Surviving As A Mage In A Magic Academy [EN]: Chapter 497

“That’s a strange way to put it.” Ratford just raised an eyebrow. Being in Einrogard, walking on the ceiling was hardly the weirdest thing he’d seen. After all, one moment the ceiling was above you, the next it was the floor.

“To… make the ceiling the floor again?” Ratford asked, confused. “What are you even talking about?” Then, he stopped talking completely. Lee Han was already doing a handstand, upside down! Ratford watched, amazed, as Lee Han lifted a drop of water, grabbed it, and flipped himself into a handstand.

‘Wow,’ Ratford thought, impressed. ‘If you’re strong enough, you don’t need to be clever!’ Now Ratford understood why Lee Han hung out with the tough students from White Tiger Tower.

*Thud!* Lee Han stamped his feet hard on the ceiling and took a few steps. Suddenly, the room spun around, and gravity flipped. Ratford was standing on the floor, while Lee Han was now walking on the ceiling.

“Done!” Lee Han said. “Let’s go, Ratford.”

“Lee Han,” Ratford said, still a bit shaky. “Do you think other students walked like this too?”

“Well, yeah, wouldn’t they have?”

‘I really doubt it,’ Ratford thought, grabbing his arms to stop them from shaking. Mages were supposed to be smart, not strong.

Luckily, they didn’t face any more ceiling-floor tricks. Lee Han easily found their destination: Kettle’s Secret Base. But when they got there, it was just a blank stone wall. No door, no window. Ratford looked at the wall, confused.

“There’s nothing here.”

“It’s a spell,” Lee Han said. “Just a second.” He looked at his map and cleared his throat loudly. “As a true Einrogard student, I promise never to trust a professor, never to take bribes from a professor, and never to tell on a professor!” Ratford stared. This was the entrance ritual? It sounded more complicated than something from a thieves’ guild!

“Especially the Headmaster,” Lee Han continued, “who is the most suspicious of all!”

‘Is he still going?’ Ratford thought. “This promise lasts until I graduate. I will be the hidden puddle to soak the professor’s socks, and the bird mess that lands on the professor’s head…” After about a minute of insulting professors, a small door, only reaching Lee Han’s waist, appeared in the wall with a loud grinding sound.

“Okay, Ratford. Let’s go in.”

“Einrogard is really scary,” Ratford said.

“You’re only just figuring that out?” Lee Han replied.

After crawling through the tiny passage, they tumbled into a huge warehouse. Lee Han pushed aside a dusty, hand-painted sign that yelled, “PROFESSORS KEEP OUT!!!” and looked around.

“Whoa…” Ratford breathed, his voice trembling slightly. As a thief, Ratford had a nose for hidden treasures, and this place smelled like success. At first glance, there weren’t any obvious treasures. A big table in the middle was piled high with unmarked spell books, and the shelves along the walls were overflowing with strange potions and broken magical objects – more junk than actual books.

But deeper inside, it was even more amazing. Broken statues of stone creatures, half-eaten cans of food, empty bottles that smelled faintly of wine, battered Quidditch bats, and rusty old mirrors – the warehouse was crammed with so much stuff it was hard to know where to start. But Ratford knew places like this were goldmines. His heart beat faster just thinking about searching through it all.

“Kettle wasn’t the only one using this place,” Lee Han muttered, running a hand over some graffiti on the wall. It was clear this place had been used for years, maybe decades. Some of the writing on the walls looked ancient. It was probably a secret hideout for generations of students.

“Looks like no one’s been in here for years,” Lee Han said. “The dust…”

“It’s like it’s been forgotten,” Ratford finished. In a place like Einrogard, it wasn’t surprising for whole rooms to be lost and forgotten.

“I have no idea what to do with this place,” Lee Han admitted.

“You think about that, Lee Han,” Ratford said, already rolling up his sleeves. “I’m going treasure hunting!” He started digging through the nearest pile of junk.

‘No way I can do this alone,’ Lee Han thought. He called out Sharkan and his Skeleton Warrior. “Sharkan, find anything useful! Gonadaltez, clear away the big stuff first. We need more space.”

Being a kind master, Lee Han used some bone fragments to make Gonadaltez stronger, to help him with the heavy lifting. But the Skeleton Warrior’s bony back looked strangely unwilling. ‘Must be my imagination,’ Lee Han thought, and looked away.

Even with his summons helping, this was going to take forever. ‘I should at least do something useful.’ Lee Han started sorting the books on the table, wiping off the dust and putting them on the shelves. Spell books in one section, notebooks in another. Then he gathered the potions and broken magical bits from the shelves and put them in a wooden box.

‘Maybe I can get Professor Verdus to fix these later,’ he thought. If Professor Verdus saw broken things lying around while he was working, he might fix them without even thinking about it.

“Huh?” Lee Han stopped, staring at a plain white notebook. It was completely empty. All the other notebooks were covered in doodles and angry messages like ‘Death to the professors!’ and ‘We’ll get you after graduation, Headmaster Skeleton!’ But this one was blank, and it felt… strange. He tried to pick it up, but it was stuck to the table, as if glued down.

Just then, a tiny drop of blood appeared on Lee Han’s finger, where he was touching the notebook. And the notebook sucked up the drop of blood. ‘Magic!’ The Headmaster Skeleton had just warned him to watch out for “evil magical criminals.” Lee Han jumped back.

“Ratford! Watch out! Evil magic!”

