Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy - Chapter 825

Fortunately, Palcrius heard his junior’s cry.

“Oh. Professor. May I step away for a moment?”

“Go ahead. The patient’s wrists stopped sprouting extra feet, so everyone can take a short break.”

“Thank you. I’m a little worried. You know that mage from the Accumulated Rain Mage Tower? I left him alone with my junior for a moment.”

“Palcrius.”

“Yes, Professor.”

Professor Alcasis spoke while burning the severed feet away.

“Your junior can handle things just fine on his own. Worry about your own work instead.”

“But… he’s only a second-year…”

For once, Palcrius looked genuinely flustered.

Granted, he occasionally forgot Lee Han’s actual year and mentally added one or two extra years onto it, but even so, the boy was still a second-year.

And the mage from the Accumulated Rain Mage Tower had been a troublesome case. There was no telling when the curse might flare up again or what kind of symptoms it might trigger.

“He cursed himself. We don’t know when he might suddenly start acting strangely.”

“That’s why I said he’ll handle it fine.”

Professor Alcasis answered in a gravelly voice while suppressing another yawn.

He had gone so long without sleep that even after mixing sleep-repelling potions with insomnia curse potions and drinking them undiluted, the yawns still kept coming.

“If you keep acting like this, Professor, the students are all going to run away! I’m going to check on him!”

Palcrius snapped and stormed out.

“N-No… Palcrius! Palcrius!”

The professor hurriedly called after his disciple, but Palcrius never slowed.

“Don’t pretend you’re angry and skip out on work! We’re starting again in thirty minutes!”

“…I know!”

Palcrius shouted back irritably.

Alcasis of House Lagrinde was unquestionably a great mage, but sometimes he really took things too far.

Yes, weak mages couldn’t survive long in healing ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) magic anyway and needed to be weeded out quickly, but there should still be limits.

At the very least, he could wait until the younger students had become a little tougher.

If he pushed them like this from the start, the already tiny number of second-year healing magic students would shrink even further. And Lee Han, on top of everything else, was taking classes from multiple schools…

“Huh? What’s going on here?”

Palcrius blinked in confusion.

The mage from the Accumulated Rain Mage Tower, Bajun, was currently groaning and thrashing around while pinned down.

“Ghk! I only lost because you caught me off guard! If we fought properly, a second-year could never pin me down like this!”

“I understand, so please stay still.”

“Let me go! One more round!”

“No. I need to confirm whether there’s something wrong with your head first. Until then, I can’t release you.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me! Give me back my staff!”

“The things you’re saying suggest otherwise. This is your final warning. Stay still.”

“And if I don’t stay st— Gahk! Kghrk! I-I surrender!”

Bajun hastily cried out as the telekinetic force crushing his limbs and throat tightened further.

He hadn’t even realized Lee Han had been holding back.

What kind of second-year uses magic like this?

“Ah. Senior. You’re here?”

“Uh… yes. I’m here. But… did the curse spread to his head or something?”

Palcrius wondered whether Bajun had gone insane from the curse while he was gone, forcing Lee Han to subdue him.

“No. I treated the curse for now, but after that he started saying strange things, so I called you over. Could you examine him?”

“?”

Palcrius stared blankly at his junior, unsure which part of that sentence he should question first.

“What did you say?”

“Saying strange things?”

“No, before that. You treated the curse?”

“Yes.”

“…”

Palcrius rushed over to Bajun.

Still trapped in massive telekinetic hands like iron pot lids, Bajun gasped out a plea.

“G-Gently…”

“I am being gentle.”

“Ah. Sorry. I was holding him down with telekinesis.”

Lee Han apologized and loosened his grip on Bajun’s collar. Bajun shot him a resentful glare.

Palcrius immediately cast several diagnostic spells over the patient.

External damage inspection. Soul examination. Astral projection. Spirit detection.

One after another.

And to his astonishment, there wasn’t even a trace of the curse left behind.

Bajun had been completely healed.

“I-It’s perfectly cured, Junior! What in the world did you do?”

“What? His head’s fine too?”

“Yes!”

“I told you it was!”

Lee Han finally released the remaining telekinetic restraints, though he still looked suspicious. Bajun irritably got back to his feet.

“He kept saying strange things. Asking where some prisoner was…”

“…I only said that because I was startled!”

“You also called me a saint out of nowhere.”

“That… that’s a perfectly natural reaction for anyone with a conscience!”

Bajun suddenly became emotional while defending himself.

Whatever else aside, that definitely hadn’t been a slip of the tongue.

Anyone would have reacted the same way in that situation.

“Why would you call him a saint?”

Palcrius asked Lee Han in complete bewilderment.

“He didn’t weaken the curse or purify it. He absorbed it into himself! Of course I’d call him a saint— Gahk!”

Before Bajun could finish, Palcrius grabbed him by the collar with both hands and hoisted him into the air.

“You made him do that?!”

“Kghrk, no! No…! He did it himself…!”

“How would a second-year even think to do something like that on his own, you idiot from the Accumulated Rain Mage Tower?!”

“Uh. I really did do it on my own, Senior.”

“…I-Is that so?”

Flustered, Palcrius hurriedly set Bajun back down.

Then he awkwardly cleared his throat.

“It seems there was a slight misunderstanding. Ahem.”

“Einroguard people are all insane…”

Bajun grumbled while rubbing his neck. He had lost count of how many times he’d been strangled today.

Lee Han smiled pleasantly.

“It was an emergency situation. There were bound to be a few misunderstandings.”

Was it really that much of an emergency?

Bajun privately disagreed, but decided to let it go.

Honestly, if someone cured a curse that severe, getting grabbed by the collar a few times was still a bargain.

