The Rebirth Of The Hero’S Party’S Archmage [EN]: Chapter 65

65

“If we used equations for spells targeting a single point, it’s straightforward to use inequalities for area-of-effect spells.”

Professor Owen neatly wrote out the formula for a system of linear inequalities on the blackboard, explained the theory, and then looked back at the students.

“Does anyone know why this is?”

Casena Page felt like hiding behind her book. She wanted to avoid making eye contact with the professor and having to present the answer.

“Y-you, you, you bunch of monkey dung! Does no one really know the reason?”

For some reason, the muscular professor looked like he was about to cry. Then, his gaze suddenly landed on Casena.

“Hmm, yes.”

Oh, no.

A sense of foreboding, enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, enveloped her. As if to confirm her fears, Owen gave a bitter smile.

“The poor monkey who transferred into my class this time—”

“—Professor.”

The one who raised his hand at that critical moment was Rain Ludwig. Owen’s attention immediately turned to him.

“May I explain?”

The deal was to prevent Casena from being humiliated… It was annoying, but he had no choice.

Normally, Crista would have raised her hand and shown off, but she had been acting strange ever since she and Casena exchanged pleasantries earlier.

Owen’s eyebrows twitched at Rain’s confident statement.

“Your confidence is admirable! Alright, enlighten this ignorant professor. You top student who smells a little less like dung.”

“First, inequalities are divided into absolute inequalities and conditional inequalities.”

“Even my cat, who only licks its own butt in my house, knows that, Rain Ludwig!”

“In the case of conditional inequalities, you can find solutions by substituting values within a certain range.”

“Hmm, so?”

“Given the nature of area-of-effect spells, where the exact point of impact doesn’t need to be precisely calculated, it’s a perfect fit to utilize the properties of these inequalities.”

While the students blankly listened to the explanation and blinked, Casena stared blankly at Rain next to her.

‘I knew he was good at studying. I knew it, but was it to this extent?’

Perfect… Owen also admired Rain’s explanation, pondering it once again.

‘An understanding that concisely and clearly pinpoints the core, simple enough for even a child to understand…’

It was so good that it could be included in a textbook without any issues. However, Owen’s personality was too twisted to just give praise here.

“Correct! As expected of the top student. I had one hundred and thirty vile sentences ready to shatter your personality, but it’s a shame!”

Owen licked his lips with that expression, as if he would have given an enormous humiliation if he had been wrong.

“Yes, it’s a real shame.”

He was sincere. Rain had been greatly interested in Owen’s artistic use of language since their first meeting.

Owen’s assistant began writing down what Rain had just said on the blackboard, but his movements were strangely slow.

Perhaps it was because the content he had prepared was more complex and difficult than what Rain had explained. Being compared is a sad thing.

* * *

A port area on the southeastern border of the continent.

A man was sitting in a mansion grotesquely half-destroyed by the swarm of flies feasting on corpses and the reverberations of powerful magic.

His face was quite small and common (if someone from 300 years ago saw him, they might mistake him for the Great Mage Lynn), but he was tall and had a strong build.

“What did you say just now?”

The man suddenly shouted. The only ones who heard his voice in the material world were the corpses.

However, in the mental world that the man had accessed through sorcery, there were five colleagues listening to his voice.

The world reflected in the man’s eyes was not the mansion filled with corpses and maggots, but the interior of an underground temple filled with myrrh smoke.

[I said we need to observe more.]

The shadow writhing in seat number 1 repeated what it had just said. Immediately, the man’s voice took on a threatening heat.

“Observe what more! If we capture that brat Rain Ludwig and torture him, we can know for sure!”

[What if we capture and torture him, and he’s not the person we’re looking for?]

“What’s the problem with that?”

[It is a problem. Especially from my position, having infiltrated the school. How about thinking a little?]

“What, you bastard?”

As the magic of the two figures clashed, the runes forming the mental world began to writhe painfully. It was number 5’s voice that stopped the situation.

[Let Valenciadis handle it. He has to do the most important thing in our plan right now. It would be troublesome if he got caught now.]

“Leave the bastard who killed Libeni alone?”

