Academy’S Gumiho Is A Magical Genius [EN]: Chapter 194

Academy Gumiho is a Magic Genius – Episode 194

Slave Market (4)

I have killed so many living beings.

I killed countless wild animals for food, punished traitors within my own kind, and annihilated every monster I could find.

I piled up mountains of corpses.

That metaphor is not an exaggeration at all.

I have killed enough to actually pile up mountains several times over.

And that was possible because I was equipped with abilities suitable for mass slaughter. In a world imbued with magic and mystery, the talent for swordsmanship.

It meant becoming a master of martial arts at a high level soon.

‘I killed many with the Sword Energy Technique or Mind Sword.’

Usually, when you think of swords, you tend to think of 1:1 combat.

But for those who reached enlightenment as easily as eating a meal, the sword is an omnipotent limb.

It can be anything, and it can do anything.

In my case, it became a weapon for mass slaughter.

‘And unlike me, that kid didn’t need a sword.’

There was a girl with eyes like the child in front of me.

The colors of the world she looked at were closer to faded monochrome.

That’s how devoid of emotion she was.

But if poison is emptied, something else is bound to fill it.

She was born with talent.

Talent for killing, and even mass slaughter comparable to mine.

She wasn’t surprised whether she killed small animals, her own kind, or grotesque monsters.

She calmly pressed down on their necks to kill them.

‘If handled well, it was a talent that could make her a hero, but if she slipped up, a villain.’

She was dangerous.

But at the time, the world was so desperate that even the most dangerous girl had to be thrown into the war if there was even a slight chance she could help.

I think I was 17 years old at the time.

Looking back now, it was a crazy world in many ways.

Anyway, I took that girl in.

She became my first and only disciple in my life.

I passed on everything I could teach her.

Tips on handling magic.

The swordsmanship I had researched so far.

Even the martial arts and knowledge I had forcibly learned from the older first-generation seniors.

‘I taught her everything I could because I thought she was my first disciple.’

It was okay if she was slow to learn.

Once I decided to take her as my disciple.

I bore the obligation to embrace her.

‘But thankfully, she steadily digested my teachings little by little, if not all of them.’

Indeed, she was a girl born with a talent for mass slaughter like me.

However, she couldn’t fully unleash her talent.

Was my teaching insufficient?

That wasn’t it.

I just should have kept her in my arms longer.

No matter how outstanding her talent was, as long as she was my disciple, I should have kept her in my arms forever. I should have hugged her so she couldn’t leave my embrace.

Now, all of that is futile and meaningless.

“…She looks so much like her.”

And now.

The same look in her eyes.

I found a child stained with blood.

The more I look at her, the more I’m reminded of my dead disciple, and my reason becomes increasingly hazy.

I couldn’t turn my gaze away from the child.

It was like seeing that dead girl again, and even though I knew it wasn’t, I couldn’t hide my joy.

“Lord.”

“…Okay, I understand.”

Joy.

What I felt after that was a chilling sensation.

As I took a deep breath, the ideal plastered with joy and longing cooled down coldly.

This was a problem that needed to be approached with a cold head.

Just wait a little.

I’ll tear apart that damn cage that’s trapping you.

Swish.

I raised my left arm.

A left arm that is hidden by cloth and clothing and absolutely does not look like a prosthetic on the outside.

This place is the perfect place to test this left arm.

“Baekyul, is your resistance to corpses sufficient?”

“…Lord. Although I was a guy who belonged to the very end of the line, I am one of the few lucky ones who returned alive from that battlefield.”

Baek Eun-ho didn’t have much power.

He was slow to react to situations, but he wasn’t a timid man. Those who survived to the end in the long battlefield with monsters had seen countless corpses of their comrades.

This might have been a rude thing to say.

“I said something unnecessary. It was a slip of the tongue. Forget it.”

“If that is the order of the Great One, I will gladly do so.”

Then.

