Chapter 86
Chapter 86
Demon King Awakener?
“Now then, the activation phrase is ‘Eumuro Yang Eul sansuehara!’
However, with your level of mana and concentration, even if you manage to recite the activation phrase properly, there’s no way you’ll be able to cast the spell. So make sure to test it inside this safety barrier.”
Baroness Wilem prepared the safety barrier and strongly advised the students to cast their spells inside it during practice.
A male student from Zephyros raised his wand arrogantly.
“Alright. I’ve memorized the activation phrase.
There are a lot of formulas, sure, but magic works just by chanting the activation phrase, right?”
“Oh, is that so? Still, please step inside the safety barrier before casting.”
Teaching assistant Clarisse smiled like someone half out of her mind as she warned him.
“Hm. I wonder if this kind of barrier just gets in the way of casting.
I may not look it, but I’m known as a genius back in my region… I didn’t stand out in the entrance rankings, but I’m definitely third place after Lady Isolde and His Highness Rudolf.”
The boastful student said that and tried to cast the spell anyway, but Clarisse grabbed his wand and shook her head.
Then she leaned in and whispered quietly into his ear.
“I’m telling you nicely, cast it inside the barrier.
Yeah? I haven’t slept for 40 hours right now.
So don’t get on my nerves and let’s keep things easy.”
“Wait a second?
Do you even know that I’m the second son of the Furlong family?
This is extremely rude.”
“I’m doing this out of respect for the Furlong family.
If I just leave you alone and you end up as a lump of meat that used to be the Furlong family’s second son, that would be far more disrespectful to your house, wouldn’t it?
Or is it different if your family sent you here to die?”
“What kind of—”
“You won’t succeed with this spell anyway.
If you manage to succeed today, I’ll become your servant—no, your slave if you want. So just cast it inside the barrier.”
After saying that, Clarisse shoved the arrogant student forward, forcing him into the barrier.
The student reluctantly stumbled inside and raised his wand.
“Hmph. How rude, but fine. I’ll succeed in casting it right here and make you my slave. Honestly, being my slave would be better than working as a teaching assistant for 40 hours straight.”
“……”
“What?”
“No, that sounded tempting for a second. I’m reflecting on myself.”
Clarisse said that, closed her eyes, and began nodding off almost immediately.
Just how terrible was the job of a teaching assistant?
Everyone wondered.
“E~ Eu mu~ro Yang!”
The arrogant student began chanting the activation phrase.
And sure enough…
Before he could even finish the chant, his mana was rapidly drained, and his knees buckled.
“Ghk?!”
This magic contained multiple composite spells, and its mana consumption was enormous—far beyond what he could handle.
His mana had already been completely drained in the early part of the chant, yet the latter half of the activation phrase continued to force the spell forward, draining even more from him.
If things went wrong, his life could be in danger.
At that moment, the safety barrier activated and forcibly canceled the spell, saving him.
“Cough?! Th-this is impossible! M-me, fail?!”
Even after nearly dying, the arrogant student still acted full of himself.
“Of course. This true cooling magic is not something you can learn in the standard curriculum at Dunais Academy.
Even if you become teaching assistants, it’s normal not to learn it in your first year.
If any of you manage to learn this magic right now, I will call you a true genius.
I’ll even give you 50 merit points—no, 100.”
Baroness Wilem looked proudly at the struggling student.
“Hehe… Now then, that’s enough of that. Let’s move on to cooling magic using the Ice Spirit Realm.
It’s a bit of a shortcut method, but it has fewer side effects and better serves the purpose of cooling. Normally, Professor Magram would teach summoning magic like this quite well, but since he is a fire spirit himself, I will personally handle cooling magic.”
Baroness Wilem assumed that the students had no chance of mastering the original cooling magic, so she altered the formula and projected a practical, everyday cooling spell onto the illusionary blackboard.
But Idnia felt something was off.
“Huh…? I feel like I might actually be able to do this?”
Unlike the other students, Idnia had studied science on Earth, giving her a different level of understanding of magic.
From that perspective, this cooling magic was nothing short of revolutionary.
“The activation phrase was ‘negate the positive with the negative,’ right?
To cancel out positive energy with negative energy… this concept of negative energy is absurd.
And it’s only being used to lower temperature? It feels like it could have far more limitless applications.”
As Idnia absorbed and reflected on the concept she had learned, she was deeply impressed.
At that moment, Baroness Wilem called out to her.
“Student Idnia.”
“Ah, yes? Baroness Wilem?”
“It seems my lesson is too easy for you, since you’re lost in thought. Would you come up here and demonstrate how well you’ve understood by performing cooling magic?”
“Ah… cooling magic?”
Idnia was flustered.
She had been so focused on the original cooling magic that she hadn’t paid attention to the Ice Spirit Realm method taught afterward.
Mistaking that for daydreaming, Baroness Wilem had singled her out.
“Now then, please demonstrate.”