“Gasp!” Ratford shrieked and ducked behind a pile of junk. Lee Han pointed his wand at the notebook, ready to defend himself. … Nothing happened.

Lee Han lowered his wand, feeling a bit silly. “Um,” he said, trying to explain. “The notebook… it took my blood.”

“A cursed object?!” Ratford yelled, rushing over in terror.

“We have to burn it now!”

“This fire isn’t working,” Lee Han said, looking at the flames. “And please, let’s not burn anything else in here.”

Lee Han was still very afraid of fire magic.

They had just gotten the warehouse safe. If they burned it down, the older students would be very angry.

“First, let’s identify what kind of artifact it is…”

“New owner, are we?”

“!”

Words began to appear on the notebook page.

Lee Han was surprised. Raetford didn’t look any different. “Raetford,” Lee Han asked, “Can’t you see these words?”

Raetford looked confused. “Words? What words are you talking about?”

‘So, I’m the only one who can see them.’

Lee Han thought the drop of blood he lost earlier had made it work. It must be what you needed to do to use the notebook.

‘Should I write back?’

Lee Han stopped to think.

He couldn’t feel any strange magic, but playing with things he didn’t know was always dangerous, right?

Especially notebooks that needed blood.

What if a bad demon was trapped inside?

-Who are you?

You seem new here. It’s rude to ask someone’s name right away.

Lee Han frowned. ‘This person in the notebook is bad news,’ he thought. ‘Rude and maybe evil.’

He couldn’t feel any magic from the notebook. ‘This person must be much stronger than me,’ Lee Han thought.

-I already know your identity.

Lee Han quickly wrote with the pen. The notebook seemed to drink up the ink.

…Tell me.

Even though he couldn’t see the person in the notebook, Lee Han felt they were getting tense.

-Trapped in a bad thing, and not answering my question… are you a strong demon?

…You silly friend who doesn’t know who I am. This thing you’re using isn’t for trapping demons. It’s for talking to people.

The notebook talked to Lee Han like he was being really stupid.

Lee Han was a little surprised.

-Are you trying to trick me? In old stories, notebooks like this often have bad spirits in them…

Are there stories like that? More importantly, are you not good at school? If you wanted to trap a bad spirit, you’d need something special, not just a notebook. What if someone sold it in a used bookstore?

‘Hmm, that’s right.’

Lee Han felt a bit silly after what the notebook said.

Now that he thought about it, if the thing didn’t have any magic power, it was probably safe.

It was also strange to think a notebook with a powerful demon inside would just be in a student warehouse.

‘I’ve been reading too many novels.’

-Then this notebook is…

A tool our students created.

“When you become a second-year student, you can meet older students,” the notebook explained. “But it’s not always easy to talk to them honestly. Students stick with their own year group, and people from the same tower stay together. Sometimes, even the teachers have spies among the students! Maybe that’s why these things were hidden around Einroguard a long time ago.”

“These talking things could be different objects,” the notebook went on. “Notebooks were used most often because they are easy to write on. But they could also be made from paper, mirrors, or anything that ink would stick to.”

“So, students could talk to each other using these things. And because they didn’t know who they were talking to, they could be really honest.”

“It depends on who you’re talking to, but it’s usually rude to ask for names. Remember that. People might think you’re a teacher!”

-Thank you for the advice.

Lee Han thanked the notebook for now.

If the notebook hadn’t explained, Lee Han would still be confused.

‘So, it’s a way for students at Einroguard to talk secretly,’ Lee Han thought. ‘Yeah, only I would say bad things about Headmaster Skull out loud. Most students are careful about complaining about him. For them, this secret way to talk is like a safe place to share their real feelings.’

-It looks like this notebook was left alone for a long time before I found it. Has anyone else written in it before me?

No. That’s why I thought this notebook was useless and just left it there.

‘This person has more than one of these things,’ Lee Han thought. He understood a few things from what the notebook had said.

Because the notebook knew so much about these talking things in Einroguard, Lee Han guessed it had other ones too, not just this notebook.

‘So, this person probably knows Einroguard much better than me.’

-Can I ask you some questions?

Sure, ask away. And I can choose to answer or not. We help each other out, okay?

Because they were both secret, it had to be fair. If you wanted to ask something, you had to give something back.

-Okay, I get it. I want to know about the secret places on the third floor of the main building.

The third floor? Are you a second-year?

-Perhaps.

Good. If you can answer my question, we’ll trade information.

Lee Han got nervous.

Could he really do what the notebook wanted?

Should he try to cheat?

‘But if I get caught cheating, the notebook will stop talking to me.’

There’s a first-year student called Wodanaz in your group.

‘How do you know that?!’ Lee Han jumped. He was shocked that the notebook knew his name, but he couldn’t believe it knew his group.

Could the notebook see who *he* was, somehow?

‘Wait, no, that’s not it.’

Then Lee Han remembered, he was involved in lots of different things.

-Yes.

Find out what kind of magic you’ll learn in your second year.

-I know it’s really bad to talk to first-year students.

That’s why you shouldn’t get caught.

‘Who *is* this person?’ Lee Han frowned. It was weird that they knew his name. Had they heard it from gossip? Some older students knew his name because he helped the teachers… ‘Did the news spread like that?’ Then the notebook paused, as if it was thinking. ‘What is it?’ Lee Han wrote. Make sure to ask if they are going to learn dark magic.

-…Are you perhaps Senior Dirett?

The notebook suddenly went silent.