What They Call an Academy
Even at the academy’s entrance, the chaos was impossible to miss.
What first seized the eye was the desperate struggle of the priests and the faculty, students included. They were fighting with everything they had to keep the ghouls reeking of corpse poison and the cursed skeletons from spilling out beyond the grounds.
The strange part was how the undead horde remained intact despite the priests and clerics pouring out holy power without restraint. The reason was almost certainly the enormous magic circle glowing behind them. Ominous mana pulsed from that sinister purple array, strengthening the undead while shielding them enough to endure the holy assaults. Worse, it was still churning out half-formed undead without pause, locking everyone into a stalemate where neither side could advance or retreat. Odds were high this was pure stalling—or a deliberate wall to keep outside reinforcements from arriving.
And it was working brilliantly. Ignoring the undead to smash the circle risked the monsters flooding past and wreaking havoc behind the lines. Holding the line, on the other hand, left everyone fretting about whatever was happening deeper inside. Urgency and anxiety were carved into every face.
“Do not grow impatient!! We are advancing steadily even now!!”
“Mages, focus on maintaining the barriers, not casting spells! Holy power is not for scattering wide—concentrate it and fire to purify the enemy cleanly!”
Leading them were the bald instructor I had seen during the joint second- and third-year class, and a first-year professor swinging a staff while erecting barriers. The two moved as if they had been coordinating for years, seamlessly covering each other’s gaps, holding back the endless undead tide so the priests and clerics could work their purification rites.
I watched from the air for a moment, then fed mana into Kallion. The moment we arrived I had already sent Hive’s shadow crows on a suicide charge into the zombies, so Subjugator was fully stacked. The real target was the undead pouring from that circle in the rear.
The bald professor spotted me late and his eyes went wide; the barrier instructor started weaving a spell. But Kallion’s mana gathered first.
“Fire.”
“Grrrrrk…”
At my command, Kallion—who had been condensing mana in his maw—unleashed a blast laced with the milky-white aura I had once seen in a vision. The barrage tore straight through the hastily completed barrier and slammed into the undead.
KWA-AAAAAANG!!!!
The undead were swept away in an instant. Even so, the faculty recovered their formation with impressive speed and rebuilt the defensive line. It was a clear reminder that the academy did not hire its teachers lightly.
“Ugh!? Priests, hurry and purify the corpse poison spreading through the air…!”
“No need. That mana itself is burning away the poison and the curses.”
Exactly. The reason I could fire freely was Kallion’s trait, Holy. A power close to rejection and annihilation—in a sense, it bordered on Evil-Slaying. Designate the target as something foul, then erase it. What else would you call that?
I was certain this was the intended use. When I first chose the evolution into Saint Dragon, the vision had shown him scouring a dead land choked with undead and driving death itself away. Remembering that, I had attacked without hesitation.
Two or three more blasts later, a clear path opened toward the circle that had been spewing undead. The bald professor seized the moment, charging forward. He stripped off the white gloves he had been wearing, pulled a new pair of crimson ones from his coat, and condensed mana.
Fwoosh!!
Light flared from the gloves, answering the mana by vomiting red flames. He wrapped himself in the fire and slammed straight into the magic circle.
KUUUUUNG!!!
A massive boom shook the air, accompanied by the screech of twisting glass—the circle resisting his mana. But only for a moment. As the flames roared higher, cracks spiderwebbed across the array and it shattered.
“Guoooooh…”
“Krrrk…?!”
The undead that had shrugged off holy power now groaned in agony. The accumulated sanctity they had been ignoring finally took effect.
“…Now!! Push them baaaaack!!!!”
““UOOOOOOOH!!!!””
Enemies that had barely reacted to any attack collapsed and were neutralized in a heartbeat. The tide reversed at once. Confirming it, I flew down to the bald professor, who had isolated himself to destroy the circle, and burned the undead around him.
“You are… the student from last time. My thanks for the assistance.”
He bowed his head in genuine gratitude even to a student. That alone told me the kind of man he was. Putting on airs here would gain me nothing and only cost me. I had no intention of inventing losses, so I simply shook my head.
“Not at all. More importantly, what’s the situation?”
The sooner they cleaned this up, the sooner I could rest. A fair investment. Get to work already. That was the meaning I packed into the words. The bald professor nodded, brushed the ash from his ruined gloves, and pulled on a fresh white pair.