[Ah, so if it’s determined that he’s the one who killed him, Valenciadis will take care of it. What’s the problem? What’s the rush?]

The man glared. The other cowards didn’t say anything, as if they would follow Valenciadis’s judgment.

“You hopeless, pathetic, cowardly rats.”

Then, before his colleagues could stop him, the man’s shadow disappeared from the mental world. At the same time, he rose from the corpse he had been sitting on.

‘Valenciadis, if that cowardly bastard can’t do it, I’ll do it myself.’

He would just enter the school, kill anyone who got in his way, and capture and torture that guy.

His ‘Mother’ might scold him for his impulsive actions, but as long as he didn’t get caught, it would be fine. Even if he did get scolded, it would only be a reprimand.

He was an son created by Tureina from nothing, just like Libeni.

* * *

“Ugh, I don’t get it, I don’t get it!”

Lunchtime, on a bench in the courtyard.

Casena, who had been staring intently at the summary that Rain had neatly prepared, finally leaned back against the bench and slumped her head back.

“If you don’t know, you just study until you do. Isn’t that the basics of studying?”

Rain, saying that in such an annoying way, was flipping through the pages of a thick textbook, seemingly never getting tired of it. Casena glared at him.

“Why aren’t you wearing the glasses I gave you?!”

“Why would I wear them when it’s not night?”

“Just wear them!”

What ridiculous insistence… At that moment, there was a presence that brought a pure smile to Rain’s face.

Flutter.

With the sound of clear flapping wings, a presence crossed the languid summer sky, Pipi.

“Pipi, did you sleep well?”

“Slept well. Slept well. Slept well.”

Rain laughed and stroked Pipi’s head as it shook back and forth on his shoulder.

Then, he felt a hot gaze. Casena was staring at the scene with sparkling eyes.

“What’s that? A sun parakeet, right? I’ve seen it in books!”

“That’s right. It’s my companion bird.”

“Where did you get it? Let me, let me touch it!”

“No.”

He stood up from the bench and stepped back to protect Pipi from Casena, who was wildly reaching out with both hands.

“Why not!”

The headstrong personality of a young lady who has lived her life ordering people around is truly frightening.

He could just let her touch it, but he needed to correct her rotten personality even a little bit.

“Isn’t it time for you to study, young lady?”

“Study, study, study.”

“You can just consider it a break!”

“Break, break, break, break~!”

Casena drooled as she watched Pipi, who was mimicking human speech and rubbing its face against Rain’s cheek.

“Only those who have finished their work can rest. You have a mountain of things to do, young lady? Pipi, I’ll see you in the dorm later.”

Casena blankly stared at Pipi as it disappeared into the distant sky, her cheeks puffing up nervously, and tears welling up in her eyes.

‘No, it’s unfair. It’s not like he’s saying I can’t touch it at all…’

Casena glared sullenly at him, then lay down on the bench with her hands behind her head. As expected, not an act befitting a noble.

“Hmph, fine! How would the genius Rain, who knows everything, understand my feelings.”

“Excuse me?”

“I just don’t know things! I don’t even know basic math formulas! My head hurts every day like it’s going to break. I don’t know anything, so how can I not be humiliated?”

Casena, who covered her face with the summary notebook to block the sunlight, added in a gloomy voice a moment later.

“I guess it was too greedy. I should have postponed coming to school. I just don’t know things, so how can I not be humiliated.”

Casena had her own struggles.

He wasn’t unaware of those feelings.

It was really annoying, but he decided that he needed to address it clearly here.

“Why is it painful to not know many things?”

“What?”

“Doesn’t having many things you don’t know mean there are many things to learn? And doesn’t having many things to learn mean there’s only room for improvement?”

And then silence flowed.

He didn’t intend to convince her from the start. He just thought it would be okay to create even a slight crack in her defeatist attitude.

How much time passed after that?

About five minutes later, Casena jumped up and sat down, staring at the summary again as if she were going to kill it.

‘Hmm…’

It’s not unrewarding to teach her. Seeing himself satisfied like this, a slightly bittersweet feeling pierced his heart.

‘Tureina, should I have been a little kinder when teaching that tomboy…’

* * *

Two weeks passed in a flash. If there was anything good that happened in the meantime, it was that Ellin Ludwig had returned to school.