Baroness Wilem smiled slyly.
“The daughter of Flora, who bullied me during my school days… I can’t treat her carelessly due to her status, but this is part of the lesson.
If she fails, I’ll deduct a large number of points.
Her merit points are probably too high right now, making her arrogant… teaching her humility here would be proper for an educator.
Yes, this is all part of education!”
Though Baroness Wilem believed she was being fair despite her past with Flora, the moment she singled out Idnia and decided to penalize her if she failed, she had already strayed far from fairness.
Still, seeing Idnia flustered filled her with satisfaction.
“S-so, I just need to use cooling magic, right?”
“Yes. Any method is fine.”
“Understood. Then…”
Idnia took a deep breath, stepped forward, and headed into the safety barrier.
“?!”
Everyone was shocked to see her step inside.
“No way?!”
Isolde was stunned.
Could it be that Idnia intended to use the original cooling magic?
That level of high-tier magic?
Even teaching assistants failed at it. If a freshman managed to cast it, it would become a legendary story.
It should be impossible.
And yet…
“If it’s her… she might actually do it. But if that’s possible…”
Isolde felt a chill of fear.
“Uh, hey…”
Clarisse looked at Idnia, startled.
“You don’t have to do something that difficult.”
“I thought so too, but then I realized… if I don’t try it now, while there’s a safety barrier and teaching assistants to protect me, I might regret it.”
Clarisse was taken aback by those words.
Regret not trying?
Had she never seen someone completely wrecked by magical backlash?
“The barrier will protect you from injury, but you’ll still feel the pain.
If you haven’t experienced mana exhaustion before, trust me—you don’t want to.
It feels like every nerve in your body is being seasoned with salt and pepper.”
“Thank you for the warning.”
Inside the barrier, Idnia raised her wand.
She aimed at a dish filled with water and cast the spell.
“Negate the positive with the negative!”
Her wand shone brightly.
“What?!”
“No way!”
“Hmm?!”
The teaching assistants and Baroness Wilem were all shocked.
She completed the entire activation phrase?
That alone was astonishing.
Normally, people would lose consciousness just from the mana drain while chanting the first few words.
Outside the safety barrier, it could even be fatal.
But Idnia was perfectly fine.
And…
The water in the dish was perfectly fine too.
“Hm? What in the world is this? Let me check.
Everyone, remain quiet until the inspection is complete!”
Baroness Wilem calmed the students and approached cautiously.
If the original cooling magic had succeeded, there was no telling what might have happened.
She first used telekinesis to disturb the surface of the water.
No reaction.
She even lifted the water with telekinesis, wondering if it had become supercooled—but still, nothing happened.
“It doesn’t seem to be supercooled. If it were, it would have frozen instantly upon disturbance.
However, the temperature might have dropped.”
At her words, some immature students snickered.
“That’s it? Even the ice shop mages in the market can freeze water instantly.”
“You said it was some great magic, but if all it does is make water slightly cold, that’s nothing special.”
Baroness Wilem shook her head.
“To be this uneducated is practically shameless. How can you say something so foolish?
If a freshman successfully casts this original cooling magic, it goes beyond the level of genius.
It can only be described as that of a Demon King.”
“Pardon?”
“A De—”
Everyone was left speechless.
A Demon King?
In truth, it was a word people avoided uttering carelessly.
A being chosen by a god from another world—a Chosen.
However, due to the Trinity Church’s stance that the term ‘Chosen’ acknowledged the authority of foreign gods, the term Demon King came to be used instead.
Because such a being was created through divine selection, it came to be seen as an ominous and ill-fated existence among humans.
Anyone could awaken as a Demon King.
And so, people feared it, avoiding even mentioning it.
Only then did the students grasp the gravity of the situation and fell silent.
Baroness Wilem carefully approached the tray and touched the water with her hand.
Slightly cool.
But it felt no different from water left at room temperature.
“Let’s see…”
She even brought out a thermometer.
Placing the old mercury-filled glass thermometer into the water, she asked a teaching assistant for the original temperature.
The result showed no difference at all.
“It appears you have failed, Lady Idnia.”
“It seems so.”
“In that case, returning to our original discussion—please demonstrate freezing the water using Ice Spirit Realm magic.”
“Yes.”
Idnia stepped out of the barrier and cast the spell again with her wand.
This time, cold air and icy wind flowed properly from the Ice Spirit Realm, freezing the water in the dish.
“……”
Baroness Wilem was too preoccupied with examining the possibility that Idnia had cast the original cooling magic to notice.
But the other students had seen it.
While Baroness Wilem was distracted with the tray, Idnia had quickly manipulated the illusionary blackboard, learning the Ice Spirit Realm spell she had missed earlier.
Despite the ominous atmosphere created by the mention of a Demon King awakening, Idnia calmly studied the board and essentially copied the spell.
A Demon King awakener… cheating during class?
The sight was so absurd that everyone struggled to hold back their laughter.