Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy

The griffin let out a low growl. Anyone could tell it was in a foul mood.

“Who pulled the griffin’s feathers?! Salco, was it you?!”

“Shut up, you idiot prince! It’s acting like that because it can’t find Wardanaz!”

“Everyone, I don’t want to say anything negative, but…”

At Yonair’s words, Giselle answered as if already knowing what was coming.

“You mean that if we don’t find him before the antidote potion runs out, we might all get wiped out together.”

“No. I was going to say the angry griffin might eat us first.”

“……”

“……”

As if to prove Yonair was not joking, the griffin clicked its beak. The way its eyes flashed made it look like it was suspicious of the mages.

Gainando protested indignantly.

“We really did bring you here because Lee Han disappeared!”

The griffin had followed them for now, but no matter how familiar it was with them, it did not trust anyone but its owner.

Those crafty mages might simply have lied in order to use the griffin’s strength while Lee Han was absent.

If that was true, it had no intention of letting them off.

“SKREEEE!”

With a cry, the griffin plunged into a steep dive.

The students could only cling to it and scream at the sudden movement.

“There, there, that’s Lee Han!”

“How did you all get here?!”

Lee Han, racing down the mountain path like an arrow, was startled when he spotted his friends.

The griffin shook its body as if to throw all the others off and take only Lee Han aboard.

“Phoneig! You can’t do that!”

“!”

“Apologize to my friends. You can’t just try to drop them all of a sudden.”

“……”

Phoneig looked wronged, and the friends hurriedly tried to smooth things over.

After all, it really had flown all the way here in earnest based solely on their words.

“That’s right! Apologize!”

Gainando, brushing dust off himself, hopped around furiously. Since he had happened to be sitting on the very outside, he alone had tumbled over once.

Phoneig glared at Gainando as if memorizing the offense.

“Wardanaz. We need to get out of here quickly. The potion won’t last much longer.”

“Right. Thanks, everyone. I really didn’t expect you all to come this far.”

Lee Han looked around at his friends again, deeply moved.

Even if he had just gone missing normally, it would have been hard enough to come rescue him. But to track him all the way to the place where he had been kidnapped by the insane duplicate—

“Wait. Isn’t this when you should all be in class?”

“Uh… today’s class was canceled.”

“Yeah. The professor said something came up.”

At his friends’ answers, Lee Han gave a crooked smile.

It was obviously a kindly lie.

“You don’t have to lie. You skipped class to come rescue me.”

“N-no, really. The professor actually said something came up…!”

Ignoring their attempts at explanation, Lee Han climbed onto the griffin. Once everyone was on, the griffin rose into the air again.

Gainando chattered away in a relieved voice.

“The upperclassmen were no help at all. They all gathered up like that, then spent days without being able to break even one spell.”

“What are you talking about? The upperclassmen and the professors solved this.”

“The professors?”

His friends looked puzzled.

They had never imagined the professors would have come too.

“Professor Garcia, and…”

“Oh. So that’s what it was!”

“Professor Bagreg and Professor Verdus came too.”

“Wardanaz, aren’t you misunderstanding something?”

*****

“They say our junior linked up with them. It looks like he’ll be out soon!”

“That is strange.”

“??”

Diret looked slightly flustered at Professor Voladi’s words.

“What part is strange, Professor? Of course, it might sound strange that our junior tamed a griffin, but that’s just how he—”

Professor Voladi shook the head.

That was not what was strange.

Professor Garcia and Professor Verdus also realized it a beat later, and their expressions hardened.

“A dimensional disturbance?!”

“Looks like it summoned something.”

“Trackers, then. Send a message.”

Professor Voladi gave the order coolly.

If they were trackers the Skull Principal’s insane duplicate had summoned, they would not be ordinary trouble.

“W-what should I send?”

“Tell him to disguise himself as something else. Are there students nearby?”

Professor Voladi stuck the head out of the magic tent and checked the camp.

Fortunately, several students had returned after class and were standing there in shock, staring at the melting sky.

“We need help.”

“Eek!! Profe— I mean, Professor Bagreg! What is going on?!”

Bang!

Professor Voladi flicked the wand and transformed the student. The student, now altered to resemble Lee Han, cried out in alarm.

“W-what is this?!”

“Run. Next.”

Professor Verdus understood and exclaimed in admiration.

“So you’re transforming them to give off similar traces and confuse the trackers! Efficient.”

“Is now really the time to be saying that?!”

The one who snapped the suddenly transformed juniors out of their panic was Diret.

“Everyone, to the main building! Trackers from another dimension are after him, so we have to throw them into confusion!”

“Y-yes, sir!”

Still flustered, the juniors each began moving in a hurry.

Ikurusha and the giants, who arrived a step later, were bewildered when they saw students fleeing in different directions while giving off an aura similar to Lee Han’s.

—What exactly are you doi…

“Mr. Ikurusha! We need to get the student out, but nasty trackers latched on. We’re disguising people to fool them!”

At Professor Garcia’s explanation, since there was already some acquaintance between them, Ikurusha grasped the situation immediately.

—Trying to mislead the trackers. Understood. I’ll cooperate. The giants too!

“Uh… well… yes!”

Professor Garcia briefly wondered whether transforming giants would really work, but the situation was urgent, so she cast the transformation spell anyway.

A moment later, a whole crowd of giants appeared who somehow looked vaguely like Lee Han. Even in the middle of this crisis, the giants burst into laughter at one another’s ugly faces.