“At present, individuals presumed to be black mages of the Black Magic Tower, along with unidentified freaks, have infiltrated the academy. They struck with perfect timing the moment the barrier was loosened for its scheduled inspection.”
On the surface he looked calm and cold, but the loathing and rage burning inside him were ice-cold fire.
“…Wasn’t it breached a little too easily?”
“I understand why a student would think so. But the day and hour of the weekly barrier inspection are randomized and only told to the inspectors that morning. Outsiders cannot learn it. This time, information almost certainly leaked from inside. The fact that certain sections were unusually weak is also suspicious. This year truly has been one endless string of incidents.”
He swept a gloved hand over his smooth scalp as if thoroughly fed up, then looked at me with a low sigh.
“…Can you help?”
“That’s why I came in the first place.”
If I didn’t help, it would just become more of a pain later. I shrugged to show agreement. The professor’s expression grew even more serious. Thoughts were clearly colliding inside him.
From his position, protecting a student like me was the correct call. But leaving a talent who could erase undead poison and curses with zero risk unused would be pure incompetence. Borrow my power to end this quickly, or follow the rules and keep me safe?
The scales had already tipped. Me going inside was the ideal solution, and I had come intending exactly that. He had no way of knowing, of course. In a way, the real victim here was the man who had to come to work on a weekend and suffer like this.
So I decided to give him a story that would ease his guilt. Convenient that I was already outside. I would leave blocking third-party interference to him.
“Professor. On the way here I spotted a group infiltrating the academy. I was flying too fast to get a clear look, but their target is almost certainly this place…”
“…Haa. Jackals waiting for their moment exist in every age. I understand what you wish to say, student.”
He grasped the hidden meaning at once; the hardness left his face and it softened. Being an academy teacher really was a thankless job. You suffered, got tangled up with the protagonist, and got hammered from every side by this kind of mess.
Fail to protect something and you got cursed. Protect it with all your might, stabilize everything, and then arrive only to hear “What were you doing all this time? You’re already too late. Incompetent.” Wasn’t that the real definition of a thankless grind?
I could never do that for a living. I was already half-stuck doing something similar, but making it your actual job was a different breed of hell.
“I’ll head inside. Professor, please secure an escape route in case of the unexpected.”
“Ah, leave it to me.”
At his glance I turned at once and mounted Kallion. We shot into the air; eyes briefly gathered on us, but I ignored them and flew straight toward the academy’s sky.
Kuuuk.
Halfway there I felt something sticky pass through me and my body grew heavy. My chest tightened; my breath shortened. Mana felt like it was clotting and jamming. A complex web of curses had been scattered everywhere.
“Kallion.”
“Grrrng!!”
He felt it too. Annoyed by the clinging curses, he detonated milky-white mana and blasted them away in one go. Temporary relief only. The farther we went, the more the curses reattached, forcing him to detonate again and again. There was no end to it. Deeper in, both the quality and quantity of the curses only increased.
Even with Subjugator boosting us, constant one-sided drain would hit the limit fast. Carpet-bombing the academy interior was also out of the question.
We had to take down the source of the curses. And that source was almost certainly wherever Ban Taewung was.
“Caaaw!!”
Right on cue, Hive cried from the shadows. He had found Ban Taewung. I took the information and urged Kallion after the shadow crow that burst out ahead of us.
….KWA-AAAANG
In the distance I saw undead flung into the air as if blasted by a storm of mana.
“Found them.”
Location: Second Arena. Even in this chaos the artificial dungeon was still running; students inside were struggling against undead. I immediately fed mana to Kallion.
A simple attack couldn’t distinguish friend from foe. So I would fire something effective only against undead. The image: a rain shower, a storm. Overwhelming force that would sweep the troublesome undead away like a sudden downpour.
I poured that image into Kallion. The magic circle unfolding before his maw crossed and rewove itself into a new form.
“Fire.”
“GROOOOOOH…!!”
Piyuuuung!!
The mass of mana shot not at the ground but high into the sky, then ballooned and spread thin and fast.
Drawn by gravity, the milky-white mana scattered and fell like rain. Students fleeing undead, students fighting undead, even the undead themselves all stared blankly upward.
They must have felt it instinctively: this was the power that would break the nightmare.
Shaaaaaaaaaa-------!!
