Dungeon Practicum Time (1)

If I had to sum up Professor Seres’s class in one very simple line...

It was the kind of lesson that said you learn by doing, not by being shown a hundred times.

She stripped theory down as much as possible and taught by making you feel things directly with your body, so you could learn naturally and quickly.

No matter how much of a stranger to combat someone like me might be, after getting beaten within an inch of their life, they’d do everything they could to avoid that pain next time. And when that was combined with the accelerated growth granted by the Blessing of Growth, it produced a rate of improvement that was impossible to compare with anything before.

That was Professor Seres’s way of teaching.

Honestly, it wasn’t the sort of class most people would call popular.

This was Sielm. A place overflowing with scions of famous families and packed with seeds of incredible talent. If, by some chance, permanent damage ever happened here, the academy would probably turn upside down.

In that sense, Professor Seres’s class could not be called normal, not even as a joke.

But I didn’t really have that much of a complaint about it.

Nothing disastrous had happened in class, and she clearly identified the parts I needed most, then taught them to me personally.

Even if the class was sharp-edged, there were still results worth being satisfied with hidden inside that pain.

If I had been an ordinary cadet, I’d have run from a class like this long ago. But I wasn’t what people would call ordinary.

Mana Erosion from a unique ability? So far, nothing had happened. But tomorrow I might suddenly start coughing up blood from mana reflux and die.

On top of that, the mana I could feel in my surroundings gave me useful advantages, like letting me sense an opponent’s movement in advance and tell where they were positioned, but for someone like me with anthropophobia, it was instead an obstacle that made me feel human presence even more keenly.

It was a double-edged blade placed in my hands.

The reason I’d entered Sielm as a special admission student was, at least on the surface, to monitor the progress of my Mana Erosion and find a way to cure this incurable illness.

But if I just sat down here and did nothing, I’d end up looking like a condemned man waiting for an execution with no date attached, unable to try anything at all.

No matter how indecisive I was, no matter how passive a person I might be, I absolutely could not give up here.

As for my anthropophobia... maybe, if I kept living somehow, I’d eventually find a way around that too.

And the first thing I had to do if I wanted to live steadily was cure this incurable Mana Erosion.

One of the few methods Professor Han Seohwa and the others I knew had managed to find was the legendary artifact Will of the Frozen One.

It was originally an absorption-type artifact, but because it only settled into a body free of impurities and generated a core there, there were records of it being mounted onto a weapon and used to deliver a single absolute strike. The artifact had vanished eighty years ago and was hidden somewhere in the world.

If my body lost mana and could no longer generate its own, then this artifact might be able to create a new core and let me keep living.

But the real problem was that no one knew where it was, and even if its location were identified, there was a good chance it had been sealed in a dungeon of high difficulty, given that it was a legendary artifact.

I wanted to live. So I gritted my teeth and endured the high-intensity classes, forcing myself through the pain.

Even when purple bruises spread over my whole body, even when my hands were reduced to rags, I didn’t complain and faithfully followed the lesson. Well, that last part was my own doing, of course...

I had to grow even more if I wanted to preserve my life.

The results were clear, and my growth rate was definitely proven in sparring. In a match against a top-ranked cadet, someone I should have been unable to even breathe around, I managed to hold out for several minutes and improve.

At this rate, I should be able to grow enough in the near future to perform well in middling-difficulty dungeons.

And no one said a legendary artifact had to be in a difficult dungeon, either, so I intended to take my time and look for a dungeon that seemed deeply connected to the artifact.

As I felt the slim possibility that had once seemed so far away draw closer and closer to me, my desire to give up only weakened further.

And today, too, I’d come to class to help boost my growth...

"Even if I don’t especially prefer theory classes, some basic knowledge about dungeons is essential. Unlike sparring, most situations in a dungeon are the first of their kind, so preparation won’t mean much."

But today, instead of the familiar training weapons, Professor Seres had brought along a set of dungeon-related books that looked rather out of place in her hands.

"Memorize everything all the way through the dungeon practicum. There is absolutely no meaningless section. These are books I own, books not even in the library, so you can take them. No, take all of them."

