Surviving as a Mage in a Magic Academy

“What the hell is going on?!”

One of the remnants shouted at Lee Han between ragged breaths.

Their leader, Hallenken, was transforming into a hideous monster, so their confusion was understandable.

Judging calmly, the most likely culprit was the priest of Frahgal, so the correct course of action would have been to cooperate with the mage for the time being. However, it was not easy to act so calmly in a situation like this.

Instead, the remnants were wary and suspicious of Lee Han as well. Their attitude suggested that they thought he might have done something to Hallenken.

Lee Han nodded.

“The command came undone. ...Once again, obey my command!”

“Aaargh!”

The remnants present let out the same screams they had cried a moment before.

Agonizing pain from their souls.

It was the agony caused by the insects embedded within them struggling violently.

Lee Han did not waste time persuading these suspicious people or explaining the situation to them.

Instead, he made the best choice for the current situation, where even a single second was precious.

First, completely subdue those who might turn into enemies at any moment!

“Get down, Wardanaz!”

Giselle forced Lee Han down, planted one hand on his shoulder, and leaped over him. While Lee Han was stealing the evil god’s Authority and issuing commands with it, Hallenken had charged at him.

Boom!

A sword struck another sword, yet the sound was like an explosion. Giselle clicked her tongue quietly.

Skilled swordsmen could gauge each other’s ability merely by crossing blades. That single strike had revealed the opponent’s level.

’Aura, and he is highly proficient with it.’

At present, Giselle could use aura only to a limited extent. Since her aura might dissipate midway or her concentration could falter, it could not be said that she had fully mastered it.

A swordsman’s battle was one in which a momentary mistake returned as a fatal wound.

Ordinarily, she would not have forced herself to draw out aura and fight, but this was not a situation in which she could afford such leisure. She had to push the enemy back until Wardanaz supported her with magic.

The aura radiating emerald light intertwined with her twin swords and unfolded into the Moradi family’s swordsmanship, the Purple Cloud Sword. Its transformations were so extreme that space itself appeared distorted.

However, Hallenken was no easy opponent either. Gripping a single longsword as firmly as a staff, he scattered aura mixed with curses and plague as though causing it to explode.

Even after losing his reason, he still understood that no matter how changeable the swordsmanship might be, he could defeat it by overwhelming it with sheer force.

Although she rapidly lost the space she had occupied, Giselle’s gaze grew even colder.

She had known from the beginning that her opponent was strong, so there was no reason to panic. And she was no ordinary swordsman.

“?!”

The maddened Hallenken flinched. Instinctively, he sensed that something was wrong.

Crack, crack—

Cold created by magic was seeping into the muscles and bones of his limbs.

Had Hallenken not lost his reason, he likely would have realized it much sooner.

Magic swordsmen capable of using magic were always troublesome opponents. And from the perspective of an anti-magic faction member, they were several times more irritating.

The magic Giselle had just used was an enhancement spell, .

When one heard the words enhancement magic, it was easy to think only of simply increasing strength or agility, but outstanding enhancement mages knew how to apply all kinds of magic in battle.

was one such spell. It was difficult to notice how one had been affected when first struck by it.

“Ugh... Uuurgh.”

The outstanding feature of this magic was precisely its stealth.

It continuously released intangible cold around the caster and layered it upon the opponent, making it difficult for the target to notice until it reached a certain level.

It was a spell extremely well suited to magic swordsmen like those of the White Tiger Tower, and among them, to Giselle, who used swordsmanship filled with constant transformations.

The second round began.

This time, Giselle seized the initiative. Even if she was pushed back in swordsmanship, she intended to feed the opponent more cold.

The powerful magical swords passed down through her family, Ice Light and Ice Flower, aided Giselle’s strategy.

While scattering visible, tangible cold on the surface, the two swords simultaneously amplified the invisible, intangible cold magic of .

Once Hallenken realized that he had fallen deep into a quagmire of freezing cold, he launched another counterattack. The aura on his sword diminished, and then blood suddenly erupted from various parts of his body.

He had materialized mana and used it to inflict wounds all over himself.

At first glance, it looked like foolish self-harm, but the situation was different when his body was filled with an evil god’s curses.

The wounds closed in an instant, and the muscles of his body swelled grotesquely. It looked as though he were trying to evolve into an entirely new race.

’This bastard...!’

To think he would remove the cold clinging to his flesh in such a manner.

Giselle wanted to check what Wardanaz was doing, but the situation was too urgent for her to spare the attention. She had to trust that he was handling things properly and keep moving.

Now that it had come to this, she had no choice but to break Hallenken with swordsmanship once again.

The aura wavering around Giselle’s swords decreased in size. However, its light instead grew even deeper.

Mana flowed through her weapons as naturally as though they had become her own hands and feet. At the furthest limit of her sharpened concentration, Giselle discovered that she was controlling her aura perfectly.

’......’

They said fighting a powerful enemy made a swordsman grow, but why did it have to happen at such an unpleasant time?

However, regardless of her personal feelings, her hands and feet were already unfolding the swordsmanship she had practiced tens of thousands of times.

Knowing how to use aura meant knowing how to imbue a sword deeply with one’s intent, and that in turn meant having earned the qualification to approach the principles of the world.

Though far cruder and more limited than a mage’s small world, a swordsman’s swordsmanship could also approach the world.

If a mage transformed the world, a swordsman tore the world apart.

When the secret technique of the Moradi family’s Purple Cloud Sword unfolded, space bent ever so slightly. The sword Hallenken swung traced an impossible trajectory and buried itself in the ground.

