Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy

“Isn’t the floor a little too slippery? Do you want me to help clean it up?”

As the upperclassmen kept falling over, Lee Han asked in puzzlement.

Professor Verdus looked at the floor and snapped irritably.

“Why is that floor so slippery that it keeps getting in the way?!”

“Isn’t that because you just toss things aside after you finish experimenting, Professor?”

At Lee Han’s suspicion, Professor Verdus protested as if the very idea were absurd.

“The students clean it up!”

“…”

At Professor Verdus’s answer, which absolutely did not say, I didn’t do that, Lee Han shook his head.

“Upperclassmen. Do you want me to help—”

“I told you it’s fine!”

“Wardanaz. Do we really look like idiots who can’t even control one slippery floor right now? Do we look like Valdrogard students to you?”

When the upperclassmen flared up, Lee Han was a little dumbfounded.

Hadn’t they just fallen down twice?

If the person saying this had been Gainando, his wand would already have come out first, and the response would have been, Quit spewing nonsense.

“Yes… understood.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t worry about that over there. Cast the mana absorption enchantment.”

Professor Verdus stomped in impatience and hurried him on.

Because of that trash floor, a full fifty-eight seconds had already been wasted.

“By Bivle’s rule, mana, be absorbed.”

SHUFFLE, SHUFFLE—

While Lee Han and Professor Verdus had their heads bent close together over the workbench, the upperclassmen slowly moved their chairs.

Had that junior really learned <Bivle’s Mana Absorption Enchantment>?

“No matter who he is, isn’t that a little… impossible?”

“I still don’t believe he learned <Bivle’s Mana Emission Enchantment> in the first place.”

“Sigunting. You’re in the enchantment magic school. What do you think?”

The third-year dwarf student with the geometrically braided beard put on a thoughtful expression.

Then opened his mouth.

“Hmm. I’m not really sure, since I don’t care about other students.”

“…”

“…”

What a piece of trash.

The students from the other schools shot Sigunting looks of contempt.

Of course, if they were being honest, they didn’t have the leisure to look after the juniors in their own schools all that well either. They were already busy enough solving the assignments for their own lectures and handling their own research.

But the enchantment magic school was a little worse than that.

A school where disciples often forgot even their professor’s name, and seniors sometimes forgot their juniors even existed.

From the outside, it was enough to make anyone wonder why it was called a school at all.

Shouldn’t those bastards just be treated as separate individuals?

“<Bivle’s Mana Absorption Enchantment> is a difficult spell, right? I’m not imagining that, am I?”

“It is.”

There was a reason the students in the lecture hall had been so shocked when they heard the name of the spell.

Bivle’s mana-control spell series was a major wall for students who did not major in the enchantment magic school.

Surprisingly enough, even students who didn’t major in a particular school often learned one or two spells from it when the need arose.

And enchantment magic, thanks to its distinctive usefulness, had quite a few students from other schools taking related lectures.

Wasn’t this very lecture full of students from other schools right now?

Of course, since they weren’t majoring in that school, it was hard for them to master high-difficulty spells, but the students weren’t hoping for that much in the first place.

What students from other schools wanted were spells that were easy to learn, broad in application, and good for adapting into the magic of their own schools…

—Here. Take these, everyone. They’re Professor Verdus’s <Bivle’s Mana Emission Enchantment> spells. Much better and more convenient than the existing mana-attribute conversion spells.

—Wow, can you really just hand something like this out so casually?

—Professor Verdus doesn’t care anyway. In any case, the spells you want are roughly in here, so learn them yourselves.

—Thanks. …Wait. Can you actually learn this?

They were better and more convenient than the existing spells, yes, but they also required memorizing far more delicate and complex movements and understanding the principles behind them, so students who didn’t major in the enchantment magic school were bound to get bounced out immediately.

Even students who did major in the enchantment magic school often failed to learn several of them and got bounced out.

“Then it really is amazing. Starting with learning emission, and then learning absorption that quickly.”

