Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy

Fortunately, the boy of House Wardanaz overcame his fear and desperately wished for the demigod to become a hamster.

Pop!

The giant skeleton vanished, and in its place appeared an enormous hamster.

-H-Hamster?!

-There are mountain-destroying hamsters too??

The giants stared in bewilderment as the massive hamster wriggled inside the black coffin, trying to poke its head out.

The Mage Criminal Hamster trapped inside the cage let out a relieved sigh and shouted.

-Well done! Concentrate! Keep maintaining it and keep attacking!

Of course, taking the form of a hamster didn’t suddenly make the demigod harmless.

This was still an artificial thought-form created by that tyrant for the sake of continental domination.

Still, hamster form was far preferable to lich form.

-Get back inside!

One of the giants swung a crude club down with all his might.

Boom!

The Demigod Hamster staggered as if a mountain itself had collapsed on top of it.

-Attack!

-Enemy of Wardanaz!

The giants launched a savage assault.

Usually they spent their days peacefully herding sheep, but once they revealed their true strength, their destructive power was overwhelming.

Even so, the Demigod Hamster’s body continued regenerating.

The sight of it recovering while being pummeled was enough to make even the giants recoil.

-W-What kind of hamster is this?!

-It’s scarier than the sheep!

Stop attacking.

-Hmph!

Ignoring the warning, one of the giants smashed his club down again.

Then the Demigod Hamster let out a shrill cry.

■■■■■■■■!

-M-My club!

-My club! Do you know how much I paid to have that made?!

The giants cried out in shock.

The clubs in their hands instantly decayed into dust, as though centuries had passed for them alone.

-Grrr!

But the giants didn’t give up just because their weapons were gone.

They tore boulders from the mountains and hurled them at the black coffin, ripped giant trees from the earth, and swung them like clubs.

-Stop! You idiots! The laws and order around it have changed!

The one screaming wasn’t the Demigod Hamster, but the Mage Criminal Hamster inside the cage.

That cry hadn’t merely been a scream.

The demigod had twisted the laws and order surrounding the black coffin in its favor.

Probably attack nullification, and—

‘That can’t be all!’

If this was the ability of a combat-oriented demigod, there was no way it ended there.

Sure enough, the giants’ clothes began transforming into restraints that wrapped around their bodies like shackles.

-Uurgh?!

-Gaaah!

-I told you to retreat!

No matter how desperately the hamster squeaked from inside the cage, the giants refused to listen.

Instead, Lee Han amplified his voice with mana and shouted.

“Fall back! Everyone retreat!”

-Retreat!

-We never retreat! We advance backward!

The giants were wiser than they looked.

They didn’t recklessly throw themselves at enemies they had no chance of defeating.

“What exactly is that?”

-Probably… probably some kind of law of submission # Nоvеlight # or subjugation. I need to see more to know for sure!

Not only did it nullify attacks, it also forced enemies who attacked it to kneel and become slaves in its army.

It was an utterly absurd ability.

“What kind of nonsense is this? Even after turning into a hamster?!”

-It’s because you turned it into a hamster that it’s using laws like those! If it had stayed in lich form, it would’ve been throwing around every horrifying dark spell it knew. Imagine it using all the dark magic Lord Gonadaltes possessed!

Lee Han shuddered and clenched his teeth.

‘…Turning it into Gainando wouldn’t have helped much either.’

Hamster or Gainando—it hardly mattered if it could still wield a demigod’s laws.

Just forcing it into hamster form had already sealed away a large portion of its abilities.

And honestly, Gainando would probably be more competent than a hamster.

-In front of you!

Lee Han’s reaction was a split second too slow while he was lost in thought.

The Demigod Hamster seemed to have realized he was leading the giants and immediately targeted him.

“!!!”

Space twisted violently.

Lee Han felt his body being dragged toward the floating black coffin.

-It’s trying to devour you! Break free!

Lee Han didn’t bother asking what would happen if a demigod swallowed him whole.

There was no time.

His magic activated instinctively.

One was <Wardanaz’s Telekinetic Force>.

The powerful Fifth Circle wandless spell resisted the attraction and barely halted his body.

The other was—

Crackle!

“Lightning, dwell and manifest!”

Because he had forcibly cast a spell he hadn’t fully mastered yet, a metallic taste flooded his mouth, as though iron filings had burst across his tongue.

‘Backfire!’

Forcing magic beyond one’s limits didn’t merely result in failure.

It inflicted severe backlash on the caster as well.

Lee Han rarely experienced such things thanks to his talent and absurd luck, but he had crossed too many dangerous lines without regard for his limits.

Now it had finally caught up to him.

But retreating here would produce far worse consequences than enduring the backlash.

Mana exploded outward around Lee Han like a storm.

Normally, when casting spells, he controlled mana with painstaking precision, as delicately as scooping water with a teaspoon.

Now he released it recklessly in order to suppress the backfire.

The wild lightning that escaped his control lashed back at him instead of the target, scattering across his body as it burst outward.

After barely suppressing the immediate danger, Lee Han grit his teeth.

If he failed a second time, things would become truly dangerous.

“…Lightning, dwell and manifest!!”

The hand not holding his staff instantly transformed into lightning itself.

This wasn’t ordinary lightning-element magic.

The lightning contained thought and meaning—something on an entirely different level from the lightning he usually wielded.

As the spell’s caster, Lee Han understood its meaning more clearly than anyone else.

Pierce through.

Penetrate the enemy.

The seething power erupted forward toward the black coffin.

At the sight of that magic, the Mage Criminal Hamster trapped in the cage screamed.

