Top Instructor of a Third-Rate Academy

158

Rozalin headed for the infirmary.

It was the second-largest facility in the academy city, surpassed only by the large seminar halls. In terms of scale and quality alone, it could easily be considered the best-equipped facility in the city.

In the deepest part of it, in a VIP private room, Teacher Cassian was lying in bed.

“You’re here again?”

“Again? A prized disciple should diligently look after her master.”

“The way you act, you are not a prized disciple. You are more like… a graduate student whose advisor is about to run off on sabbatical right before approving their dissertation.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about, but I can tell it is extremely unpleasant. You are insulting me, right?”

“An insult? No. It is participant-based humor.”

“So it is an insult. You just said I am like you.”

“Oh? Do you want to see the elixirs going into your teacher get cut off?”

There was an eccentric man in the room.

He had grown his hair out messily, as if he had not cut it for years. It tangled chaotically around his head, chin, ears, and shoulders. Beneath the wild beard, he wore a checkered shirt of deep coloring that was obviously made of high-quality silk at a glance. Over it, he wore a white lab coat that, in contrast to his face and hair, was so impeccably clean it could have passed for obsessive cleanliness.

That cleanliness extended to his body as well. If one looked closely, aside from his hair and beard, everything else carried a faint scent, like subtle perfume.

“How is his condition?”

“The same as ever. I honestly do not know why this man is still alive. Normally, congenital severed meridians die young as a rule. And this is supposed to be a martial-arts setting, you know? Is this not a setting violation?”

“Are you going to keep saying ominous things?”

“But he is still alive thanks to the genius who even deceived the gods—that is me.”

Rozalin let out a sigh.

His tone was unbearably irritating, but she could not simply dismiss him.

He was the leader of Lefteria, the island of magitech engineers—the genius who had created all theories of magitech.

Sihan.

“Deceiving gods my foot. You could not even cross a single dimensional gate, you loser.”

“Tsk, there you go again. I already crossed one once, you know? I just could not cross overlapping gates, so I stayed behind.”

“So you could not cross it in the end, right? You died once, right?”

“Damn it. If only I had studied physics more seriously.”

Sihan was a peculiar man.

First of all, he claimed that he was not originally from this world.

According to him, his homeland was a place called the Republic of Korea. While attending graduate school there, he carried out a tumbler bomb attack on a professor who had stolen his thesis and died. When he regained consciousness, he had been reborn as a baby in this world.

Sihan called it reincarnation.

“To think I would be treated the same as these barbaric locals….”

Using knowledge from his previous life, he combined magic and engineering.

He created potions that partially replicated divine power, flying airships that drifted through the sky, amphibious vehicles that cut across the sea, and even automated carriages that ran dozens of times faster than horses.

Yet his true value was not in what he made.

He moved naturally beyond the common sense of this world. He spoke casually of things people could not even imagine, and he did not treat taboos as taboos.

The ability to imagine what no one else could.

That was what allowed him to reach the Sixth Circle faster than anyone else.

However, that trait was also his weakness.

He could not accept the common sense that everyone else took for granted.

He could not bear to watch people dying in battles against demons. Even by this world’s standards, demons lay beyond common sense, and he could not comprehend them at all.

In the end, he had no choice but to seclude himself on a remote island in the middle of the sea.

He had come out into the world to deal with the Ocean Hall, but after only three years of war, he was completely exhausted.

He somehow survived until the final battle, but he could not cross the gate of time and space. When he tried, the rift rejected him, as if expelling him.

He left his last words with Rozalin, and those words led him here.

“So when is Teacher going to wake up? You said he would wake up around today.”

“Wait a little longer. Does it matter if it is off by a day or two? Back in my day, it was standard for professors to skip orientation and have a teaching assistant just take attendance…”

“That so-called standard of yours. Anyway, if he does not wake up, he dies?”

“Cass—”

Cassian woke up three days later.

For three days, Rozalin tormented Sihan relentlessly.

***

“Teacher!”

I came to my senses at Rozalin’s voice.

Perhaps because I had collapsed and woken up so often, the situation felt strangely familiar.

“Rozalin.”

“Why did you wake up so late?! The Opening Ceremony already started!”

“Already?”

The Opening Ceremony? It felt like I had only closed my eyes briefly. Had nearly two weeks really passed?

Thanks to Sihan’s warning, I knew I would be unconscious for a long time, but still.

When I looked around the infirmary, Sihan seemed to have been waiting for me as well.

Waiting?

I tilted my head at the strange sensation that lingered.

Why would Sihan be waiting for me?

“Why did you wake up so late?!”

“Pardon?”

“If it had been one or two days later, you would have died, you know?!”

“Was my condition that serious?”

“No, I—”

“Yes?”

Judging by his expression, he was serious. But I could not understand why.

