Academy’S Gumiho Is A Magical Genius [EN]: Chapter 304

Academy Gumiho is a Magical Genius – Episode 304

Academy Gumiho is a Magical Genius 304

Mastone (4)

“Let’s go home soon.”

I had an early dinner with my sister and returned home.

There was still much to do, including the power struggle between the elders and the family, but from now on, it was their turn to fight each other, not mine.

─Aren’t you going to stop them?

“Stop who?”

─The elders who were forcibly removed from their positions and the newly appointed elders.

“Come to think of it, everyone’s eyes were unusual.”

After dinner, I recalled the subtle war of nerves between the two factions in the hallway.

The servants were at a loss, and the two factions confronted each other with their own grounds.

The people on the elders’ side raised their voices, saying that most of the real power in the family resided with the elders, so it was right to give them strength.

The people on my side told them to read the trend and the atmosphere. They reminded them why the elders couldn’t get their act together during the meeting and gave them a look.

The problem was that neither side would budge, and the atmosphere went as far as it could go.

“I thought they would just throw punches. If things go wrong, they might even try to stab or assassinate each other.”

A few people are going to die.

─Don’t you think you should protect the elders you appointed?

“Huh? Why would I?”

─……Huh?

Something doesn’t add up in our conversation.

I think we have different intentions.

“The elders I chose were selected from the beginning to be used as meat shields.”

─Why bother with such a troublesome task?

“Because they were the ones to be disposed of.”

Most of the influential people in the family had long been on the elders’ side. Most of them followed the elders, and those who kept their positions when the new elders were elected were mostly unqualified.

Insects who didn’t even have the strength to cling to the elders.

Bats who tried to raise their value by comparing the conditions and sizes of the two forces.

I don’t need these guys under me.

So I picked only these guys and made them elders.

─Are you planning to completely divide the family?

“Well, the family will be hurt.”

─It doesn’t look like just a scratch to me.

What would happen after I returned home was obvious.

I didn’t even have to use my imagination to picture what would happen in the main house like magic.

I chuckled, anticipating the chaos that would ensue.

“The powerless will be the first to be expelled.”

This was a fight between forces.

In the fight between the head of the family and the council of elders, the first to burst are not the whales, but the shrimp that live around them.

The shrimp will all burst, and their flesh and entrails will be absorbed into the whales’ mouths.

That’s also a kind of nutrient, but it won’t be abundant.

“Next, the bats will die off.”

The bats who went back and forth between various forces to raise their value will lose their wings in the fight between the whales. The fall of a bat that loses its wings and plummets into the sea will be uglier than the fall of any bird.

Up to this point, the whales don’t even pay attention.

Whether they fall or not, it doesn’t affect the big picture.

“After the bats, it’s the turn of the powerless lions.”

The lion leads a pack, but the lion who loses in the territory fight wanders alone. Even though he is strong enough on his own.

If they unite their forces, they can become stronger.

The lion who is left alone because he doesn’t have that power will eventually be split in half by the whales’ discord and become nutrients for each whale.

“In that way, the incompetent and the stupid will be filtered out.”

─That’s fine up to that point, but what if the fight escalates and the whales bleed? You don’t want butchered whale meat, you want two intact whales.

Intact power and authority.

And the financial power that accumulates steadily based on those foundations.

For these things, even if victims are created in the process of the two whales fighting, measures must be taken to prevent the whales from dying.

“I don’t have to do that.”

I’m not the only one who wants to prevent the family from splitting and monopolizing power.

There are two, no, three people in our family.

“You’ll know if you watch for a month.”

Until then, I just need to be prepared.

Clang!

The key in my pocket shook as if asking if I had called it.

I haven’t called you yet.

* * *

About ten days have passed since the weekend when the existing elders were dismissed and new elders were elected. It’s a weekday today, so I’m getting ready for work.

“A breaking news story came up?”

“Why, should I turn on the TV?”

“Please do.”

A breaking news alert came from the newspaper I subscribed to.

The amount was too long to check on my phone, so Baek Hyeon-ah, who was watching next to me, turned on the TV with the remote control.

On the wide TV as wide as the living room, disturbing news came out from the morning.

“Murder? Last night? And it’s near this area.”

“……Finally, what was going to happen has happened.”

The deceased was one of the family’s new elders.

It was the 7th Elder.

“You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“Me? If I were to commit an assassination, I would have chosen to wear a mask and act like a villain to increase my notoriety and influence.”

“I can’t argue with that because it seems like you would really do that.”

“It’s not just that it seems like it, I actually assassinated about four people like that.”

“What were the charges and assets of the assassinated targets?”

The charges are things I don’t want to talk about, and 90% of the assets I took from their homes were laundered and used by me.

The remaining 10% was donated to orphanages.

Of course, I laundered it cleanly and distributed it.

I can’t give these kids blood money.

I don’t know about money that has been laundered of blood.

Baek Hyeon-ah nodded after listening to my explanation.

“Then that’s fine.”

