Chapter 65
Chapter 65
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 65
Chapter Title: Inequalities in Wide-Area Magic
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“If you use equations for magic targeting a single point, then for wide-area magic, inequalities are the way to go.”
Professor Owen neatly wrote the formula for a system of linear inequalities on the blackboard as he explained the theory, then turned to face the cadets.
“Does anyone know why?”
Kasena Page wanted to hide behind her book. She desperately hoped to avoid locking eyes with the professor and being called on to explain.
“Y-You, you, you worthless pieces of monkey shit! Is there really not a single one of you who knows why?!”
For some reason, the muscle-bound professor looked like he was on the verge of tears. Then, out of nowhere, his gaze landed on Kasena.
“Hmm, alright then.”
Oh no.
A chilling premonition swept over her, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. As if to drive the nail in, Owen flashed a sinister grin.
“The pitiful monkey who just transferred into my class this time—”
“—Professor.”
At that critical moment, someone raised their hand: Rain Ludwig. Owen’s attention immediately shifted to him.
“May I explain?”
The deal was to keep Kasena from being humiliated... It was a real hassle, but there was no helping it.
Normally, Christa would have shot her hand up and strutted her stuff, but ever since that little exchange of compliments with Kasena earlier, she’d been acting a bit off.
Owen’s eyebrow twitched at Rain’s confident declaration.
“Confidence like that is something else! Fine, enlighten this ignorant professor of yours. Top cadet who doesn’t reek of shit.”
“Inequalities are divided into absolute inequalities and conditional ones.”
“Even the cat licking its own asshole in my attic knows that, Rain Ludwig!”
“With conditional inequalities, you can find solutions by plugging in values from a roughly specific range.”
“Hmm, and?”
“Given the nature of wide-area magic, where you don’t need pinpoint accuracy on impact points, this property of inequalities makes it a perfect fit.”
While the cadets listened in stunned silence, blinking in bewilderment, Kasena stared blankly at Rain beside her.
‘I knew he was smart. I knew it... but this good?’
Perfect... Owen mulled over Rain’s explanation, marveling once more.
‘Grasping the core so simply and clearly that even a child could understand...’
It was so spot-on it could go straight into a textbook. But Owen’s twisted personality wouldn’t let him just praise it outright.
“Correct! As expected of the top cadet. I had a hundred and thirty hellish lines ready to smash your ego to pieces—such a shame!”
He looked positively disappointed at not getting to unleash massive humiliation for a wrong answer.
“Yes, what a shame.”
Rain meant it sincerely. He’d been fascinated by Owen’s artistic command of language since their first meeting.
Owen’s assistant began scribbling Rain’s explanation on the blackboard, but her movements were oddly sluggish.
Probably because her prepared material was more convoluted and difficult by comparison. Being outshone was a sad affair.
* * *
The southeastern frontier port region of the continent.
In a grand mansion grotesquely half-demolished by the backlash of immense mana, amid the feast of corpses swarming with flies, sat a single man.
His face was notably small and common-looking (if someone from three hundred years ago saw him, they might mistake him for the archmage Lin), but he was tall and powerfully built.
“What did you just say?”
The man suddenly bellowed. In the material world, only the corpses heard him.
But in the mental world he’d accessed via ritual, five comrades heard his voice.
The world in the man’s eyes wasn’t the corpse- and maggot-ridden mansion, but the interior of an underground temple thick with myrrh smoke.
[I said we need to watch a bit longer.]
The shadowy figure in seat one wriggled as it repeated itself. The man’s voice took on a threatening heat.
“Watch what? Just grab that punk Rain Ludwig and grill him—we’d know for sure!”
[And if we grab and grill him, but he’s not the one we’re after—what then?]
“What’s the problem?”
[It’s a problem. A huge one for me, embedded in the school right now. How about using that brain of yours?]
“What the hell, you bastard?”
As their mana clashed, the runes forming the mental world writhed in agony. Seat five’s voice intervened.
