Chapter 66
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 66
Chapter Title: Laziness and the Mage (4)
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Late into the dawn.
The sky had long been shrouded in darkness, yet the light in the department head's office atop the magic tower's highest floor still burned steadily.
Magic Department Head Raymond Cloud sat on the plush sofa, rifling through a stack of documents.
It was none other than the incident report that Chief Professor Howard had dumped on him earlier that day, detailing Lunaris's mishap.
"Hmmm~"
His body felt impossibly heavy, like it weighed a thousand tons.
Fatigue had seeped into his very bones from the relentless academy schedule and back-to-back Mage Tower meetings.
But strangely enough, sleep refused to come.
"Did I overdo it on the coffee...?"
The department head muttered, staring down at his now-cold coffee cup.
He'd thought himself immune to caffeine ages ago.
Or maybe it was the racket from those professors who'd barged in during the day, their voices still buzzing in his skull?
That Howard fellow sure had lungs on him, that was for damn sure.
Raymond pressed his temples firmly.
Perhaps this was the gut instinct of a mage.
The sense that he shouldn't sleep just yet—that something was about to go down.
An intuition defying logical explanation.
Come to think of it, things sounded a bit rowdy outside.
More precisely, he could feel the mana currents in the air twisting ever so subtly.
A faint disturbance any ordinary mage might brush off as a bad day or off-condition.
But as an archmage who had reached the pinnacle, he sensed that delicate shift more sharply than most.
The moment the thought flashed through his mind that something might blow—
-Knock, knock.
A gentle rap shattered the quiet stillness.
Unlike the boisterous pounding from those daytime troublemakers, this was polite, refined.
Though the urgency behind it was just as palpable.
"It's open~ Come on in."
The door swung wide, and a man stumbled in, panting heavily.
Who was this again? Such a familiar face.
Ah. Right—the newest addition to the Magic Department faculty, freshly appointed this semester.
He remembered the guy's face well: a former lackey who'd groveled under the chief professor for over a decade before finally clawing his way to a professorship.
The man straightened his clothes before the department head—who sat with legs casually crossed on the sofa—then spoke in an exhausted voice.
"Haa, haa... Department Head! You're still up. I saw the light in your office and figured I'd check."
"Appreciate you pulling night duty. But what's got you here at this hour?"
"Well, it's just..."
The professor trailed off, swallowing hard.
His face was a tangle of bewilderment and reverence.
"You need to head to the practice building. Now."
Raymond's eyebrows shot up.
"What's the emergency? Routine maintenance on the practice building's magic devices isn't for another couple weeks, last I checked. And anyway, it's not my rotation this time—it's Department Head Lilliana's..."
"Stu—Student Gaius Leonhardt and Student Lunaris Evermoon... they're at it again. Round two, right on the heels of yesterday."
"...Pardon?"
Raymond bolted upright from the sofa like he'd been waiting for this.
He summoned his robe from across the room with a flick of telekinesis magic.
"Gotta see this myself!"
A gleeful grin split the department head's face.
The weariness etched into his features had vanished in an instant.
He'd been dying to witness Lunaris's progress firsthand anyway.
"Looks like she's gone and vaulted that wall in the meantime..."
Tonight's stubborn insomnia might just have been divine providence, urging him to behold this historic moment with his own eyes.
The birth of the one-of-a-kind student archmage—the empire's youngest ever.
Underground beneath the magic tower's main building: the practice hall.
Even in the late dawn with the moon hanging high, the arena's spectator seats teemed with onlookers.
Not just the overtime night-duty professors and guards, either.
Sharp-eared students who'd caught wind of the rumors and snuck out in their pajamas, dodging the maids.
A massive crowd, all eyes glued to the spectacle unfolding in the arena.
Raymond, arriving fashionably late to join the throng, found his jaw dropping at the sight before him.
"..."
Meteors plummeted. Flames roared skyward.
Storms raged. Frost scattered like deadly confetti.
Amid bursts of blinding light, space itself screamed and warped.
It was a scene straight out of a natural cataclysm.
At the epicenter of that maelstrom stood Lunaris.
Rooted in place like a statue.
Only her fingers stirred.
Graceful, conductor-like sweeps through the empty air.
Her mouth let out nothing but a lazy Haaaah~ yawn—no incantations.
No intricate formulas in sight.
Not even a magic circle—the gateway for spells—lingered; it flickered for a split second and winked out.
There was no process to the magic.
Only the raw result. The phenomenon, laid bare.
"She really... did it."
Archmage Raymond shivered.
Swift chant? Abbreviated casting? Those were distant memories now.
This was...
An anomaly, one that bypassed the very logic and causality underpinning magic.
The ideal of every mage.
Standing there right now...
Was another archmage, eye-to-eye with him, drinking in the same vista.
That girl had done it tonight... or maybe even last night.
