This Lecture Should Be for Me Only!
"Fifth-tier magic, in the blink of an eye…."
"Wait, isn't he the Practical Application professor?"
"Wasn't he a slave merchant?"
"That's incredible!"
Gasps of astonishment rippled through the students.
Behind me, five main magic circles hung suspended in the air.
Hmm… now what comes next? I'd managed to link two before, but that was it.
Then Tia gave her fingers a tiny flick. Auxiliary magic circles etched themselves between my main circles, and as they spun, the casting flowed onward without a hitch.
Her skill is nothing to scoff at.
Fwaah—
A shrunken sky materialized against the lecture hall's ceiling. Tiny stars, each one a mote of compressed mana, glittered overhead like a planetarium brought to life.
"Wow, it's beautiful."
"That's celestial projection! My goodness."
"He summoned an actual universe into the classroom!"
Letting the students' awe wash over me, I bent the stars to my will and shaped them into the form of a continental map. Red stars and blue comets were laid out for easy reading.
"The blue markings are dungeons I've personally conquered. The red ones are the locations of every intermediate-tier or higher dungeon to appear in the last ten years."
"Six intermediate-or-higher conquests…."
"So that means he's gone at least ten floors deep?"
"Someone casting fifth-tier magic… I guess it's real…."
I pressed on with the lecture.
"Since none of you have dungeon experience, allow me to emphasize this a little more."
My voice reverberated off the walls of the hall.
"In a dungeon, you can never predict what will happen next, and the smallest mistake leads straight to death. Even on a first floor cleared dozens of times before, B-rank adventurers have met their end. That is what a dungeon is."
The stars overhead traced the shape of a dungeon.
"The average survival rate of a dungeon's first floor is ninety-eight percent. Do you understand what that means? As it happens, there are about fifty of us in this room."
I clenched my fist. In an instant the sky shattered and crumbled, and the celestial projection dissolved. The students flinched in alarm.
"It means that if every one of you set foot on a dungeon's first floor right now, not a single one would walk back out."
A quiet tension settled over the room. I eased it with a light smile.
"Of course, so long as I'm with you, nothing of the sort will happen even if we push to the fifth floor. Capable and trustworthy companions will be joining us as well, so everyone can rest easy. Now then—do you like candy?"
"Huh? Oh, um… yes…."
I handed a piece of candy to the frightened student sitting in the very front row.
"Oh, come on. There's no way anyone actually dies on the first floor. We're not greenhorn adventurers—we're Caesus students, you know?"
It was a third-year from the Wind Hall—the very student who had raised his hand earlier claiming dungeon experience. He clearly had plenty of confidence in his own abilities.
"Tell me, can you beat a goblin?"
"Obviously? They were nothing. I dispatched all three of them in an instant."
"Frail monsters, goblins. Small, weak of arm, incapable of magic, and armed with nothing but shoddy weapons. As far as animals go, they're no different from pigeons. Would you agree?"
"Exactly as you say, Professor!"
"And yet even a pigeon, in a flock, can kill a man."
"I'm sorry—what?"
The Wind Hall student curled his lip in open disbelief. I rapped my knuckles on the lectern, twice, sending a signal.
Clatter! Whoosh—!!
Every window in the lecture hall flew open at once, and hundreds of pigeons came streaming inside.
"Waaagh! You scared me!"
"Where did they come from?!"
Through the windows, I could see Cersi busily shoving the pigeons in—the very flock she had spent so much effort preparing outside.
In moments the entire hall was a churning storm of beating wings, so thick you couldn't see your own hand in front of your face. Feathers whirled everywhere, and the students flailed their arms wildly to and fro.
The pigeon assault did not last long. Cersi worked her magic and smoothly herded the whole flock back out through the windows.
I lightly dispelled the anti-vermin spell I'd been holding. Even through all that chaos, not a speck of dust had touched me.
"Wh-what in the world was…."
"What you just experienced was a goblin swarm. On the first floor, monster generation bottlenecks cause them to spawn all at once like that—something you'll run into more often than you'd think."
Most of the students looked like their souls had left their bodies.
"Every one of you has just taken as many wounds as there are feathers clinging to your uniforms. Now then—did anyone survive?"
The Wind Hall student, who'd been so full of himself mere minutes ago, stared back at me with a face smothered in pigeon feathers, looking thoroughly wronged.
"Th-that wasn't fair! That was an ambush…."
"Have you ever known a monster to announce its attack in advance?"
The Wind Hall student fell silent.
"Even in that situation, there were students who maintained a flawless defense. Take a look around you."
The students turned their heads in every direction.
Luca, Tia, and Yuri, seated side by side, were all perfectly calm and spotless, as if nothing at all had happened.
Beyond them, roughly ten more students from Earth House—including Xuehua and the imperial princess—had also weathered it unscathed. The other dormitories had a handful of students worth their salt as well.
I activated the short-term cleaning artifact I had prepared in advance, and both the students and the lecture hall returned to spotless condition.
"Proud students of Caesus Academy."
"If you see my lectures through to the end, I promise you I will raise your survival rate in the dungeons a hundredfold."
Most of the students were staring at me wide-eyed, as though they'd been jolted wide awake.
Of course, not everyone was convinced.
"This is a farce! Isn't Dungeon Studies supposed to be theoretical? Where did all those pigeons suddenly come from! And honestly, how many times in your life are you actually going to set foot in a dungeon?"
One noble student, his hair thoroughly mussed by the pigeons, voiced his grievances for all to hear.
"Hey, you. Were you not listening at the start of class? The professor clearly said that disrupting the lecture is forbidden."