[Let Valensidis handle it. He’s got the most critical task in our plan right now. Getting exposed now would be a disaster.]
“Let the bastard who killed Ribeni go free?”
[That’s why—if it turns out he’s the killer, Valensidis will handle it. What’s the issue? Why the rush?]
The man glared. The other cowards seemed content to follow Valensidis’s judgment, staying silent.
“You pathetic, gutless rats without a spine.”
Before his comrades could stop him, the man’s shadow vanished from the mental world. At the same time, he rose from the corpse he’d been lounging on.
‘If that coward Valensidis can’t do it, I’ll handle it myself.’
Sneak into the school, beat down anyone in the way, grab the guy, and grill him. Simple.
Sure, ‘Mother’ might scold him for going rogue, but as long as he didn’t get caught, it’d just be a slap on the wrist.
He was Tureina’s son, created from nothing, just like Ribeni.
* * *
“Ugh, I don’t get it—I don’t get it!”
Lunchtime, on a bench in the courtyard.
Kasena had been glaring holes into the key points summary Rain had handwritten for her, but she finally slumped back against the bench, letting her head loll backward.
“If you don’t get it, study until you do. Isn’t that the basics of studying?”
Rain, who’d said it so infuriatingly, flipped through the thick reference book without a care. Kasena shot him a glare.
“Why aren’t you wearing the glasses I gave you?!”
“It’s not night yet.”
“Just wear them!”
What nonsense... That was when the being that brought a pure smile to Rain’s lips appeared.
Flutter flutter.
Trailing the crisp sound of wings, cutting across the languid summer sky, came Pipi.
“Peach, sleep well?”
“Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well.”
Pipi landed on Rain’s shoulder, bobbing its head back and forth energetically, and Rain burst out laughing, stroking its head.
But then he felt a burning gaze. Kasena was watching the scene with sparkling eyes.
“What is that? A sun parrot, right? I’ve seen it in books!”
“That’s right. My familiar.”
“Where’d you get it? Let me, let me touch it too!”
“No.”
Rain stood from the bench, pulling back to shield Pipi from Kasena’s flailing hands.
“Why not?!”
The headstrong temperament of a girl used to having every whim obeyed was truly terrifying.
He could just let her touch it, but first, he needed to straighten out that spoiled attitude a bit.
“You’re supposed to be studying, miss.”
“Study, study, study.”
“Think of it as a break!”
“B-break, break, break~!”
As Pipi rubbed its face against Rain’s cheek, mimicking human speech, Kasena ogled it, drooling.
“Only those who’ve finished their work get to rest. You’ve got mountains of it, miss. Peach, see you at the dorm later.”
Kasena stared blankly as Pipi flew off into the distant sky. Her cheeks puffed out irritably, tears welling in her eyes.
‘It’s not like I’m saying never...’
She shot him a sullen glare, then flopped onto the bench face-up, hands behind her head. Hardly noble behavior.
“Hmph, fine! A genius like Rain who knows everything could never understand how I feel.”
“Huh?”
“I just don’t know stuff! I don’t even know basic math formulas! My head hurts like it’s splitting every day. Because I know nothing.”
Kasena shielded her face from the sun with the key points notebook, then added in a depressed tone after a moment.
“It was greed after all. I should’ve put off coming to school. How can I avoid embarrassment when I know nothing?”
So Kasena had her own struggles.
Rain wasn’t oblivious to that feeling.
It was a pain, but he decided it needed addressing head-on.
“Why is having a lot you don’t know painful?”
“What?”
“Having a lot you don’t know means there’s a lot to learn, right? And a lot to learn means nothing but improvement ahead.”
Silence followed.
He hadn’t planned to fully convince her from the start. Just cracking that defeatist mindset a little would do.
How much time passed?
After about five minutes, Kasena bolted upright and began glaring murderously at the key points summary again.
‘Hmm...’