In the faculty office, his aunt was sighing deeply as she sorted through the mountain of documents that had piled up over 50 days. When Rain entered, she glared at him fiercely.

“You little rascal, what kind of trouble did you cause while this genius professor Ellin Ludwig was away?”

“?”

“Casena Page! You tried to elope with that little girl? No, that’s not important. How is she even walking… How did things turn out like this?”

For Ellin, who was planning to encroach on the prestige of the leading magical family by using the lineage of genius mages—Scalzi-Keiban, Ellin-Rain—Casena’s rehabilitation was a significant red flag.

After explaining how he got involved with Casena, Ellin stared at Rain with a dumbfounded expression, then pinched and pulled both of his cheeks.

“Ugh, I can’t believe it, really! Just like my pathetic nephew! Who do you think went through all that trouble for? If you do something like that, it’s all for nothing! Huh?”

“S-sorry…”

Ellin let go of his cheeks with a sigh, and Rain whimpered, caressing his reddened cheeks.

“Strange rumors were spreading that my aunt was obsessed with black magic. I thought I had to do something for my aunt’s professorship.”

“What?! You idiot! Who do you think I am?”

“The genius professor Ellin Ludwig.”

“That’s right! The world-renowned genius professor Ellin Ludwig is me! It’s who would lose out if they fired me. They would have protected me no matter what, so why did you have to step in! Aigo [Korean exclamation of frustration], aigo, aigo!”

She scolded him like that, but she didn’t particularly feel bad that her bright nephew had done such a thing for her.

That’s why the bizarre phenomenon of her hitting him on the head while smiling foolishly appeared. Ellin had no talent for hiding her expressions.

Ellin seemed to nag Rain at every opportunity, but this was actually her own top-tier expression of affection for her cute nephew.

‘Well, it wouldn’t be bad to be friendly with the Page family.’

Even her Keiban brother had solidified the family’s prestige by having a senior-junior relationship with Madelia Page during his school days.

“Ugh, ugh, ugh. Just go! The final exams are in two days, so you must be busy. Although not as busy as me.”

The problem was how Casena was able to walk again. Was the rumor that her spine was broken just a false rumor?

But that wasn’t just a simple rumor, he had inadvertently overheard Keiban and Brim talking about it…

Ah, never mind. He was already dying from a headache because of the secret about Tureina, and there was so much work to do. He’ll think about it later.

“But Aunt.”

“Hmm?”

“What were the Inquisitors… saying about Tureina? I don’t know what she did wrong that they’re doing that.”

At Rain’s quiet question, Ellin’s hand, which had been flipping through the documents, hesitated and stopped.

– Tureina is alive. I missed her because of my mistake…

– In fact, if you associate her with Lynn, it’s understandable that Tureina became the leader of the Black Church…

That troublesome story resurfaced in her mind, but there was a gag order on the story she had heard at that time, so she couldn’t consult with anyone.

‘I can’t even imagine what kind of incident will happen on the day Tureina comes to the front lines…’

Her nephew was waiting for her answer with a slightly hesitant attitude. He had even borrowed a book to read, so he must have admired Tureina too.

‘Like most chicks…’

She didn’t need to shatter that heart with a vague answer. And the final exams were coming up soon, so she didn’t want him to focus his mind elsewhere.

“It wasn’t anything. It seems the black mages used a few of Tureina’s books as a cipher communication system. That’s why they did that.”

“Really?”

“Ugh, you fool! If that wasn’t the case, would I have been tortured and come back so quickly?”

She felt a slight sense of guilt for the lie she had made up on the spot, but seeing her nephew’s face brighten up, that feeling immediately melted away.

“Thank you for letting me know. Then I’ll be going now because I have student council activities. You look busy too, Aunt.”

As Rain turned to leave, Ellin snapped her fingers as if she had remembered something and drew attention.

“You’ve been preparing hard for this final exam, right?”

“So-so.”

“So-so? You better work harder than that.”

“Why?”

As Rain tilted his head, Ellin smiled as if she were giving a secret gift.

“Your sister-in-law said she’s coming to see you. With your pathetic siblings too.”