Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy - Chapter 855
No. Not yet.
Lee Han held himself back once again, then suddenly grew uneasy.
Was he being too patient?
What if he kept saving it for the perfect opportunity, only to graduate without ever using it?
…No. That won’t happen. The opportunity will definitely come.
“Learn <Bivle’s Departure Enchantment> first. Hurry up. Why haven’t you learned it yet?”
“Then why haven’t you finished the automatic flying sailing ship yet, Professor?”
“T-that’s difficult!”
Professor Verdus felt a deep sense of injustice at his disciple’s merciless words.
How could someone say something so cruel?
“Hmph. This is difficult too.”
“This isn’t difficult!”
“Then the sailing ship isn’t difficult either, right?”
“It is difficult!”
While carrying on an argument utterly unfitting for a dignified professor-disciple relationship, Lee Han rapidly skimmed through the spell.
Fortunately, once he actually read through it properly, <Bivle’s Departure Enchantment> wasn’t all that difficult.
…Wait. What did I just think?
Goosebumps prickled across Lee Han’s skin.
A spell on the level of fourth-circle magic didn’t feel difficult anymore.
Since first year, he had been dragged through every bizarre errand Professor Verdus could think of. To survive them, he had constantly been forced to learn extra magic on the side, and the result was a foundation absurdly solid for his age.
Beginning with <Bivle’s Mana Emission Enchantment>, all the spells he’d unwillingly learned were now feeding directly into his understanding.
“It’s not difficult! Are you even listening?”
When Professor Verdus started shouting beside him, Lee Han’s temper flared too.
“Damn it, it’s not difficult! Happy now?!”
“Y-yes.”
Professor Verdus flinched.
For a moment, he sensed the same murderous pressure from his disciple that he occasionally felt from Professor Garcia.
Lee Han continued muttering to himself while learning the spell.
“Not difficult… Damn it. This is ridiculous.”
Is he insane?
For the first time, Professor Verdus felt genuine fear.
His disciple kept saying and doing things that defied all logic.
“The spell used here is <Bivle’s Mana Amplification Enchantment>, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And this is <Curve>, while this is <Acceleration>?”
“Yeah.”
“Write more clearly.”
“If you can read it, then I wrote it clearly enough. What are you talking about?”
“…I’m done with this.”
Lee Han abruptly stood up.
The fact that the spell was easy had already put him in a foul mood, and the professor had only made it worse.
Professor Verdus panicked.
“What? Why?”
“Because your handwriting is garbage.”
“You could read it! What are you complaining about?!”
“I don’t care. I’m leaving.”
“I’ll even pay you the wages I promised with Kettle!”
Professor Verdus frantically darted left and right, trying to block him somehow.
If it were any other disciple, he could replace them without much trouble. But ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) not this one.
Ignoring him, Lee Han sidestepped and pulled out his staff to dispel the barrier spell.
“I’ll write properly! I’ll write properly!”
“Hmph. I’ll be watching.”
Only then did the disciple grudgingly sit back down.
Professor Verdus muttered under his breath.
“If you can read it, that should be enough. Why insist on all this inefficient…”
“I’m leaving.”
“No! No! No!”
***
Woooooom—
Lee Han stared at the object floating in the air with undisguised admiration.
Then curiosity struck him.
“Professor. Why aren’t we testing this on the actual sailboat? Why am I making rafts and floating them around instead?”
The thing currently hovering in the air was a crude wooden raft made by ripping out one of the Spire Stable’s support pillars.
Lee Han wondered whether this was really acceptable.
Probably not.
Resolving to report Professor Verdus by name when the stable keeper eventually discovered the damage, Lee Han waited for an answer.
“You only notice the precise differences when you test it yourself.”
The reason Professor Verdus had dragged Lee Han here was simple.
“I’m casting spells too.”
“But the mana supply is maintained with the mana I’m providing, right?”
“Yeah.”
Rather than getting angry again, Lee Han simply nodded.
To be honest, there was no point getting upset just because the professor had dumped every part of the experiment—preparation, execution, observation, and documentation—onto his disciple.
Professors were that kind of creature to begin with.
“Alright then. Let’s start.”
“Clear the center of the deck. I’m casting!”
Professor Verdus pulled out a spell scroll and tossed it neatly into the empty space in the middle of the deck.
That section connected directly to the auxiliary navigation magic circle installed on the ship, allowing movement without anyone touching the helm.
The moment the spell activated there, departure would begin.
Woooooom—
Mana surged from the mana-storage circle installed inside the small sailboat.
Thanks to Lee Han overloading it with extra mana beforehand, they had plenty to spare.
Without that, they would have needed to dismantle every magic circle and redesign the entire structure for automatic operation. Since artifacts like these required perfectly precise mana calculations, adding new spells was enormously complicated.
“Go! Departure Enchantment!”
Professor Verdus jumped up and down excitedly.
Without Lee Han touching anything, the small sailboat lifted and moved through the air purely through magical propulsion. Lee Han carefully observed every motion.
If its movements differed from the wooden raft he had floated earlier, that would mean an unexpected variable had appeared.
They match.
“How is it?! Does it match?!”
“Yes!”
“Good!”
Professor Verdus signaled for landing. Lee Han tossed the anchor down, and the sailboat slowly descended.
“That’s incredible. Just watching it float makes it seem like a completely autonomous ship already.”
“That’s the easy part. And small sailboats naturally have fewer errors.”
The more spells layered together, the more overlap and magical interference increased.