A voice sharp as an icicle rang across the hall. It was Yuri.
"You think Dungeon Studies is only useful inside a dungeon? And you're planning to go through life without ever once running into a monster outside one?"
Tia glared at the noble student as well.
"Leave."
Luca said, in a single short word.
"N-no, wait. There's no need to be so frightening…."
The girl seated beside the noble student grabbed his arm and held him back.
Her nameplate read <Summoner Zion Ebels>. Her affiliation: Water Hall.
"I have a question, Professor."
"Go ahead."
"Would you be able to interpret this dungeon for us?"
Zion produced a crystal orb—a projector. She fed mana into it, and a hologram of a dungeon and its map bloomed in the air above her desk.
"A dungeon that appeared in the kingdom's southwest. What were the survey results?"
"Five floors—a lower-tier dungeon."
"And yet you're asking about it specifically, so something must be unusual."
"Yes. Five D-rank parties and three C-rank parties went in as the vanguard, and every one of them went silent. So they urgently deployed an A-rank party, which blitzed its way to the fifth floor, but…."
"They couldn't find the missing adventurers, and the dungeon itself was never subdued. Am I right?"
"…How did you know that?"
Zion drew in a sharp breath of surprise.
"Well then, it's quiz time. Why must a dungeon never be left alone—why must it be subdued as quickly as possible? The first correct answer earns a prize."
Several hands shot up. Luca, Tia, and Yuri all reacted instantly as well, but I decided to give the other students a chance first.
"Marque."
"Because mana accumulates within it, and if the boss monster on the final floor goes berserk and breaks outside, it can inflict catastrophic damage."
"Correct. Here's your prize."
I tossed the candy to Marque, and he caught it.
"Aww…."
"For a prize, I thought it'd be something impressive."
Meanwhile, Marque examined the candy for a moment—and then his eyes went wide.
"Huh? Isn't this a Fruit of Experience?!"
"What?"
"The one that doubles your training results for half a day if you eat it?"
"That's insanely rare! Unless you're a duke's family or better, you never even get to see one!"
The students broke into a buzz of whispers. I pulled a fistful of individually wrapped candies from my pouch and held them up.
"There's plenty more where that came from. Everyone, participate actively in the lecture."
"Wh-whoa…."
"So the professor is great at magic, conquers dungeons, and he's rich…?"
"This guy is busted…."
I turned my attention back to Zion.
"I'll give you the conclusion first. That dungeon is on an entirely different wavelength from any dungeon seen so far. In fact, the way to prevent any harm from it is not to subdue it."
"Excuse me? What do you mean by that?"
Zion's face was a mask of disbelief.
"The vanguard cannot be found. It cannot be subdued. It is not commonly discovered. I call this type a Multi-Phase Dungeon."
In the games I knew, we'd have called it an instance dungeon.
Because it was designed as farming content, its contents reset with every entry. Even after clearing it, only rewards would come out—the dungeon itself never actually fell, persisting in place indefinitely.
"It is a dungeon that sends each party that enters to a separate dimensional space of identical structure—so no party can ever encounter another. Without advance knowledge of its nature, total party wipes are almost a certainty, and cooperation is impossible, which makes it exceptionally treacherous."
"Unlike conventional dungeons, which accumulate mana, a Multi-Phase Dungeon steadily consumes its mana in order to sustain its phases. In time, it will dissipate on its own. Though it cannot be subdued, that same quality means it carries no risk of a berserk breakout. In other words, leaving it alone is the wisest course."
"Where in the world does a dungeon like that exist?"
"The Intermediate Realm has plenty of them. And in the Human Realm, they'll only grow more common from here on. Hmm—well, this works out nicely. I'll take this opportunity to publish a paper. Thank you for the excellent question, Miss Zion."
"A dungeon like that… but if it's multi-phase, then it really does explain everything…."
Zion nodded, seemingly convinced. I shifted the topic with a light touch.
"Now then, allow me to introduce the curriculum ahead. After three theoretical lectures, you will form parties and move into practical exercises. As it happens, the Academy Territory still has several lower-tier dungeons in need of subjugation."
"During the exercise, I guarantee your safety personally. If you're still worried, you're free to transfer to another lecture right now. But I give you my word—my lectures will give you experiences you could never have anywhere else in this academy."
I looked around at the Earth House students.
Every one of them burned with determination.
And above all, Luca, Tia, and Yuri were standing solidly behind me.
That fact alone was enough to make me feel this lecture would go well.
Three days later, Zion Ebels received a reply from her father, the guildmaster, and could barely contain her astonishment at what she read.
"Whoa—it was real."
The reason Zion knew of the dangerous, unidentified dungeon in the first place was that her father was a guildmaster and one of the kingdom's most influential nobles.
She had written down the answer she'd heard in Wicker's lecture and sent it to her father.
Thanks to that, the guildmaster resolved the situation—and he heaped praise on the professor who had uncovered the concept of the Multi-Phase Dungeon until the letter practically tore from the force of his enthusiasm.
Naturally, Zion's shoulders squared with pride.
"This lecture is an absolute jackpot."
A lecture this good—I wanted it to be mine and mine alone.
Wouldn't it be better to just drop the clueless idiots who couldn't recognize Professor Pidia's true brilliance?
While Zion was busy scheming, a noble friend called out to her.
"Zion! Did you hear the news?"
"What news?"
"That Dungeon Studies professor! He already published the Multi-Phase Dungeon paper!"
"Already?! How did a paper come out in just three days?!"
"He had a co-author. They say it's Assistant Professor Cersi Paniya—but who on earth is that?"