Surviving As A Mage In A Magic Academy [EN]: Chapter 393

Forced to rest, Lee Han looked at Priest Siana and asked:

“But Priest Siana, weren’t you off duty this time?”

“Is it really too much to ask to do a little extra to share the true word of Phlemin?”

“…I see.”

Lee Han was often taken aback by the intense faith of the Phoenix Tower priests. They seemed so incredibly dedicated.

Unlike other students who would find any excuse to miss these events, these priests seemed genuinely eager to be here and share their faith.

“And I believe Wodanaz wasn’t originally scheduled to come either, was he?”

Lee Han paused at Priest Siana’s words.

“I’m… a little different.”

“Really? It seems similar to me…”

“…Shall I pray then?”

Lee Han changed the subject, thinking it wouldn’t be good to talk about this topic for too long.

Priest Siana’s face beamed with excitement.

“I’ve always thought that Wodanaz is the perfect person to carry on Phlemin’s will.”

“Is it because of the compliment…?”

“Pardon?”

“It’s nothing.”

Priest Siana carefully placed the ritual items on the stone floor. The bowls gleamed softly in the dim light, and the glass bottles looked delicate and old. These were the tools used by the priests who served Phlemin during prayers.

Lee Han noticed the Phlemin Order’s way of praying was more formal than the Agltaqua Order he knew. Each group had their own style of serving their gods.

“Oh, you who understands the heart of everything and guides its change,” Priest Siana chanted, “I offer my faith today. Please give this believer a sign, a hint of what to change.”

“The essence of things…”

Lee Han recited the prayer after Priest Siana. And just like he did with Agltaqua, he offered mana to Phlemin.

Whoosh!

Just like last time, Priest Siana was overjoyed when divine power appeared.

Siana smiled brightly. ‘It wasn’t just luck last time!’ she thought. ‘His interest in Agltaqua must have been a mistake. Someone who loves alchemy so much must belong to Phlemin. Seeing divine power appear so quickly means he’ll awaken divine magic soon!’

Lee Han, who was practicing diligently, stopped for a moment and asked:

“Priest Siana, do you happen to know how to use divine magic?”

There was no better teaching than seeing and experiencing the magic firsthand when learning a new spell. If he could see the divine magic of the Phlemin Order, it might help him get a feel for it.

“Ah. I should have shown you that first.”

“So you do know how to use it. In the Phlemin Order…”

Lee Han’s eyes widened. “You can use it? That’s amazing!” He went on praising her for a full minute, sounding genuinely impressed.

The White Tiger Tower students passing by stared with expressions that seemed to say, ‘Did Wodanaz take the wrong medicine?’

Priest Siana prepared the magic with a very triumphant look on her face.

“It’s nothing much…”

The snake-kin priest scratched her finger with her fingernail. Then, she put a drop of blood into the water in the cup.

With a chant, the water began to bubble, a faint scent of herbs rising in the air. It shimmered and thickened, transforming into a potion that glowed with a soft, blue light.

“Amazing!”

This wasn’t flattery, but genuine admiration.

Lee Han had suffered in the workshop throughout the vacation and deeply felt how difficult the process of making a single potion was.

Divine magic was supposed to be different from normal magic, breaking the usual rules. Even so, making a potion from just a drop of blood seemed truly amazing to Lee Han.

“It’s not that amazing. The potion’s performance is limited… I heard that more skilled priests can create even more amazing potions.”

Lee Han listened very attentively.

If Priest Siana’s words were true, then the divine magic of the Phlemin Order was certainly attractive.

If you became really skilled, could you even make something as valuable as gold just from blood?

“Do you have to make it with blood?”

“You can spit in it, but… considering the feelings of the people who drink it, isn’t blood better?”

Lee Han was about to ask if he could hide it secretly, but he stopped himself, thinking it wasn’t something to say to a priest.

“I see. I must awaken divine magic today.”