She'd scaled the wall mages chased their whole lives.
Elterion Academy—nay, the empire—had birthed another archmage.
"Raaaaagh-!!"
Against that living apocalypse charged a lone knight.
Gaius Leonhardt.
Propped up by his single sword, he rent flames asunder, shattered ice, and pressed forward.
Beneath that overwhelming barrage, he looked fragile as a rowboat in a typhoon.
Swordsmen-hating mages couldn't help but pity the poor guy.
But he didn't capsize.
On the contrary—he cleaved the waves, slipping through magic's chinks, doggedly narrowing the gap to Lunaris.
"No freaking way..."
"Isn't that straight-up insane?"
"That's not the magic I know... not even close."
"Senior Gaius... is he gonna be okay?"
Awe-struck gasps erupted from the students in the stands.
"Heh heh... remarkable."
"A student duel, they say..."
"I'm the one who ought to be taking notes here."
Even the professors were speechless.
Lunaris went without saying—but Gaius had blasted far past student tier too.
-Rumble rumble rumble!
The clash grew fiercer by the second.
Space buckled. The arena floor spiderwebbed with cracks.
The defensive barrier—meticulously maintained and upgraded over years by Raymond and Lilliana—began to quiver.
It could shrug off supreme-tier spells, sure, but waves of advanced magic detonating in rapid succession, laced with mana-charged sword ki? Structural failure was inevitable.
The barrier was one thing; Gaius's state was far graver.
His muscles bulged, screaming in protest.
Mana overload burst his veins, turning his bronze skin a fiery crimson.
It was heartbreaking—whipping his blade with power wrung beyond limits, at the cost of his very life.
"Sh-shouldn't we stop this, Department Head?!"
"Gaius is in real danger at this rate!"
The professors, snapped from their daze, began murmuring in alarm.
"Lunaris isn't right in the head either! We have to intervene!"
"Every spell she's slinging is lethal!"
"Someone's gonna die if this keeps up!"
A few professors went sheet-white, bolting for the barrier controls.
Or trying to.
"Stand down."
A low, steady voice pinned them in place.
It was Raymond himself blocking their path.
"Department Head! This is beyond serious—"
"Let it play out."
Even as he held back the others, Raymond's gaze never left the arena.
"I'll own whatever happens."
"It's not about owning it!"
"If someone gets gravely hurt, we can't undo that!"
Raymond stood resolute amid the outcry.
"Don't you see? Both of them are shattering their limits right here!"
One of those rare, life-altering turning points.
The instant they cracked their shells and burned bright.
Raymond's voice rose.
"As their teachers, we can't fail to clear the path—let alone block it!"
His unyielding tone made the professors flinch, exchanging uneasy glances.
Only the department head still saw those two as mere "students."
Inside the arena, the air hurtled toward critical mass.
-BOOM!
Gaius, swept up in the mana tempest.
His body was a wreck.
Clothes long reduced to charred tatters, skin without a single unscathed patch.
Yet he didn't retreat an inch— he surged ahead.
Accelerating, even.
Forward.
Stripped of any compulsion to strike or obsession to win.
His mind held one pure thought: take the next step. And the one after.
Paradoxically, the power coiling at his sword's tip only swelled.
All that remained was unadulterated will, fixed solely on Lunaris.
-Thump!
Gaius kicked off the floor and launched skyward.
Slipping a hairsbreadth through the onslaught of mana storm.
At long last, he closed in on Lunaris.
"..."
Lunaris's half-lidded eyes twitched, brows lifting faintly.
Her lips parted just a fraction.
"Guess that's plenty for my post-meal stroll."
With a sharp Hup!, Gaius thrust his mana-sheathed wooden sword.
One final lunge, every ounce of strength poured in.
As the strike bore down on her nape—
From Gaius's fingertips came a pathetic poof.
The sword hit its limit first.
Unable to withstand its master's power or the enemy's onslaught, the wooden blade crumbled to dust and scattered.
"Ah...!"
Mournful sighs rippled through the crowd.
Of all the timings, right at the clutch moment.
If only the weapon had held...
He could've touched her.
What a hollow finish.
A swordless swordsman might as well be beaten.
But Gaius refused to yield.
"Can't... let it end... like this...!"
The lingering mana afterimage etched where the wooden sword had been.
Azure flames erupted atop it.
In that fleeting instant as dust flew—
A formless sword materialized in his empty grasp.
A blade of purest mana and battle spirit, blindingly blue.
"...Mana Blade!"
The professors cried out as one, stunned.
Sword manifestation.
Gaius had smashed through his own wall too.
Sure, the road ahead was long.
But at last, he was qualified to tread the path blazed by archmages like Lunaris or Raymond.
"...Oh."
Lunaris let out a soft gasp.
Pure, genuine admiration—untouched by any ulterior motive.