Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy - Chapter 829
“Why are you looking at me like that? You don’t actually doubt me, do you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Raphaedel can vouch for me.”
“Two idiots together would get fooled just the same.”
That’s a little harsh…
Lee Han thought to himself.
Sure, Anglago and Raphaedel could be gullible at times, but calling them idiots felt excessive.
“Well… not completely excessive, maybe.”
“Wardanaz. We’ll be fine, right?”
While the two spoke, Anglago approached hesitantly.
The punishment cells clearly brought back painful memories.
—You’re throwing me into the punishment cells over a tiny kitchen raid?! I could’ve just paid compensation!
—Student. Please remain quiet.
—Hmph! I refuse! Aren’t you Death Knights ashamed? Locking students up over something as minor as raiding the kitchen!
—If you continue speaking, we’ll have no choice but to silence you.
—Go ahead and try!
—…Sigh. Petrify.
The punishment cells weren’t just traumatic. They were genuinely dangerous.
The place was packed with traps and defensive mechanisms designed to stop escapes and intrusions. Even experienced mages could get caught if they relaxed for a moment.
“Haha. Of course. It’ll be fine.”
“R-right. Of course it will. There’s no way Wardanaz would come all the way down here without preparing first.”
Visibly relieved, Anglago turned away.
Lee Han glanced toward Giselle.
“Does White Tiger Tower always trust people this easily?”
“Shut up.”
***
Lee Han guided his friends deeper into the punishment cells with courage, wisdom, and shameless familiarity.
“Good afternoon.”
—Yes. Good afternoon, Student Lee Han.
“I’ll be passing through.”
—Go right ahead.
The White Tiger Tower students stared in disbelief as Lee Han casually exchanged greetings with the Death Knight patrolling the corridor before continuing onward.
What exactly had they just witnessed?
“W-wait. Wardanaz.”
“What now? Don’t distract me. I’ll lose track of the route.”
Lee Han replied irritably without even looking up from the map in his hands.
Even by Einroguard standards, the punishment cells changed constantly. He had memorized several major routes already, but one careless step could still send them somewhere bizarre.
“That was a Death Knight just now, wasn’t it?”
“…Raphaedel. Do you perhaps not know what a Death Knight is? You’re from the dark magic school.”
“That’s not what I’m asking! I’m asking how you convinced it!”
Raphaedel exploded after suddenly being treated like an incompetent dark magic student.
For a moment, he even wondered whether Lee Han had secretly used illusion magic to deceive the Death Knight.
He knew Death Knights possessed extremely high magic resistance, but if it was Wardanaz…
“Ah. Right. I forgot. We’re acquainted.”
“…”
“…”
The White Tiger Tower students fell silent once more.
No matter how polite they were, Death Knights remained the Skull Principal’s servants and one of the greatest sources of fear within Einroguard.
If simple conversation worked on them, students wouldn’t suffer nearly this much.
What exactly do you have to do to become acquainted with Death Knights?
Wardanaz has always been strangely favored by the Skull Principal.
…That’s true too.
Fortunately, Lee Han was too focused on the map to hear their horrifying conclusions.
“This way. Follow carefully. Dergeu, don’t touch that path over there. If you tap the statue embedded in the wall, the floor collapses and drops you two levels down.”
“!”
“Relax, Wardanaz. No second-year would be dumb enough to touch something like that.”
Seeing Lee Han worry excessively, Giselle responded with confidence.
By now, second-years knew better than to touch random objects in Einroguard just because they looked interesting.
Gainando definitely would, though.
Thinking that to himself, Lee Han continued forward.
If there was one thing he could do better than most upperclassmen, it was navigating the punishment cells.
Of course, he still had to watch out for naturally occurring traps and unpredictable environmental changes, but simply being able to avoid pursuit from the Death Knights and Perkuntra was already an enormous advantage.
“Huh? Where did the warden go?”
The entire floor where Perkuntra usually stayed was empty.
Panicking slightly, Lee Han grabbed a passing Death Knight and asked for directions.
The Death Knight answered kindly.
—Two days ago, students summoned a void monster. The surrounding area was destroyed, so he relocated to the lower level. /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ Push aside those bars over there and a staircase will appear.
“Thank you.”
“This is much different from what I expected.”
Following behind them purely for entertainment, Ragesa sounded dissatisfied.
She had expected to watch students struggle through a deadly underground dungeon.
Instead, this was turning into a guided tour.
“Why is she following us?”
“She says she wants to observe Einroguard students’ magic.”
“Looks more like she’s waiting for us to trigger traps.”
Click.
The moment the words left his mouth, something activated beneath the corridor floor.
Since Perkuntra had relocated, they had entered an unfamiliar passage and triggered an unidentified trap.
“Finally!”
Ragesa shouted excitedly.
The White Tiger Tower students reacted immediately.
“Spread out and hold your breath!”
“Watch above us!”
The students instantly widened the distance between each other and checked the ceiling for airborne poison or falling-type traps.
As expected of second-years, their reactions were fast and disciplined.
Unfortunately…
Einroguard always exceeded expectations.
Space twisted in the center of the corridor as a floating sphere formed out of distorted mana.
The moment anyone touched it, they would be teleported to another section of the punishment cells.
“!!!”
The students froze.
None of them had expected the trap to target the positions they retreated into.
“This way.”
Lee Han reacted instantly.
Telekinetic force exploded outward. His friends were yanked through the air while the sphere itself was shoved aside.
