All to Gain Momentum (1)
Chapter 39.
It was all to gain momentum. (1)
A commotion broke out.
Of course, among the hot-blooded students of the Academy, a commotion was hardly anything new — but this one spread and swelled into a low, rolling murmur across the halls.
“Wow. We are screwed.”
“Mm, two weeks…. It was a happy two weeks, however short they were. Thank you for everything.”
Some students slumped their heads and muttered in despair, while others scrambled to mock them for it.
“Ahh…. Do you not think this is retribution for the wicked heart that dared to slack off during lectures, brother?”
“Screw you, man!”
“Puhahak…! Brother, hell is coming!!”
And so it was.
It was all because of the news that Professor Niger was returning to the Academy.
And I had been listening blankly to the students' chatter the whole time.
Even watching them fall into despair, I felt nothing so much as a resigned sort of acceptance. I couldn't tell whether something in my head had gone wrong, but the fact that he was coming back… didn't actually displease me.
That said, to be completely honest, I was a little afraid.
I could picture the future in which I paid for the barrage of spells I'd fired off during the midterm just to somehow take him down a peg. Just as vividly, I could picture him ranting and raging through the lectures he was determined to make up after two full weeks of absence.
And yet — how should I put it — the fact that he was coming back made me that glad.
That man called a priest. That monstrous human being, collapsed from overwork, unable even to hold his own body upright. Seeing him like that had made my heart lurch.
Part of me wondered if it hadn't been my fault.
Because I had kept him under senseless surveillance. Because I had gone on suspecting him, sniping at him, keeping my edges sharp against him at every turn.
I kept thinking that I must have piled stress onto him.
Granted, the professor insisted it wasn't only because of me — but still, a person has a conscience, doesn't he?
Perhaps that was why I found myself visiting his sickbed so often.
Teasing Professor Elia every time our paths crossed at his door was, of course, delightful in its own right — but there was a faint thread of guilt tangled into the fun.
So then.
“Welcome, brothers and sisters.”
The professor stepped up onto the platform with a smile on his face.
“Two weeks, already. It feels like a very long time.”
…I suppose I had missed it, a little.
Break them.
Break the Sacred Arts class with lectures — that was the whole of it. Nothing else occupied my mind.
Bellatrix, who had unleashed a torrent of spells at me during the midterm. Hannibal, who cursed my name again and again throughout the exam. Rachel, who conjured an illusion of me and shrieked her head off.
Every last one of them was dead.
“Welcome, brothers and sisters.”
That was the sentiment behind the smile I wore.
A smile steeped in malice runs deeper than any laugh, and in that moment I was wickedness incarnate.
“Two weeks, already. It feels like a very long time.”
For my plan to break them with a five-hundred-fold lecture to be delayed by two whole weeks — truly, it has taken far too long.
[…Brother, kindly calm yourself.]
Screw you.
Niger's voice reached me, and I simply kept smiling.
“Well then — since the lectures have fallen two weeks behind, we shall be packing them in to the very brim.”
This was retribution.
You bastards.
The plan went like this: strike them psychologically with theory, then grind their bodies down with practicals. Carve the grandeur of divinity into their weakened minds with weekend remedial lectures. Steal every spare hour with weekly quizzes and assignments.
Broadly speaking, that was the shape of it.
Part of me thought it might be a touch excessive — but it was entirely doable so long as I skipped sleep.
Well….
One sleeps when one is dead anyway, so it would probably be fine.
And I'd tested it on myself — after pushing my body to its limits for two months straight, two weeks had been more than enough to recover.
That was my reasoning.
“Uuuaaagh….”
“You can do it, brother. Get back up and try once more.”
—which is how the zombie population of my lecture came to multiply.
“P-Professor…. I was wrong…, I was wrong, okay? Please, spare me….”
“What on earth are you saying? You've done nothing wrong, brother. Now — one more time, if you please.”
You have done nothing wrong except curse me to my face during the midterm.
“Ugh…, you've been saying 'one more time' for the past hour….”
“This truly is the last one, brother. Finish up quickly so you can rest, yes?”
This is the last barrier. Truly.
There were still plenty of reinforcement incantations and holy strike incantations left to go, but the barrier we were drilling right now — that one would be the last.
I swallowed the rest of the sentence and smiled.
It was a gentle smile.
Thud— A chair went clattering back. Another student had shot to their feet.
The girl, white-faced with terror, bolted for the back door—
“Protect.”
I sealed the entire lecture hall inside a barrier.
If I remembered correctly, that was the girl who had hurled curses at me while fleeing from my illusion.
“Uh…? P-Professor? I, um — something's come up, so if you could just open the door….”
