Academy’S Gumiho Is A Magical Genius [EN]: Chapter 333

Academy Gumiho is a Magic Genius – Episode 333

Academy Gumiho is a Magic Genius Episode 333

The Storm Rises (3)

After the relatively lavish festival.

Clang!

The sound of armor being donned and weapons being readied echoed from all directions.

Thud!

The ramparts were being reinforced, and the weapons installed on the walls were being serviced.

The coalition, fresh from enjoying the festival, immediately began preparing for war.

“Alright! Listen up, everyone! For the time being, we’re on maximum alert, defending the area!”

“Woof! Hairless Captain! Got a question!”

“What is it, you beast with only chest hair like a beast-man?”

Hahaha!!!

At the shout of the human clad in splendid armor, a wolf beast-man raised his hand high.

The wolf beast-man called the human ‘Hairless Captain.’

It was wartime. Achievements were a shortcut to promotion.

Beast-men, with their superior physical abilities, were generally well-suited to earning merits in war. As a result, most of the captains commanding units at the front lines were beast-men.

However, there was one unique human captain here.

The beast-men, with a sense of respect, called him:

Hairless Captain.

Captain Alopecia.

“Hey! That’s a bit much!”

“You guys make fun of me for being hairless! So I have to tease you too!”

The captain wasn’t one to stay silent when his subordinates called him that.

He gave nicknames to each of the beast-men who called him Hairless Captain. In the case of the wolf beast-man from just now, his chest hair was thick and bushy, but the hair on the rest of his body was relatively short, giving him the appearance of a plucked chicken.

“Well, you shouldn’t have started it with me.”

“Ah, it’s just that the atmosphere felt a bit stiff for just asking a question.”

“Just ask the question, you rascal.”

“Then, why are we gathered like this? We don’t usually gather this many people, so why today?”

This question was, in fact, on everyone’s mind.

The number of defenders was more than ten times the usual amount.

Everyone recognized it at a glance.

Personnel who had been dispatched elsewhere and those who were supposed to be off were all assigned to the defense force.

There were only a handful of times when manpower was pooled together to this extent.

And all those times were during wars.

“Everyone’s uneasy, even if they don’t show it.”

“I know, I know.”

“Is it something you can’t tell us? Something classified?”

If it’s classified, then there’s no helping it.

Haha! The wolf beast-man finished his words with a laugh.

But this time, no one laughed along.

That was proof that everyone was taking this question seriously, and it meant they were all ears, waiting for the captain’s answer.

“……Hoo.”

The captain took a deep breath and exhaled.

He steeled his resolve and shouted in a loud voice.

“For the first time in history, a Knight has died. And all the Riders under his command were massacred. No one knows what will happen as a result.”

The Riders armed with wind.

And the pure white Knight who was engulfed in a typhoon.

They succeeded in killing them all.

Annihilating one corner of the four forces that stirred up the front lines was naturally something to celebrate, but there was one problem.

No one could predict the aftermath.

“Perhaps the remaining three Knights will join forces and come in a group to avenge the White Knight. It’s just a possibility, but it’s not impossible. I don’t know if they have any sense of camaraderie.”

It was only a possibility.

But we had to prepare.

“Also, the Riders were originally the kings of the spirits. Spirits are the purest life forms made of magic, and they are the cycle of the world itself.”

What this meant was:

“Whatever his appearance, the White Knight was the Wind Spirit King. Now that we’ve killed him, we must be prepared to lose the wind.”

Losing the wind meant losing a lot of things, including convection and air currents.

If we used large-scale magic, we could replace the absence of wind, but if that happened, humanity would lead a precarious life, like a critically ill patient on a respirator.

This was also just a possibility.

But by talking about it in advance and preparing in advance, we could at least struggle when the situation arose.

‘I’m worried that I’ll die without even being able to struggle properly, but I feel relieved when I see those dumb faces.’

Even though he didn’t say anything nice, his subordinates laughed while hitting each other’s heads.

“Did you understand? I didn’t understand.”

“You stupid bastard, why do you even have a head if you’re going to be like that? Take it off, take it off.”

“What’s wrong with my head? If you keep doing that, I’ll take your head off!”

“Don’t touch my head!”

“Wow, they’re fighting! Who should I bet on?”

They’re really hopeless.

And these guys are warriors, huh.

“There’s someone nearby to emulate. I wish they would learn even a speck of what that person has.”

Su. That person was the strongest in the coalition, and a hard worker who never neglected studying in any situation.

He was on a different level from the beast-men who played around with alcohol and gambling.

I really wish our kids would learn just a little from him.

Ah… Speaking of which, a question came to mind.

“That person is very different from the legend.”

The Canyon Legend.

In the short legend passed down among humans.

“There was definitely no mask or tail…”

—Su wore a mask just like that.

According to the legend, he wasn’t a fox with a tail, but an existence with translucent, sparkling wings.

Because of that, there were a lot of rumors about him being a fairy or something.

“……Still, well.”

Legends are just legends.

Reality is more important now.

Even if he wasn’t the hero of the canyon.

Su. He was clearly a hero of the coalition.

Right now.

That was enough.

* * *

Blazing!

The cloudless weather meant that the scorching sunlight poured down onto the ground without filtration. The sunlight was so intense that if your skin was weak, it felt like it would burn instantly, but the sunlight was blocked by the branches and leaves of the huge, lush trees.

