Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy

Of course, no matter how shocked Lee Han was, it could not compare to how shocked Asan beside him was.

Asan literally fell over backward.

“Are you all right?!”

“B-Brother? That person is your brother?!”

To think he would see a direct member of House Wardanaz, someone he had only heard about in rumors.

Asan was excited and afraid at the same time. He could not even begin to guess what kind of person it would be.

“That’s right.”

“He looks like an ordinary human… even though he’s from House Wardanaz!”

“……”

Lee Han looked at his friend with a complicated expression.

What does this bastard think I am, then?

“Didn’t the others tell you? Some of them met him during break.”

“Ah, that… right, they did. That’s him? Arsil, was it?”

Only then did Asan recover slightly from the shock and manage to dredge up the memory.

Starting with Gainando, a few of their friends had visited the House Wardanaz mansion during the previous break.

“Yeah. That’s him.”

“I did hear a lot of things, but so many of them were absurd… They said devils wandered the territory, and golems went berserk…”

“Mm. Gainando does exaggerate a lot.”

Lee Han smoothly changed the subject.

If his friend believed that, there was no need to point out the truth.

“Arsil is definitely someone who… spirits…”

“Right. He has an evil dominion power that lets him work spirits however he pleases.”

“…N-no. I heard he cares for and loves spirits. And that he’s loved by them too.”

“Well, close enough. Brother!”

While Asan stared at Lee Han in disbelief, Lee Han called out to Arsil.

Arsil, who had been writing a book with the spirits at the summit, turned his gaze and greeted him warmly. Then he shouted something.

Unable to understand spirit language, Asan tilted his head.

“What is he saying?”

“He says if we climb up to the summit now, our whole bodies might be shredded apart by the blade wind summoned by a mad spirit, so we should wait a moment.”

“……”

*****

Arsil asked the other spirits to clear away the blade wind at the summit, then welcomed his younger brother and the friend with him.

Lee Han looked embarrassed as Arsil, seeming excited, clapped and spoke animatedly.

“No, this isn’t anything worth… It’s nothing special, Brother.”

“He’s praising you for climbing all the way up here, isn’t he?”

In Asan’s opinion, there was a 99 percent chance that was exactly it. There was nothing else to praise right now.

“He says he was worried I wouldn’t make friends, but seeing me bring a friend like this, just like during break, makes him happy.”

“……”

Asan quietly shut his mouth. Lee Han pointed to his friend and explained the situation.

“This is Asan of House Dalcard, and because of today’s lecture… Yes. Making a map. No, what kind of nonsense is that? How is this an easy lecture?!”

Asan was startled when his friend suddenly became furious mid-conversation.

“Wh-what’s wrong, Wardanaz?”

“He says we got an easy topic! …It was originally something else?”

Arsil soothed his younger brother and kindly explained.

In the past, the summoning magic school’s lecture topic had certainly been…

“……”

Lee Han’s face turned slightly pale. When his friend went silent, Asan felt an inexplicable chill.

“…Difficulty is relative by nature, I suppose. Understood.”

What was it?!

Asan became afraid of what sort of topic Lee Han had just heard about.

As they talked, the other students began arriving one after another from below.

“H-huh?! Hello!”

Gainando was startled when he discovered Arsil.

“Who is that? Wait. Isn’t an outsider being here dangerous? Like that mage who kidnapped Wardanaz last time.”

“No! He’s Lee Han’s brother.”

“…Doesn’t that mean he is dangerous?”

Several friends whispered among themselves.

Lee Han was still a comparatively young direct member of House Wardanaz, and he was already like this. They could not even dare imagine what his much older brother might be like.

Gainando bristled at their whispers.

“He’s a very kind person! He even gave me a gift.”

In fact, the leather case Arsil had given him, the one that offered advice on Mage Cards, was a treasure Gainando valued dearly.

“Hello!”

“He says hello to you too. And he’s asking whether you’ve won a lot of Mage Cards since then.”

“M-my luck just hasn’t followed me…”

“He’s asking how luck can be that bad for only one side when luck is equal for everyone.”

“S-sometimes misfortune comes all at once.”

“How about giving up Mage Cards and studying instead?”

“B-but Mage Cards are… Did he really say that?”

“No. That last part was just me.”

“……”

Gainando glared at Lee Han.

Seeing that, Arsil laughed and spoke.

“Brother. Saying his luck will turn around someday is kind, but I don’t think it will help. Wouldn’t it be better for him to simply quit Mage Cards?”

“…I can hear all of that! Right. Arsil. My undead summon was reverse-summoned. Is there any way to calm it down?”

“That’s too much even for Brother, Gainando. Just summon it again once it recovers. I’ll help scare it beside you.”

Lee Han reacted negatively to Gainando’s words.

Of course, he understood why Gainando was acting like that when the summon had been reverse-summoned, but Arsil was not an orthodox mage. He was simply someone with an unusual constitution.

He could not call back a destroyed undead summon and soothe its grievances.

Lee Han helping would be better. With Lee Han’s abilities, intimidating an undead into signing the contract again probably would not be that difficult.

However, Arsil lightly patted Lee Han’s shoulder and said something.

“…Uh, you say it’s possible? How…? No, a spirit can do that? It’s undead. If you borrow the power of a dark-element spirit you’re friendly with, negotiation with undead is also…? No, that makes no sense. Of course, it would be the spirit most likely to be close to undead, but that kind of negotiation is…”

“Lee Han. Didn’t he just say it can be done?”

