A Beginner’s Guide to Being a Scoundrel

Chapter 65

As full-fledged summer approached, the Academy’s second semester began.

As I had said before, this section in the original work was mostly skipped.

Ordinary daily life made up the bulk of it, and apparently large portions were cut out for fear the writing would drag on.

The source was the record journal of my former senior.

Because he had resigned so abruptly, I ended up taking over several authors he had been in charge of.

Fortunately, he wasn’t incompetent, so various records had been left behind.

Thanks to that, they were a huge help when giving feedback on this work, which was why I remembered it clearly.

Still, even that senior who had quit probably never imagined that the editor himself would end up transmigrating into the novel.

The city and streets were sweltering under the summer weather, but the interior of the Academy—true to being the finest in the Empire—was comfortable beyond measure.

I spent peaceful days as though the violent incidents from before were things of the distant past.

When morning came, I attended classes and worked on assignments.

When the weekend arrived, I occasionally went out with my companions.

It was such a tranquil time that I wondered if it was really okay to live like this.

Just like in the first semester, it felt as though I had returned to my university days, and that made my heart flutter a little.

What was different from then was that I, a Swordsmanship Department major, had applied for a double major in the Magic Department.

With the dean backing me, it was accepted without difficulty, and I was able to take some of the Magic Department’s courses.

That said, the classes were boring as hell.

I had expected something flashy, with things rising up dramatically like in anime or manga, but what we actually learned was nothing but tedious stuff like magical theory and formulas.

Thanks to system assist, I understood what was being said, but hearing the same story repeated over and over inevitably made me sick of it.

“Are you aiming to become a magic swordsman?”

Leysias, who was sitting to my left and taking the class with me, looked at me with a puzzled gaze.

Her doubt was reasonable.

It was rare for a swordsman who had already reached a certain level to study another field, especially magic.

This was a world where even mastering one thing was difficult no matter how much you trained for a lifetime.

If I were someone else, I would have focused on the sword alone, but I had no intention of being satisfied with just that one thing.

So I set down the pen I had been using to doodle on the parchment, nodded indifferently, and said,

“As you know, it’s a hard life, so the more insurance you have, the better.”

“Haha…….”

This time, Yuria, who was sitting on my right, let out a dry laugh.

They both knew that I was an imperial prince.

A little wordplay like this was nothing to hold back over.

“Yuria. That formula there is wrong.”

“Ah, thank you.”

With me between them, the two women gave off a friendly atmosphere.

In the original work, one side had ignored the other unilaterally, but with the changes brought about by a story centered on me, they now seemed to have become completely close.

Leysias’s demeanor had fully softened now, and Yuria’s timid side had improved at least a little.

The tedious classes, where I hadn’t even dared to doze off because of all the eyes on me, finally ended.

After greeting Leysias and Yuria and telling them good job, I left the classroom without delay, entered the teachers’ offices, and looked for someone.

“Professor Gawain.”

Gawain, who had been forcibly made a teacher at Bayern Academy due to my plans, greeted me with a sallow complexion.

By the time he graduated from the Academy, he had been an unprecedented genius, but here and now, there were plenty of cohorts senior to him.

I had left him alone for a few days to give him an adjustment period, but it seemed he had gone through a brutal initiation thanks to a murderous workload.

To think that someone who had even been a court mage couldn’t look after his own well-being.

This was why half-baked smart guys were the worst.

“…Ostia-kun.”

Buried in paperwork, Gawain only noticed my presence a moment later.

Then, with a face that looked like his soul was about to leave his body, he glanced around nervously and looked at me.

“Shouldn’t you be keeping your promise about now?”

The biggest reason I had brought him here was to learn magic.

I thought the timing was about right.

“That is, I still have a lot of backlogged work…….”

Gawain looked at me with a pleading expression.

He wanted to keep his promise to me, but the circumstances weren’t favorable.

‘So you want me to do something about it, is that it.’

“Who’s the one in charge?”

When I lowered my head slightly and asked who his superior was, Gawain reflexively bent as well and pointed at a man seated in the seat of honor.

He looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties, and even at a glance, he seemed like someone with a nasty temper.

“…….”

Perhaps he was already aware of me, because he had been stealing glances in this direction.

When our eyes met, he flinched slightly, then naturally turned his head away as if he hadn’t seen anything.

“Get ready.”

“Yes!”

At my words, he nodded and answered energetically.

Seeing him pack up his things with a bright expression I hadn’t seen before, as though he had been harassed terribly, was pitiful to the point of sympathy.

“Professor.”

I went and stood in front of the extra character whose name I didn’t even know.

“Isn’t this Ostia-kun, the top student of the first year? What brings you here?”

He greeted me with an easygoing expression, as if welcoming me.

I couldn’t suppress the dry chuckle that came out naturally and pointed toward Gawain.

“I’m Ostia. I’m scheduled to receive supplementary lessons from Professor Gawain, but it seems he has a lot of work, so I was wondering.”

When I asked if there was some way he could do something about it, he replied with a regretful look.

