Chapter 42
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 42
Chapter Title: Final Exam?
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A man with brown hair and glasses.
His sleazy eyes definitely looked just like him.
"Unexpected. I thought you came to kill me."
Dylan's gaze had already locked onto Ted.
Ah, so the hostility I saw earlier was because I hurt his student.
It wasn't hard to understand.
Discriminators like him were endlessly lenient toward their own kind.
To him, fellow mages must be as precious as family.
"I've heard a lot about you, Roel the Cadet's demon. They said you were fully under control. Was Professor Cigarette lying, perhaps?"
Snap!
Dylan snapped his fingers.
With the friction sound, a magic circle appeared on the ground.
It was right under the fallen cadets.
Not an attack spell—probably trying to teleport them somewhere safe.
Of course, I had no intention of letting that happen.
"Who knows? Beats me."
A magic circle was essentially a drawing.
Since it represented complex calculations visually, disrupting it in any way would cancel the spell.
I stomped the ground hard.
Not just brute force—it had to be infused with mana, employing the principles of Cleave.
Boom!
A powerful vibration erupted.
Cracks spiderwebbed out from the deep footprint, splitting the earth in all directions.
I released the pent-up mana, and it raced along those fissures.
"......"
The magic circle, warped by the shifting ground, lost its effect and faded away.
"You must really care about them, huh?"
"Of course. They're my students."
"I see."
I glanced at Ted, sprawled unconscious on his stomach.
He'd passed out when I shattered the ground earlier.
Maybe I should wake him up.
"Wait, you......"
I remembered clearly.
Ted had cast his spells mainly with his right hand.
Losing his eating hand would make life pretty inconvenient from now on.
I swung my sword, and a sickening sound rang out.
The crunch of bone and tearing muscle. Ted's eyes snapped open from the agony, and he screamed.
"My... arm......"
He passed out again right away.
He'd woken briefly from the pain, only to black out from it.
Shock compounded by massive blood loss.
Left like this, Ted would die soon.
"Oops. Looks like you're about to lose a student."
"......You cocky bastard."
A time attack to save the mage had begun.
They moved almost simultaneously.
Dylan widened the distance while casting multiple spells at once.
I dashed across the ground, searching for a way to launch into the air.
Cigarette wouldn't show up for a while.
Sitla was drawing as much attention as possible, so I had some breathing room for now.
I wasn't the one in a hurry—they were.
"Die."
"Why the harsh words?"
Magic circles began floating in the air.
Unlike the ground ones, these had to be dodged directly—cancelling them outright was impossible.
I had to evade them all.
"Impressive."
The problem? There were quite a few.
Not just one or two.
Dozens of magic circles filled the sky, unleashing threatening attack spells like rain.
I picked up speed.
Weaving between trees for cover, I slashed away any spells I couldn't dodge with my sword.
Even after dodging plenty, they kept coming.
Thanks to Dylan refilling them personally, it felt like I was living a bullet-hell game.
You can't dodge forever.
I planted my foot on a large rock ahead and abruptly changed direction.
I charged straight through the barrage.
I could see Dylan's panicked expression from afar.
"Tch......"
Realizing quality over quantity, Dylan prepared a stronger spell.
Lightning compressed to its limit hurtled toward me with menacing force.
Definitely several times stronger than Ted's magic.
Reached 3rd Circle at seven, huh?
Youngest ever—a genius through and through.
"That all you got?"
I wrapped my fist in mana and swung wildly.
The lightning's momentum halted there.
Dispersed by a single punch.
"You insane demon......!"
Dylan hastily put distance between us.
He seemed to think that if he flew far enough out of my reach, he wouldn't get hit.
"......"
If that worked, Sitla wouldn't be my slave.
I channeled all my running momentum into a leap.
My legs stung a bit from the strain, but it didn't matter.
I rocketed forward at high speed, arriving in front of Dylan in an instant.
"Up close, you look even more punchable."
His face was one of utter disbelief.
The strong were always like this.
Too strong to even consider defeat.
Well, I was the same, but whatever.
Dylan Forrest.
The once-in-a-generation genius who reached 3rd Circle at the youngest age ever.
Every mage had their eyes on him, praising him endlessly.
"Magic was the easiest for me."
4th Circle in his teens.
5th Circle in his twenties!
Officially, only 3rd Circle was public, but Dylan shattered every record as he grew.