“No. Brother must be misunderstanding something. Wait.”

“He said it can be done! He definitely said it can be done!!”

After whining on and on, Gainando finally obtained permission.

Arsil called over a dark-element spirit he was close to, checked the contract crest engraved on the back of Gainando’s hand, and sent a message to that dimension.

“……”

Lee Han watched Arsil talk with the spirit, ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) looking anxious and uneasy.

This makes no sense. How can being friendly with spirits let him do even that?

Theoretically, dark-element spirits were beings of negative energy, unlike ordinary spirits, so they were relatively close to undead.

But even so, having that spirit soothe the undead’s anger and reconcile them?

If that was possible too, Lee Han’s world might collapse.

“…Lee Han. You’re not hoping this doesn’t work, are you…?”

“What are you talking about, Gainando?”

Lee Han flinched. The Imperial Family’s intuition was especially sharp at times like this.

FLASH!

In that instant, Gainando’s contract crest glowed red. It meant the scattered and broken power had returned and reconnected.

No one could feel the result faster or more clearly than Gainando himself. Gainando shouted in a voice that sounded ready to die of happiness.

“Thank you!!!”

“……”

“Lee Han? He’s saying something, isn’t he?”

“He says that’s good.”

“No…! He said something really long!”

“All right, all right. He says he asked the dark-element spirit to recover the revenant’s broken body, provide materials, and in exchange, restore the broken contract and make it forget its grudge. Damn it. How does it make sense that you can make a spirit do all that?”

Gainando pretended not to hear the last part. The gift he had received from Arsil just now was too great for him to join his friend’s anger.

Sorry, Lee Han.

“Wardanaz. Ask something else for me.”

Salco, who had been watching the mood, made the request cautiously.

Gainando was the strange one for speaking so actively to Arsil. The other students were currently hesitating and keeping their distance.

That was how terrifying the title of a direct member of House Wardanaz was.

“What do you want to know?”

“…First, why he is here…”

“Ah. Right.”

Lee Han nodded at Salco’s words.

Now that he thought about it, he had been so surprised by meeting Arsil here that he had missed the important point.

“Brother, what brings you here? This doesn’t seem like such an important dimension.”

If Professor Milei assigned it to second-year students as coursework, it was not actually that dangerous a dimension.

Of course, the second-year students might ask, “What was that thing we met earlier if this isn’t dangerous?” but as stated, difficulty was relative by nature.

Even if it was dangerous for second-year students, it might not be dangerous for a direct member of House Wardanaz.

FLIP!

Arsil opened the book he had been writing and explained. Inside the book was a map of the current dimension, along with several analyses.

—No Frost Giant relic. Verification complete.

—Further verification needed, but probability low.

—No Frost Giant relic. Verification complete.

—…

??

Amazingly, Arsil was searching for a relic in this dimension. Not an ordinary relic, but one that had drifted over from the Frost Giant dimension.

“There’s a Frost Giant relic here? Ah. You’re not certain yet? You’re going to look through other dimensions too?”

The second son of House Wardanaz nodded and pointed to the small spirit sitting on his left shoulder.

The spirit was shaped like a butterfly and was so quiet and gentle that it emitted no aura at all, but Lee Han was startled the moment he faced it.

…It’s strong!

For an instant, a presence strong enough to raise goosebumps across his whole body brushed past him. It was a spirit concealing its power almost perfectly.

And it doesn’t run away at all even after seeing me.

He wondered if it might be a spirit at least on Perkuntra’s level.

Arsil tapped the butterfly spirit and said he would be visiting other dimensions with its help.

“I see…”

“Wardanaz. May I ask your brother one more thing?”

Salco raised a hand, visibly intimidated. Arsil gestured to speak comfortably, but Salco absolutely did not relax.

“He says to ask.”

“That Frost Giant relic he seems to be searching for… Is that right? It must be, right? If I remember correctly, Frost Giants appeared here.”

“They did. I met one.”

“Then isn’t that relic the one the Frost Giants are looking for?”

Arsil smiled as if he understood and explained. Lee Han relayed it exactly.

“He says the Frost Giants obtained the relic by stealing it too, so it doesn’t matter if Brother steals it.”

“……”

“……”

The students fell silent.

Among them, a few friends showed a faintly impressed look, as if thinking, “That’s logical, isn’t it?”

Arsil closed the book, copied the map inside, turned it into a scroll, and gave it to Lee Han as a gift.

“…Brother!”

Lee Han was deeply moved for the first time in a while.

Compared to gifts like an evil dimensional scalene polyhedron or a bizarre fused devil, this kind of gift was far more touching.

“Thank you. Thanks to this, I’ll be able to get away from the professor’s torment this semester and live comfortably…”

Tap, tap.

Arsil unfurled the scroll and pointed to several spots on the dimensional map. Those places were marked “Further verification needed, but probability low.”

They were locations Arsil had not yet personally checked to see whether the relic existed or not.

“…Uh, you want me to go check them? And if there happens to be something there, I can use it well? N-no. Shouldn’t you check them yourself, Brother? It’s the treasure you were looking for. …You say you can just look for other relics? I think securing this one might be better…”

It feels like something is going wrong here.

I agree one hundred percent.

Salco and Asan exchanged looks.

As Einroguard students, they could feel the ominousness creeping up very strongly.