“Anyway, thank you again for healing me. And what’s wrong with calling you a saint? Anyone willing to risk their own life to save somebody who’s falling apart and about to end up like Professor Verdus deserves to be called one. You’re a saint, young man.”

“Are you sure there’s really nothing wrong with his head?”

Lee Han ignored Bajun’s rambling and quietly asked Palcrius. Palcrius gave a faint nod.

“Thanks again. And I’ll keep my promise. Make sure you visit the Watercloud Mountains sometime. But I should leave now. My research is already terribly behind schedule. Farewell!”

Bajun barely even bothered putting his shoes back on properly before racing up toward the airfield above the tower.

A moment later, he hooked a magic chain onto the claws of a passing wyvern and shot off through the sky.

—You lunatic mage! What do you think you’re doing?! What if the wyvern’s claws snap?!

—Sorry! Just take me along! Drop me off somewhere near the Watercloud Mountains!

“Wardanaz. Did you really absorb somebody else’s curse?”

“Yes. But I have strong resistance, so I’m fine.”

“…”

Having high resistance didn’t make something like that normal.

No ordinary person would absorb another person’s curse into their own body without hesitation.

That required an absurd degree of resolve and responsibility toward others.

Professor. You were right!

Palcrius suddenly realized that Professor Alcasis had understood his disciples far better than anyone had thought.

Palcrius had assumed the professor was so exhausted from work that he couldn’t even tell tea from coffee anymore, but apparently that wasn’t true at all.

…Then why didn’t he recognize us back then?

Last winter break, Professor Alcasis had once run into several healing magic students while they were dressed in casual clothes.

And he had walked straight past them without recognizing a single one.

The story had become legendary among the healing magic students.

—The professor seriously didn’t recognize us, right?

—Honestly, I still suspect he doesn’t remember us even now…

He probably just couldn’t be bothered dealing with us. We misunderstood him.

Palcrius resolved to share this revelation with the younger students later.

There was no way someone who paid this much attention to Wardanaz, a student who had only recently entered the school, could truly be indifferent toward the rest of them.

“Senior.”

When Palcrius remained silent for too long, Lee Han cautiously called out to him.

“Hm? What is it?”

“Are you angry because I treated the patient?”

“What?! No! Why would you think that?”

“You seemed happy about researching a rare disease for an entire year.”

“…Well, that part is true. But that doesn’t mean I’m angry you cured him!”

Flustered, Palcrius suddenly began to worry that this junior might think he was insane.

Though honestly, if anyone here was strange, it was probably the second-year who absorbed a curse into his own body before even completing a proper analysis.

“Junior. Just in case, let me warn you—don’t casually absorb other people’s curses.”

Now fully aware that his junior was even more abnormal than expected, Palcrius hurriedly gave the warning.

It should have gone without saying, but clearly it still needed to be said.

“Why would I casually do something like that?”

“Then what do you call what you just did?”

“That was… an exception.”

“Then don’t casually absorb exceptions either. Understood?”

“Yes…”

He really does seem angry.

***

“Ugh, my poor aching bones.”

Ragesa complained once every three seconds.

Eventually, Lee Han gave up and apologized.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you over.”

“Kid. You summoned me here on purpose, didn’t you?”

“No! What a terrible misunderstanding!”

Like any proper Einroguard student, Lee Han absolutely refused to admit anything.

Ragesa grinned like a kindly old grandmother.

“Kihihit. I’m impressed, that’s all. You can be honest with me. Would Torgerd’s daughter really get angry over something this small?”

Yes.

Lee Han answered instantly in his head before replying aloud in the most hypocritical tone imaginable.

“I really did call you because I wanted to introduce you around, Ragesa.”

“Tch.”

Ragesa clicked her tongue.

The kid was absurdly slippery. He never fell for the kinds of traps that most people walked into without thinking. If he had chosen piracy instead of magic, he would have become an extraordinary pirate.

“You barely had time to look around while helping Alcasis. See anything interesting?”

“Not particularly. There was a mage from the Watercloud Mountains…”

“Ah. Bajun? We were taking bets on how many curses that brat could survive.”

Lee Han blinked in mild surprise.

Apparently Bajun was more famous than he had expected.

“Yes. Him. I treated him.”

“How? That couldn’t have been easy.”

“I absorbed the curses.”

“…”

Ragesa was so stunned that she completely lost the ability to speak for a moment.

The sheer nerve required to absorb curses severe enough to be brought all the way to Einroguard was unbelievable.

And the magic required to accomplish it was just as unbelievable.

But most unbelievable of all was the fact that all of this had happened right behind her without her noticing a thing.

“You little brat, you should’ve told me! Want me to tie you to the mast? Want me to turn you into another Professor Bivle?”

“No, no! You were busy!”

“Busy or not, I should’ve seen that! That’s exactly the kind of thing I came here for! Instead I ended up looking like some idiot who only worked the whole time!”

After fuming for a while, Ragesa finally calmed down enough to ask:

“When’s your next class?”

“In one…”

“One hour?”

“One minute. You should probably start running.”

“…Right.”

Lee Han, who had been running ahead, suddenly hesitated.

“What’s wrong?”

“Uh… I think it might be better if I attend this lecture alone. Wouldn’t you rather tour the seventh floor a bit more, Ragesa?”

“What’s this all about, kid?”

Grinning broadly, Ragesa snatched the schedule out of Lee Han’s hand.

She couldn’t even imagine what kind of lecture this slippery brat was so desperate to avoid attending with her.

Maybe it’s a subject he’s bad at?

Surprisingly enough, it could have been something involving etiquette or liberal arts. Mages obsessed with magic tended to be terrible at Imperial manners.

<Wand Materials and Magical Amplification>

Professor Bivle Verdus

“…”

Ragesa’s expression twisted like a pirate staring down an oncoming storm.