Skipping Lectures, I Dropped a Meteor
A student who skipped class and ended up unleashing a massive Meteor Strike.
KABOOOOOM—!
A mushroom cloud billowed up, and fierce winds yanked my hair back into a slicked-back style.
This place was my personal subspace, so I didn't need to hide my magic at all.
But there was a specific reason I'd wasted a few precious meteors on trash like this.
They were targeting me over some pathetic prophecy.
"What? A prophecy? Where'd you hear that bullshit. Ptooey."
They'd placed blind faith in prophecies that had never been wrong before, but apparently they hadn't foreseen themselves getting pulverized so badly not even a corpse would be left.
I spat toward the bastards crushed into the bedrock, turned into high-quality fertilizer.
It was also a message for their trip to the afterlife: get a good look at what I was capable of.
If they believed in prophecies that strongly, they could probably use necromancy to summon memories from the dead.
This was my declaration of war.
Even if I kept hiding my power, they'd see me as an easy mark and pull shady stunts like this again.
If they didn't want losses, they'd either leave me alone or come back with much better preparations.
Snap.
I flicked my fingers while gazing down at the wasteland, where excessive heat had melted parts into lava.
A treasure orb appeared in my hand.
The core of the multi-layered phase barrier they'd been using.
It hadn't even suffered a scratch despite taking a direct Meteor Strike.
"This is the only worthwhile loot I got, huh."
A treasure capable of binding even a Special Grade sorcerer—the pinnacle of sorcery—for a while.
As I stared at it intently, fresh inspirations bubbled up.
Combining it with subspace could yield some surprisingly solid techniques.
The possibility of summoning my personal domain anytime, anywhere.
Not a bad spoil from a mass slaughter.
Suspension, day three.
Even though it was still too early to set foot in the academy, I ended up getting dragged to the president's office.
A total of 58 sorcerers had vanished overnight.
More than half of the sorcerers graduated from Korea's sole academy each year.
And 2nd Grade or higher sorcerers were pretty rare on a macro level.
It wasn't surprising that the nation was reacting sensitively.
"Do you know why I called you here?"
"Roughly."
The tiny old lady sitting across from me was the academy president—a fact that was hard to believe no matter how I thought about it.
The Sorcery Association Chairman, the academy president, and so on.
All the high-ranking national sorcerers were designated Special Grade.
The sorcerer before me had one foot in the pinnacle of sorcery.
Even if I'd gained more efficient abilities through magical theory, I sensed nothing from her.
My brain knew it, but my senses, instincts, aura perception—every sensory organ classified her as an ordinary human.
As if telling me my level couldn't even perceive her.
"Good, you're quick on the uptake. So, what really happened?"
Did you kill them all?
The president cut straight to the chase from the start.
She seemed utterly disinterested in petty squabbles among ants, speaking as if it were just obligatory procedure.
"No lies, now. We're taking this incident very seriously."
"Is that so? If you were, you would've stepped in from the academy side to stop their nonsense before it happened."
She pressed for an answer while claiming it was serious, but her expression had been serene from the beginning.
I had no reason to lie, either.
If I tried some half-assed deception, I might end up destroyed like Gongmyeongdang in retaliation.
A Special Grade sorcerer would have the power for it, and as president, she'd have the authority.
"Yes. They came at me, so I killed them all."
Maybe she hadn't expected me to admit it so readily. The wrinkles on her face twitched faintly.
"Since you've grasped the situation, you know it was all self-defense. The nation wouldn't shelter criminals, right?"
"…."
"They publicly declared they'd take my life in the middle of the street and activated a multi-layered phase barrier without hesitation. I just treated them as criminals on the spot and executed justice."
Sorcerers could unleash missile-level destruction even barehanded.
It wasn't like some mutual assault case between civilians where both sides were at fault.
Any sorcerer crossing the line was subject to summary execution—that was the rule.
Faced with my unapologetic attitude, the president lowered her gaze silently.
She quietly picked up her steaming coffee, took a sip, then suddenly let out a deep sigh.
"Should I call this sharp intuition or a lack of it…."
"…Pardon?"
"How could a mere academy freshman massacre high-ranking sorcerers? A decent excuse would've let it slide…."
The president glanced at the people standing on either side—likely her aides—frantically scribbling notes, while she kept sipping her coffee.
She muttered softly that things were getting out of hand.