“Baekyul, activate the grandfather clock.”

“Yes, Lord.”

Baek Eun-ho smashed the clock he was carrying.

The sound of something breaking made people turn around.

What they saw was a giant clock floating in the air.

The minute hand in the clock engraved with Roman numerals turned little by little.

“To think I’d get something like that for 20 million won [roughly $15,000 USD]. I don’t want to admit it, but this place is a treasure trove the more I think about it.”

“It was an item that even the seller didn’t know the value of anyway. Even now, I think 20 million won was too expensive.”

The identity of the clock floating in the air was.

A grandfather clock I got from the market.

The old, giant grandfather clock that cost over 20 million won was an item containing a skill. Not everyone can handle skills.

Baek Eun-ho said that several conditions were required.

The first is the presence or absence of a rare aptitude for ‘time’.

Just like I am specialized in fire and heat-related magic, you need an aptitude that can follow me at least halfway, even if it’s not at my level.

Next is a pocket watch containing magic power.

It must be an item with an inner strength of B grade or higher, and it must be a clock engraved with Roman numerals to be effective.

It was information I didn’t know, but.

Baek Eun-ho said that the clock was too old to fully handle the ability contained in the grandfather clock, so it was necessary to transfer its contents to a pocket watch.

‘I probably would have had the pocket watch if there hadn’t been that additional comment afterwards.’

The medium for transferring the ability in the old grandfather clock to the pocket watch was the rare aptitude for ‘time’, and Baek Eun-ho had that rare aptitude.

Although the level of aptitude was low, it barely made the cut.

It is beneficial for a good ability to fall into the hands of someone who can handle it well. I gave up easily because I wasn’t confident that I could handle it better than Baek Eun-ho.

“What’s that clock? Is it an event?”

“There’s no way there would be something like that in this illegal market?! Guards!”

“Who is it! I don’t know who you are, but I’m arresting you.”

The ability is to maximize the relativity of time.

Time seems to flow fairly, but it applies relatively to each person. On the other hand, time seems to flow equally for everyone in the same space, but it doesn’t seem to be.

A very ambiguous concept.

Time is one of the most complex concepts that mankind has set. And 「Time’s Antithesis」 actively utilizes this.

[Authority, 「Time’s Antithesis (S)」 grants relativity to the time of the area.]

[An antithesis (傷瘢) [scar] that can never be healed twists the axis of time!]

[The target of acceleration is ‘Baek Seung-woo’ and ‘Baek Eun-ho’, and the target of deceleration is ‘everyone else’.]

Tick-tock─!

The minute hand instantly goes backwards.

The speed was so fast that the hour hand also moved noticeably.

When it became 12 o’clock, the movements of everyone in the market except us noticeably slowed down. Is it about twice as slow in terms of sensation?

And this time, the minute and hour hands face forward.

When the clock that had turned once pointed to 12 o’clock, the movements of the people were twice as slow as before. Combined, it was four times slower.

“It’s not that they’ve slowed down.”

“It’s that they’ve become twice as slow, and we’ve become twice as fast.”

「Time’s Antithesis」, which maximizes the relativity of time.

It was a type of authority that granted antithetical speeds to two groups.

Leaving an antithesis (傷瘢) [scar] to fix and twist the axis of time was an ability that was not easy to implement with skills.

When time reached an almost stagnant level.

I stretched out my left hand.

My palm was facing the market people who were moving slowly.

The prosthetic hand hidden in my clothes.

The sentences engraved on the outside began to shine.

The five senses letters react as magic power is infused into the prosthetic hand.

Five senses letters.

What is engraved on this left arm is a type of magic letter.

It is said to be on par with the ‘Primordial Runes’, whose principles and meanings have not been fully deciphered for hundreds of years. Of course, it is only treated as being on par based on the historical background.

Its power and efficiency were one grade lower than the Primordial Runes.

I can’t help it.