“Haha, it seems you have urgent business, sister. Then by all means, come out here and we'll finish yours first.”
“P-please, have mercy….”
I'm a priest, for goodness' sake — who exactly is supposed to be dying here?
I simply smiled and waved a hand.
Nobody leaves until the lecture is over.
Ah, you ask where Bellatrix is?
She's lying unconscious behind me, right where I left her.
She was the first one I broke.
And so the lecture ran its full, jam-packed three hours, and I wore a smile while I wrote out my formal letter of apology.
“Professor Niger…. Are you now writing these in advance, of all things?”
“Haha, my passion simply overflowed a little. Ah — would it be permissible to submit the next one ahead of time as well?”
“Don't spout nonsense, and don't smile either. I am dying of anguish as we speak….”
One more strand of the Headmaster's hair drifted to the floor.
I once caught one of those drifting hairs right in front of him, and got scolded for nothing. Precious things, those hairs.
Time flowed on, and night came.
I was lying in bed, musing that it had been a productive day, when a voice spoke up.
[Brother — are any of your murder targets, by chance, students?]
“Er… where on earth did that come from? I have no idea what you're talking about…?”
Why would I kill students, of all people?
I asked back, utterly baffled. Ah — I did suppose that some students had actually died, so maybe that was what he meant.
[At this point, this is practically an attempt to kill them via lecture, is it not?]
“…?”
[Do not play dumb. My point is that you ought to rein the lectures in a little.]
Ah.
That's what he meant.
“Oh, come on. People don't die that easily.”
[Yes. That easily, they do.]
Well… no, that… wasn't exactly wrong.
Certainly, a person dies easily enough — one swing of a mace is enough to send a skull flying — and yet at the same time, people don't die all that easily.
Which is to say: a packed lecture schedule and a mountain of homework are not going to kill anyone.
This was part hard-won experience from two months of working my body to rags, and part a lesson learned through university life itself.
I was now a professor at the Academy.
So what, then, is a professor's greatest virtue?
A professor… a professor must, above all things, be without a conscience.
A professor must teach, assign, and examine on the assumption that the students enrolled in his lecture listen to his lecture alone.
Why?
Because that was how I was taught, and every classmate, senior, and junior of mine was taught the same way.
Besides, the Sacred Arts class was full of students who regarded their professor as an object of terror — so much so that they conjured illusions of him.
That meant their mindset was still lacking. That meant their reverence for their professor was still lacking.
And so, all of this was — every bit of it — a decision made for the students' own good.
The moon had risen into the sky.
Sitting on the edge of my bed, gazing up at it… normally, doing exactly this was supposed to settle the heart.
But my mind right now was violently, hopelessly tangled.
Or rather, it kept circling back to Friday's Sacred Arts lecture, and anxiety kept welling up in me.
Who on earth was it? That lunatic who declared she missed a professor who tormented his students with that ever-present, sadistic smile?
Who was the madman who entertained such an absurd thought in the first place?
“Hoo….”
First things first, I apparently needed to reflect on the fact that the madman was me.
A deranged professor. Mad, thoroughly unhinged, his mania deepened tenfold, head pierced clean through with divinity — a professor like that.
Ah.
Ah….
Every bone in my body creaked.
I'd been healed over and over with divinity, and still my shoulders and legs and everywhere else ached as if I'd come down with the worst muscle soreness of my life.
My first order of business, I decided, would be reexamining whether any of that could legitimately be called a lecture.
Had he confused lecture with training? The thought kept churning through my skull.
Yes. Come to think of it, I'd felt a faint unease from the moment he started smiling.
He always smiled, of course — but I knew full well that when that smile deepened, something was brewing behind it.
So when I met those eyes, having told myself I'd missed him, and the moment that instinctive dread came crashing over me — that was when I should have run.
Instead, clinging to some surely not, I chose to trust him. That fault was mine.
“Aaah….”
I sighed and looked up at the moon.
And so my thoughts drifted down another path.
Hm. How many absences did it take to fail a course, again?
Two unexcused ones seemed to be fine; with medical exemptions filed properly, I could probably skip around four lectures altogether.
For now, simply not attending seemed like the better bet for my future.
But the moment that thought formed, the words the professor had spoken at the end of the lecture came back to me.
He had said, quite clearly:
And he'd said it smiling.
With that maddening grin, he had looked at me — at me alone, the one who had only just clawed her way back to consciousness after fainting.
If you're thinking of running, be prepared to pay for it.
That he would break me all the more brutally — he'd said it with such friendly warmth.
“….”
Skipping the lecture, it seemed, was not an option.
No, seriously….
We're adults here — how can a grudge run this deep? What in the world is wrong with him?
A deranged professor, that's what.