Chapter 218 : Chapter 218
Chapter 218
Five Aura users.
One Saintess candidate.
Fifty students, soldiers, and Auditors.
A total of fifty-six members formed the expedition to subjugate the demon.
"We're taking it slow."
Rozalin, the team's leader, made the declaration to the group.
"We're basically a replacement assignment for the final exam, right? There's almost two months until finals, so think of it as a two-month-long project."
More than half the group were students.
With roughly six or seven students per team, five teams came to about thirty-five people.
Most of them had no experience with long-range missions.
Of course, the majority of the students had no issues.
These were people who'd entered the Academy to fight, to survive by the sword.
But there were always exceptions.
"You're telling me I have to sleep on bare rock without a mattress? In a single sleeping bag? How barbaric."
"There are villages along the way, aren't there? Can't we stop and buy food?"
"I've got money! An inn! Horses! Can't we just pick whatever we want?"
Among the scions of Imperial noble houses, some students couldn't adapt to the very concept of a field operation.
Rozalin blew a contemptuous snort at them.
"I'm not your teacher, got it? Actually, there are no teachers here."
Pan, Hati, the Spear God, Rozalin, and Duke Crownhardt.
How they'd managed to assemble nothing but the most ill-tempered people at Akarind Academy was almost impressive.
If just one person like Jacy or Shasha, Sordian or Freutche had been among them, things would've been better.
"What's this? You still think you're at the Academy, Owl Five?"
"Wh-what?"
"You think we're fighting so you can be well-fed and warm? What you're going up against is a demon. A demon. When you should be ratcheting up the tension, what—you wanna get comfy and slack off?"
"Must want to die. Heh heh. How about you and me drop rank and go a round right here?"
"What rank does an old man have to drop?"
"Then I can beat you senseless without any rules!"
The students watched them in terror.
Before leaving Akarind Academy, the five mentors had been remarkably attentive and kind.
Even that cantankerous Spear God had meticulously instructed them on what to prepare and how.
But that hadn't been for the students' sake.
It had all been to ensure the students had no excuses to give—a calculated move to make the mentors' own journey smoother.
"......No, I'll just try my best to sleep. Haha. Even having this much is a luxury for some people!"
"Being able to fall asleep gazing at the stars is a beautiful thing. How wonderful that we can navigate by them!"
The students instantly reversed course and began forcibly acclimating themselves.
It wasn't easy, of course.
Zelta watched his companions tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep.
'I miss Teacher.'
If Cassian were here, he'd have kindly taught them how to adjust to a situation like this.
He'd heard that the teacher had traveled the world seeking out swordsmen to establish his theories before coming to Akarind Academy.
If so, wouldn't he have know-how for enduring and adapting to harsh conditions like these?
Zelta closed his eyes with that thought.
He needed to lie down soon if they were moving at dawn again tomorrow.
***
When morning came, I woke naturally.
'......This bed could seriously make a person lazy.'
The bed and linens Goldline had provided were so plush and luxurious they made a person go limp.
A light, brief sleep was enough to fully recover from fatigue.
On top of that, Sihan's pest-control system meant there were no lice or fleas, so my body felt refreshed.
Once the sun rose and the birds sang, my eyes opened—and even then, I'd linger under the covers for about five minutes.
'I should get up.'
But thinking about the swordsmanship theory still waiting to be refined forced my body upright.
I opened the window to let the dawn air rush in.
The air was growing faintly damp and muggy, signaling the slow transition from spring's end into summer.
Still, the morning air was crisp enough to shake off the last of my drowsiness.
I washed my face, sat at the desk, and pulled out my manuscript.
'Which section should I revise today?'
After reaching Master and refining Rozalin's and Pan's swordsmanship—
Perhaps because my perspective on the sword had changed, my earlier writing no longer satisfied me.
Scholars always fight themselves more than anyone else.
I revised old sections and slowly polished the sentences.
In the process of editing the textbook, aspects beyond swordsmanship caught my eye too.
'How did I write sentences this atrociously?'
Famous scholars say the first draft is garbage.
Language is imperfect.
The most perfect thing in the world is always the image and concept before it becomes words.
Capturing the meaning in my head with vocabulary, then transcribing it into writing.
Some author had described this process as: "Writing is always a translation of the writer."
And as with any translation, the clearer the concept and the more information you have, the better the writing becomes.
'My swordsmanship has improved a lot since then.'
The interesting thing was that the more one's skill grew, the narrower, more detailed, and deeper the scope of "fundamentals" became.
Where I'd once thought everything from A to Z was necessary, now it was down to about G? Less than a third of the original scope had been consolidated into fundamentals.
No—compressed was the more accurate word.
Concepts I'd thought were separate turned out to be one and the same.
And so each individual concept grew deeper.
