Magic Academy's Bastard Instructor

Chapter 261: Flower of Iron [1]

“Uhm… Vanitas…”

“What?”

“Does your fiancée… hate me?”

“Huh?”

Vanitas genuinely froze at the question Franz had just asked. The two of them were huddled near the bathroom, Vanitas still drying his hands after stepping out.

“She really beat me up,” Franz said.

“…Margaret? Why?”

“I asked her for a duel. The air changed instantly. We started swinging, and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground.”

“So you lost.”

“No. I’m serious.” Franz frowned, rubbing the back of his neck. “There was something behind her eyes. Like fire. Like she genuinely wanted to kill me. I’m telling you, she hates me.”

Vanitas stared at him for a long second before sighing.

“…You asked her for a duel?”

“Yes?”

“You didn’t say anything else.”

“I just asked for a spar.”

“…I see.”

That explained everything, and at the same time, nothing at all.

Franz was overreacting. But it was understandable. The more puppets Vanitas encountered, the more he came to realize just how distinct each of them truly was.

Franz had once told him that if he ever stepped out of line, a puppet would come forth and kill him, taking his place without anyone realizing.

Apparently, this had been a common occurrence for nearly twenty years. Some kind of twisted norm for Franz Barielle Aetherion.

Anyway, it was all a bunch of nonsense. But that was interesting. To think Margaret had become strong enough to overpower someone like Franz. Perhaps it wouldn’t be long before she could replace the hole that useless Sword Saint had left behind.

“Anyway, I met Fyodor again.”

“In this ship?”

“In this ship.”

A pause followed.

“When are we killing him?”

“Relax,” Vanitas said. “We still don’t know his weakness.”

That much was true. If an Archmage like Soleitte had been unable to defeat him outright, then brute force was never going to be the answer.

Vanitas was strong, sure, but strength alone meant little against something fundamentally out of reach.

At the moment, humanity was the scissors, and Fyodor was the rock.

No matter how sharp the scissor, it would only chip itself to pieces if it struck a rock head-on. Charging blindly would achieve nothing beyond self-destruction.

So they needed paper.

A rule that even rock had to obey. Something conceptual. A condition embedded into existence itself, the same way Zen had once woven inevitability into a seal instead of domination.

Until they found that paper, all they could do was endure and wait.

….And hope Fyodor never realized they were already looking for it.

“By the way,” Franz added, “they’re looking for you. They probably found something. Told me to come fetch you.”

“Alright.”

With that, Vanitas rose and made his way through Eisenreich’s vessel.

The ship shuddered with every impact. Somewhere beyond the bulkheads, Cthulhus continued to tear at the ocean’s surface.

Yet Eisenreich did not sink. It did not even intend to sink in any meaningful sense.

Of course, the Bundesritter navymen held the line. Explosions echoed, vibrations crawling up through the decks, but the vessel pressed on regardless.

It was less a ship at sea and more a fortress daring the ocean itself to break it.

* * *

“This is it.”

“Huh?”

“Thank God!”

“Did we really find it, Astrea?”

Vanitas scanned the parchment once more, tracing the systemata etched across its surface. The ellipses curved and converged toward a single point before folding inward.

There was no mistaking it.

The flow was no longer scattered. The pattern had aligned.

It was a clear indication that the leyline had finally entered its trajectory.

“It won’t be long,” Vanitas said. “Just follow the coordinates.”

That, however, was easier said than done. Even translating the coordinates alone was an arduous task. Yet Vanitas could tell with a single glance.

“Northwest,” he added. “That’s what it’s saying.”

“Is there some kind of shortcut?” someone asked. “A way to tell without running the calculations?”

“There is,” Vanitas replied. “You calculate it mentally.”

“….”

But that was not the kind of mathematics one could solve in their head. It involved layers upon layers of calculus, stacked and interwoven, just to determine the direction alone, not to mention the exact values expressed across multiple axes.

Vanitas, however, did not rely on mental arithmetic.

Behind the lenses of his spectacles, the calculations were already complete.

It was a cheat. And he had no intention of sharing.

After all, if he revealed that there was a way to bypass the worst of the formulas, a method that did not rely on raw intellect alone but on reduction and substitution, he would no longer be useful.

