Surviving As A Mage In A Magic Academy [EN]: Chapter 1149

Lee Han couldn’t sleep. The night was quiet, the kind of quiet giants probably slept right through. But Lee Han was a wizard with a job to do.

He had to check the magic from the day, making sure nothing had gone wrong. He needed to send messages to the stonemasons in the capital, telling them how things were going. Then there was food to make for the hungry giants, and he had to calm down a senior student who seemed to be eating more and more each day. Finally, he had to check if they had enough supplies – wood, stone, everything they needed for the lighthouse.

Then, a siren suddenly appeared, bubbling up from the water. Even Lee Han was surprised.

“What’s going on? Why are you here?”

The siren, Parthenope, blinked.

Normally, she would sing a song to make her opponent sleep and run away. But this wizard was immune to siren songs.

Parthenope had been tricked before. She was too scared to try again.

“Wait a minute. Your face looks familiar… Ah! Could you be the siren Parthenope I met last time?”

Lee Han was happy to see a siren he knew.

Unlike other sirens, Parthenope was friendly to Lee Han.

The year before, when he was secretly moving the giants through the underground passage, he needed the sirens’ help. Parthenope had helped connect them.

Because she helped him, Lee Han thought he was somewhat close to her, as close as he was to the giants in the mountains.

Parthenope didn’t think they were close at all.

Parthenope shook her head quickly. Lee Han looked confused.

“You’re not Parthenope?”

She nodded.

“Oh… I’m sorry. I made a mistake again.”

He needed to get better at knowing the faces of a race he didn’t see often. Lee Han felt embarrassed.

“What should I call you then? Ah, if your name is hard to say, I was going to give Parthenope the nickname ‘Gainando’ last time. Maybe you could…”

Parthenope shook her head like crazy. She didn’t want that terrible name she had refused before.

The siren quickly took out a stone tablet and wrote ‘Penoterpa.’

“I see. Ms. Penoterpa, could you call Parthenope? We know each other, so it would be easier to talk.”

Parthenope’s fin trembled.

She fought back the urge to sing a song of rage and pain.

Competing with song would only hurt the siren. Parthenope held back and wrote on the stone tablet.

“Is that so? That’s a shame. But Ms. Penoterpa…”

Parthenope looked up, questioning.

“Why are you here?”

Parthenope almost hiccuped.

Lee Han thought for a moment and asked, “Is it because building the lighthouse is too noisy…?”

She wrote: To Help Us Out.

“Ah! Is that really why?”

Lee Han was surprised. He thought the sirens would be angry about the construction, but they came to help.

“I thought you came because it was noisy. Thank you for this. Did Parthenope recommend you?”

Penoterpa, no, Parthenope, felt like sinking to the bottom of the sea.

How did things turn out this way?

“Then, I look forward to working with you.”

The siren nodded weakly.

As morning came, the giants started working, singing loudly.

The sirens had been working since before dawn. They covered their ears, bothered by the pig-slaughtering sounds from the ground.

Lee Han worried that the sirens might get angry and attack. ‘Hmm, I don’t know Siren language, but that sounds like cursing.’

The sirens looked at Parthenope with tears in their eyes.

They agreed to help after the sirens gave them a taste of their own medicine, because they feared that wizard just as Parthenope feared him.

But this was too much.

That song seemed to insult the sirens’ pride!

The sirens couldn’t take it anymore and launched a counterattack under Parthenope’s command.

The students around the lighthouse looked up, surprised by the unique, sad singing of the sirens.

“It’s a siren? Why are the sirens here?”

“Are they here to attack because they’re angry?”

“…No, they’re helping with the work? They’re pulling that rowboat over there. Of course, they’re singing with the giants, but…”

If the sirens heard the word ‘chorus,’ they would strangle themselves.

Chorus? This was torture!

This was a fight to push back the giants’ terrible song.

However, the giants didn’t back down easily.

Since a wizard taught them to sing the year before, the giants had become very interested in singing and had been practicing for a long time.

They sang when herding sheep, when clearing stones, and even when the old Yacha asked them to be quiet so he could sleep.

That chorus practice was helping them now.

