Chapter 54
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 54
Chapter Title: Doubt and Warning
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“Um… Professor Aiden?”
I watched as Elin let out a puzzled voice, then snatched the cup from her hand and set it aside.
Suddenly deprived of her cocoa, Elin’s eyes sharpened.
Even I found this a bit absurd.
‘To glare at me like that over something as trivial as losing her cocoa.’
Resisting the urge to press my temples, I stared at the cocoa.
‘No telling what might be in it.’
Over there, Prezel Professor, who had looked startled at first, now wore a sly smile.
“Professor Aiden, is that you? What brings you here?”
“I’m taking Elin.”
“Oh my, are you two already that close?”
She covered her mouth, playing it off with playful teasing.
Acting like some meddlesome adult stirring up romance between a young man and woman, but my gaze remained ice-cold.
“Professor Prezel.”
My firm tone lowered the mood a notch.
“I have no desire to joke around with you.”
“……”
“Let’s go.”
I grabbed her arm roughly and dragged her along, making Elin grimace.
“Professor, wait a moment. I wasn’t done talking with Professor Prezel. Dragging me off like this… No, listen to me……”
It didn’t matter what position Prezel had held for Elin before.
Right now, all that mattered was that this professor could threaten Elin.
That was the only thing important to me.
‘Of all things, she had to bring up Elize.’
This was getting troublesome.
Clicking my tongue inwardly, I quickened my steps.
If she hadn’t eaten anything, that would be one thing, but the scone clearly had a bite taken out of it.
She’d offered the cocoa, so maybe the scone was safe…….
‘Still need to check.’
Something like delayed poison might seem fine at first.
And the other party was a professor. Not a botany expert, perhaps, but knowledgeable in her own way.
No idea what concoction she might have prepared.
I was glad I’d followed, even if late, but regretting my initial complacency made my head ache.
“For now, let’s head to my lab……”
But at some point, things weren’t going smoothly.
When I turned back, Elin was dragging her feet like an anchor.
Her eyes blazed as if she’d turn back right then if I didn’t explain.
“Lis-ten to me. Please.”
She pronounced each word deliberately, like an angry beast baring its teeth and growling.
Elin didn’t stop there when I glanced back.
“What on earth are you doing? That was so rude to Professor Prezel……”
“My mistake.”
Elin’s face hardened, as if asking what I meant.
“I get it—you went to see Professor Prezel in that state. I gave you a false sense of security, so it’s my responsibility. Be wary of that professor from now on.”
With that, I grabbed her wrist again and pulled.
“Stop, let go! It hurts.”
Elin shook off my arm and huffed.
“Always, always talking about things only you know and just giving me the conclusion. What is this? I need to know something too to understand and empathize……”
“I suspect Professor Prezel is an insider.”
Elin froze on the spot.
“Not something to discuss here. Come on. I’ve confirmed it, but this is still the floor where Prezel lingers.”
“No… wait. What do you even mean……?”
Sighing as I swept a hand over my face at her incredulous look.
“You can sense people’s general colors through spirits, right? Like how you caught my lie at the start of the semester. Am I lying now?”
“Ah, no… but!”
I shot a glance at Elin’s dumbfounded face and unleashed a reprimand.
“Stay alert. Trust no one. Suspect everyone.”
Hearing that, Elin followed obediently, her face a mix of resignation and complex emotions.
Even as we rode the elevator down, that expression didn’t fade.
“I… still can’t accept it.”
“Doesn’t matter. One thing’s clear: Professor Prezel has a high interest in Elize.”
“Even so……”
“Elin.”
I added one more word to Elin, who kept her head down and denying it repeatedly.
“More than monsters, the one thing you mustn’t trust is people. The incidents around you, like the training disaster—none of them are ordinary.”
You could become a target at any moment.
At those words, Elin wore an enigmatic expression.
“…Then should I suspect you too, Professor Aiden?”
I mulled over her words carefully before nodding.
“I’m the one with the most secrets. Suspect me. If it ensures your safety, anytime.”
After my response, the conversation ended.
Silence hung thickly over the path to my lab.
* * *
‘…That professor sure is something.’
After Aiden left in a hurry saying he had urgent business, Radia chewed over the note in her hand.
With Isel and Arion around, Radia was lounging to rest her body now that Aiden was gone.
Normally she’d nag about laziness, but even Radia thought that professor knew no middle ground.
‘Pushing so hard, then easing up completely. Everything’s extreme……’
The relentless prodding back at the magic tower still gnawed at her.
Yet in the lab, he permitted her to sprawl out comfortably.
Unpredictable in every sense.
If it were just daily life, fine—but the same applied to serious matters, piling on her worries.
The note in her hand was a perfect example.
‘Don’t open until something urgent happens.’
Aiden’s earnest warning before handing it over lingered in her heart.
“Open it when you’re in the most pain, when you feel utterly helpless.”
“…Is there a reason it has to be that way?”
To her question, Aiden just smiled kindly.
As if he had nothing to say, brushing it off with a smile.
But surely that professor wouldn’t do anything harmful to her.
Radia sensed exhaustion intuitively.
Even if she wondered what kindness meant from someone with unchanging expressions, his softening aura made her think so.
‘Strict as can be during lectures.’
She’d once slipped into Aiden’s classroom when she had free time.