With a convinced expression, she stared intently at the face of the dead man on TV.

She is a “Doppelganger” [a magical construct] created based on my memories.

Judging from the circumstances, she was checking if there was any information about the man in my memory. Just then, Baek Hyeon-ah’s eyes widened.

“How is it? Did you recognize him?”

“No…… How could that greedy guy?”

Bang Sa. He is a person in my memory.

“Why did he die only now?”

In a bad way.

“I know, right? I didn’t know it would take ten days either.”

I thought of Bang Sa as the first person to die, but I thought he would die within a week at most, or three days at the earliest.

But I didn’t expect him to last ten days.

“The calculation was slightly off, but as the first victim came out late, the chain reaction will be enormous.”

“……I don’t need any of that. There won’t be anything that will have a bad influence on the children, right?”

Baek Hyeon-ah turned to me with a dark look.

Well, if it’s something that will have a bad influence on the children.

“Like assassins.”

“If an assassin breaks through the security of this house, I think that would be amazing in its own way.”

“Can’t they just break a window or a wall and come in?”

“Do you think I would have made this house so easy to break into?”

This house is full of not only children but also my research materials.

Of course, the security level and defense system were thoroughly prepared.

I carved magic directly into a mastone [a large magical stone] larger than a person with a knife. The mastone is a battery, and the magic was a technique that reached the realm of great magic.

And I buried or installed dozens of them all over this house.

Thirty in the ground. Twenty on the walls of the house.

In that way, 50 layers of magical barriers specialized in defense protect this house.

Honestly, it’s hard for me to break through this.

Well, I can break through it somehow, but I designed it so that the family members inside can evacuate with plenty of time to spare.

“If an assassin invades this house without anyone knowing, wouldn’t it be reasonable to consider it a natural death even if that person dies?”

“If you’re so confident, then whatever.”

You must have done a good job.

Baek Hyeon-ah seemed to have lost interest in the TV and focused on breakfast.

“I’m going to wake up the kids.”

Then she got up to wake up the children.

She must have stayed up late reading a book last night. Today, Baek Hyeon-ah was waking up the children later than usual.

“……That girl has become a mother now.”

I scanned Baek Hyeon-ah.

She wore an apron over her neatly ironed clothes, and her long black hair was tied with a string. The overall appearance is beautiful, so it seems to suit her quite well.

─Compared to the first day, the atmosphere has changed quite a bit.

“Your atmosphere has changed quite a bit too.”

─Ha, I originally had a hundred faces, so I’m a hundred-faced person.

“Yeah, it’s nice that your schizophrenia is so severe.”

Certainly, the atmosphere of the house was gradually changing into a normal home.

Of course, normal homes don’t have mastones with magic engraved in them, and they don’t raise vampires and dragons as children.

Still, this is enough to be a happy home, isn’t it?

─……Do you think I helped you to hear those words? Oh, where do you think you’re going, getting up from your seat? Why don’t you sit down?

“Enough with the lectures. I have work to do this morning, so I don’t have time to waste arguing with you.”

─Your way of speaking is really something. Ha, well, since you have work to do, I’ll back down this time.

“…….”

It was a word that didn’t need to be answered, so I silently cleared the dishes on the table. After cleaning up everything I ate, I put on my shoes to go to work in my uniform, and Tamamo asked.

─But what’s going on today?

“……Just school work.”

─You haven’t been doing anything special lately. You’ve just been going to the lab every day to do research, right?

“They told me to take care of the minimum number of classes.”

─Minimum number of classes? Who said that?

I was now going to the lab, but my position at the academy was as a teaching assistant.

I’m not a professor, so what’s with the minimum number of classes?

“The professor did.”

The person I call professor is mostly Nam Hwa-yeon.

She is my magic teacher and a benefactor who provides me with all kinds of conveniences.

It was thanks to her that I was assigned to the lab.

If that’s what that person says, I have to do it.

─Yeah, you prepared the lecture hard, right?

It was a sudden lecture schedule.

Even Tamamo nodded.

I had received so much from her.

“Prepare?”

─Don’t tell me you didn’t?

“Is there any need to?”

The midterm exam for the first semester of the first grade has passed.

Now the final exam is approaching.

Most of the students have found their own paths based on their aptitude and aspirations based on the classes so far.

What students need now is not to pave the way for them, but to teach them how to look back on themselves.

And I know that method best.

“All I have to do is fight all the first-year students 1:1.”

─Do you have any ill feelings towards the students?

“I’m not trying to fight because of trivial things like ill feelings. And I don’t have any ill feelings towards the students in the first place.”

It’s just that looking back on oneself through fighting is the most efficient and the most certain.

Originally, humans exert the greatest power just before they die.

─You mean you’re going to beat them until they’re on the verge of death?

“I won’t kill them. I won’t kill them.”

Of course, controlling my strength is basic.

Everyone will be back in school perfectly fine the next day.

“It’s been a while since I’ve taught a class.”

I’m a little nervous.

─Wouldn’t the students’ hearts be pounding?