And once his usefulness ended, so would his life.

He didn’t intend to die here yet. Not in this ship, with nowhere to run.

“Then could you…”

“As long as I’m accommodated accordingly,” Vanitas replied.

“Of course. Of course! Someone get Astrea some food!”

That was all it took.

For the following week, stranded in the middle of the ocean, Vanitas’s position was no longer that of a mere adviser brought along for convenience.

He was treated like a king.

If he was hungry, a feast appeared before he even had the chance to ask. If he wanted to read, stacks of books were brought in, sorted by subject, language, and condition, as if the ship had suddenly remembered it had a library.

If he wanted a drink, navymen abandoned their posts and transformed from soldiers into baristas in the blink of an eye.

Orders bent around him. Schedules shifted to accommodate his rest. Officers lowered their voices when he passed.

Even the tremors shaking Eisenreich’s hull seemed like nothing whenever Vanitas settled into his seat, crossed his legs, with the parchment spread before him as if the ocean itself was waiting for his judgment.

Occasionally, those who sensed an opening tried their luck.

Some approached him earnestly, asking how to solve this formula or that system, treating the moment as a free lecture and a rare glimpse into the mind of Vanitas Astrea.

Others were less subtle. They circled their questions, disguising them as academic curiosity, probing for shortcuts in navigation and hoping to pry answers loose without revealing their intent.

Vanitas indulged them just enough.

He answered calmly, but never fully. A variable left unexplained here. An assumption secretly altered there. A method that worked, but only under conditions that would never repeat twice.

He sprinkled sugar and salt in equal measure, enough to taste convincing, and enough to mislead.

Those who listened closely walked away thinking they had learned something profound. Those who trusted it blindly found their conclusions slightly off, but they didn’t question his genius, because he had proven himself.

Of course, Vanitas never lied.

He simply chose which truths to leave intact.

In doing so, he maintained the balance.

He remained indispensable without ever making himself replaceable.

A king, after all, did not rule by handing out his crown.

Before anyone realized it, some form of worship began to take shape.

A consensus formed around Vanitas Astrea.

A cult, if one insisted on naming it.

Many would find the idea absurd. Vanitas himself would have dismissed it outright. Yet within the world of academia, reverence was never far from obsession.

Faced with a mind that seemed to operate several steps ahead of their own, even the most rational scholars were to succumb.

If one were to stand before Einstein in the flesh, would a modern scientist not lower their head, if only a little?

Would they not abandon pride, if only for a chance to understand even a tiny bit of how such a mind worked?

It was the same here.

Vanitas did not ask for worship, nor encourage it. Funnily enough, he was completely unaware of this at all.

For that matter, he remained indifferent, perhaps even bored by the attention. And that only made it worse.

Distance became mystique.

Indifference became proof of superiority.

They called him when they were stuck. They waited for his nod before acting. Some even began structuring their work around what they imagined his answer would be.

Vanitas noticed.

But he did not stop it.

Perhaps an interesting event would unfold soon enough.

“X: −317.42, Y: 884.09, Z: −62.71.”

Crack——

But the illusion fractured the instant the coordinates were spoken aloud.

“Major Maeril?”

It was Karina who had solved the current coordinates.

It had been her.

Of course it had.

Many had forgotten, or chosen to overlook it. Karina’s resume still bore a line few remembered to read carefully.

Before everything else, before Zyphran, she had been an assistant professor.

Not just any assistant.

She had been Vanitas Astrea’s direct aide.

The crack spread another fraction wider. Like glass that had finally acknowledged it could break.

If anyone were to keep up with the greatest mind aboard the Eisenreich, it would have to be someone who had once walked beside it.

Not as an observer, nor as a follower, but as a pupil shaped directly by that brilliance.

That was Karina’s existence.

Once upon a time, she had been closer to Vanitas Astrea than anyone else.

Closer even than his own sister.

She had learned directly under him as someone he took the time to shape. He corrected her patiently, guided her carefully, and when the time came, led her forward.

For just a few short months, she had walked by his side.

“I think I get it…”

Vanitas looked up from the parchment and frowned. “Get what, Major Maeril?”

“The coordinates don’t point to the leyline directly. They describe how the leyline moves.” She paused. “Like predicting a tide instead of chasing the water.”

