Surviving As A Mage In A Magic Academy [EN]: Chapter 530

The friends, thinking Lee Han was testing them, gave him wary looks.

However, Lee Han looked at his friends with a genuinely puzzled expression and asked again.

“What are you all doing here?”

“You…”

“Forced us…”

“To fight…?”

Lee Han paused at his friends’ resentful answer.

“I forced you to fight?”

“Yes.”

“What nonsense.”

Lee Han chuckled.

“Do you really think you’re the kind of guys who would listen if I forced you?”

“……”

“……”

The friends felt so wronged that they felt suffocated. What was even more unfair was that what he said was somewhat true.

It’s true, but…!

“Lee Han, you really did make us do it!!” Gainando shouted with a voice full of resentment.

“Look at this!!”

“?”

Lee Han saw the blue bruise around Gainando’s eyes and asked.

“Did you get that from fighting?”

“No. This is from when I was dodging an attack from a White Tiger Tower student and he hit me. Besides that, look at my clothes here. They’re torn.”

“I see. The fight wasn’t very intense, was it?”

The students reacted fiercely to Lee Han’s words.

“No, it wasn’t!”

“That damn prince was just lucky!”

“Can’t you see the bandages right now!”

At the heated shouts, Lee Han waved his hand as if to say he understood.

“Alright, alright. Wait… Ugh.” Lee Han suddenly felt a headache coming on.

Memories of what happened while sleepwalking slowly came back to Lee Han. He remembered drinking the suspicious spring water, suddenly feeling sure of himself, calling his friends, and rushing here.

“Huh. Why did I do that?”

“……”

“……”

Some of the students wanted to curse, but they held back. If they cursed, the statue that attacked them earlier might reappear and attack them again. Yoner asked with a worried voice.

“Lee Han, are you okay?”

“Yeah. It seems the effect is completely over. Knowing the future is definitely dangerous…”

Knowing it in your head and experiencing it directly were, as expected, different. Once he had been captivated by the future, he could feel that the blind sensation was not entirely positive.

Someone might say, what’s so wrong with moving along the best path towards the most sensible future…

‘It’s not necessarily a good thing.’

Seeing his friends around him with bandages and splints, he definitely thought it could be dangerous.

“It seems to me that foreseeing the future is indeed a very dangerous thing. Wodanaz.”

“I think so too. Our wizards need to be more humble.”

Seeing the White Tiger Tower students, who usually had no interest in magic, talking at length, it seemed they had definitely developed a fear of divination magic.

Yoner opened his mouth to change the atmosphere.

“Still, looking at the positive side… we somehow broke through the obstacle! It wouldn’t have been possible without that spring.”

“Maykin, my ankle is broken.”

“Maykin, I can’t turn my neck to the side since earlier.”

Ignoring his friends’ words as if he didn’t hear them, Yoner pointed ahead.

“Aren’t you all curious about what’s behind there? Such a strong enemy was blocking the way? They say there are treasures left behind by our seniors.”

“Indeed…”

The students, who had been groaning from their injuries, were once again tempted and swayed. Having spent nearly a year in Einroguard, their magic school, the students’ common sense had been quite shattered.

Even with a broken ankle and a twisted neck that wouldn’t turn, they would check the spoils first.

“Right?”

Yoner nodded, realizing that his friends’ mood had changed. Then, he slyly whispered to Lee Han.

“But what’s inside?”

“I don’t know either.”

“…Huh?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been inside.”

“……”

Lee Han, enhanced with precognition, had intuitively judged that ‘the first thing to do now is to knock down the statue, break through the underground passage, and find what the seniors left behind,’ but Lee Han, whose potion had worn off, couldn’t understand why he had made that judgment.

“Maybe there are records left by the seniors about the test they took first?”

“That… seems a bit disappointing.”

“What? What could be more important than that?” Lee Han was shocked by Yoner’s statement.

What could be more important to a student than information related to studying?

“I hope there’s meat. Pork.”

“I’d prefer alcohol.”

“Then pork marinated in alcohol?”

“No. You idiots. You can get meat anywhere. Sweets are the best! Cake.”

“Prince, you ate candy this afternoon, didn’t you?”

“Did not?”

“Yes, you did. You were waving it in front of us and showing off.”

“…Did not?”

Lee Han said firmly to the conversation he heard from behind.

“Those guys are just weird.”

‘Lee Han, you’re a bit weird too…’ Yoner thought so, but swallowed it down for the sake of his struggling friend.

Creak-

Fortunately, there were no other traps after the statue disappeared. The students cautiously opened the heavy door and entered.

They pushed open the heavy door and stepped into a large room under the ground. This was the seniors’ old warehouse. The air was thick with the smell of dry dust and old wood. It smelled like a forgotten attic.

“Ugh, dust!” Gainando coughed, waving his hand in front of his face.

Princess Adenart waved her hand. “Wind!” A gentle breeze swept through the room, pushing the dust away. Gainando coughed again and glared at Adenart playfully.

“Okay, everyone,” Salco said, stepping forward. “Check the shelves first. But be careful, there might be traps.”

“Traps?” one of the Black Tortoise Tower students asked, looking nervous. “What kind of magic should we use to check for traps?”

Salco paused, looking thoughtful. His friends watched him, impressed. *Salco always knows what to do,* they thought. A good leader should be able to solve any problem quickly.

Salco turned his head slightly towards the statue that was now quiet in the corner. “Hey, Wodanaz,” he called out softly. “Do you feel any magic on that shelf over there?”