"The safety of academy students is the president's responsibility. I've been on your side from the start. The chairman might throw a fit, but charging in as a group was the more unreasonable side anyway."
"I'll submit the evidence."
I placed a small memory card on the table.
It contained footage of the Hwaseong Group sorcerers' murder threats, the barrier activation, and people vanishing in an instant.
I'd attached cameras to my shikigami in preparation for something like this.
The president stared at it wordlessly.
"You don't trust anyone, do you? Normally, you'd ask for help in a situation like that, but you handled it all alone."
"Sorcerers are shady and underhanded, aren't they? In a world where 58 gather just to kill one person like me."
"…Can't deny that. The world still has a long way to go."
Clap!
The president sighed and clapped her hands loudly once.
The aides on either side flinched hard and stopped writing.
"…Madam President?"
"Everyone, you're dismissed. The academy supports Gong Siwoo's innocence."
"B-but…."
"But?"
No pressure emanated from her quietly upturned gaze, but it seemed different for them.
"U-understood."
"It was an honor to meet you…!"
They politely dropped their documents and fled the office like their lives depended on it.
The president saw them off with her eyes alone, then spoke again once the door fully closed.
"Sorry for the fuss. They're staff dispatched from the association."
"…I see."
Well, investigating the truth required such formalities.
Shattering those principles with a few words—that was the power of a Special Grade sorcerer, I suppose.
"I'll trust in your innocence. …I have questions about how you acquired that power, but prying into a sorcerer's secrets is off-limits."
But.
With that word again, the president pointed a straight finger at me and stared into my eyes intently.
"As president, I can't just let friction with other sorcerers during your suspension slide. Aggravated penalty."
"Ah."
The world was strict even with victims.
My three-day suspension finally ended.
From morning, a procession of students. The moment I left the dorm, gazes gathered, and whispers rippled among them.
The most annoying was none other than Ren Tsuchimikado.
"It's about time you told me, right? What on earth happened? I heard all those people went missing…. No secrets between fiancés!"
"Fake fiancé."
"Whatever! You didn't even answer my calls until now…! Do you know how worried I was? You should've at least told me you were in the dorm!"
The price of silently shoving her into the academy during the Hwaseong Group ambush was coming back to bite me now.
"Later. I'm busy right now."
"Sigh. What kind of fiancé is this heartless…. Should I make up for the ignored calls with more dates?"
I brushed off her casually terrifying words and headed to the faculty office first.
I had to report my return from suspension and fulfill the penalty the president had imposed.
Her punishment for me: one instance of on-campus service.
Lighter than expected, but the assigned service was heavier than it sounded.
"…As notified in advance, Gong Siwoo must perform one on-campus service duty."
"Yes."
"It's called a penalty or service for appearances, but in reality, it's also a request for cooperation."
The professor facing me grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously, eyes sparkling.
Why would anyone want this creepy old bald guy's groping hands?
On his desk sat the Void Resonance Art I'd leaked earlier.
"I'm Professor Heo Taegong, in charge of spatial sorcery. Please assist me as TA for my first lecture."
"…Not a problem."
The academy wanted to milk me—the improver of Void Resonance Art—for all I was worth.
Fitting for an educational institution.
Auditing was the norm at the academy, yet students had lined up nonstop this morning for today's first lecture.
Most were probably here for the one including Void Resonance Art.
"Shall we go, then?"
"Yes."
On schedule, Professor Heo Taegong and I moved to the lecture hall.
Attendees spanned from freshmen to seniors.
The assigned hall was the large auditorium where I'd done my freshman rep speech.
Standing at the podium, Professor Heo Taegong looked around, overcome with emotion.
Even if it wasn't truly his, teaching this many students was an honor in its own right.
He greeted them in a trembling voice.
"Everyone. Throw your old textbooks in the trash! Void Resonance Art has opened a new era in spatial sorcery!!"
"…Pardon?"
Skipping even self-introductions, Professor Heo Taegong ranted on.
The old spatial sorcery theories he'd spent his career with were casually discarded to the floor.
The dusty textbooks looked pitiful, like lifeless objects with a sense of abandonment.
"This outdated crap is all garbage now! With just Void Resonance Art, even minor clans lacking secret arts can rival direct heirs of great families!!"
"Uh…? This is different…."
Usually, folks clung to the old and rejected newfangled stuff, right?
Professor Heo Taegong was more radical than I'd thought.