“No, the question is whether that’s even possible. Sigunting. I know you don’t care, but by your standards, what is it?”

Sigunting said nothing. The students looked puzzled and grabbed Sigunting and shook hard.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“Ah. Sorry. I was busy thinking about what kind of work I should ask that junior to do after today’s lecture.”

THUD-CRASH-CRASH-CRASH!

The upperclassmen shoved Sigunting backward.

When Lee Han raised his head, the upperclassmen shouted first.

“The floor is really completely fine now!”

“You could roll an oil-greased wagon wheel over this and it would stop here, so don’t worry! Focus again!”

“It’s all right. I’ve already finished.”

“…?!?!?”

*****

While the upperclassmen chattered in the front, Lee Han helped Professor Verdus and learned amplification, increase, acceleration, explosion, curvature, and conversion enchantments on top of that.

Excited by a work speed incomparable to normal, Professor Verdus rode the momentum and shouted,

“The next task too!”

“Stop talking nonsense, Professor.”

Professor Verdus grumbled that the disciple showed too little interest and passion for magic, but Lee Han ignored it.

Now Lee Han had to prepare for the actual lecture content as well.

Feels like I already got all my strength drained before the lecture even started.

Just in case, Lee Han checked the chair and the floor once (the lecture hall seemed unusually slippery today), then sat down.

As one could guess from the name <Wand Materials and Magical Amplification>, a wand’s performance fundamentally varied unpredictably depending on what materials were combined and how.

For example, if the frame of a wand were made from Blue Water Wood and a fragment left behind by an Archduke of the Deep Sea were placed inside it, that wand would become an extremely water-element-specialized wand.

If the frame were formed from metal from the Demon Realm and crests were drawn into it with demon blood, there would be advantages when casting demon summoning magic.

A wand easy enough for me to manage, but still capable of producing decent performance.

The wand Lee Han was currently using was the wand made by the Talking Oak Tree.

The first basic wand, since it had been made by Einroguard, had a form and balance close to perfect, but it didn’t contain any particularly stronger power or a sleeping spell.

—Grab it and run while Professor Verdus is blocked!

—You pack of robbers! You are currently stealing rightful property protected under Imperial law!

—Who are you to bring up Imperial law when nobody ignores Imperial law as much as you do, Professor?!

Noisy voices came from beside him, but Lee Han ignored them so he could focus.

The wand made by the Talking Oak Tree had a wood spirit dwelling within it.

And beyond that, the blue gemstone of the Frost Giant King and the ore from the teleportation statue.

A wood spirit dwelled in the body of the wand, and at the tip were set the blue gemstone of the Frost Giant King and the ore from the teleportation statue.

I can probably transfer them, but I’ll have to account for that too.

Trying to force a power into a wand that it couldn’t endure would not do any good.

In the worst case, the wand might crack or shatter.

—Unbelievable! He really learned it! Look at this!

—A miracle of Einroguard!

—How is this even possible? Wait. Isn’t this amplification? Did he do the amplification too?

—Give it back, you robbers!

CLANG!!

—Damn it. Professor Verdus is already back! Scatter, all of you! Stall for time!

Lee Han hastily drew a simple magic circle and prepared a summoning spell.

When he had first received this wand, there were only a few spells he could cast, but now, after spending time at Einroguard, the number of spells Lee Han could use had grown quite a bit.

The spell he was about to use now was the second-circle spell <Low-Grade Spirit Dialogue>.

A spell belonging to the summoning-magic group, it attempted to ask a few questions of a spirit with whom one had not made a contract.

Since Lee Han rarely had any reason to meet spirits, he had never actually used it, but he had studied it diligently.

Good thing I learned it. As expected, learning magic is never a loss.

Lee Han cast the spell to ask the wood spirit in the wand a question.

“Spirit, please answer my questions.”

The spell was cast accurately, but no answer came back from the spirit.

What?

Thinking he must have made some kind of mistake, Lee Han frowned in puzzlement.