The green light that filtered through the branches and leaves.

Thanks to the densely grown trees, the plants that grew under them didn’t receive much light.

However, it was only a relative amount of light.

The trees and plants grew to a fairly decent size.

Thud, thud.

The dull sound of footsteps treading on the unkempt dirt and grass.

Jet-black armor strode beneath the giant trees.

He discovered a small sprout that had just taken root in the ground.

“At this rate, it will die soon.”

Thwack!

A hand wearing a gauntlet dug deep into the ground.

The soil that was completely dug up had grass and a small sprout rooted in it, breathing. He transported the entire clump of soil and moved it to a place with relatively good sunlight, and he was newly lost in reverie.

“This scenery is still the same, but the inside has changed so much.”

The helmet part of the armor moved from side to side, gazing in all directions.

Everything was green.

A world full of stems and roots.

The vast forest, comparable to a continent, was a huge ecosystem where the Mother Tree grew indigenously. Everything existed in this forest.

An independent atmospheric environment and plants that only existed in the forest.

And naturally, there were residents in such a forest.

Small creatures with translucent appearances.

Some resembled people, some resembled beasts, and some had no form at all. They were spirits.

The spirits used tree trunks as swings.

And they slid down the giant leaves where streams flowed.

“But now, it all feels like a distant past.”

All of this was.

A distant past that disappeared 10 years ago.

“The Mother’s warm leaves no longer embrace the babies.”

The young spirits who sincerely loved the Mother Tree and regarded nature as their playground created cold, hard armor and melted themselves into it.

“The child ended up killing his friend with his own hands.”

Thanks to the unique emotions of the spirits, who had close relationships with the elves, the lower spirits, who had just shed their childishness, burst and killed the elves with the hands they used to play with them.

“The things they saw and learned by the side of humans have now become maces that are returning to them.”

The intermediate spirits, who had come to recognize the horrors of the outside world, applied the martial arts and magic they had seen and learned from their contractors during the days when they contracted with various races to their own spirit arts, massacring humans with human techniques.

“The noble authority of the spirits fairly crushed the humans who argued over blue blood and red blood, in useless disputes.”

In the human world, high-level spirits were very noble beings. So much so that even if a human who contracted with a high-level spirit at the national level was a commoner or a lower-class person of slave status, they would willingly bestow a title of nobility of at least a baron [a minor noble title].

The power of a high-level spirit was national power.

It was like a strategic weapon that could lead a war to a favorable outcome in an emergency.

But the opposing country also had high-level spirits. In this way, two different spirits each destroyed their respective opposing countries. The high-level spirits, who silently watched this process, were disgusted by human formalities, meaningless titles, and eugenics [the practice of improving a population’s genetic quality].

“The kings did not step forward recklessly. They listened to the words of their people and hesitated to make decisions for the sake of making better choices.”

Spirit Kings.

They symbolized the ecosystem itself.

The incarnation of the wind.

The water itself that flowed through the world.

All the animals that lived on the ground had to be grateful to them.

They sat the trembling, pitiful human children in front of the bonfire and bestowed blessings on the children out of pity.

But what came back was betrayal.

“In the end, our choices have returned like this.”

A knight in black armor.

The Black Knight. The ground he was stepping on, as well as the ground that all the creatures in the world stepped on and lived on, was once the chest of the one who was called the Earth Spirit King.

The soil was the flesh of the Black Knight.

Everything that happened on it was under his awareness.

“The king in charge of the flow has died. The wind will find its master again and fly freely. But from today, we have lost an old comrade.”

The one who was called the Wind Spirit King.

The White Knight was dead. It was a very sad thing.

But he didn’t dwell on the sadness.

“I won’t pray for his soul. Because we’ll be leaving soon too.”

The Black Knight continued walking and arrived in front of the giant Mother Tree, the World Tree, and examined the tree roots that had slightly risen from the cracks in the ground.

The viscous black energy that had seeped deep into the roots.

That energy, which was hard to believe was from this world, was ominously surging as if it contained all the evil of the universe.

“We don’t have much time left either.”

The Black Knight looked at the tree roots and inferred how much time they had left.

“How much is left that you’re making such a fuss?”

Unlike the serious Black Knight, the Blue Knight in sea-colored armor asked flippantly.

To that answer, the Black Knight replied in a stiff tone.

“Even if we’re generous, 2 years. If we’re tight… right now.”

“What, what? That’s all we have left?”

His stiff tone made it hard to believe it was a joke.

The Black Knight was then and now. Like solid rock and soil.

He was taciturn and serious about everything, so even the Blue Knight, who had a light personality, was worried about what to say to this remark.

“The Mother Tree is appealing for pain. We, the children of the Mother, have a duty to quickly excise the diseased buds and roots.”

The Black Knight said.

He engraved the scenery reflected through the black helmet into his mind and reaffirmed his resolve.

Everything was for the Mother who had conceived them.

He intended to turn all the seeds that tormented the Mother into the rust of the sword.

Even if they were humans who loved spirits.

Even if they were elves who were more lovable than any other race, there were no exceptions.

“Rotten branches must be cut off, and diseased roots must be pulled out.”

Personal feelings were already excluded.

This was for the Mother Tree and the planet.

It was just a very large-scale pruning and cleaning.