As Professor Seres had said, the books she brought were mostly volumes I couldn’t find in the library.

Since there were no people around to trigger an attack and it was quiet, and since most of the theory-class books were already in the library, I usually spent my time there. But these books were the kind you couldn’t see anywhere else.

[The Habits of 5-Grade Monsters], [Dungeon Survival Rules, Volumes 1, 2, and 3], [How to Identify and Classify Monsters’ Weaknesses], [Rules for Distinguishing Medicinal Herbs from Poisonous Plants], and so on...

Some of the titles sounded familiar, but at the very least, they were books I had never seen in the Sielm library.

Medicinal herbs and poisonous plants... of course, when you get injured in a dungeon and don’t have anything proper to treat the wound, it’s important to find medicinal herbs and use them. And because cases of poisonous ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠plants being mistaken for medicinal ones happen so often, learning to distinguish them is important too.

"What do you think? Is this information already familiar to you?"

"No. Most of it is new to me. There’s a lot ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that seems useful."

"Good. Then study this and prepare for the dungeon practicum."

After hearing that there was plenty I didn’t know, Professor Seres nodded and continued.

While I blankly absorbed the information in the books, she pulled a small object from her subspace that looked like a compass.

"This is an artifact that detects the location ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of irregular mana in the surrounding area, or unnatural mana moving somewhere that doesn’t fit the space."

What Professor Seres had taken out was a mana-detection artifact, one of the essential tools used in dungeons where all manner of danger lurked.

Even after introducing that artifact, she kept pulling out more magic tools in a steady stream and explaining them.

Backup mana containers for storing mana in case of emergencies, magic tools that mixed a small amount of mana with various objects to generate heat in case the temperature dropped...

Most of them were tools prepared with major dungeon disasters in mind.

There were also combat support tools made to prepare for battles with monsters.

Watching her lay out all these different tools and explain each one, all so she could prepare for any possible situation, felt strangely moving.

"And this is for striking the monster’s mana-rich sections... what are you thinking about?"

"...Ah, nothing."

"Focus. I’ll be holding intensive lectures again over the weekend after today and Friday are over."

Professor Seres noticed I’d drifted off and resumed the lesson with a warning to pay attention.

The Professor Seres who had always shoved things at me and forced me to learn by natural exposure, rather than explaining anything at all, still felt ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠strangely unfamiliar when she suddenly started teaching me theory directly.

And not only that, her lecture was... astonishingly detailed and useful. It stayed in my head far more clearly than the shallow dungeon information Professor Han Seohwa usually taught.

She even pointed out the unnecessary parts in the books one by one and taught me good memorization methods so the material would stick, running the class with painstaking care.

And because she added detailed information not written in the books, based on her own experience in the demonic frontier, it pushed my study even further.

She didn’t simply list monsters; she explained their individual traits, told me which ones were edible, and added things like how the presence of one species made it likely that other monsters would be nearby too...

Information you couldn’t find in even professional books was pouring out of Professor Seres’s mouth.

"What’s there to be impressed by? It’s all basic knowledge about dungeons. Burn it into your head."

She was still as sharp as ever, but there was a different atmosphere coming off Professor Seres today.

The woman who usually acted like I should just learn on my own was now spoon-feeding me one bite at a time, and my body almost seemed to reject it.

Was this what people called cognitive dissonance...?

"I’ll be repeating this over the weekend too, so keep that in mind. Actual use of the magic tools starts tomorrow. I already taught you how to use them, so tomorrow I’ll test you without any explanation. Make sure you’ve memorized everything clearly now."

No, hadn’t she always hated dungeons?

Or then why had she reacted so badly every time the subject came up until now...

After class ended, the bracelet contained a file that organized and summarized everything she had taught us that day.

I spent Friday and the weekend like that. Before I even realized day after day had gone by, Monday arrived, and with it, dungeon practicum time.

The bracelet gave off a familiar vibration, and the mail contained a list of the teammates I’d be working with during practicum.

My heart thudded with a mixture of anticipation and nerves as I opened the file.