Not a bad teaching job. Watching her like this stirred a faintly bittersweet pang in his chest.
‘Tureina... Maybe I should’ve been a bit kinder when teaching that tomboy...’
* * *
Two weeks flew by since then. One good thing happened in between.
Elin Ludwig had returned to school.
In the faculty office, as his aunt sorted through the mountain of papers piled up over fifty days, sighing heavily, she fixed Rain with a sharp glare when he entered.
“You little punk—what mess did you stir up while this genius professor Elin Ludwig was away?”
“?”
“Kasena Page! You tried to elope with that kid? No, that’s not important. How the hell is she walking around... How did things end up like this?”
For Elin, who’d been plotting to leverage the lineage of genius mages—Skalji-Kevn-Elin-Rain—to challenge the top magic house’s supremacy, Kasena’s recovery was a major red flag.
He explained how it started with Kasena, and Elin stared at him in bewilderment before grabbing his cheeks and yanking hard.
“Argh, unbelievable! Typical of my pathetic nephew! Do you know what I went through for you?! If you pull crap like that, it’s all for nothing! Got it?!”
“P-Pleash, shorry...”
When Elin released his cheeks with a sigh, Rain rubbed his reddened face and whined.
“There were weird rumors that Aunt got obsessed with black magic. I thought I had to do something for your professorship.”
“What?! You idiot empty-head! Who do you think I am?”
“Genius Professor Elin Ludwig.”
“That’s right! I’m the genius professor Elin Ludwig the world watches! <Delaiten> would be the one losing out if they fired me. They’d protect me no matter what, so why’d you stick your neck out?! Oh, woe is me!”
She scolded him, but knowing her clever nephew had done it for her sake didn’t feel bad at all.
That’s why she kept bonking his head while grinning like a fool—an odd phenomenon. Elin had no talent for hiding her expressions.
She might seem to nag Rain at every chance, but it was actually her top-tier way of showing affection to her adorable nephew.
‘Well, getting chummy with the Page family isn’t a bad thing.’
Even big brother Kevn had solidified the family’s status back in school through his senior-junior friendship with Madelia Page.
“Ugh, enough. Get out! Finals are in two days—you must be busy. Probably less than me, though.”
The real question was how Kasena was walking again—was the rumor of her shattered spine just gossip?
But it wasn’t mere rumor; he’d accidentally overheard Kevn and Brim talking about it...
Ah, whatever. Her head already ached from the Tureina secret, and now work piled up. He’d think about it later.
“But Aunt.”
“Hm?”
“What did the heresy inquisitors say... about Tureina? I can’t figure out what she did wrong.”
Elin’s hand paused while flipping through the file at Rain’s quiet question.
- Tureina is alive. I let her slip away by mistake...
- Linking it to Lin actually makes sense for Tureina becoming the black church’s leader...
The headache-inducing talk revived in her mind, under a gag order, so she couldn’t discuss it with anyone.
‘If Tureina steps into the spotlight, who knows what incident will erupt...’
Her nephew waited with a slightly hesitant look. He’d borrowed and read her book, so he probably admired Tureina too.
‘Like most fledglings...’
No need to crush that with a vague answer. And with finals soon, better to distract him elsewhere.
“Nothing much. Black mages apparently used a few of Tureina’s books for their cipher system. That’s what it was about.”
“Really?”
“Ugh, you fool! If it was more, would I have gotten tortured and come back right away like this?”
She felt a twinge of guilt for the white lie, but seeing her nephew’s face light up melted it away.
“Thanks for telling me. I’ve got student council stuff, so I’ll head out. You look busy too, Aunt.”
As Rain turned to leave, Elin snapped her fingers like she’d remembered something.
“You prepared hard for finals, right?”
“Decent enough.”
“Decent? Better make it more than that.”
“Why?”
Rain tilted his head, and Elin grinned like she was handing over a secret gift.
“Your sister-in-law’s coming to watch. Bringing your pathetic little siblings too.”