Chapter 82
Chapter 82
Academy’s Gumiho is a Magic Genius – Chapter 82
I clenched my teeth and focused my consciousness on my fingertips.
Vibrant mana rippled at my fingertips.
Wooong!
The mana abruptly turned black, twisting like a Chinese character dashed off with a brush, and soon formed a single incantation.
It was sorceryone of its kinds, a curse. The sorcery called Poisoning rose from my fingertips, circled around me once, and scattered the curse.
The worlds gone mad. Mad. Even for a beginner curse, to fully embody it in less than half a day.
A speed of embodiment that made Tamamo blurt out admiration without thinking.
Id mastered Poisoningthe starting point of all poison cursesin under two hours. No, mastered wasnt quite accurate.
Id already blended antibodies from the Hundred Poison Body into Poisoning, reaching the point where I could produce my own deadly venom.
Of course, it was still just variations on High Venom and Killing Stone.
Class had started just this morning, and now it was barely lunchtime.
What the hell kind of growth speed was this?
And it doesnt even harm the casters body. Does he have poison resistance? But even factoring that in, zero side effects means his proficiency is utterly insane.
Curses were sorceries defined by all harm and no benefit.
They originated from suicidal spells that injured both caster and target alike.
That danger made curses the most powerful among all sorcery lines. And yet, to flawlessly master even a beginner one in just hours?
This crossed the linehard.
Genius talent, and the intellect to encompass it all. If gods exist, theyd die of guilt for crafting such an absurd, unfair genius. Hehe, personally, I hope your training lags behind a bit.
Jealousy mingled with lament and mischief on her lips.
She was genuinely cursing the worlds unfairness, wishing my training would fall short.
I turned back at her words.
Yeah, training. That word again.
The system kept repeating it during the tail-growth process too. But no matter how much I wanted to know more, the family records and side stories offered no specifics.
Training was just... training.
That was the full definition from every ancient family tome.
What kind of nonsense was that?
I have one question.
Hmm~ Craving more wisdom? Fine. From my vast knowledge as the progenitor of sorcery, Ill answer as best I can with utter sincerity. Though this time, Ill make it as convoluted as possible.
Is there a special way to grow tails? The system keeps mentioning training, but I dont know if it means mental cultivation or physical development.
Aha... Now thats a sharp question I didnt see coming.
Tamamo grabbed my shoulder, her tone brimming with genuine admiration.
No trace of her usual playful mischief.
If anything, she seemed impressed.
Was it really that profound a question?
Just what was the systems training that even she reacted like this?
Truth be told, training isnt some complicated concept. Anything that tests yourself counts as training. Like uniting essence, energy, and spirit through mental cultivation, or achieving shedding and rebirth through physical growth. Of course, theres the easy route too: laze around for a century... no, endure an entire century until maturity lets you grow tails one by one.
Doesnt exactly sound like wisdom from your vast knowledge.
Hear me out to the end. What are ears for, if not that?
Fair enough.
Good. Then heres a question for you: What do these three training methods have in common?
Hmm.
Uniting essence, energy, and spirit was something most couldnt achieve over an entire lifetime. Pure physical growth to shedding took decades of relentless daily practice. And a century? That was just a question of whether Id even live that long.
Well, so. Their common thread was...
They all take a ton of time?
Not wrong. You cant call something training if it wraps up short-term. But thats not the point.
Then what is?
The point is simple.
For nine-tailed foxesnot just them, but all fox kintails arent merely parts of the body.
Theyre deeply tied to the souls rank and dignity, a profoundly important and symbolic feature.
Tails are our souls rank. The more you have, the higher your soul rank climbs, and strength follows naturally.
And its only natural that training gets harder with each new tail.
The first ones are like filling a bucket with water, but it escalates to filling lakes, then oceans.
Thats how realms work.
But dont worry too much. Ill help you personally.
Tamamo could sense it.
His tails were spiritually linked to the ring.
As his tail count rose, shebound to the ringwould reclaim her past glory bit by bit.
Right now, she could barely interact with objects, but once he reached four tails, directly manipulating them would be a breeze.
So, for the sake of their symbiotic bond, she spoke with magnanimous grace.
Ill chart a clear path for your training to wrap up fast. Whether harvesting soul essences or just boosting your soul rank, thats all it takes.
Training sounded noble, but it boiled down to the grueling task of elevating soul rank.
And Tamamo knew plenty of shortcuts to cheat that grind, honed by experience.
Two hours after I taught him, and... what the hell am I looking at?
Of course, the world rarely flows exactly as desired.
Sometimes it veers bad, sometimes good.
Other times, it swerves into the utterly unexpected.
I only taught him how to expand his po in the dantian via lotus position, and look at this. Haha... Hell figure the rest out fine on his own.
With such a clear catalyst, he could aim for four tailsor even fiveswiftly.
Six tails onward would hit a wall, as multiples of three demand unity of heaven, earth, and man, but even so, his pace was blistering.
She was going to run out of tricks at this rate.
Her words put my mind at ease.
Perfect, then. Midterms are coming up soon, so I need to power level anyway.
Midterms.
In a normal school, itd just mean students hunkered over desks for a few days taking tests.
But this worlds core stage was the academy.
Exams here meant swinging spears and swords, didnt they?
If only it were just swinging. The problem is stray blades killing or maiming students.
If the first main scenario of Academy Blockhead Genius was repelling Yuren and the monsters invading Chilseong...
...the second played out through demons and criminals lurking during midterms. They infiltrate the exams covertly, shutting down every single safety protocol meant to prevent accidents.