Leading the lecture doggedly without a hint of a smile, he seemed more like a machine advancing the curriculum than a person.
Brutally difficult material, an intensity burdensome for students.
Ignoring their basics, barreling ahead as if they should’ve studied it themselves—it was absurd to watch, yet……
‘Intense.’
That unyielding unfriendliness was likely why his lectures got rave reviews.
Magnetic pull.
Aiden’s classes had tremendous draw.
While other professors struggled with one example, Aiden’s zipped through a dozen in a blink.
Professors mixed in chit-chat to hold attention, but Aiden plowed on regardless.
A whirlwind of aura changes and histories flashing by.
Dissecting each application and core in detail.
The guilt of “miss this now, it’s your loss” was probably every student’s shared sentiment.
Yet for all its packed, overwhelming heat, his notorious reputation matched it.
Coldly brushing off students pleading they hadn’t finished notes, while in his own lab he was all leniency.
‘Though he’s not one to joke around.’
A note to open only in true emergency.
If Professor Aiden said so, it must be exactly what she’d need then.
Radia tucked the note into her chest pocket and let out a small sigh.
“Wish he’d just tell me straight.”
No idea why he’s so full of secrets.
Turning her head, Isel and Arion came into view.
While her gaze wandered, they were bickering again, clinking and clacking.
Arion tossed out provocations, Elin countered—though really just bantering.
For all their roughhousing, both vied for top in the department.
Rumor had it they were outliers, yet Aiden had banded them together.
One by one.
She didn’t know the reasons.
But……
“Good to see. He must have his reasons for not telling.”
That was why she followed quietly despite lingering questions.
What Aiden aimed for tied relentlessly to safety.
Radia could shelve her doubts for now.
* * *
A pitch-black underground chamber.
A vast magic circle glowing red sprawled across it.
Where the man stood, no other lights existed.
He had no choice but to rely on the eerie glow from the magic circle for vision.
The circle was enormous, its edges impossible to discern.
Save for the hulking masses dotting it and blocking views here and there, it felt like it stretched to the horizon.
Amid this, the man spotted an old figure at the circle’s center, chanting prayers.
Neatly robed in monastic garb, long uncut white beard, wrinkles etched deep.
Bathed in the light from below, his body seemed painted in blood, though the robes were truly white.
Had they been red from the start, the creepiness might’ve been less; instead, the old man’s attire evoked a devout believer.
Chanting prayers every morning, offering tidy devotions to the divine… On the surface, a kindly elder from some village corner, exactly his appearance.
Step closer, and he was merely a rosary-clutching senior visiting the cathedral daily.
Frequenting it near death’s door to repent past days wasn’t odd.
The man wouldn’t have cared if that were all.
His throat bobbed.
But the old man before him……
Was one of the most shunned among heretic mages.
“I greet the elder of the main sect.”
A mad mage dissecting beasts and men mercilessly.
The originator advocating artificial ancestral regression for purity.
On a land blanketed in corruption, impossible to cleanse no matter the desire—his ideology held that life’s foundation formed by patching its broken axis.
Life’s origin, life’s mystery.
The unremovable, unaddable core of providence.
Gather it all for purity.
Only the resulting vomit-inducing chimeric forms marred it.
Yet the elder truly believed them pure.
Thus, his masterpieces accompanied him.
Monsters with hundreds of faces fused.
Screaming beastmen and humans.
Giants studded with a hundred eyes.
Nightmare fuel, every one.
More horrific: the main sect’s countless kidnappings of humans and beasts to craft them.
The man added,
“Beast Tamer.”
Soon a resonant rebuke shook him.
“Can you not see I’m praying to the divine?”
He flinched, hastily denying.
“That’s because the council’s emergency……”
“Fool.”
The Beast Tamer rose slowly, turning to him.
“Your blasphemy against the divine—I’ll gouge and cleanse that useless eye of yours.”
The man couldn’t rebel.
He merely knelt on one knee, trembling like an aspen.
Rebel here, and he’d end up a sacrificial offering, his fate far more wretched.
Where the Beast Tamer had prayed tirelessly.
There lay a man with grotesquely twisted limbs.
That offering neither lived nor died, only moaned; release from agony came solely when the Beast Tamer freed him.
The man wanted no such fate.
The Beast Tamer’s steps halted.
Just as he braced for the eye-gouging.
The Beast Tamer gestured extravagantly, as if in ecstasy.
“Yet today, my divine is greatly pleased. He bids mercy—so your sin won’t be atoned in fleshly pain, nor your irreverence to faith in shame upon yourself.”
Realizing pardon, the man banged his forehead bloody on the floor.
“Thank you.”
Before pain creased his face, the Beast Tamer lifted his chin.
“Behold. My divine commands.”
The man stared at the elder.
Beast Tamer.
One of the vilest heretic mages dubbed elders.
His mass beast transfers wrought disaster, dubbed “tunnels.”
Indescribable terror made the man’s jaw clatter.
Behind the Beast Tamer, a massive form hidden by shadow uncoiled and stirred.
Like a world-swallowing serpent, an immense earth dragon retracted its saw-like teeth.
The Beast Tamer spread his arms wide and burst into mad laughter.
“In the name of the holy war, we purify! In the name of prophecy, we face the pledged land.”
The Beast Tamer grinned ear to ear.
To the academy.
Accordingly, the colossal magic circle began spewing baleful red light.