They were surprisingly holding their own against the sirens, a race known for their singing.

The Einroguard students quickly took action.

“Cover your ears!”

“If you don’t know hearing protection magic, come get it quickly!”

Neither the siren’s song nor the giant’s song would be good for the students.

If the sirens won, the students would fall into a sleepy state. If the giants won, the students would hate music.

“Stop! Stop!”

Lee Han quickly stepped in when the two races showed no signs of stopping their musical fight.

“Please focus on the work. We don’t have time right now.”

Parthenope wrote on the stone tablet that she would work her best if they banned the giants’ curses.

“Curses? Ah, the song.”

The giants were angry. They told Lee Han what they wanted.

“We’ll work with the song!”

“No song, no work! …But that doesn’t mean no cooking, right?”

The problem was this fight between races, not magic.

The stonemason guild people were right. In the field, other things were always more important than magic.

Lee Han frowned and came up with a new idea.

“How about working while listening to the siren’s song?”

Parthenope gritted her teeth.

If the water wasn’t there, she would have dropped those giants into the lake!

“Hmm. Then how about I play for you?”

“Can we ask for songs?”

“No. And you can’t sing along either.”

The giants were sad, but Lee Han didn’t give in.

The war between the two races would start again the moment they sang along.

Lee Han, having convinced one side, returned to the siren and said, “I’ve decided to play for you. Is that alright?”

Parthenope looked at Lee Han with suspicion.

Wasn’t this the wizard who taught those giants that terrible song last year?

She couldn’t believe that he would play instead. If she had to work while listening to terrible music, it didn’t matter if a giant sang it or a human wizard played it.

While the sirens were thinking, Lee Han took out the violin. The sirens became even more wary of the strange energy they felt.

What kind of instrument is that…?!

Feeling the sirens’ gazes, Lee Han focused.

‘I can do it. My skills have improved a lot.’

He could only play or , but this was still a great achievement.

What was important in music magic was how well you could play one song, not how many songs you could play.

‘I’m going to play with all my heart!’

Just like he had been inspired for after seeing the duel between the crazy doppelganger and the skeleton headmaster, Lee Han played to bring the sirens and the giants together.

It was a magnificent march.

The giants, who had been secretly trying to sing along, opened their mouths wide. The seniors lowered their hands from their ears.

The sirens were the most surprised.

Could a wizard who lived with those giants and had their culture play such a song?

The magic in the music attracted the people around him and energized the work.

When the performance ended, the giants cheered. They were very happy with the performance.

Parthenope, who came to her senses after the performance, asked a question.

What Kind Of Song Is That???

“It’s the song the giants were singing earlier.”

The sirens were ashamed that they had been moved by such a song.

The stonemason guild members who visited Einroguard this time were responsible people.

They were worried about this request.

Doing it within Einroguard was already hard, but they had promised to finish it even faster.

They didn’t want to interfere, so they only gave advice, but they couldn’t help but worry.

“Should we go see?”

“We can’t do that. What if they think we don’t trust the wizards?”

It wasn’t good to give the wizards too much freedom, but it was also rude to interfere too much.

Either don’t give it to them, or trust them once you do.

“Oh, a letter has arrived. It says they’ve gathered the students as planned.”

“That’s good! They’ve gathered as many Einroguard wizards as they wanted, so that’s half the work.”

Some time later, the next letter arrived.

“What does it say? The construction must have started, right? They should have started right away.”

“…It says they cleared the site with the power of dragons and started construction with the power of giants.”

“???”

Wizards often wrote in code or metaphors so that knowledge could only be shared with those who wanted it.

Could this be one of those cases?

“Well… we’ll know when we see the results later.”

Some time later again, the next letter arrived.

“Give it to me! I’ll read it this time. Hmm, the sirens are helping, so the time will be shorter. They fought with the giants, but I brought them together with a performance…”

“Are you kidding me?”

“You read it!”

The guild member, who thought his friend was joking, grabbed the letter and read it.

Then he opened his mouth.

“…Let’s go see it ourselves.”

The guild members all nodded.

Tradition or whatever, they had to see it with their own eyes.