“Oh dear, in Professor Gawain’s case, his appointment was decided suddenly, so he likely has a lot of matters to take care of. If it’s not urgent, it might be best to postpone your appointment.”

Well, would you look at that?

Most teachers, knowing my status, would have yielded appropriately, but he casually dodged the issue with eyes that said there was no chance.

As the one in charge of the teachers, there was no way he didn’t know who I was.

Which meant that at the very least, he had backing strong enough that he wasn’t afraid of someone like me.

‘Another imperial prince, perhaps.’

It would be burdensome to confront me directly, so he was pulling this kind of maneuver.

Then again, the original work had plenty of slander like this too.

“Professor.”

This time, just as I had done with Gawain, I lowered my head.

Then I released the momentum from my entire body and seized control of the air in the space.

“…….”

The teachers’ office was divided into several sections according to each person’s specialty.

Where Gawain was seated was, of course, the area where the Magic Department professors were stationed.

In other words, people more sensitive to the flow of mana than anyone else.

The professor’s face turned pale in an instant.

As though he had never imagined I would press down on him head-on, his eyes shook as if struck by an earthquake, and his mouth fell open.

The other professors around us wore similar expressions.

Rolling their eyes frantically with faces that screamed trouble was an unpleasant sight.

At the far end, where my pressure reached less strongly, there was even someone who half-rose from their seat, seemingly trying to flee.

“Don’t move.”

I said this while looking at the professor who was half-standing awkwardly.

Like an obedient lamb, he sat back down with an innocent expression, and I turned my head to look at the professor in front of me again.

“Does a mere chess piece dare to think it can match me?”

When I said it in the sense that he was nothing more than a disposable piece, his face turned bright red.

But what could he do? It was the truth.

Unable to say anything, he simply bowed his head deeply.

When I glared at the other professors, they too avoided my gaze and swallowed hard.

“My origins are what they are, so my patience has a low limit. Think carefully and conduct yourselves wisely.”

It wasn’t a loud voice nor a small one, but the threat—that if they pulled any nonsense and got caught, it wouldn’t end nicely—was surely etched into their minds.

“Then, I’ll be counting on you. Professor.”

When I greeted him like that with a smile at the end, he replied in a low voice that he understood.

Having finished my business, I returned to Gawain’s desk with a refreshed expression.

He, too, was waiting for me with a look of satisfaction, preparations complete.

“Then, since I have an appointment with Ostia-kun, I’ll excuse myself now.”

“G, good work. I’ll take care of these, so don’t worry.”

A senior professor at the next desk cleared his throat and pulled the mountain of documents from Gawain’s desk over to his own.

Gawain bowed slightly, then followed behind me with his face twitching.

“Looks like you’ve been through a lot.”

Seeing Gawain’s bright expression, as if ten years’ worth of pent-up indigestion had been cleared just from me throwing a few words at them, was enough to make me happy too.

He gave a bitter smile at my words and shook his head.

“Isn’t it all just karma? Everyone welcomes the downfall of a lonely genius.”

At that, I looked at him with a dumbfounded expression.

No matter how much someone was set up as a genius, did people usually call themselves a genius out loud?

“Well, anyway, leave magic completely to me! I, Gawain, who has gone from the bottom all the way to the peak, will teach you with all my heart and soul!”

Good grief, he was reliable to the point of bringing tears to my eyes.

“…After hundreds of deliberations, this formula was the result! I can confidently assert that I am the first in academic history to have discovered something like this!”

In a quiet classroom filled with the light of the setting sun, Gawain continued explaining magic while writing formulas across the blackboard.

After about thirty minutes, his passion seemed to ignite, and now he was spewing his excitement with spit flying.

On the blackboard, several vast and complex formulas overlapped—far more than what I had heard in the earlier class.

I could only stare at those incomprehensible things with vacant eyes.

“Although I couldn’t break through the wall of Fourth Class Master, I’m confident that my theory loses to no one. Even the dean exclaimed in admiration after hearing my theory.”

Half of the lesson content was self-praise.

The fact that even Chris had exclaimed in admiration sounded a bit impressive, but well, you had to understand it to admire it in the first place.

“Since it’s the first session, I only skimmed over the theory lightly. These are theories I established before entering the Academy, so at Your Highness’s level, there shouldn’t be any difficulties in understanding them.”

Gawain showed enthusiasm, saying that if there was anything I didn’t recognize or had missed, he would explain it in detail.

To be honest, I didn’t understand a single thing.

The blackboard was filled with formulas and symbols several times more complex than the earlier class, and Gawain’s explanations were so abstruse that I doubted whether he and I were even speaking the same language.

But what did that matter?

[SYSTEM: Interpreting ‘A Study of Basic Magic Theory and Formulas for Improved Efficiency – by Gawain’.]

I had the convenient ability called system assist.

It was dismantling and reconstructing the formulas Gawain had written one by one, then accumulating the data.

The reason I needed Gawain was because I didn’t know how system assist would function when it came to magic.

When I saw the four words ‘Interpretation Complete’ appear, I looked at Gawain and gave him a grin.

“Easy.”

I understood everything.