Chapter 159 : Chapter 159
159
The Academy was in an uproar.
Not metaphorically—literally.
The most luxurious facility in the Academy, the infirmary.
And within it, the deepest VVIP room.
The man who had been sleeping there woke up.
His name was Cassian.
The true power holder of this Academy.
The legendary genius who created Aura.
Known as the most orthodox authority on the sword among all instructors in the world—and above all, the man who taught swordsmanship better than anyone else alive.
Even elderly swordsmen who arrived leaning on their canes could read an entire lifetime from merely watching him a few times.
And with no more than a handful of brief pieces of advice, he would completely transform their swords.
That was why even now, swordsmen from all over the world filled the Akarind Academy City, all hoping to hear just one lesson from him.
And today—
Today was the day that the very subject of those rumors would hold a class.
“Wow, this is the first time I’ve seen this lecture hall completely full.”
“It’s Instructor Cassian’s class. This is still too small.”
The freshmen stared with their mouths agape.
For the upperclassmen, however, it was not an unfamiliar sight.
Cassian’s classes had been like this since last year.
People who wanted to hear his lectures gathered from everywhere and packed the halls.
This was merely a repetition of the same scene.
The only difference was that the lecture hall itself had become far larger.
“You’re saying filling the Grand Auditorium is ‘small’?”
Recruiting Sihan during the transformation of Akarind Academy into an academy city had been nothing short of divine foresight.
“What kind of barbaric architectural environment is this…! This world doesn’t even have dwarves? Huh?! Where did you throw away the pinnacle of architectural engineering and decide to have necromancers raise buildings with earth magic instead?! This design! This sense of aesthetics! What are you going to do about it?!”
Sihan led the construction while screaming incomprehensible tirades.
At the wave of his hand, golems of all shapes and sizes rose up.
“Watch carefully! This is called an excavator!”
“Ahh—! This is a crane!”
“This one’s called a dump truck! It moves dirt!”
If an Inquisitor had seen him, Sihan would have been arrested as the leader of a cult on the spot.
Thanks to that madness, Akarind Academy became a masterpiece that could tell even the Imperial Royal Academy to step aside.
Stairways connecting buildings, elevators installed throughout the corridors, self-moving escalators, washing facilities and plumbing installed in every dormitory room—
Not merely imperial-level architecture, but something difficult to match anywhere in the world.
The Grand Auditorium was where Sihan’s engineering shone most beautifully.
From the front stage, a massive oval staircase spiraled upward like a vortex, spreading loosely across twelve levels.
The building itself was designed at a slight angle, ensuring that from any seat, the instructor and blackboard on the lowest level were visible.
The angles of the floor and desks were offset so that books and writing instruments would not slide off.
The ceiling was entirely glass, allowing natural sunlight to fall gently onto the floor.
Bathed in sunlight, no seat ever felt dark.
Capacity: eight thousand people.
Enough to hold the entire student body of Akarind Academy at once.
“Watch closely. You’re about to witness a miraculous lesson.”
A returning student—now freshly promoted to second year—looked down with a confident grin.
At that moment, Instructor Cassian was walking in from the entrance.
“Wow…”
By outward appearance alone, he was utterly ordinary.
Yet perhaps because of the magic woven into the auditorium, the sunlight scattering across his hair gave him an almost sacred aura.
Moreover, rumors were rampant that just days ago, the moment his body recovered, he had demonstrated swordsmanship that could only be described as miraculous.
There were even students who claimed to have achieved a kind of awakening simply by watching his swordsmanship from nearby.
Everything they had ever swung before felt like worthless lumps of dung, while that sword—that was the real thing.
Some even debated whether they should break their own swords afterward.
That was the kind of man Cassian was.
“Nice to meet you. I am Cassian.”
—Nice to meet you. I am Cassian.
A microphone installed beside the podium carried his voice throughout the building.
Even his voice felt novel to the students.
“Since we have many new students today, we will begin slowly with a very basic lesson.”
Despite the massive crowd, Cassian had always taught the basic course.
What is a sword?
And how must the human body be used to wield it?
Those fundamental questions were the essence of his classes.
The freshmen hurriedly took out their writing tools, determined not to miss a single word.
The auditors did the same.
Only the upperclassmen watched them with faintly relaxed expressions.
And then—
Three minutes later.
“…Therefore, the sword is not a sword in itself. It becomes a sword only through human discipline. At that point, the sword may retain the form we recognize—or it may transform into something entirely different. In such circumstances, if the sword is no longer a sword, what must we do to make it one again? And what is it that truly makes a sword?”
The upperclassmen went blank.
What was this instructor even saying right now?
They could not understand it at all.
Even Pan—who had already grasped intermediate sword theory and reached the level of a Sword Adept—found Cassian’s words difficult to follow.
“P-Professor?”
Sensing something was wrong, students hurriedly began writing down everything Cassian said word for word.
Some freshmen stopped taking notes entirely and simply stared blankly.
‘We came to listen to a class like this? I thought I was a genius… how arrogant I was. I grew conceited in that narrow well called the imperial capital.’
It was a mistake.
‘I… I am trash…’
That student had entered as this year’s runner-up.
