even talking about it on <Einroguard’s Watchers>.
Iactus: Did you hear the dark magic school is selling antidote potions instead of poison?! Why are they doing something like that!?
Beaver-Penguin-Fox: Apparently there used to be a graduate named Koholti who banned antidote sales to preserve poison potency.
Iactus: How vicious!
“……”
Lee Han decided to apologize to Senior Koholti someday if they met again, then finished organizing the vault. Outside the window of Dark Hall, the sun was slowly brightening, announcing the start of a new week.
Still, this is a relief. The income has to keep holding steady like this.
Even after dividing out wages for the participating students, this round of revenue had been more than enough to fill the vault.
The problem was whether they could sustain it.
Let’s not worry about that already. The next chance will come when it comes.
If a new curse broke out, or another undead disturbance happened…
…of course, Lee Han had absolutely no intention of causing one. Lee Han was only hoping a little.
“What are you doing over there?”
“!”
Lee Han jumped.
The door to Dark Hall opened, and the most pitiable fifth-year in the dark magic school walked in.
“Good morning, Senior Diret.”
“Why are you up at this hour… Wait, you didn’t sleep?”
“What about you, Senior?”
“Well, I mean…”
“Same here, more or less…”
“……”
“……”
At the same time, the two silently pitied each other very deeply.
“I was organizing what we worked on over the weekend.”
“What kind of work?”
“I borrowed the help of the professor and the other students to make some items and sell them.”
“…Did they actually sell?”
“Yes. We did quite well.”
“Right…”
Diret did not believe the answer, but Diret did not press the issue either.
What was the point of dragging out a sad story?
“Here. Have some coffee.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s that?”
Lee Han looked curiously at the cup Diret had brought.
Why was there a poisonous aura coming off it?
“Belgarung’s Poison. Bitter taste. Good for waking up.”
“…Why not just drink coffee??”
“Hey. Coffee beans are expensive.”
Grumbling, Diret accepted the hot tin cup.
Where else in Einroguard were you supposed to find a junior who made coffee for an upperclassman?
Most of the time, juniors stole their upperclassmen’s coffee beans.
“Wait. If you borrowed the professor’s help, why didn’t you call me?”
“The professor told us not to call you.”
“…If I hadn’t had coffee yet, I might’ve let that slide, but the coffee woke me up. The professor would never say that.”
I shouldn’t have given Diret coffee.
Diret shook Diret’s head.
The one to blame was the evil professor, not a well-meaning junior.
“What do you have in the morning?”
“It’s possible I don’t have anything.”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“Yes. I do, actually. <Sword and Life>, and since it should be Professor Ingledel’s lecture, it’ll probably be fairly—”
“That won’t be Professor Ingledel.”
“Pardon?”
“Give it here.”
Sipping coffee, Diret looked over Lee Han’s class list and nodded.
“Junior. This class isn’t Professor Ingledel’s.”
“Then who teaches it?”
Einroguard had plenty of mages, but surprisingly few excellent swordsmen.
“Caten of House Jahan. Fifth-year White Tiger Tower.”
“!”
The moment Lee Han heard fifth-year White Tiger Tower, Lee Han tensed a little.
The White Tiger Tower and the Blue Dragon Tower had a long history of clashing, after all.
“What kind of person is Caten?”
“Jahan? That idiot is…”
As expected, some kind of master of enhancement magic? Or maybe another magic field.
“…the dumbest person in Einroguard.”
“???”
For a moment, Lee Han thought Lee Han had misheard Diret.
“Pardon?”
“Dumb.”
“There’s no way a fifth-year could be dumb. Ah. I understand. Dumb by your standards, Senior.”
“No. Objectively dumb… Junior. You’re taking classes from every school, right?”
“Yes.”
“Jahan’s the opposite of that.”
Diret made a circle with a finger.
“Senior Caten is taking classes from every school too?”
“No… zero schools. Caten failed all of them.”
“……”