Naturally, a small craft was far easier to stabilize than a massive sailing ship.
“Now then. Next is <Bivle’s Flight Enchantment>.”
“I see. What do I need to do?”
“You need to learn it first.”
“…”
Lee Han stared at Professor Verdus with naked killing intent.
The professor hurriedly defended himself.
“That’s perfectly normal!”
Muttering darkly under his breath, Lee Han began learning again.
This time, he mastered the spell even faster than before and successfully cast <Bivle’s Flight Enchantment> onto the wooden raft.
“Oh. It’s moving. Can’t we push the speed higher?”
“For that, we’d need to add more spells. Isn’t this fun?”
“No.”
Lee Han was honestly a little interested, but he denied it immediately with a blank expression.
Professor Verdus grumbled.
“You’re clearly enjoying it…”
“I’m leaving.”
“Ah, no! No! Let’s say you’re not enjoying it! Here, get on already!”
Afraid his disciple might actually run off, Professor Verdus hurriedly shoved him back onto the sailboat.
Once aboard, Lee Han activated the departure scroll again, then triggered the flight spell after the ship lifted into the air.
The sailboat began gliding through the sky on its own.
Unlike before, however, the vessel rattled and swayed noticeably.
The mana flow is unstable.
Being aboard the ship allowed Lee Han to sense the fluctuations far more clearly than Professor Verdus below.
Several of the installed magic circles were destabilizing. The newly added spell was obviously interfering with them.
Hull reinforcement? No… this one looks like wind-resistance magic. Wait, if it’s flying over the sea, do we even need anti-corrosion magic? If things get worse, I should disable that first. For now, I think it’ll hold.
“If it starts failing, feed mana into the backup circle! It’s shaking badly!”
“It still looks manageable!”
Lee Han shouted down while relaying what he’d discovered.
Pleased that his disciple was performing even better than expected, Professor Verdus immediately assigned him more work.
“Excellent! If you can analyze it from up there, write everything down too!”
“…”
Lee Han fell silent.
The professor had just delegated even the one task he’d been handling himself.
I shouldn’t have said anything…
While Lee Han recorded the observations, Professor Verdus watched in delight.
Seeing how capable his disciple was, he began seriously considering assigning him even more work in the future.
“Landing!”
Professor Verdus signaled from below. Lee Han nodded and prepared to descend.
“Oh!”
“What is it?”
“Over there! It’s Ragesa!”
Professor Verdus pointed into the distance below.
Unlike the others leaving through the seventh floor, Ragesa was boldly marching toward the main gate alongside her pirate slaves.
Professor Verdus looked slightly flustered.
“She’s leaving sooner than I expected.”
“Then should I give it to her now?”
“No! We only just started! We haven’t even fixed the problems yet! Get down here first!”
Professor Verdus firmly rejected the suggestion.
Whether Ragesa felt disappointed or not mattered less than perfecting the invention.
“…Wait. Where are you going? Hey! Where are you going?!”
Professor Verdus panicked as he waited for his disciple to descend.
Instead of returning toward the Spire Stable, the sailboat abruptly turned and flew in the opposite direction.
“Come back! I said come back!”
***
As Ragesa headed toward the main gate, she looked up in surprise at the small vessel flying toward her from behind.
What the hell? Don’t tell me Vible’s attacking me.
The ship was unmistakably one of Professor Verdus’s creations.
Then Lee Han jumped off it.
Ragesa looked even more bewildered.
“What’s this?”
“Lady Ragesa. Professor Verdus finally completed his work, so I came to deliver it.”
“…Don’t lie to me.”
How did she know?
Lee Han was genuinely impressed by her reaction.
How did she know?
“To be honest, he hasn’t finished it yet. I stole it and brought it to you first.”
“…Explain.”
Ragesa stared at him with complete incomprehension.
Lee Han briefly summarized the situation. Professor Verdus had technically made progress, but from Lee Han’s perspective, the professor had become far too greedy—
“Is that bastard insane?!”
Even the chained pirate slaves behind her unconsciously nodded in agreement.
To pirates who had committed every kind of atrocity imaginable at sea, this still sounded deranged.
As expected, mages were all lunatics.
“So?”
“If I left things alone, it seemed like the professor would just keep making enemies, so I stole it and brought it out.”
Ragesa burst into laughter.
After laughing for a while, the old pirate spoke between chuckles.
“Vible’s clueless about most things, but he’s ridiculously lucky with disciples. Every disciple before you turned out just like him, so what kind of miracle wind blew this one over…”
“To be clear, I didn’t do this for Professor Verdus. I did it for the justice of the Empire.”
“If you ever change your mind, come find the Empire’s Southern Privateer Fleet. I’ll let you plunder to your heart’s content beside this daughter of Torgerd.”
Lee Han was briefly tempted before immediately abandoning the thought.
No matter how he looked at it, piracy was not a stable career path within the Empire.
“Thank you, kid. This was an unexpected gift. Thanks to you, this visit to Einroguard was completely worthwhile.”
With that, Ragesa held the sailboat back out toward him.
Lee Han recoiled in alarm.
“You’re returning it to the professor?!”
“Are you insane? Why would I give anything back to Vible?”
Ragesa sounded genuinely serious.
Lee Han immediately apologized.
“My apologies.”
“I’m giving it to you, kid. If what Vible says is true, you’ll probably improve it even further.”
“I don’t have Professor Verdus’s level of skill…”
“Well, give it a year.”
“…”
“Six months? Three?”
“No.”
