No, I'm Telling You, It Copied Itself. (5)
Honestly, this was beyond ridiculous.
The moment I saw my illusion being infinitely copied, all I could feel was sheer disbelief.
To my right, to my left, in front of me and behind me—nothing but Nigers sprinting in every direction. It was enough to make my head spin.
"Haha, Brother. We still have plenty of time. Let's try that once more, shall we?"
"Aaagh!! Stop chasing me!! I said stop—seriously, STOP…!"
The sight of myself chasing after a half-exhausted, stumbling student with a smile on my face was pure, unadulterated madness.
No wonder the students were terrified.
Wait.
Hold on. When exactly did I ever go that far?
Well... I suppose I might have pushed them a little harder than necessary, out of some vague desire to see the students grow a bit more.
I cast recovery spells on the students who had collapsed and hauled them back to their feet, filled all three hours of what was supposed to be a general-education lecture right to the brim, and even smiled encouragingly at the ones begging to quit, telling them they could do more.
Uh.
Hmm. Yeah, that... that does sound exactly like something I would do.
...
But what am I supposed to do about it?
You're the ones who signed up for this.
I let out a long sigh and stamped my foot lightly against the ground. Dealing with this absurd situation came first, I decided.
I had no desire to keep looking at this sorry state of myself, duplicated a hundred times over.
And so I approached the student who was still screaming his head off. By now he'd given up on running entirely—he'd collapsed in a heap, meekly accepting the recovery spell that my illusion was administering to him.
And from behind that illusion, I murmured quietly.
"Repent... through death."
Please.
Just die like that and never show up as an illusion again.
With that thought, I brought my mace down on the head of the illusion that had been chasing the student.
I might have hesitated a little, but thanks to my earlier experience smashing the heads off several other illusions, my mace swung without a trace of mercy.
Thwack—
With a dull, heavy sound, the illusion warped and shattered.
I'd smashed it flat before it even had a chance to splatter blood, so thankfully there was no grotesque mess this time.
"Ughaa... ugh...? Huh...? G-guys! The N-Niger Professor here just took down another Niger Professor...!"
At the words that tumbled out of the student lying sprawled before me, the fleeing students all turned their heads toward me.
And then, like people who had finally found hope, they came running straight at me—herding the copied Nigers along with them.
No.
I am not an illusion, you little brats.
And so a little more time passed.
Every single one of the illusions the students had herded toward me lost its head to my mace.
The students seemed fascinated by the sight of me dispatching illusions with a mace in hand—they widened their eyes and murmured amongst themselves—but what mattered to me wasn't the mace.
It was my wounded heart.
"...Haha. It seems you Brothers and Sisters despise me that much, do you?"
"N-no...! Th-that's not it at all."
The students, who had been slumped over catching their breath, flinched at my words.
I gathered they hadn't expected me to come right out and say that.
"It's quite all right. People are allowed to dislike other people, after all. Truly... it is so."
"N-no, really...! P-Professor? We really don't dislike you! Really, really...!"
They must have sensed something unpleasant lurking in my next words, because they all began crawling to their feet, scrambling to offer excuses.
But I hoped they understood it was already too late.
I mean, fine.
Sure. People can dislike people. That's fair.
But in exchange, I'm feeling a little hurt about it, so you'll understand if I take it out on you during lectures, right?
Which means, from now on, your lectures are going to be 500 times the intensity.
I smiled as I thought this. Even when my thoughts turned crooked, my expression stayed bright and cheerful. That's how you keep people off their guard.
And then one of the students spoke up.
"B-but, Professor? I think there's... one more of your illusions left over there...?"
"Pardon...? Where is it still remaining?"
"Behind you, Professor. Looks like a student from the Swordsmanship department... but why is he fighting your—actually, that thing over there is kind of strange to call a copy of you...."
I assumed the student was just trying to change the subject and wriggle out of the awkwardness, but when I turned around, there really was a student locked in combat with something that looked like my illusion.
Except, the appearance of that illusion was....
"...?"
It looked like me, technically speaking. But it also looked nothing like me. How should I put it.
After telling the students to head out of the forest under the safety personnel's guidance, I made my way over there.
The student fighting my illusion was Lutz.
Lutz was on his knees before my illusion, his face twisted with frustration and indignation.
The sight made me frown without my meaning to.
Not because Lutz was kneeling—but because something about the illusion's appearance was off.
The face was identical, but the skin was a deep bronze tan. The voice was identical, but the speech pattern was completely wrong. He was clearly wearing clerical robes, yet he slouched about in a way no priest ever would.
So I listened to what the illusion was spouting.
"Whoohoo~ Jackpot! Just snagged myself Elia, the Academy's buxom bombshell~★"
"Gghk—don't talk about Professor Elia like that...!"
Wow. What the actual hell.
My hand closed hard around the mace.
Somehow suppressing the torrent of profanity rising up my throat, I raised the mace high overhead.
"Hah..."