Rozalin stepped between Sihan and me, sticking her face close.

“How is your body? Do you really feel a clear difference in strength?”

At her words, the reason I had been unconscious began to surface.

About a month into the break, Rozalin had brought Sihan to me.

From that point on, Sihan, Berlis, and I had devised a plan to use the Ocean Hall to open my mana roads.

“Normally, blocked meridians are opened by overwhelming internal energy. Of course, you also need a master to forcibly stimulate them.”

“Stimulate…? What is that?”

“You beat the body.”

“…?”

Fortunately or unfortunately, Rozalin’s intense anger and opposition removed the beating from consideration.

In the end, we used the Ocean Hall to accelerate the surrounding mana, and the result was my current state.

“I think I will know once I swing my sword.”

“Yes! Let’s go outside! I brought your sword too!”

As I stepped outside the infirmary, a spring breeze greeted me.

It was a wind that had traveled from afar to warm the cold air.

The warmth mixed within it tickled my heart.

There were other things in the air as well.

Pollen meant to spark life.

Insects moving busily in the distance.

The green scent of life and sprouting buds.

Everything pressed sensitively against my body.

“Ah.”

When four roads had connected, I had seen the world more broadly.

I could see every sword trajectory, and even glimpses of past and future beyond what should have been possible.

Now, the world was vivid.

The colors I had seen until now felt fake, as if real colors had suddenly come alive to the point my eyes hurt.

No—could this even be called color?

Why were those petals green? Why was the sky blue? It felt as though the meaning itself was conveyed as color.

A form of synesthesia had been forcibly opened.

“This is absurd.”

I let out a hollow laugh and lightly shook my sword.

At that moment, external mana resonated powerfully with my will.

I had not even summoned Aura. I had merely loosened my body and flicked the blade once.

Yet it felt as though the world itself misunderstood every movement I made as swordplay.

Or perhaps it was not a misunderstanding.

I carefully raised my sword.

The movement of the blade cutting through the air transmitted itself clearly to my fingertips.

“Swordsmanship is not limited to when you take a stance.”

Every breath and every movement of my limbs was no different from swordplay.

The distinction between swordsmanship and non-swordsmanship had become meaningless.

Then what would happen if I used swordsmanship now?

I cautiously took a stance.

A light middle guard, holding the sword along my centerline.

At that moment—

“Wow.”

Rozalin exclaimed in awe as she watched me.

“To think someone in a barbaric world without Aura used swordsmanship like this.”

Sihan clicked his tongue, as though he could not believe it either.

But the most shocked person was me.

It felt as though I had become the world itself.

As though I could cut anywhere I intended, move wherever I wished.

So I lightly shifted my body.

Tap.

When I stepped back lightly with my rear foot, the world seemed to slide smoothly, as if on ice.

I hurriedly drove my front foot into the ground, and my center stabilized instantly, stopping me in place.

Mana flowed naturally.

I swung the sword.

A single leaf on a tree far from the infirmary was cleanly severed.

The leaf fluttered gently to the ground.

The cut was so sharp that it was visible even from here.

Countless objects stood between us, yet not a single one was harmed.

More importantly—

“It does not hurt.”

It would be a lie to say there was no pain at all, but the dull, persistent ache throughout my body was gone.

My muscles were fine. My nerves no longer tormented me.

I stood upright and looked up at the sky.

“……”

Just in case, I took another stance.

As if reviewing the swordsmanship I had organized to teach my students, I unfolded each movement.

A proper cut.

A powerful thrust.

A desperate block.

A feinting slash.

Each swing made the air vibrate with mana.

The Aura gathering on the blade grew denser with each repetition.

It felt as though my body was naturally finding the appropriate degree of mana to unfold, adjusting itself.

I felt eyes on me.

Laborers walking by, students, countless people stopping to watch.

I slowly finished my form.

“Hoo.”

My breathing grew rough.

Ah—so this is what exertion feels like.

Had I ever pushed my body this far before?

I had experienced fatigue during strength training after receiving advice from the Spear God, but that had been mere muscular failure.

This sensation—panting, pushing my body to its limit—was new.

There was pain, but the wounds that once felt as though they would tear my body apart were completely gone.

At this level—

“Rozalin.”

“Yes, Teacher!”

“Is there a demon nearby? Somewhere I could visit and return from within a week?”

For the first time, I wanted to test my sword.

Someone answered instead of Rozalin.

“Where do you think you are going?!”

It was Gwen.

“An Teacher like you! What?! The semester just started! If the semester started, you should be teaching, not lying unconscious for two weeks without preparing a single lesson! And now you want to go somewhere?! I knew this would happen! That is why I ran here the moment I heard you woke up! You have no common sense!”

I endured an indiscriminate barrage of scolding.

It felt like my fault, so I could not retort.

It was spring.