Chapter 36
Chapter 36
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 36
Chapter Title: The Uncrossable Bridge (3)
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‘Sorry. We have to survive, too.’
The male student squeezed his eyes shut and cast Teleportation toward Shirone.
If they collided, a critical injury would be unavoidable.
“Keuk!”
A groan of fear escaped him, but he didn’t feel the impact he had braced for.
When he opened his eyes, Shirone was still beside him.
‘He changed direction.’
Dodging was better than mutual destruction, but he'd lost distance, meaning victory was now out of the question.
The female and male students fell with satisfied expressions, and Mark seized the lead from Shirone.
‘Damn it…!’
His rhythm broken by the recent evasion, Shirone gritted his teeth and focused his mind to pick up the tempo of his Teleportation.
“Those kids just now, wasn't their movement a little strange?”
A comment came from the advanced course students.
“I thought so too. Maybe they pushed too hard and got tangled up? Surely they didn't actually try to collide.”
“No, they did it on purpose.”
The Class Five students turned to look back.
The owner of the thin, metallic voice was Mercodine Iruki of Class Five.
He was the one who had offered Shirone advice in the Image Zone before, with a scrawny body, mismatched eyes, and jagged teeth.
“How can you be so sure? In cases like this, you might have suspicions, but you can't know unless you're the one involved.”
Iruki held out one palm and struck it with his other fist.
“One person blocks the path while the other hits from the side. It's a brilliant strategy that simultaneously shuts down both the immediacy of Teleportation and the spatial leap. If Shirone hadn't dodged, the match would have ended right there. Of course, if it were me, I could have calculated the equations of motion and escaped at the last possible second.”
The classmates turned their heads back toward the testing grounds.
‘What a damn show-off.’
Meanwhile, as the gap with Mark widened, Shirone began to feel a little anxious.
The remaining distance was 350 meters.
At the halfway point, all participants except Shirone and Mark had been eliminated.
‘I've won! I’ve won!’
The moment he was certain of first place, Mark thrilled.
There was no one blocking his path, and despite having cast nearly 40 Teleportations, he didn't even feel tired.
‘Today, I'm different from my usual self. I'm the one who's going to pass!’
The rapid promotion to Class Five, the envious faces of his peers, the humiliation of the Class Six upperclassmen—all flashed through his mind.
“Hahaha! I'm number one!”
As Mark spurred on the tempo of his Teleportation, the distance between him and Shirone began to widen even more.
‘In that case…’
Shirone's rhythm suddenly quickened, and the sound of his Teleportations tearing through the air echoed like the beating of a drum.
The students' excitement reached its peak.
“Shirone's starting to catch up! This is the deciding moment!”
“Mark! More! Faster! More, more, more!”
Just then, Mark’s eyes detected a strange change.
The iron bars of the Uncrossable Bridge began to bend geometrically, approaching at a tremendous speed.
If even the tip of his toe got caught, a fracture would be the least of his worries; his balance would be shattered, and a fall would be inevitable.
-Warning. Warning. Activating the Uncrossable Bridge mechanism. Level 10. Level 10.
The advanced course students were horrified.
“Level 10?”
The highest difficulty level of the Uncrossable Bridge.
Even the upper classes of the advanced course had never seen the iron bars bend into such a menacing shape.
“What in the world is going on! For the mechanism to suddenly activate!”
The teachers fell into confusion.
Not only had the safety device been turned off, but the highest-difficulty trap had also been activated.
“What is Teacher Thadd doing! He went to the control room!”
“Headmaster, what should we do? The promotion test is…”
Alpheas clicked his tongue as he watched the bent iron bars, which were moments away from striking Shirone and Mark.
He knew the determination with which the students faced their graduation exams and wanted to respect their will as much as possible, but Level 10 of the Uncrossable Bridge was a different story.
‘This doesn't even serve as a proper evaluation. At their class level, they can't possibly pass.’
Alpheas spoke with a bitter taste in his mouth.
“Cancel the test and deactivate the mechanism.”
The moment he finished speaking, a streak of light shot up into the sky above the testing grounds.
It was Shina, who had left for the control room to find Thadd.
* * *
Meanwhile, unaware of the situation at the testing grounds, Thadd fumed to himself as he approached the control room entrance.
“Damn it! Just let me find out who did this!”
The staff in charge would never deactivate the mechanism unless they were insane, so it was clearly the work of some troublemakers at the academy.
“Who the hell…!”
He shouted as he roughly turned the doorknob, only to hear a click from the inside, indicating it was locked.
“You little brat!”
As he deployed his Spirit Zone, he could feel someone sitting with their back against the other side of the door.
Thadd said, conjuring flames in his hand.
“Open up. I'm about to cast Fire Strike. If you don't, I'll blow you away with it.”
“I don't care. No, please, do it, Teacher.”
Unexpectedly, it was Maria's voice.
He wasn't her dedicated teacher, but she had been attending the academy since before he was appointed, so there was no mistaking it.
“You, Maria? What is the meaning of this?”
“I'm sorry, Teacher. Please don't forgive me.”
“Open the door. Let's talk face-to-face first.”
“I'll be expelled now, right? No, will I be sent to prison?”
“No, Maria. I don't know what your circumstances are, but I'll listen. Just open the door first.”
“It doesn't matter. I don't want to live. I just wish I could die right here.”
Thadd quelled the blazing fire.
“Haa. Fine, if you don't want to come out, then don't.”
Judging by Maria's usual behavior, she wasn't in her right mind, so smashing the door down would be pointless.