A rain of mana fell. Faces twisted by corpse poison and curses lightened. The undead writhed, melted, and died.
In that moment a black-mana spell streaked toward me. At its compressed center a skull clacked its jaws, radiating pure killing intent. The malice, thickened by a powerful curse, was so sharp the fine hairs on my skin stood on end.
Yet its speed looked painfully slow. No—more accurately, it appeared slow.
My raised stats plus the skill Combat Focus had activated. Because I was dealing real-time damage to enemies, the system apparently judged this combat as well.
In the slowed world I calmly fed mana to Hive. Dodging that kind of guided attack was pointless. Better to make a substitute.
“Go.”
“Caw!!”
““Caaaaaw!!!””
A swarm of shadow crows erupted from Hive’s darkness and intercepted the spell with their bodies. The instant they touched it they turned to white bone and crumbled into dust, as if time had rewound. I sighed.
Five thousand six hundred twenty-one. Even under my command and boosted by Subjugator, more than five thousand shadow crows had to die before the spell was stopped.
Meanwhile the enemies kept dwindling. I ordered Kallion to circle the academy and keep raining the same attack from high above, then kicked off his back into empty air.
Mid-fall I reshaped the shadow saddle into a long wire, reeled it in the moment I landed, and wrapped my entire body in shadow.
Away from Kallion the curse pressure surged again, but once I formed a mask and pulled it on, my own mana was enough to endure.
“You bastard…!!”
“Sinwoo!!”
Two completely opposite reactions hit me the moment I steadied myself.
One came from an old man who looked like the mastermind of this whole mess. The other came from Ban Taewung, the walking disaster of a protagonist who seemed to grow thorns in his mouth if a single day passed without incident.
Of course his companions were there too: Cheon Jang-mi, face deathly pale from the curse; Luicia supporting her; Onohara Erika and Riri holding a defensive wall with some kind of talisman.
And standing protectively in front of them, Ban Taewung was locked in a standoff with the old man.
“A brat whose blood hasn’t even dried yet dares lay hands on my precious children…!!!”
Ting!
I formed a shadow blade and swatted aside the bone bullet aimed at me. Basic black magic, fired fast—but the mana packed into it was far beyond ordinary. My hand still rang from the impact.
In that brief window he must have summoned more undead; zombies and skeletons began clawing up through the ground as if rising from graves.
Not an ordinary bastard.
Thud!
“KRAAAAAAH!!!!”
More than half of them never fully emerged before their skulls burst or their bones crumbled to ash. Clear magical interference. The old black mage stomped the ground in rage, unable to contain himself.
“Every last one of you dares interfere with this body’s great work!!!”
Interfering mid-cast with an already-activated spell was something only one person here could do. The girl with the makings of a great mage, white hair gleaming, slowly opened her eyes and smirked.
“Figured that out ages ago. Not falling for it anymore.”
“Kuuugh…!”
“Nice one, Riri!!”
At Ban Taewung’s praise, only the corner of Riri’s expressionless mouth twitched upward. Seeing that, I felt a little relief—she was still alive enough to smirk.
Thanks to her half the undead had vanished, but half remained. Watching them begin to strengthen under the old man’s magic, I sheathed my blade and wrapped mana around my fingers. If the enemy used numbers, we would answer in kind.
“Growl. Echidna.”
Snap!
Light burst with the sound of mana. A girl in a nun’s habit and a massive wolf appeared at my sides.
I immediately formed a shadow halberd and a belt for an auxiliary mace, handing them to Echidna, then reinforced Growl’s fangs and claws with shadow. Now he could bite or rake poisoned undead without dropping from the toxin. As for Echidna, I had never worried about her to begin with.
“Echidna.”
“O Most Distant Rest… grant me strength…”
At my command she clasped her hands in prayer. A ring of mana formed above her head like a halo. It drank its own light until it glowed soft pink; geometric script bloomed inside it, and fragments of that script descended to wrap her body like armor.
Enhancement borrowed from the divine. The effect of Divine Aura.
Thok, whoosh! Clack.
The moment the prayer ended she kicked the spear’s tip up, caught it cleanly, and began raising mana through her entire body. I transformed my sheathed blade into a shadow bow and nocked an arrow.
“Holy power.”
“Yes.”
As if reading my mind she layered her own holy power onto my bow. Not a dramatic buff like Blessing, but enough sanctity to make it lethal against undead.