Vanitas was silent for a moment before exhaling and shaking his head.

“That’s a tempting interpretation,” he said. “But it’s also the fastest way to get everyone here killed.”

“I disagree.”

“….”

“The curvature here,” Karina continued, pointing to a section he had deliberately obscured earlier, “there’s direct interference. To me, Vanitas Astrea, the mental calculations you produce on the spot function as a preconditioned axis. They can’t be derived through conventional methods. They’re based on… assumptions.”

Vanitas slowly raised his head.

“Assumption? Are you saying I’m misleading everyone here? Choose your words carefully, Major Maeril. One careless statement, and you sabotage this entire operation.”

Karina did not back down.

“No. Not misleading.” She took a breath. “If you round the values, your conclusions are frighteningly accurate. But that’s exactly the problem. I don’t think there are fixed coordinates. The leyline isn’t there. It’s going there.”

The surrounding air seemed to tighten.

Vanitas stepped closer, his shadow looming over the parchment.

“The systemata records vectors,” he said evenly. “You’re reading causality where there is none.”

“But this isn’t reality,” Karina replied. “It’s a moving constraint. A self-correcting one. The moment you define a point, it shifts away from it.”

Silence followed.

“Your calculations assume a stable reference frame. But the leyline isn’t bound to one. Every time pressure builds along one axis, it bends away. That’s why recalculations keep converging but never overlap.”

A few officers exchanged glances. Even the analysts had no idea what the hell they were talking about.

Vanitas stepped closer to the table and placed his hand directly over the marked section she was indicating.

“You’re mistaking fluctuation for autonomy,” he said. “If the leyline were self-correcting, this vessel would already be too late. The fact that the vectors are still resolvable means there is a dominant trajectory.”

Karina frowned. “Then why does every solution decay the moment it’s finalized?”

“Because you’re overfitting. You’re forcing a solution where approximation is required. The systemata was never meant to be solved cleanly. It’s a predictive tool, not a mirror.”

“That doesn’t explain why—”

“Major Maeril,” Vanitas cut in. “If you insist there is no fixed trajectory, then you’re suggesting we chase a ghost. That is suicide.”

For a long while, their words went back and forth, layered with counter-theories and implications neither side voiced aloud.

Somewhere in the midst of it, Vanitas felt the corner of his lips twitch upward.

It had been a long time since anyone had dared to challenge his intellect like this and knew what they were talking about.

Because Karina was close.

Uncomfortably so.

Vanitas had not corrected her because she was wrong.

He had corrected her because she was too close.

If she realized that the leyline could not be reached through timing, then she would inevitably realize something else as well.

That he was not calculating faster than everyone else.

He was choosing when to be right.

And somehow, it was always her.

The one who had once been the closest to him, only to drift away. The one who had veered off course, yet returned time and time again to question him, to challenge him, to force him into corners he could not escape quickly enough.

This woman, who resembled Kim Minjeong so uncannily that it hurt, even if she was no reincarnation, had always stood out to him.

Not because she followed his path.

But because she dared to walk against it.

Undoubtedly, the two of them had become the core of the ship’s navigation system.

And within only a few days, they had found it.

“That is…”

What rose from the sea could barely be called a structure.

It resembled an Iron Lotus, with metallic petals unfolding outward as if the ocean itself had birthed it.

It was an island in scale, yet wrong in every word that could possibly describe it.

The pressure radiating from it was so immense that even Vanitas felt his breath seize, his knees buckling before he could stop himself.

“Ukh…!”

Navymen were trained for the ocean. No one could enter the ranks of the Bundesritter navy if they were prone to seasickness.

Yet here, one by one, they began to retch.

Men dropped to their knees, clutching their stomachs, vomiting over the railings. Some could not even manage that, collapsing where they stood as bile spilled onto the deck.

The leyline loomed before them, yet pressing down on their minds as if existence itself had grown heavier.

The air tasted wrong.

The sea felt wrong.

Even thought came slower, dragged down by something vast and indifferent.

Vanitas forced himself upright and fixed his gaze on the Iron Lotus.

So this was it.

“H-How are we supposed to defeat something like that?!”

Panic spread all across the Eisenreich.