‘「Five Senses Letters」 are the only magic letters I can fully handle.’

Then, I have no choice but to learn even these letters to the best of my ability.

There are two main ways to use the Five Senses Letters.

The method of individually utilizing the power of each letter, or combining and arranging them to implement higher-level magic.

The other is the method of translating based on the alphabet and implementing the contents of the sentence with letters. It exists like this.

I’m going to try both today.

‘Let’s use them step by step.’

It takes a little time because I haven’t used it in actual combat yet.

But it’s okay.

Time is on my side.

[Prosthetic hand, activating 「Arketrav」!]

[Skill, 「Five Senses Letters」 resonates with the sentences engraved on the prosthetic hand.]

My left arm heats up little by little.

The sentences engraved on the outside shone so brightly in blue that they could be seen through my clothes.

‘Each letter of the five senses has a corresponding meaning, tree, and alphabet.’

If you use these letters separately, it will be like this.

Swish.

My magic power melted into the air.

[Úath]

It was a letter that resembled taffy.

It means Úath, hawthorn, and means fear.

Actually, it doesn’t matter.

Magic is will.

Magic letters such as the Five Senses Letters express that will by engraving them in the air, so even if it’s a little wrong, it will be executed according to my will.

[Executing 「Úath」.]

[Creates a sense of fear in the targets and instills fear.]

Screech───!

The sound of fingernails scratching a chalkboard.

Of course, there were people who fainted from the long and loud noise, and there were also people who trembled. It was fear towards the unknown.

“It works well. It seems to apply to A-class players as well.”

“It’s a success.”

“There’s still one step left.”

I’ve done letters, so I have to write words.

[Fern]

It means alder.

The corresponding alphabet. In other words, the Roman letter is ‘F’.

[Luis]

Herbs and rowan.

It can be translated into the Roman letter L.

After that, I drew three more letters in the air.

The Five Senses Letters are letters created by combining consonant letters and various systems based on trees. The magical mystery was melted into a language system that I was encountering for the first time, so I had a hard time engraving each letter in the air.

But soon the letters came together to form words.

[ᚃ  ᚂ  ᚐ  ᚋ  ᚓ]

Translated, it means 「Flame」.

It is the same as the magic that deals with the basics of fire magic.

Although words did not form sentences, the Five Senses Letters, which had been effective with just one letter, formed words.

Even if what it means is basic magic.

Will its power really be the same as the basics?

It was a highly anticipated part.

Whirrrrr!!!

And the expectation did not deviate from the prediction.

The fiercely burning flames instantly rose to a level comparable to a forest fire.

They, whose time was flowing relatively slowly, didn’t even have time to recognize it.

Engulfed in the huge flames, they slowly burned in their slowly flowing time.

Their death was too quick for us and too long for them.

The market burned that day.

The criminals were burned at the stake.

The children of unknown origin disappeared, holding the hand of a masked man.

The association confirmed all of this with CCTV operating in a small crystal ball.

The association defined the masked man as a villain.

Based on his actions and characteristics, they began to give him an easy-to-identify alias.

There were opinions to give him an alias related to witch hunts because he burned the criminals to death, and there were opinions that the Pied Piper or Hamelin would be good because he didn’t leave a single footprint even though he took so many children.

Despite being a first-time offender, opinions were endless due to his shocking actions.

Later, based on the testimony of survivors who miraculously suffered severe burns, they found out that he was a monster wearing a fox mask.

Thus, the alias given was.

Maegu.

A thousand-year-old fox and a fiend of sin.

The villain who received that name was wanted as a groundbreaking case of an A-class villain from the start, with the only characteristic being a fox mask, with no distinction between gender and physique.

Since villains who are A-class from the start are mostly big shots that even high-rankers cannot guarantee a victory against.

The world was buzzing with talk about Maegu.

There was no mention of the slave market.

The fact that the association annihilated all those involved and then concealed public opinion was something only they knew.