The Mage Tower's master, the "Archmage," had said:
"Dylan, you are the future of magic."
He fully agreed.
Frankly, magic's future looked pretty grim.
It had hit a complete developmental wall—what they called the "cursed plateau."
Dylan vowed.
He would become the next Archmage, slay the Demon King, and advance magic further.
「Someday, a legendary Hero will emerge among the Blessed Ones.」
That prophecy shattered with the oracle.
"Dylan, how many applicants does the Mage Tower have this year?"
"......A little over a hundred."
"That's a sharp drop."
After the oracle, aspiring mages had plummeted noticeably.
People thought of knights when they heard "Hero."
Because the legendary Hero wielded a sword.
So, Hero hopefuls naturally aimed to become knights.
Magic's dark age.
And a surge in demand for knights due to the oracle.
Mages couldn't endure this trend.
"The kingdom is regressing."
"Knight disdain" was originally a Mage Tower tradition.
A device to foster belonging in their isolated world—it had persisted for over a century since the Tower's founding.
Now, they were exporting it outward.
"There was once an era when magic was everything."
The Archmage visited Dylan daily.
It seemed like mere griping at first, but Dylan knew better.
Damn old fool.
"Even fetching water required a mage's power. Lighting fires, of course—and if drought hit, an entire village would offer tribute to a mage."
"......Ancient history."
"Not anymore. Magic lags far behind the era's progress."
The Archmage stroked his white beard.
"Dylan, in this situation, what if a new Hero doesn't use magic?"
"......"
"I miss the old glory."
With that, the Archmage left.
"Fuck."
Ten years since the oracle.
A new Academy had been founded in the kingdom, and Dylan was now in his thirties.
He'd achieved great success at 6th Circle, but received no blessing.
Dylan pulled out a letter from the Academy.
It requested he take a professor position.
"......Fine."
He couldn't become the Hero himself.
But the next Hero had to be a mage.
Dylan packed his bags.
He'd raise them himself.
Turn mages into Heroes.
Thus, he became a professor.
The first few months went smoothly.
Including his sister Helen, the Academy's 1st Grade mages grew rapidly.
A few, like Ted, even reminded him of his younger self.
Around then, Dylan felt the joy of teaching.
All that happiness shattered during midterms.
"......That's a cadet?"
Roel Griffith.
He hadn't seen her fight mages directly, but Dylan knew.
No—perhaps every professor here felt it.
'She's the next Hero.'
Compared to his students, or even to Dylan at her age.
Roel was closer to the Hero ideal than anyone.
Dylan thought:
'She has to go.'
For magic's sake.
They couldn't leave her be.
He proposed a joint exam to Cigarette.
Under the pretext that it was too large-scale for one person to prepare.
Days before the exam, he gathered the cadets and implanted suggestions.
His ideological indoctrination had primed them—they fell easily.
"......Why is everyone acting like this?"
His dear sister resisted a bit, but it was fine.
He could implant a stronger suggestion on Helen later.
Finally, exam day.
Everything went perfectly.
Cigarette noticed faster than expected, but Roel was already dead—no issue.
Even expulsion was acceptable.
All for magic's future.
Yes, for magic.
For magic.
For magic.
For magic—
"Danger......"
Dylan didn't know.
Why he'd been so blindly obsessive.
Why the Archmage visited daily.
Only when his own blood soaked the ground did he sense something was wrong.
I look down at the fallen Dylan.
Body slashed, limbs severed...
Even in that gruesome state, he's still alive.
"Why... did I...?"
I'd thought something felt off.
They were superhumans in a fantasy world, but still human.
Risking life isn't easy.
Yet Dylan and his mage cadets threw theirs away so readily.
"Pain clearing your head?"
Dylan had the same kind of suggestion implanted as his cadets.
One so strong it only broke at death's door.
Suggestions root in the subconscious, enforcing blind obedience without conscious awareness—puppets acting for others.
A mage of Dylan's caliber wouldn't fall to simple suggestions...
"The Mage Tower's the problem, right?"
Dylan nodded weakly, his breath ragged.
I don't know the details, of course.
Don't care to—it's just annoying.
But I knew what needed eliminating.
I granted the suffering Dylan a merciful end.
"Roughly handled, but..."
I sling my bloodied sword over my shoulder.
I tilt my head, waiting for something, but nothing changes.
"She's late."
Roel must still be asleep.
Well, time to farm some points.