Chapter 156 : Chapter 156
156
“There is a 6th-circle mage?”
“Not a mage. An alchemist.”
Rozalin corrected me.
Alchemists were those who tried to reproduce divine miracles through magic.
“Aren’t they con artists?”
According to scripture, when God created the world, a vast light filled existence.
So there were those who believed that if they wielded a sufficiently powerful light, they could create a small world of their own.
When God created humans, He breathed life into them—so there were those who believed that if they recreated that breath through spells, they could create life from bare stone.
Alchemists were even more fanatical than Inquisitors, and at the same time, utterly unhinged.
That was why they were spectacularly insane.
Eighty percent of the con artists roaming the Imperial Capital were alchemists.
They claimed they could turn iron into gold, or extract diamonds from grains of sand, deceiving people with such nonsense.
Of course, no one who knew better took those claims seriously.
But every so often, clueless drifters or tourists were fooled and vanished.
The most frequent victims were students of the Imperial Royal Academy.
They gathered the brightest students in the world, but in the end, they were still just students.
In fact, those students were often the easiest to deceive.
There were far too many fools who believed that being good at studying meant they understood the world.
To smooth-talking madmen, stripping such fools bare was easy.
“Have you ever been fooled, Teacher?”
“No.”
I could see through their scams.
I watched their eyes, their expressions, their gestures, their tone.
I focused not on what they were selling, but on how they sold it.
People who answered every question without hesitation.
People overflowing with confidence, whose words never stopped.
People who somehow twisted every topic back to what they wanted to say.
People whose explanations sounded grand and abstract despite lacking substance.
People who spread sideways instead of digging deeper, repeating the same explanations.
People who bragged endlessly about their connections.
Filter those out, and you avoided con artists.
“And yet I am supposed to go meet an alchemist myself……”
The topic I needed to ask about was the possible existence of a 7th-circle being.
An inevitably abstract hypothesis.
And I had to ask a con artist about it.
I did not like it.
“It is fine. This one is the real deal.”
“He actually turned iron into gold?”
“No. He abandoned alchemical failures and focused on maximizing what succeeded. He calls himself a magic engineer rather than an alchemist.”
“Engineer?”
“He sometimes uses the word ‘science,’ too. Anyway—right. Teacher. You said you drank two Elixirs that Seris gave you, didn’t you?”
“I did. Wait—”
“Yes. That alchemist made those Elixirs.”
That surprised me.
An Elixir was a miraculous restorative capable of fully reviving someone as long as they were not already dead.
Because of its association with healing, I had assumed it was a potion developed by priests.
“Imitating God’s power and reproducing it in reality. That is something an alchemist can do.”
“All right, I will concede that. So where is this person?”
“Lephteria, the island of magic engineers.”
“Lephteria? I have never heard of it.”
“It is an island. Far beyond where Ocean Hall was, deep in the middle of the open ocean.”
The center of the open ocean…… was that even a place humans could reach?
The open ocean was not just an ordinary sea.
Monstrosities far beyond common sense lurked there, and it was a place where securing food and water was nearly impossible.
“You said Ocean Hall devastated the Kingdom of Namress for a long time in the past. When supplies from the land stopped coming, people from Lephteria ventured out. That man was among them. Sihan.”
“Sihan? That is a unique name.”
“In any case, he will be able to answer you. His way of thinking is peculiar, but his abilities are genuine. He was also the last one to make the crossing.”
“I see…… then the first step is figuring out how to cross the open ocean and come back.”
I would have to secure a ship from the Kingdom of Namress or something similar.
More importantly, if I were to leave for the open ocean and return, I would need to align it with the Academy’s opening schedule.
‘I need proper Teachers I can rely on at the Academy.’
Demons were certainly important, but my true role was that of a teacher.
For Akarind Academy, for my students, and for everything else—
if I abandoned all that just to roam the outside world, I would be no better than a fraud.
“Do not worry. We will go.”
“What?”
“Did you really think you could go anywhere after what happened to you?”
Rozalin’s eyes gleamed dangerously.
“You are not going anywhere. You cannot do anything. People can only suffer so much, you know?”
“……That is—”
“Forbidden. All forbidden. You are not going. Where would you even go? We will handle it properly, so just stay put and behave, got it?”
Rozalin’s eyes looked as unhinged as a classmate who had been swindled out of ten thousand gold by an alchemist.
And it was not just her.
“Where do you think you are going?”
“What?! Our Teacher is planning to abandon us again and disappear somewhere, after burning our nerves to ash?!”
“What did you say?! You vanished without a single message, made your students lose sleep and skip meals while tearing apart the Kingdom of Namress looking for you, and now you want to do it again?!”
I—I was in the wrong.
Honestly, it felt a little unfair, but I had not vanished on purpose.