“…Ah, no. You don’t have to do it today. And it’s not something that can be done by forcing it…”

Siana waved her hands quickly, looking flustered. “Oh, no, not today! And you can’t force divine magic. It’s not like other magic. You could hurt yourself if you try too hard.” She definitely didn’t expect him to learn it so quickly anyway.

“That’s right. Don’t overdo it.”

“You can hurt yourself if you try to awaken divine magic by force.”

“…What are you all doing here?”

Priest Siana glared at the priests who had gathered behind her, nodding and giving advice, as if she was dumbfounded.

These priests, really…!

Lee Han ultimately failed to awaken divine magic (Lee Han pretended not to hear the other priests sighing in relief).

On the way back, Lee Han suddenly had a thought and asked Priest Siana a question:

“Hey.”

“Are you suddenly filled with faith in Phlemin?!”

“…Not that. I was just wondering if you knew what kind of potion this is.”

Lee Han took out the potion recipe he had received from Yoelner’s sister, Yoanen, during the vacation.

She hadn’t told him what kind of potion it was, saying he would know if he made it himself, so Lee Han still didn’t know what kind of potion this recipe was for.

‘It seems to be an enhancement type…’

“This potion is… wow. It’s really amazing!”

Priest Siana exclaimed as soon as she saw it.

No matter which alchemy group or workshop created it, the skill was incredible. They had arranged the ingredients perfectly to get the best effect, without any wasted space.

The alchemist who completed this recipe must be someone who wanted everything perfect.

“It’s amazing how they came up with this idea.”

Priest Siana nodded, looking back and forth for a while.

“I’m not sure, but I have a guess. I helped make something similar at the temple.”

“As expected of Priest Siana…”

Priest Siana stopped Lee Han from praising her. She still had something to say.

“Wait a minute. It contains blue Meanil flower, Donghaso, and Jureulan as ingredients, which are often used when making precognition-related potions. I think it might be a potion that enhances precognitive abilities.”

“!”

Lee Han was surprised.

“A potion that enhances precognitive abilities… does that even have any meaning?”

There were various types of enhancement potions.

From mana enhancement to stamina, strength, agility, reflexes, recovery, and so on.

But potions to improve precognition were incredibly rare. Lee Han had never even heard of one before.

‘But will it even work?’

The problem wasn’t just how hard it was to make a clairvoyance enhancement potion, but whether it even worked at all.

It was already tricky to use clairvoyance spells. Even if you managed it, you couldn’t be sure if you were seeing things right. So, a potion to make clairvoyance stronger? That seemed pretty strange.

Why bother making a potion when you couldn’t even tell if it was doing anything?

“That’s true. People don’t usually make potions like this. But the temple does sometimes… And knowing who made this, they must have been pretty confident it would work.”

Even though it was hard to know if these potions worked, sometimes people still used them, hoping for any help they could get.

Especially with divine magic used by the clergy, which wasn’t always clear-cut, high-ranking priests would use as much as they could when using divine magic.

Hearing that, Lee Han started to feel a bit interested.

‘Yoaneen is really skilled. If the temple has tried this recipe a few times… it might be a much better version now.’

Good clairvoyance was like having really good intuition.

Lee Han imagined drinking the potion and taking Headmaster Skull’s exam.

-Kraaah! I’m so frustrated my skull is going to shatter!

‘Hmm. It probably won’t be that bad.’

“Um, Wodanaz?”

“Yeah?”

“You can keep complimenting me, you know.”

“…Okay.”

Lee Han briefly thought Priest Siana was a little like Gainan. He wasn’t sure if it was her personality or her looks, but something about her reminded him of Gainan.

Morning.

Lee Han didn’t have any classes that morning, so he planned to relax.

He wanted to check the crops in the garden, see how the basilisk egg was doing, and visit Phonryg in the stables.

Actually, it didn’t sound very relaxing, but Lee Han tried to think it was.

“Wodanaz! Wodanaz!”