As a result, students battle for grades, but with safeguards offline, they end up as killers of their own friends.
The scenarios crux: future talents left spiritually shattered, trust in Chilseong eroding away.
Midterms? Whats that?
A type of exam students take. Results become their labels, benchmarks for evaluating individuals.
Fascinating. Grades as evaluation over status?
These days, personal ability trumps status in evaluations. Everyone values fairness. Bloodlines and status havent vanished entirely, but they dont rank above skill.
Truly. A millennium has changed so very much.
Tamamo closed her eyes, as if sifting through ancient memories of how people were judged across a thousand years.
Midterms mustve struck her as a peculiar institution.
Maybe she felt some for a world kinder to children. Pure speculation, though.
Tamamo wasnt the sentimental type.
Besides, most students collapsed during pre-midterm performance evals anywayno headspace for fairness or status.
Thats why she suggested training in the mental realm, unbound by time.
Call it whatever: mental world, inner world, minds projection, memorys manifestation. All accurate; its a slippery sorcery concept hard to pin down.
Thats when I finally grasped what she meant.
In other words, Tamamo was proposing...
You want to enter my mental realm directly?
Exactly. What, got secrets you dont want seen?
Of course I had things Id rather keep hidden.
Who in their right mind wants to bare their inner self to another?
Humans often shy from plumbing their own depths.
But that alone wasnt reason enough to refuse.
If mental training was as efficient as she claimed, I had to do it.
Still...
One question first.
Im listening.
Do past remnants and memories manifest in the mental realm too?
Naturally. The you that exists is built from innate traits and lived experiences. Hehe... If they didnt show up, thatd be the weird one.
Her answer muddled my thoughts.
But I soon reached a conclusion.
If past remnants and memories do manifest, theres no reason to refuse.
My face relaxed as the realization hit.
Itll really work, right? That training method?
Of course. Hehe, you think Id fool you? Efficiency drops by half after the second try, but the first time? Guaranteed results.
Then lets get started.
I urged Tamamo to begin right away.
Her words, once sounding like a peddlers pitch, now rang with sincerity.
She tilted her head at my abrupt shift.
Hope it goes well.
My mental realm.
I had a pretty good idea of what it looked like.
If it stemmed from my memories and experiences, itd surely be an empty abyss unto itself.
Wonder if training would even work in a place like that.
Doubts crept in, but I kept them from Tamamo.
No one likes exposing their mind, after all.
If it flopped, shed just teach me another sorcery.
I settled into the thought comfortably.
* * *
.
Whyve you been quiet?
Ha, youre seriously asking why Im quiet? Youre seeing the same sight and thats what comes out of your mouth?
Were facing the same direction, so yeah, same sight. Though everywheres identicaleast, west, north, south, up, downso no real difference in views.
Wed entered the mental world.
Tamamos eager anticipation of delving into the deep unknown of a human mind lasted all of a moment.
The vista before us shattered any expectations, leaving only shock.
So utterly void. No sky, no earth in a mental realmthis is really a human mind?
Youre subtly shading me now, huh?
Oh, finally caught on? Im saying it doesnt feel human at all.
Even for her, the caster, stepping into anothers mental world was exceedingly rare. She couldnt declare what a normal one looked like.
But a landscape this desolate? Unprecedented in anyones mind.
Even serial killers mental realms held faint traces of memories, flickers of warmth.
What the hell was this place, worse than that?
Maybe its so vast weve dropped to the farthest inner edge? If so, to glimpse his true mind, Ill have to venture deeper.
Tamamo mused to herself.
In the mental realm, free of fleshly limits.
Wouldnt she, not her still-immature contractor, hold the edge here?
Shed once been a nine-tailed empress lording over vast continents and isles. And this was the realm of mindsno bodies involved.
Under equal terms, Tamamo was confident shed best anyone.
So she seriously pondered subduing her contractor by force and rifling through his hidden memories before escaping this world.
Itd give her leverage in their relationship, plus endless fun material to tease him with forever.
But what was this sprawled before her eyes?
Immense.
Something immense stood before her.
Invisible to the eye.
Yet its immense presence loomed right there before Tamamo.
That immense somethingBaek Seung-wooopened his mouth.
Stop.
Seung-woo, right beside her.
No change in size, no shift in form.
So why this trembling?
Tamamo, halt right there. I can roughly read your thoughts. So stop while Im asking nicely.
This wasnt in her calculations.
What the?
This was why he accepted my proposal so calmly?
With a hidden card like this, it made sense hed taken her offer without hesitation. Baek Seung-woo was sharp.
Rational enough to objectively weigh the risks and gains to himself.
He mustve known this side of himself lurked within and accepted anyway.
Unbelievable... Even at my peak, I couldnt forge a rank like this.
This was the soul rank of someone just grasping heaven-earth-man unity, newly at three tails?
Incomprehensibly exalted, nobly beyond words.
A humans soul rank?
Better to imagine Ive stepped into the mind of an immortal, a Buddha, some ascetic monk. Even their desire-stripped cores would be this void.
Enough chit-chat. Down to business.
Her contractor, Baek Seung-woo, murmured lowly.
His voice carried none of that prior rank.
As if the awe shed felt moments ago was a mere mirage.
The mood plunged in an instant.
Tamamo stared at Seung-woo with eyes for an utterly incomprehensible being.
To receive so many shocks from one person in just two days.
Life with him promised no boredom; a smile and intrigue lingered stubbornly on her lips.