‘S-Surely the seniors all understand this, right? C-can I ever become like that?’
The seniors were suffering just as much.
Unaware—or uncaring—Cassian’s lecture continued.
“I proposed a hypothesis here. If swordsmanship can be treated as a field of study, could it be quantified numerically, or even expressed as a formula? That is to say, we may represent swordsmanship not as a three-dimensional trajectory of blade and motion—points, lines, and planes—but as an abstract concept…”
So why had Cassian begun lecturing in such an incomprehensible way?
Was this revenge against Director Gwen for obstructing his trip?
(According to Chief Guard Rozalin’s personal claim.)
In truth, it was the result of several unfortunate misunderstandings overlapping.
First: Cassian had become too strong.
‘Right. If I think of the sword as an equation, I can construct a formula for its existence. If the toes are a, and the arms and legs are b and c… then what is the sword? And the enemy? Should I place them on a coordinate plane?’
The total number of lines formed in his body was now seven.
Having recovered two more lines through the Fantasy of the Ocean Hall, he had reached a level that could legitimately be called that of a Sword Master.
The problem was that he had not fully absorbed that level himself.
Swinging the sword only a few times was not enough to completely internalize it.
Thus, Cassian was digesting his newfound understanding through the act of lecturing.
Second: Cassian’s enlightenment conflicted with existing swordsmanship.
He was dismantling and scattering his own swordsmanship.
Techniques that once had meaning before his enlightenment now held no meaning here.
As a result, Cassian found his own basic and intermediate lectures unsatisfactory.
He refuted his own material in real time while teaching, which only confused the students further.
If it was right, it should be right.
If it was wrong, it should be wrong.
So why did his words keep going back and forth?
That confusion was inevitable.
Third—and finally—
Cassian had entered a state of selflessness while organizing his theory.
No one could have imagined entering such a state merely by lecturing, without even swinging a sword.
But Cassian had always been a scholar before he was a swordsman.
Among scholars, it was not uncommon to push theory endlessly until enlightenment emerged from a chain of thought.
Of course, no scholar had ever done so while lecturing a basic swordsmanship theory class to freshmen.
“Ah. This feeling is nostalgic.”
Pan let out a hollow laugh.
Come to think of it, Cassian’s classes had always been like this.
At some point, everyone had begun acting as though they understood and could follow along.
But from the very beginning, only a tiny fraction of students at Akarind Academy truly understood what Cassian taught.
Even Pan himself had not understood—he had simply forced the lectures into his head through sheer effort.
And this year’s classes looked like they would proceed in the same manner.
Pan felt just a little sorry for the students.
“Before swinging the sword, we think about swinging the sword and move our bodies accordingly. Therefore, let us assume that the moment we hold a sword, our cognition becomes trapped within the form of ‘the sword.’ The sword is a prison. An interesting metaphor, is it not?”
Unaware of the students’ turmoil, Cassian continued.
Pens scratched frantically across paper.
Faces flushed red from exertion.
As the lecture progressed, some students did gain insights.
In particular, the elderly auditors.
‘T-This is impossible. It’s just a lecture, yet I’m feeling something from merely watching him teach?’
It was not the wording that mattered.
His gestures.
His steps.
Every movement he made while lecturing resembled the swordsmanship of a hero who had overturned fate.
At the highest level in the world.
They desperately wished for the lecture to continue.
Forever.
Endlessly.
End—
“…Huh?”
Those with higher attainment noticed something was wrong.
Cassian was not stopping.
His speech did not break, and his thoughts accelerated endlessly.
“Damn it, stop him!”
“He’s too immersed! If this continues, his mana will tangle!”
The state of selflessness had advantages—but also dangers.
If one failed to control it, one could lose oneself entirely.
Cassian losing himself—forgetting swordsmanship or theory?
That would be a disaster worse than any demon Akarind Academy had ever faced.
“P-Professor?”
The students called out desperately, but Cassian did not respond.
How were they supposed to stop this?
Should they call Verlis? Rozalin? Or Sihan?
As panic spread—
“Instructor! I have a question!”
Freizia, now a student of the basic course, shouted urgently with her hand raised.
The lecture that had seemed eternal stopped.
Cassian’s immersion existed strictly within the framework of “a lecture.”
So rather than calling his name directly, maintaining the structure of the class—
It was a gamble that paid off.
But this only paused him temporarily. They had to pull him completely out of it.
What question could do that?
In a split second, hundreds of possibilities flashed through Freizia’s mind.
Her face turning bright red, she shouted—
“Please tell us about your first love!”
“…Huh?”
Cassian: sanity restored.
***
Outside the classroom—
“She’s the senior who asked Instructor Cassian about his first love.”
“Does she like him?”
“Hmm, about a ten-year age gap. I support it!”
“Waaaah!”
Youth scattered like petals.
Meanwhile, in the director’s office—
“Director! Send him out! Demons or not, let him organize his enlightenment somewhere else! Do you want Akarind Academy to collapse?! If this keeps up, teachers and students alike are finished!”
At Rozalin’s shouting, Gwen buried her face in her hands.
“Why is everyone doing this to me….”
It was a beautiful new semester.