A moment later, Wodanaz’s voice echoed in their minds, “Not really?”

“Okay, thanks!” Salco said, turning back to his friends with a confident nod. “No traps!”

The Black Tortoise Tower students blinked at each other. They slowly started to take things off the shelves, looking a little confused.

*Is that it?* one of them thought. *Is that really his amazing plan?* Maybe Salco was more… unusual than competent.

“Hmm.” Lee Han’s eyes scanned the room, his shoulders slumping with disappointment.

A few bottles of alcohol that the seniors had brewed were on the outer shelves, along with a few potions that had already expired, and some scribbled notes.

The grand plan to defeat the mad skeleton will soon be completed… Heh heh heh… They will never even imagine what we are plotting…

‘It’s worthless.’ Lee Han frowned.

Lee Han wanted systematic information about the upcoming exams for various lectures, not these lamentations. Of course, this wasn’t strange.

The chance of finding something useful in a warehouse that people hadn’t used for a while was low. But from the perspective of someone who had a life-or-death duel with a statue and entered, it was disappointing.

At least he expected there to be something more useful than outside…

“?”

As he moved his feet, Lee Han realized that only the inside of the warehouse was unusually neatly organized. Unlike the other dusty spaces, this side was clearly protected by various magic circles.

‘What is it?’

Lee Han checked the inside with a puzzled expression. Starting with magic circles that blocked dust, various barriers were protecting the inner space.

A huge artifact that he had never seen before and whose purpose he could not understand occupied most of that space. The round artifact, which easily surpassed a person’s height, looked like a gate made by piecing together various junk. There were wires, metal pieces, strange lights and symbols.

‘What… artifact is it?’

-9/7 -The artifact just won’t work! Damn it. I have to finish this before I graduate. Otherwise, I won’t be able to face the senior who passed this down to me.

-9/13 -I found a solution in the mad skeleton’s warehouse. The orichalcum latch solved the closure problem of the drive unit! Haha! Just you wait. I will definitely solve the problem and tell the mad skeleton that I succeeded in his face!

-9/15 -I am trash who doesn’t deserve to enter Einroguard.

-9/18 -I shared some of the mad skeleton’s brandy with my friends and regained my energy. Damn Einroguard. Damn magic. I can’t believe I’m already in my final year. It feels like yesterday that I was a beginner. Can I really complete this?

-9/22 -Space magic is like a plague in imperial magic. I shouldn’t have researched this in the first place.

-10/2 -Even though I completed the related magic formula, I can’t satisfy the magic power. How can I reduce the amount of magic power here? Where do I get the insufficient amount of magic power? Should I ask my ancestors?

-10/25 -All the hard work for 3 weeks has been in vain. Even with the heart of Behemoth, the amount of magic power could not be satisfied. Ah, if only I could use all the magic power of Einroguard as I wish, like the mad skeleton!

-11/10 -Now that I’ve given up, I feel relieved and sad. Burning one of the mad skeleton’s warehouses with my friends was a bit of a consolation. Maybe as our magic has increased a lot, if we all work together, we can give the mad skeleton a blow.

-11/17 -Damn it. There was a more terrible punishment room. I shouldn’t have messed with the mad skeleton.

-11/20 -I was about to destroy the dimension gate artifact, but I stopped. I couldn’t destroy what I inherited from my senior. It’s a non-operational piece of junk, but I cast a spell to prevent it from breaking.

If there is anyone among the juniors who discovers this artifact, I would like to earnestly ask them not to destroy it. Of course, they will destroy it. I also destroyed it and took what I needed. But this is a really great artifact that has been inherited and completed for generations…

“…?!!!!”

Lee Han, who had read all the journals stuck next to him, was startled. ‘A dimension gate… artifact??’

The illusion that magic is a miraculous discipline that makes the impossible possible quickly disappeared after learning magic for only 3 months. Magic was a discipline that rolled with rules and theories more terrible than reality, not a shortcut that ignored rules and order.

One of the examples that made him realize that was space movement. Spacetime magic boasted such extreme difficulty that no school was created within the empire, and space movement, as the most representative magic among them, boasted even more brutal difficulty.

Just moving a substance one step ahead would immediately cause a normal magician’s brain to shatter and blood vessels to rupture. And this difficulty increased exponentially as the distance increased and the number of targets increased.

As such, saying that a dimension gate artifact was simply ‘impossible’ was not far from wrong.

‘No wonder it looks so unstable as if it will collapse soon.’

The reason why the artifact was made like piecing together various junk was apparently a desperate attempt to satisfy the necessary magic power and activate the magic. Even if it had the durability to be cast once and then shatter, it was impossible to cast it without doing this.

However, despite such desperate efforts, the artifact was not completed. Lee Han was honestly thrilled by the obsession he felt from this artifact.

‘…They went this far to escape outside the school.’

Looking at the design and records of the artifact, the destination was not that far from here in the first place. Escaping from school was the top priority.

If that was the case, there would have been many other ways, but the fact that they insisted on this method was truly wizard-like.

‘I understand.’

Lee Han understood the feelings of his seniors. Even if they started lightly at first, it was gradually completed, and then inherited, and in the middle, the skeleton headmaster would laugh and say, ‘Is that even possible?’…

As time goes on, means can become the purpose. Lee Han, who had been lost in thought for a moment, turned his gaze.

‘I have to dismantle it.’

Like the seniors left behind, this non-operational artifact had many valuable materials. Just leaving it alone was a waste.

Wooooooom-

“?”

“????”

At the sudden huge roar from the artifact, everyone in the warehouse turned their heads.