Lutz, you little bastard.
Where the hell did this deranged illusion come from, spouting things I've never once said in my life?
And for the record—the blond hair, sure, fine. But the tan and the delinquent swagger had to go, dammit.
I brought the raised mace down in one clean arc.
CRACK—
The head of the "Bronze Niger" caved in.
The illusion vanished, and I turned to Lutz, still on his knees and looking up at me, and gave him a beautifully warped smile.
"...Brother. Exactly what have you been thinking of me, all this time?"
"N-no, that's... um, well... I'm sorry."
"What you think of me is your own business, of course. But I would suggest, Brother, that you work those thoughts out of your system through some very rigorous training."
"Yes... I'm sorry."
Having said my piece, I escorted Lutz back to where the other students were gathered.
And let me just say this.
Lutz, you little punk.
Even if it weren't me, you were never going to end up with Elia anyway—so do us both a favor and stop having weird thoughts, and swing your sword more instead.
And so, having rescued Lutz as well.
The rescued students, Lutz included, all made their way out of the forest together once the safety personnel arrived.
As for me, I stayed behind to look around a little longer—just in case some other student was caught in a similar situation, you understand.
But as it turned out, that worry was not a well-founded one.
I'd been wandering the forest looking for other students for who knows how long when I spotted her—Bellatrix, running toward me from the opposite direction, only to stop short and immediately scrunch up her face in a scowl the instant she laid eyes on me.
Having someone recoil at the very sight of my face stung a little, I'll admit, but I tried to be magnanimous about it. I'm an adult, after all.
However.
"Therefore... I suppose I'll have to take this frustration out on an illusion. Wouldn't you say, Professor?"
When she suddenly spat out those words and began drawing up her mana, I decided something was very wrong.
She was clearly misunderstanding.
At that moment, Bellatrix seemed to believe I was an illusion, on account of me appearing out of nowhere like this.
So I blurted out in a hurry.
That I was not an illusion but the real Niger. That she should calm down a little.
"No, Sister. Please, calm yourself. I am not an illusion—I am the genuine Niger Caritas."
And yet.
"You can leave the distinguishing to me, so no need to worry about that part. Disqualification? Point deduction? What do I care. I'll just blow you away with magic."
"Are you insane—"
Her attitude only grew more resolute, and I heard myself cursing out loud.
Life, honestly.
I really should have checked my horoscope this morning.
Seriously, why is everyone being like this to me today?
So that professor's illusions really do take after his madman of an original.
"Hahh... hah..."
I exhaled again and again.
Steadying my ragged breathing, I straightened my posture.
Watching the Professor's illusion slowly dissolve away, I ground my teeth.
I had almost failed.
If that illusion hadn't been injured by the reflection effect of my protective barrier—if the total amount of divinity it possessed hadn't been lacking, simply because it was an illusion—those were the kinds of hypotheticals that kept circling back to me.
And it was only natural. If that illusion had truly been the Professor himself, I wouldn't have made it through the forest—I'd have been carried out from the middle of it, unconscious.
That relentless, sadistic hounding had been every bit as vicious as the Professor. But its skill, and its divinity, had fallen short of the real thing.
Having finally caught my breath, I looked around.
I had managed to deal with my own pursuer, but the screams of other students still echoed through the trees.
Behind a student passing nearby, the Professor's illusion was following along with a bright, cheerful smile.
When my eyes met that illusion's for a brief moment, I felt a chill crawl up my spine.
I quickened my pace.
My only thought was to get out of this maddening forest as fast as humanly possible. The Professor illusion I'd created was already gone, so all that remained was to reach the exit as quickly as I could.
To the other students who had conjured Professor illusions of their own, I offered a brief moment of silent prayer.
Ignoring the screams—which might as well have been funeral wails—I pressed on through the trees.
I had no way of knowing what was coming.
How much farther had I hacked my way through the forest when I came face to face with it?
With what?
With the nightmare itself—the Professor who should never, ever have appeared again.
For a moment, pure irritation flared up in me.
He'd said it himself: once an illusion appears, it never appears again.
And now the Professor was spouting outright lies on top of everything else. The sheer audacity of it.
"Therefore... I suppose I'll have to take this frustration out on an illusion. Wouldn't you say, Professor?"
"No, Sister. Please, calm yourself. I am not an illusion—I am the genuine Niger Caritas."
His words gave me a moment's pause, but I paid them no mind.
Real or fake, it made no difference to me. All I wanted was to stuff this one into the forest of illusions and punish the mastermind behind this entire circus.
Granted, the circus had technically been caused by me—but whose fault was that, really?
"You can leave the distinguishing to me, so no need to worry about that part. Disqualification? Point deduction? What do I care. I'll just blow you away with magic."
"Are you insane—"
There it was.
The real Professor would never have cursed like that—so this one was clearly an illusion.
Ah, though it hardly mattered whether he was an illusion or not.
If he was real, all the more satisfying.