THUD!
“Now that we’re lower down, the traps are stronger. The ones above only activated when approached. These directly cast magic.”
Lee Han spoke toward Ragesa.
Fortunately, <Wardanaz’s Telekinetic Force> specialized heavily in speed. Otherwise, several people would have already been separated.
“How fortunate.”
Ragesa answered with a grin full of disappointment.
Her words said one thing. Her expression said the exact opposite.
“…You’re disappointed I saved them, aren’t you?”
“Of course not! Keep moving. You said everything below those stairs is unexplored territory, right?”
“…”
Lee Han stared at her with dead eyes before immediately summoning Skeleton Warrior Gonadaltes.
“We’ll need to search carefully.”
“Boring!”
Ignoring Ragesa’s complaints, Lee Han proceeded methodically.
His friends immediately sided with him.
“Wardanaz is right.”
“Don’t listen to outsiders trying to tempt us!”
These second-years are unbelievably shameless.
Ragesa grumbled inwardly.
Maybe it was Wardanaz’s influence, but none of them cared at all about appearances in front of outside guests.
Normally there was always at least one fool volunteering heroically.
Ah. Found one.
Ragesa immediately spotted the perfect target and drifted toward him.
Anglago flinched and instinctively tried to retreat.
“You’re from House Alpha, aren’t you? Those famous sea knights!”
“Gasp. You know my family?”
“Of course I do! But a knight from such a distinguished house plans to stand back while leaving all the danger to a friend?”
“Th-that’s…”
“Surely a knight wouldn’t monopolize glory for himself?”
Ragesa’s voice dripped with subtle provocation.
Anglago wavered visibly before finally making up his mind and rushing toward Lee Han.
“Wardanaz!”
“?”
“I’ll help scout ahead too. I’ve gotten much stronger since last year— Aack! Ack! Ack!”
Lee Han smacked Anglago across the back repeatedly with his staff.
Not a single White Tiger Tower student stopped him.
“That idiot only starts talking nonsense when he hasn’t been hit recently.”
“If he quietly stays put, Wardanaz will handle everything safely anyway.”
“…”
Ragesa stared at them in disbelief.
These White Tiger Tower students were profoundly strange.
A student from another tower was beating their tower mate with a staff right in front of them, and they simply accepted it like sheep.
THUD!
Gonadaltes, who had been scouting ahead, vanished instantly.
An absorption trap targeting undead souls had activated.
Red mirage-like energy surged upward and swallowed the Skeleton Warrior whole.
“Oh no. It got destroyed. What now?”
“I’ll just assemble another Skeleton Warrior and send it ahead.”
“I heard from Professor Voladi Bagreg. You use orthodox dark magic?”
When exactly did he talk about that?
Lee Han frowned.
Professor Voladi Bagreg looked taciturn, but somehow news about Lee Han’s abilities always spread through the faculty with alarming speed.
“Yes. I know how to use it.”
“Orthodox dark magic is powerful, but it has weaknesses. The undead you assemble don’t possess true souls. That makes certain traps difficult to detect.”
The Empire’s modern dark magic school focused primarily on contracts with extradimensional beings.
Naturally so. Once a contract was established, summoning became vastly more efficient.
By comparison, the classical dark magic Lee Han had been forcibly taught involved manually constructing undead piece by piece and controlling them directly.
It was more difficult and came with weaknesses like this one.
Maybe I should’ve learned the modern method after all…
“So shouldn’t a student go in personally now?”
“No. It’s fine. I’ll just summon another.”
“Another? It just got reverse-summoned. Won’t it be furious? Haven’t you heard the story of the dark mage Oondorgu, who starved to death after being trapped by a Ghoul King?”
Ignoring her, Lee Han summoned Skeleton Warrior Gonadaltes again.
“Can you go back in?”
Gonadaltes bowed politely before hurrying forward once more.
Ragesa’s jaw dropped.
What kind of absurd undead control was this?
What a monster…
Everything she had seen from him so far had been monstrous already, but most of it could still be explained as genius.
This level of undead domination was different.
Normally, only tyrants on the level of devil dukes possessed control this overwhelming.
“Kid. You’d do well in the Demon Realm.”
“Why would you say something so horrifying?”
Lee Han looked genuinely disgusted as he monitored the summoned creature.
***
It took time, but the outcome was practically predetermined from the start.
Unlike ordinary mages, Lee Han could continuously resupply mana and resend his summoned creature even after destruction and reverse-summoning.
After repeating the process enough times, they eventually identified which sections of the new corridor were safe and which were traps.
“Let’s head down.”
What brings you here?
RUMBLE!
Thunder crashed through the distance as lightning spread bleakly across the walls and floor.
The students instinctively tensed at the overwhelming presence ahead.
“I came because I need help.”
Help! Since you did not invoke the authority of our contract, I could refuse… but since you came all this way, I suppose I can at least hear you out.
Perkuntra’s voice echoed so loudly that only Lee Han could properly understand it.
The other students immediately took defensive stances as thunder continued roaring louder and louder.
Usually, signs like this at Einroguard meant disaster was about to happen.
“Thank you.”
Not at all. In truth, I expected you to come.
“!”
Lee Han was startled.
Did beings on the level of the Thunder King develop prophetic powers or something?
“How did you know?”
Simple logic. You mages would not understand. The Pride Duke never forgets defeat. Surely the Pride Duke sent you a letter?
“…No.”