—This is no time to laugh around! Scatter!

—Understood!

“Professor!”

Just then, far in the distance, the griffin appeared.

It had been less than a week, and yet to Professor Garcia and Diret, the student in front of them felt like someone they had not seen in almost a year.

“Student Lee Han…!”

“AAAH! Lee Han turned into a giant!!!”

Before anyone could exchange emotional greetings, Gainando shrieked and pointed at a giant running off.

The giant looked deeply pleased.

The transformation had worked well enough to fool even a human mage.

—Ha ha. Stupid mage!

Satisfied, the giant departed.

“…Listen carefully, everyone. We’re going to split up and head for the main building. Professor Bagreg, take these two. Professor Bivle, take these two. If you lose the students, your lives end right there. Understood?”

Fearing Professor Verdus might decide this was too troublesome and abandon the students halfway through, Professor Garcia spoke harshly.

“Student Diret. The student—”

“I’ll take these two.”

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Seeing her friends’ faces altered into features similar to Lee Han’s, Giselle looked like she was about to throw up.

“Sorry, Moradi.”

“…It’s fine. I volunteered for this.”

“Moradi, that wasn’t me. That was Salco imitating me while disguised as me.”

“You bastard…”

“Moradi, it really is me. Salco was joking.”

“……”

“They’re coming!”

For a moment, the students thought night had fallen when the sky darkened.

But it was not night.

More than several thousand bats were flying in, blotting out the sunlight.

Professor Garcia muttered under her breath.

“The hounds…! Of all things, those miserable trackers!”

“Move!”

Professor Voladi split the remaining students at the camp and Lee Han’s group into separate routes and sent them off.

Riding the griffin with Professor Voladi, Lee Han asked, “Professor. Why are those called hounds?”

No matter how he looked at them, they were monsters in the shape of bats, nowhere near hounds.

Before the question had even fully left his mouth, several of the bats vanished, then appeared in front of Lee Han.

They billowed into flickering smoke and shadow, then abruptly transformed into four-winged demons.

With a single gesture, Professor Voladi crushed the demon and answered, “They are the Greed Duke’s hounds. Do not let them out of your sight.”

Another devil duke on par with Garisayma, the Pride Duke, whom Lee Han had once encountered.

The pets of that Greed Duke were what mages called the Greed Duke’s hounds.

Strictly speaking, they were not actually shaped like dogs. They were monsters capable of taking any form…

Flash!

“!”

Lee Han was shocked when one hound that had slipped out of his sight immediately closed the distance with teleportation.

The instant it left his line of sight, it had cast teleportation at once.

He had always known that grotesque beings from other dimensions could use, by pure instinct from birth, spells that mages spent their whole lives researching and building toward, but this was still deeply shocking.

It could use teleportation of this level that casually?

KRAAAACK!

Suddenly, from the western sky, jade-colored chain lightning exploded and began tearing the hounds apart.

Professor Verdus shrieked in a high voice.

“Garcia! Friend-or-foe identification! Friend-or-foe identification!!!”

Unlike Professor Bagreg, Professor Garcia clearly was not used to battle.

Battle mages had techniques for skillfully distinguishing allies from enemies, but Professor Garcia had never had much interest in that sort of thing.

Since he himself was still within range, Professor Verdus frantically threw up defenses as Professor Garcia boldly unleashed highly destructive magic anyway.

“Please block it yourselves!!”

“Bagreg! Switch places with me!”

Professor Voladi ignored all of that and kicked the griffin in the flank, meaning for it to go faster.

Despite the high-handed order, the griffin accelerated.

That was how threatening the Greed Duke’s hounds felt.

So that’s why they’re called hounds!

Unlike demons that possessed reason, those creatures {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} felt as though they had none at all.

No matter what destructive spell struck them, they neither cowered nor felt fear.

They pursued only their target.

And their abilities were vicious too. The instant they left the opponent’s sight, they teleported.

Boom!

When one of the Greed Duke’s hounds came in close, Lee Han cast the he had learned this time.

Its durability did not seem especially high; once it took the shockwave-like strike, the demon broke apart into dust on the spot.

Seeing that, Professor Voladi asked, “That spell just now?”

Damn.

He knew he had slipped, but now that he had already shown it, there was no way to hide it.

Professor Voladi would have recognized immediately what level of spell that incantationless, instant-cast magic had been.

“…I learned it while I was kidnapped by the duplicate.”

Lee Han tattled about how the insane duplicate had pressured him, leaving nothing out.

It had been a fluke, and the odds of anything like that happening again were vanishingly small…

“That is a dangerous way to teach.”

Even in a situation this urgent, Professor Voladi criticized the insane duplicate’s methods of instruction.

Magic ought to be passed down through trust between master and disciple, not taught through that kind of violent coercion.

“That one does not seem fit to be a master.”

“……”

For a moment, Lee Han was speechless.

No…

No…!!

Of course, Lee Han appreciated that Professor Voladi was criticizing the Skull Principal’s insane duplicate.

Just the fact that Professor Voladi was not saying something like A fine method. Truly the wisdom of the ancients was enough to move him.

And yet, hearing Professor Voladi say that somehow felt deeply unfair.

Why did it feel this unfair?

Even Lee Han himself did not understand.

“What is it?”

Seeing the disciple look distressed, Professor Voladi asked whether magical rebound had set in.

“It’s nothing. I think some dust got in my eye.”

“Even so, do not lose sight of the enemy.”

“Yes…”