“Kha…! You think mere holy power like that can stop me!? A blood-snot brat like you is nothing without that damned lizard from earli—”
Creak, twang!
I added my own mana and loosed the arrow, cutting his words short.
Thud!!
Skeletons and zombies that leapt to shield their master exploded. The holy power inside prevented regeneration; they simply writhed and died.
“Why’s your tongue so long all of a sudden? What, scared you’ll lose to a blood-snot brat?”
Grit…!
The sound of mana-charged teeth grinding filled the air. A sticky wind of curses rolled out, making my body feel heavier still.
Ban Taewung’s group groaned under the pressure. The old man seemed to enjoy it; he suddenly struck a refined pose.
“…Child. I have seen many of your kind. Brats drunk on their own talent, strutting as if they were something special. Do you know what became of them?”
Crunch.
His wrinkled hand crushed the head of a zombie beside him, as if showing us our future.
“Originally I planned only to complete the commission and withdraw quickly. But I have changed my mind. Troublesome sprouts are best uprooted early. This will be your last road to the underworld. I shall grant you the honor of tasting a fragment of this body’s great path of magic.”
Crack, squelch.
Dark black mana writhed from the crushed zombie; the corpse compressed until it looked like a staff made of dead flesh.
All that posturing was just buying time to prepare for a real fight. I stretched my shadow to claim the ground beneath him and released the bowstring.
“Now, behold—”
Ting!
The arrow I loosed cut his words off. Aimed at his head, it punched halfway through an invisible barrier he must have raised in that split second and hung there in midair.
He clearly had not expected the shot; he blinked, then swallowed hard. Seeing him freeze solid, I seized the opening and spoke again.
“You talk way too fucking much. Shit. If you’re just scared to fight and need prep time, why dress it up in such a long speech?”
“…What?”
“What? You weren’t stalling on purpose? Real shitty concept you picked, old man.”
His mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. Whether he failed to understand or simply refused to, I couldn’t tell. What was certain was that he was furious. Stealing a mage’s composure was already half the battle won.
“Or what? Why can’t you answer? Been so long since you talked to a living person instead of playing house with stinking corpses that your brain’s rusted?”
I gave him no room to breathe. Blood vessels burst in his eyes; the muscles of his face twisted so hard they looked pitiful. Effective as hell. Lee Se-rin-style needling.
“…What… did you say?”
“I already told you, old fart. Going deaf in your old age?”
I converted the shadow bow back into a blade and raised my middle finger straight at his face, waggling it in open provocation.
“Stop yapping and come at me already.”
“…I will keep you alive no matter what and turn you into my experimental material.”
Empty, lukewarm killing intent full of vanity. Not even slightly scary.
I moved to keep him in check while he began preparing black magic and carefully widened the distance, reaching Ban Taewung and the others.
“…Sinwoo. That just now was a little much.”
“Shut up and just protect them. Keep that woman from doing anything stupid.”
The last part was aimed at Luicia, not Ban Taewung. She was half-eaten by the curse and whimpering, yet her eyes still held faint hostility and suspicion when they met mine.
She clearly hated the current situation and wanted to take it out on me.
Ha, fuck. If I don’t drive the nail in hard she’ll pull something immediately.
Useless bastard. I thrust a shadow blade at Cheon Jang-mi’s throat—not to pierce, just deep enough to break skin.
Clang!!
Ban Taewung half-blocked it by yanking his sword back, but the mere fact that I had gone for her neck without hesitation layered fear over the hostility in Cheon Jang-mi’s eyes. Probably the added effects of Torture and Sadism on that light attack.
“Jang Sinwoo, what the hell are you—”
“I told you. Protect them.”
I returned Ban Taewung’s half-indignant words with ice. He flinched but turned his gaze forward again.
“…Explain later. Definitely.”
He never could leave the last word alone. Annoying.
I left his flank to Growl and Echidna, turned, and crouched in front of Cheon Jang-mi, who was half-sprawled from the earlier strike. I met her eyes.
Girls like her never understood unless you spelled it out.
Slap!
I layered mana into the blow and backhanded her cheek.
Her head snapped sideways, but as an Awakened she managed to coat her neck in mana just in time to keep it from breaking. That didn’t make the hit hurt any less.
Before the pain could even let her speak, I opened my mouth first.