“Let’s go, quick!”

Until Angalo and the White Tiger Tower students rushed in, calling for him.

“…Couldn’t we go after lunch…? Alright, let’s go.”

Lee Han was going to say they could go later, but he changed his mind when he saw how worried the White Tiger Tower students looked.

Knock knock knock!

“Oh. You brought the golem.”

Professor Verdus yawned as he came out of his tower after hearing the knocks. His tower looked messy, with strange objects piled up everywhere.

While the professor looked at the broken golem, the White Tiger Tower students watched, looking anxious.

“Wodanaz, do you think it’ll be okay? Can it be fixed?”

“Why are you asking me that…?”

“Don’t you have a heart?!”

“……”

“S-sorry. I’m just really worried about the golem…”

‘Were these guys always so emotional?’

Lee Han changed his mind about Angalo and his friends. He had thought they were just a bunch of guys who liked to swing swords and say, ‘Ugh, I swing sword.’

Professor Verdus circled the golem, tapping it with a long finger. “Hmm,” he mumbled, mostly to himself. “Well-made, surprisingly. To last this long… over ten years, you say?”

Angalo stepped forward, his face still pale with worry. “Professor, could it be… did your students build it, maybe?”

Professor Verdus blinked slowly, as if just remembering they were there. “My students? Oh, I haven’t the faintest idea what half of them are tinkering with. Too busy with my own projects, you see.” He shrugged, then picked up a dusty quill from his desk, scratching something on a piece of parchment. He handed it to Angalo. “Here.”

Angalo unfolded the parchment. “What’s this, Professor?”

Verdus yawned again, a wide, dramatic yawn. “Your shopping list. Materials for the repair, naturally.”

The White Tiger students stared at the list, their mouths falling open.

Five bundles of well-trimmed birch wood, three boxes of granite bricks, basalt (in large chunks), one Joma ore, two bottles of Sebelan Mountain binding potion…

“What is this?”

“Materials needed for the repair.”

The White Tiger Tower students were surprised. They thought Professor Verdus would just fix it for them.

Also, they needed more materials than they expected. It would be much harder to find them inside the school than outside.

“Don’t you have the materials, Professor?”

“Me? I do.”

“C-can’t you use those?”

“Why? It’s your golem.”

“……”

The White Tiger Tower students looked at Lee Han, asking for help, but Lee Han ignored them.

Professor Verdus was right about this.

“…Alright. We’ll get them! You’ll fix it if we bring them, right!”

“Yeah! Bring them quickly!”

Seeing the White Tiger Tower students so excited, Lee Han asked, a little worried, “Can you really get them?”

“Don’t worry, Wodanaz. We are knights. Once a knight makes a promise, nothing can break it.”

“O-okay.”

“It seems some students are missing…”

Professor Ingeldel looked around at the students in the swordsmanship lecture.

“I don’t punish people for not coming. You can only get better at swordsmanship if you try hard yourself. Now, let’s split up and…”

“…Wodanaz.”

Giselle spoke to Lee Han. Lee Han quickly thought about what he had done during the vacation and replied.

“What is it?”

“Those guys who aren’t here… did you… Never mind. Forget it.”

“…Why say half of what you want to say and then say forget it? I didn’t attack them.”

“What did I say, Moradi? I told you Lee Han wasn’t the culprit.”

Deurghyu replied, sounding very relieved. He seemed a little too happy for someone who believed in their friend.

“People can be absent sometimes…”

Lee Han paused.

He realized that Angalo and his friends were the ones missing.

‘…Could they have skipped class to get the materials??’

Lee Han was surprised they would skip class for this.

“…Let’s go into the forest. Today, we’ll practice fighting in the forest.”

At Professor Ingeldel’s words, Lee Han looked at the two and asked.

“I have a question.”

“What is it, Lee Han?”

“…?”

“If Professor Ingeldel goes into the forest and sees the missing students playing around, will he be angry?”