Wooong—
The pad vibrated.
An alarm function Sihan had added.
'It's time.'
I'd written about five pages today.
At this rate, another hundred pages or so and I'd have a foundational theory text.
It should be ready to use as a textbook by the start of next semester.
I stood up for my appointment.
The morning air led me to Sihan's workshop.
"I'm here."
"Yeah. Come this way."
Sihan had been waiting and immediately led me to the very back of the workshop.
"Here."
We arrived at a sizable laboratory.
It was enclosed on all sides by specially treated alloys, filled with unfamiliar glass containers, machinery, and Magitech equipment.
Seven researchers were visible at a glance.
Four or more of them looked gaunt and disheveled, as though they hadn't slept for days.
"It's an absurd mineral."
The object of their obsession was the World Eater's Fantasy.
Roughly 1 meter 50 centimeters long, about 15 centimeters in diameter.
The ore, a brownish hue close to gold, emitted an enigmatic luster whose composition defied analysis.
"It's stronger than any mineral I've ever known. Hard, extraordinary, miraculous."
Sihan's expression was one of rare, intense excitement.
Slightly bloodshot eyes glinted with mania.
"No chemical or physical process available to us can alter it. The sheer forces compressed inside are staggering."
When you considered the path the World Eater had traveled, it was absurd that this was the only byproduct it had yielded.
What would one have to do to an expanse of earth that vast to produce a mineral of this scale?
"On top of that, its mana Conductivity Rate is beyond imagination. Probably several times better than the Holy Sword."
"Better than the Holy Sword?"
"Yeah. What even is the Holy Sword? A blade consecrated through prayer. Made by human hands. But this transcends human laws of order entirely."
The Holy Sword had been broken, true, but it had still absorbed the Holy Power of hundreds of holy knights.
And this ore had a better Conductivity Rate than that sword?
"And in the end, it's a Fantasy, right? It even channels the World Eater's abilities—it's completely broken. If we made a weapon from this...... man. This is what overpowered really means. Who needs a +15 enhanced weapon?"
Sihan rattled off more exclamations in his own incomprehensible jargon.
I had no idea what he meant, but it was clearly a good thing.
Yes, good. All good. But.
"......It's not a sword, though?"
That was just a Fantasy in its raw state, wasn't it?
Its appearance was nothing more or less than a mineral.
No blade, no hilt, no guard.
He wasn't suggesting I swing that thing around as a sword, was he?
Catching my gaze, Sihan cleared his throat.
"That's why I said we can't make it into a sword. I explained all this."
"What?"
"It's impossible. It's harder than any known mineral. Incredibly powerful. And its mana Conductivity Rate means it absorbs all mana."
"That means......"
"We've thrown every damn thing we can think of at it and it looks exactly the same."
I looked at the researchers again.
One of them happened to be hefting a hammer as large as himself and bringing it down on the Fantasy.
CLANG!
He was launched backward and went rolling across the lab floor until he slammed into the far wall.
"GAH! Why won't it work?! Why?! I'm not good enough?! This is Orichalcum! Orichalcum that can punch through bulletproof glass!"
"Waaaaaah! Failure number one thousand two hundred and one! A failure! Die! Just die!"
"Why did I declare this as my dissertation topic...... Ahahaha, ahahahaha."
On closer inspection, the researchers' wrecked appearances weren't simply from pulling all-nighters.
One had a faint froth at the corners of his mouth; another had burst every blood vessel in his eyes.
Even the one I'd assumed was relatively normal turned out to be muttering a soft "hu hu hu hu" laugh with absolutely no change in facial expression.
Right. These were perfectly normal graduate students, the kind I'd always seen lurking around the Imperial Royal Academy's graduate labs.
"So the reason I called you today is to find out whether your Fantasy can process this."
"Hmm...... what should I do?"
"You've got the Iron Eater Fantasy, right? It's a Fantasy that manipulates, reshapes, and controls metal—try using that."
I glanced at the graduate students.
They stared at me like people whose research challenge had just been stolen—a mixture of hoping the Fantasy would yield and insisting that I had no right to be the one who cracked it.
"I'll give it a try."
I drew my sword.
They said the Fantasy had been absorbed into my body, but I had no idea how to properly wield it.
I wasn't a mage, so freely manipulating the mana inside my body was difficult.
Mages described it as imagining a third hand growing from your body and moving it—
But swordsmen drew external mana in and channeled it outward.
So the most intuitive method was simply swinging the sword.
"Whew."
I raised the sword and focused my Sword Intent.
What I wanted was the transformation of that Fantasy.
In response, something strange stirred inside my body with a low hum.
The Iron Eater's energy, presumably.
'This is the ore that'll become my weapon. Let's cut it right.'
As if answering, the Iron Eater's energy surged.
I channeled it directly into my swing.