The Holy Kingdom had prevented me from contacting them……
“So do not even think about going anywhere and just stay at the Academy and teach, understood, Teacher?”
Was this a gang or a group of students?
I nodded without arguing.
It was absolutely not because Rozalin’s unblinking glare was terrifying.
Absolutely not.
***
As soon as I returned to the Academy, I went to see Berlis.
“Oh my?”
When I delivered Yuria’s gift, Berlis’s eyes flew open.
It seemed to be quite a shocking present.
“This is Spartoi, isn’t it?”
That meant little to me.
“A dragon-fang soldier. And…… wow. There is a fairly wicked witch’s curse on it? This level of curse would require torturing at least a hundred people to death. The resentment is extraordinary.”
“……”
“Wow! A lich’s staff! Teacher, you know how rare this is, right?! The last lich appeared around three hundred and twenty years ago, and that one was a 5th-circle mage who willingly took on a curse to advance his realm! Most of that lich’s relics appeared at dark auctions, but this staff was impossible to obtain, so I—”
“Ah, yes. I see.”
This was the first time I had seen Berlis like this.
For the first time, I saw her scholar’s side—her obsessive, digging nature.
Yuria, what exactly did you entrust me with?
“You are saying that little lamb gave you all this? Has she decided to fall?”
“I am not sure. She did not seem that way at the time, but after hearing you speak, I wonder if she might have.”
“If she leaked items like these, she could be called a demon’s accomplice.”
“Is it really that serious?”
“Of course it is! Now then!”
Berlis moved with such excitement that even her usual habit of dragging out her words disappeared.
She hummed as she stepped outside the laboratory and swung her staff toward a corner of the garden.
A chilling, hair-raising energy tore into the ground.
Literally tore into it.
A vision flickered, like a starving beast frantically clawing at the earth.
What on earth was this……?
“Wow. This dreadful negative energy! It is the real thing—absolutely genuine!”
Berlis did not seem to care at all.
She poured bone powder directly onto the dug-up earth.
Then she lightly clenched her fist.
Whether through a spell or something else, drops of blood pooled in her palm and dripped down.
After feeding enough blood into the bone powder, Berlis stepped back with a giggle.
The soil piled up again, forming a mound like a grave.
“Rise, dragon-fang soldier.”
At her brief command, the ground began to rumble.
Moments later, the earth cracked as if struck by an earthquake, and a naked man crawled out.
He was around 180 centimeters tall.
His dark navy hair contrasted with a body built like that of a well-trained warrior.
His bronze-toned skin gleamed, and his body was covered in scars, as though he had survived countless battles.
His lowered gaze had no focus at all—eyes like Yuria’s in the past.
“Haah. He is the real deal!”
I understood the meaning immediately.
The placement of scars, the development of his muscles—
the way his limbs moved as he crawled free, revealing sharply defined muscle lines.
Those were traces of battles fought on the edge of life and death.
Battles that could not have been easy.
At the very least, they were marks left by fights against ogres, trolls, basilisks, or Cyclops-class giants.
“Impressive.”
“What kind of weapon do you think suits him?”
“Hmm…… rather than a weapon, would clothing not suit him better right now?”
At my words, Berlis blinked once, then burst out laughing.
“You are right. I did not think of that.”
“For your new assistant, try giving him dual blades. He seems suited to handling two swords.”
“I will take that advice. Thank you. I love both gifts. Next time that little lamb is in danger, I could sacrifice another arm for her. No, maybe a leg or an eye instead?”
Enough with the horrific jokes.
What was worse was that it did not sound like a joke at all.
I briefly imagined Berlis smiling brightly with a single artificial eye.
“I—I will be returning to the Academy now……”
“Yes, yes~ Thank you~!”
I left, my stomach feeling unsettled.
I headed back toward the staff dormitories.
The private dormitory Avril had built for me had been completely destroyed.
I now lived day by day in the same dormitories as the other Teachers.
It was a shame to lose that space filled with books.
It pained me that most of the ancient tomes there had been destroyed.
Still, this would soon be restored.
In the distance, workers were already moving busily.
Wooden supports were erected, bricks stacked, buildings rising.
Small green parks were constructed between buildings, with brick paths laid beneath.
Each classroom was furnished with chairs, desks, and countless teaching materials.
New blackboards and chalk were stacked neatly.
As the Academy transformed into an academy city, the proportion of humanities—once small—was greatly expanded.
From general education to history, literature and etiquette, politics and strategy, new subjects were established, and classrooms dedicated solely to scholarship were arranged one by one.
From massive seminar halls capable of seating a thousand people to rectangular classrooms lined with blackboards on all sides.
The time it took to complete all of this construction—
Three months.
“All right! The semester begins!”
Applicants for new enrollment: 1,420.
The competition ratio was 340 to 1.