“Stop causing so much fucking trouble, you bitch. I even looked the other way on the rumors, and you pull this shit? This is the academy, not your goddamn living room.”
“Uh… uh?”
At first her face twisted viciously, proving the old saying about faces matching hearts—she burned with hostility at being slapped. But the moment the word “rumors” left my mouth, panic flooded her eyes.
I had only learned about it after hearing from Lee Se-rin, but the result was the same, so it wasn’t a lie. This level of bluffing was practically cute in business.
The problem was that this woman accepted my words at face value.
She should have at least cross-checked or wondered where the leak came from. No—before any of that she should have played dumb and denied everything.
If she had brazened it out I would have found her disgusting but still given her credit. Everything I said was circumstantial; I had no hard proof.
Instead she panicked like a child whose secret had been found out, confirming my words were correct.
This airheaded bitch was the next-in-line candidate for the top dark-guild family? The world really was ending.
I layered Charisma and crushed her with mana. Being weakened by a curse was no excuse.
Was she my woman or something?
To me she was nothing but a walking disaster, a bomb that could go off any second. If I didn’t dismantle her now we were truly fucked.
I reached out, seized her collar, and ripped. A brooch-shaped magic tool was pinned there—almost certainly a communicator. Every spell built into it was high-grade. Real money-wasting taste.
I crushed it right in front of her eyes without hesitation. Even the strongest magic tool was nothing before raw stat violence.
“Whether you’re the dark guild leader’s daughter or whatever, I don’t give a single shit. But you mess with my peace? That’s the end of it. Got it?”
Clatter.
I spoke coldly to Cheon Jang-mi as she stared blankly at the shattered tool scattered on the ground.
“Can you handle it? You don’t even know who I am. Yet you dare try to bring filthy rats into this place?”
“…Hic, hhk… s-stop…!”
Unable to endure the continuous pressure, she finally covered her face. I hadn’t even released proper killing intent, yet she was trembling like a leaf. Pathetic.
“…Haa. Stupid people have it so easy, don’t they? They never think about the consequences of what they do—just act on whatever whim hits them. And they never clean up after. Hmm? Feeling good? This whole mess is your fault. How’s the mood?”
“Hic… huuk…”
I had to crush her thoroughly this time so she would never even think of pulling more bullshit. The moment I tried to tighten my grip on her collar, a hand blocked me.
“…Perhaps it would be better to stop for now. There is something more important than her at the moment.”
Onohara Erika. The only second-year present. Without the connection through Ban Taewung she would have been a complete outsider.
She didn’t know me. She probably didn’t know Cheon Jang-mi either. Yet she stepped in because she believed it was the right thing to do.
The poise she showed now was proof of the effort she had poured in since childhood to match her family’s dignity.
She offered a way to redirect my attention without wounding my pride. And her suggestion was entirely reasonable. Yes—dealing with that old man came first.
Don’t get the priorities wrong. This could wait until later.
KWA-AAAANG!!
As if to show his preparations were finished, the old man began raising corpses and detonating them.
A slight shift of my eyes showed Luicia meeting my gaze without flinching despite her pale face, while Riri kept her unreadable deadpan fixed on the mage ahead.
“…Tsk.”
I clicked my tongue, released the pressure and the collar. Cheon Jang-mi’s body went limp as if the strings had been cut.
“Handle outside business outside. Finish things cleanly before your half-assed moves hurt other people. Don’t drag me—or my peaceful daily life—into your worthless shit, Cheon Jang-mi.”
…Gulp.
She nodded slowly but firmly, accepting it.
This was the final warning. Even if she might become a heroine someday, if she obstructed my goal I would crush her without mercy.
Even if that put me at odds with Ban Taewung, I had no intention of yielding.
Once you start bending, it stops being a conviction. A conviction is something you clash against head-on, fiercely and desperately, even if it breaks you—never retreating.
This was the only core I had left. Everything else had already snapped and burned away. So this one thing I would protect no matter what.
Because that was the “reason for existing” that let me keep living.
I turned and stepped up beside Ban Taewung. He cut down a zombie approaching from the side, glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and sent a look that clearly had a mountain of things to say. A guy staring like that was just creepy.
“Focus.”
“…Yeah.”
Let’s finish this fast and rest. I tightened my grip on the shadow blade and glared at the old man who was blasting murderous light from between the corpses.