Sword strikes exploded against the body of the enemy who had lost all reason. No blood sprayed. Whenever the aura stabbed or grazed him, ice burrowed inward.

“Grrrrrrrgh!”

Hallenken threw away the sword that had become an inconvenient burden and formed aura around both arms. The blazing aura left his arms in tatters, but as long as the power of the evil-god worshipers remained, that hardly mattered.

Giselle felt cold sweat running down her body as she breathed heavily. She had prepared enhancement spells like before the battle began, but after using even a secret sword technique, her mana was beginning to run dry.

’He is tougher than I expected...!’

At that moment, one method came to mind.

Would it really work?

Ice Light pierced the opponent’s left arm. Giselle spun around and drove Ice Flower into his right arm as well.

With a sharp cracking sound, ice spread outward from the areas where the swords had been embedded. It was a powerful attack, but Hallenken instead seemed even more emboldened.

He had instinctively realized that his opponent had resorted to a desperate measure from an unfavorable position.

Hallenken tried to tear himself free with enough force to rip off both arms and charge again.

Thud!

The end of the fight was truly anticlimactic.

His head blown away by a compressed projectile of wind, Hallenken collapsed heavily to his knees. Giselle exhaled deeply.

“...It worked.”

To think she would end up using this.

What ended the fight was neither swordsmanship nor magic, but a concealed-weapon artifact. It was the magical artifact with a hidden weapon built into it that Wardanaz had given her last time.

Said to have been favored by a famous dueling mage, the artifact fired a compressed projectile of wind from the hilt when activated while pretending to draw the sword, delivering a lethal blow.

It was slightly embarrassing that such a petty means had ended a high-level battle between swordsmen, but...

“I am sorry, Moradi.”

Lee Han, who had barely succeeded in bringing the stolen evil god’s Authority under control, opened his mouth and apologized.

“Forget it. Is everything actually finished?”

“Yes.”

Giselle let out a sigh of relief.

Her entire body felt exhausted. She did not think she could serve as a shield like this a second time.

’How did I end up doing this...?’

“Next time, bring Senior Caten inside with you.”

“I considered that too, but Senior Caten cannot control his expression. If he deals with suspicious people, his ears will immediately perk up.”

’That is certainly true.’

“Aaargh... Aaargh!”

The remaining remnants glared at Lee Han while letting out monstrous cries.

They wanted to escape this place immediately, but the insects lodged within their souls bound them tightly.

“Stay still, unless you want it to become even more painful.”

Lee Han warned them.

Unlike at the beginning, when the command had come undone, now that he had begun controlling the Authority, they had no opportunity to escape.

Lee Han had realized that he could steal this evil god’s Authority when he grasped the insect extracted from the other person’s soul in his hand.

Unlike Imperial magic, divine magic—in other words, the Authority of an order—was closer to an innate instinct. Just as one did not calculate every movement in one’s head before swinging an arm, Authority worked the same way.

Since Lee Han had already happened to learn divine magic from another order before, he adapted even faster.

The evil god’s Authority created insects that amplified the vitality of the soul while simultaneously spewing out a contagious curse-based plague.

The scope of this Authority extended to controlling both the insects and the curses they emitted.

It was only natural that the remnants with insects embedded in their souls ultimately surrendered and obeyed his commands.

“An Imperial... An Imperial mage is allowed to use such wicked power...?!”

“That is a sharp observation.”

When Giselle muttered, Lee Han glared at his friend.

She could at least help instead of making comments like that!

“I am only using it this once. Just this once. One must understand an enemy’s power well in order to fight that enemy properly.”

“Do you not understand it too well? Are you really sure it is safe to use that Authority?”

This time, she was not being sarcastic. She was genuinely worried.

She had wondered earlier whether he had been affected by the Authority.

No matter how confident he was in his resistance, acting so recklessly was going too far.

“The Authorities of orders are merely powers. As long as one does not blindly worship them, there is no particular problem. ...Of course, it may look strange that I learned it so quickly.”

’Ah.’

Giselle realized her mistake.

Wardanaz had such a shameless personality that she had assumed he would not care much, but apparently it had bothered him more than she expected.

Of course, Wardanaz had easily learned an Authority like this in the past as well, but the human heart was not so simple.

“However, you must take into account that my magical skill has increased in the meantime, and that I learned a similar Authority last year as well. Also, I have clashed with the Sanguros Order many times in a short period. I must have instinctively sensed the structure of the enemy’s Authority.”

Lee Han rambled on, explaining information the other person had not actually been especially curious about.

Giselle had only wanted an answer about whether it was truly safe to use, but now that he had begun, she felt slightly sorry to say that she was not interested, so she simply listened.

And honestly, it was a somewhat interesting subject.

In fact, whether it was the Authority of an ordinary order or the Authority of an evil-god order, it was not impossible to reproduce it through magic.

In the end, both were beings that fell within the boundaries of magic.

The former might be described with expressions such as primitive magic or divine magic, but there was undoubtedly an intersection between them.

A truly outstanding mage might instinctively understand the structure of an Authority and steal it.

As stated earlier, this divine magic was closer to an innate instinct.

...Of course, Giselle had never heard of anyone instinctively understanding and stealing even the Authority of an evil-god order...

“Are you listening, Moradi?”

“Huh? Yes. But would it not be better to pay attention to the people behind you?”

Lee Han turned around. The remnants were trembling in agony. He had forgotten about them after ordering the insects to inflict pain earlier.

“My apologies. I will stop it now. Now, tell me everything you know about the Sanguros bastards.”

“S-Sanguros? We have nothing to do with them...”

Lee Han’s face hardened. Screams burst from the remnants’ mouths once again.

“Aaaaaaargh!”