Since he had never done this before, it was hard even to tell what had gone wrong.

“Upperclassman… Upperclassman, what happened here?!”

Only then did Lee Han look around and realize that the upperclassmen were limping and bleeding from the nose.

“It was nothing.”

“Were you trying to learn another of Professor Verdus’s spells again?”

“Th-that’s more or less what happened.”

“That’s incredible.”

When the junior looked ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) at them with eyes full of admiration, the upperclassmen felt a stab of conscience.

There was no way they could say, We made a bet over whether you had really learned it and got into a fight while checking.

“What’s incredible is you. This is the first time I’ve seen a student capable of helping Professor Verdus with work.”

“?”

Lee Han didn’t understand.

Of course, Lee Han did have some special advantages in certain parts of enchantment magic, but surely there were upperclassmen in the enchantment magic school who were superior to Lee Han.

“Aren’t there upperclassmen in the enchantment magic school?”

“Ah. Anyone capable of helping Professor Verdus with work usually doesn’t help Professor Verdus with work and just does their own magic instead.”

“…”

Realizing anew just how bleak the human relationships inside the enchantment magic school were, Lee Han felt bitter.

Come to think of it, if the upperclassmen had handled Professor Verdus’s work, I wouldn’t have had to suffer like this too.

Without realizing that, given his mana characteristics, he would have been dragged into it no matter what even if the upperclassmen had taken the work, Lee Han thought that.

“Upperclassman. Could you take a look and see whether there’s anything wrong with this spell?”

“Enchantment magic? If it’s enchantment magic, I think you’re probably better at it than I am.”

“Ha ha. That joke is going too far.”

“I’m not joking.”

“All right. Thank you for the compliment.”

“No, I’m really not joking…”

Though dumbfounded, the upperclassman checked the problem Lee Han mentioned first.

It was a wand with a wood spirit dwelling inside it, but even when <Low-Grade Spirit Dialogue> was cast, no answer was coming back.

“You cast the spell correctly. Nothing seems especially wrong.”

“Is that so?”

“I’ll cast it myself.”

The upperclassman swung the wand and cast <Low-Grade Spirit Dialogue>.

Watching that, Lee Han suddenly felt uneasy.

…Surely it isn’t refusing to answer because it’s afraid of me.

“Spirit. Are you listening?”

A crest indicating affirmation was drawn in front of the wand, then vanished.

“It works. Strange. What was the reason?”

The upperclassman sank into thought.

This spell could only be answered with right or wrong, yes or no, so the questioner had to ask somewhat sharp questions too.

“Upperclassman. Please ask whether it isn’t answering because it’s afraid of me.”

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

At Lee Han’s words, the upperclassman burst out laughing.

“Hey. Sure, to Einroguard students, you might seem scary. You’re taking lectures from every school, after all.”

“…”

Lee Han stared at the upperclassman with an unpleasant expression.

“But spirits don’t get scared by things like that.”

“Try it.”

“All right, all right. Spirit, are you perhaps not answering because you’re afraid of this mage here?”

Amazingly, the answer was no.

Startled, Lee Han grabbed the upperclassman hard by the shoulders and shouted,

“Upperclassman. Look!!! The spirit says it isn’t afraid of me!!!”

“Y-yeah. Congratulations. I don’t know why you’re this happy about it, but could you loosen your grip a little? My collarbone that Professor Verdus broke earlier still hurts.”

“I’m sorry.”

Freed from the iron grip, the upperclassman rubbed a shoulder and fell into thought.

“Hmm. I really don’t know the reason.”

“I wanted to ask a few things because I’m making a new wand…”

“Well, nothing for it. Let’s just ask everything we can think of.”

The upperclassman pulled a spirit-summoning magic book from inside a robe, then began asking questions one by one.

“Is it because you made a contract with an evil being?”

“Ugh.”

“Is it because you fought in excessively dangerous battles?”

“Ughhh.”

“…What’s wrong? Are you in pain somewhere?”

“No. Please continue.”