-I told you the laws and order around it had changed!

“!”

Lee Han’s narrowed vision widened abruptly.

Right.

With the demigod defending itself through altered laws, a careless attack—

Crack!

The spell, 【Wardanaz’s Lightning Fire】, pierced straight through the Demigod Hamster.

The one most shocked wasn’t Lee Han, nor even the demigod that had been struck.

It was the Mage Criminal Hamster.

‘How!?’

The spell Lee Han had just cast was already absurdly advanced for a lower-year student at Einroguard.

At minimum, it belonged to the Fifth Circle.

And transforming lightning so that it carried higher-dimensional concepts and intent was beyond even that.

On top of that, he had cast it while simultaneously maintaining another Fifth Circle spell.

The hamster was an archmage.

Even so, it couldn’t help but admire such an outstanding junior.

But laws were absolute.

No matter how brilliant the mage before it was, the laws themselves should not have changed.

If a demigod established laws of attack nullification and subjugation, they should have been impossible to overcome.

Yet Lee Han’s attack had pierced through them.

‘Did he break through those laws using nothing but Fifth Circle magic?!’

The principle itself was simple.

If the enemy forcibly rewrote the laws, then you overpowered those laws with greater force.

The problem was that mages normally required at least a Lesser World to accomplish such a feat.

There were high-level spells capable of exploiting loopholes in the world’s laws without deploying a Lesser World, but none of them were Fifth Circle magic.

To produce enough force to overwhelm laws using only Fifth Circle magic—

Stop attacking, commander.

The Demigod Hamster cried out in frustration at the supposed commander who kept attacking it.

Even the last strike had somehow pierced through its law-based defenses.

“Who’s your commander?”

Lee Han spat blood onto the ground and prepared another spell.

The damage he had inflicted had already regenerated instantly, but his side possessed effectively limitless mana reserves.

He intended to keep casting until his mind collapsed from exhaustion.

But the Demigod Hamster moved first.

Rather than continue exchanging blows with a mage wielding lightning capable of piercing its defenses, it changed tactics.

Lee Han, who had closed the distance by cutting through space, suddenly found himself far away once more.

At the same time, the space between them warped and folded into impossible geometric distortions.

‘It’s trying to block my aim!’

Lee Han immediately understood.

If contact itself was dangerous because his attacks could pierce the demigod’s laws, then the obvious solution was to make contact impossible.

Whenever Lee Han tried to approach, the hamster twisted space to increase the distance.

Then increased it again.

And again.

Watching it instantly create obstacles like the paradox of the flying arrow, Lee Han felt genuine despair.

‘The insane duplicate was planning to mass-produce things like this?’

At first, he had thought the insane duplicate was simply deranged.

Now he was starting to think continental conquest might genuinely have been possible given enough time.

He was already struggling this much against a single demigod that hadn’t even fully escaped the coffin.

If several appeared at once—

“Student Lee Han!”

“!”

At the familiar voice of the troll-blooded professor, emotion surged through Lee Han.

In the distance, Professor Garcia and Professor Voladi Bagreg flew toward them alongside several Death Knights.

“Are the other professors coming too?”

-Pardon?

“…You haven’t realized what kind of situation this is?”

-Ah! I understand now.

The Death Knight corrected Lee Han’s misunderstanding.

Even if something catastrophic occurred at Einroguard—for example, the summoning of a demigod—the professors did not rush over immediately.

The first responders in situations like this were the Skull Principal’s subordinates.

Namely, beings like the Death Knights.

Incidents happened so frequently at Einroguard that if professors investigated every powerful magical disturbance personally, the academic schedule would completely collapse.

The Death Knights first investigated and handled the matter themselves, and only if they deemed it impossible would they request support from the professors.

“…But these two still came!”

“I was worried about you, Student Lee Han, so I came just in case. Professor Bagreg as well.”

“…”

Lee Han felt disgusted by Einroguard’s heartless school regulations.

Even if he had to submit an anonymous complaint afterward, he truly felt these rules needed to be changed.

“That’s enough. Having the two of you here already changes everything! There’s a reason reinforcements exist!”

“Student Lee Han. Why is there blood around your mouth?”

“…Some potion probably splashed on me earlier. That’s not important right now!”

The two professors quietly exchanged glances.

Professor Garcia sent a worried telepathic message.

‘He’s clearly overexerting himself. Should we send him back to school?’

‘I understand.’

‘…Yes? Understand what?’

‘I’ll subdue him. Professor Garcia can take him back.’

‘No, no! I meant persuading him!’

Professor Voladi Bagreg silently shook his head.

If Lee Han were the type of disciple who could be persuaded to retreat, he would never have ended up in this situation to begin with.

Professor Garcia couldn’t even argue against that logic.

Completely unaware that the two professors were discussing an ambush against him, Lee Han hurriedly explained the situation.

“The principal! Has gone insane! Continental conquest!”

…The explanation was not especially effective.

“You reversed the order.”

“The principal’s insane duplicate is summoning demigods to build an army.”

Fortunately, both professors were intelligent enough to understand him despite the terrible explanation.

“But if it’s merely the principal’s duplicate, shouldn’t it still be capable of suppressing or bypassing the world’s resistance? Why has it become like this?”

“There must have been some confusion or agitation.”

“Could Student Lee Han perhaps have influenced it slightly?”

“Most likely. Outstanding disciples influence their masters as well.”

A terrible sense of foreboding washed over Lee Han.

“What exactly did you just say?”

“Nothing at all, Student Lee Han. Just focus on reverse-summoning the demigod.”

“That’s exactly what I was waiting to hear…”