Thadd sat with his back against the iron door and gazed up at the sky of Alpheas Magic Academy, a sky he had found so tedious in his youth.
The simple fact that he didn't yell at her to come out immediately helped calm Maria's heart, if only a little.
“Teacher.”
“Yeah?”
“You hate me, don't you?”
“I don't hate women.”
He generally liked women, but this statement was a quirky conviction of Thadd's that carried a different weight.
“Why is the world so unfair?”
“Haha! You don't like unfairness? It's rare for someone to be born as pretty as you.”
“A teacher called a genius mage wouldn't know what it's like to have no talent. Even when I want to do well, despair comes first. It feels like nothing I do will ever work out. Do you know how hopeless that feels?”
“...I do.”
Maria turned her head toward the iron door.
“You, Teacher?”
“I graduated at twenty-two, so it's already been four years since I became a teacher. When you enrolled, I must have been in my final year. You know I'm a graduate of this place, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then try to remember. Have you ever heard anyone talk about a student named Thadd attending this academy?”
Come to think of it, she couldn't remember at all.
It was unusual, especially considering someone like Shirone, who had been the talk of the students from the moment he enrolled.
“No. I've never heard of you.”
“I figured. My grades were in the lower-middle range, I had no talent, my family wasn't well-off, and I was always getting into fights outside of school.”
“You, Teacher?”
“Yep. I spent a full two years in every class before moving up. And I was held back in the final year for three years. Haha! Of course, my situation might seem a little better than yours right now.”
Thadd said, imagining Maria's sullen expression.
“But isn't it all the same in the end? If you can't be the best, everyone gets broken at some point. It was the same for me. I somehow made it to the final year, but I failed every time.”
“But how did you…”
“Become such a successful teacher? It was all luck. Pure luck. I say I did my best, but it wasn't as much as others, and I got tired of struggling to beat someone else. Then one day, someone said this to me.”
Thadd recalled that time as he spoke.
“‘The reason you can't win in a competition isn't because you're incapable of winning, but because you don't want to win.’”
Maria quietly repeated those words.
“Maria, you don't have to beat someone else. If you love magic, that's enough. In this world, there are people who don't want to compete with anyone. People like me.”
The ten-year-old girl who entered the academy because she loved magic was now, nine years later, a complete wreck.
“My life changed after I met him. Thinking back, he's a real eccentric, isn't he? A teacher saying something like that.”
“He was a teacher?”
“Yeah. My master, Headmaster Alpheas.”
Maria's head whipped around.
“What? The Headmaster?”
“From that day on, I became his official apprentice and received private tutoring. A huge privilege. Thanks to that, my life turned around. Being taught by a mage renowned across the continent, even a good-for-nothing like me gets to live it up, being called a genius, right? What do you think? Jealous? Life is all about luck. Luck. Hahaha!”
Maria became gloomy again.
“So what I want to tell you is that the world is, in the end, unfair. Some are born with talent, and some throw themselves into competition like demons. But even for people like me, who have no talent and hate competing, miracles can sometimes happen. Isn't that why everyone lives with hope?”
Thadd dusted himself off, stood up, and turned around.
“A miracle can come to anyone. It's a waste of all the time you've spent to give up already. Why not try just a little longer, just a tiny bit more?”
Maria buried her face in her knees.
“Do I have to bet my life waiting for a miracle that may or may not come for someone with no talent like me? What if it never comes? What happens to me then?”
“What are you talking about, Maria?”
Thadd placed his hand on the iron door and smiled.
“See? A miracle has come to you right now, too.”
Tears welled up in Maria's eyes.
“Let's try again, with me. You haven't had a string of successes like others, but don't define yourself so soon. Maybe you were just really unlucky. Maybe your method was wrong. The academy's curriculum isn't effective for everyone. So, could you entrust yourself to me one more time? I'll make you a mage, I promise.”
Maria covered her face with both hands.
“Teacher, really? Can I do it too?”
“You can. If magic is your whole life, then there's absolutely no reason to give up.”
A clattering sound was heard, and Maria, her eyes swollen, emerged after unlocking the door and shouted urgently.
“Teacher! Quickly, the device……. The device…!”
“Hmm? The device?”
Even leaping 700 meters wouldn't take that long with Teleportation magic.
By now, the test should have been nearing its end, and seeing as there had been no news, it seemed the promotion test had concluded safely thanks to the teachers' competence.
At that moment, as if betraying Thadd's expectations, a flash of light fell with a sharp sound.
“Teacher Thadd! What are you doing right now!”
Shina's face, as she rushed over with fire in her eyes, was a mixture of anger and urgency.
As she was about to grab Thadd by the collar, she noticed Maria and wore a bewildered expression.
“Maria? What are you doing here?”
Thadd asked.
“Why? Is something wrong?”
Shina shouted again.
“Deactivate the mechanism, quickly! The Uncrossable Bridge's difficulty has been set to Level 10!”
“What?”
So she hadn't just deactivated the safety device?
Recalling Maria's words, Thadd realized it was true and hastily turned toward the control room.
Just then, another streak of light warped in.
Etella, having arrived via spatial transfer, spotted Shina and Thadd and came running over, out of breath.
“Teachers! It's a disaster, a disaster!”
Since a literally massive trap had been activated, Shina was suddenly struck with fear.
“What's wrong? Don't tell me there was an accident…?”
Etella, her eyes still wide with shock, cried out.
“Shirone… Shirone!”