Episode 855
by Cristae‘No. Not yet.’
Once more, Lee Han restrained himself and suddenly felt afraid.
Was he perhaps being too patient?
What if, by saving it for the perfect opportunity later, he ended up never using it all the way until graduation?
‘…No way. The chance will come, for sure.’
“Start learning -Bible’s Launch Enchantment- already. Quickly. Why didn’t you learn it?”
“Then, Professor, why haven’t you finished the automatic flying galleon yet?”
“Th-that’s hard, obviously!”
At his student’s harsh retort, Professor Verdus felt a sting of aggrieved injustice.
How could someone say such a mean thing?
“Hmph. This is hard too.”
“This isn’t hard!”
“The galleon isn’t hard, then?”
“It is hard!?”
Bickering at a level unworthy of a prestigious magic school master and apprentice, Lee Han quickly scanned through the spells.
Luckily, -Bible’s Launch Enchantment- wasn’t so difficult once he read it in detail.
‘…Wait. What did I just think??’
Lee Han was creeped out by himself.
A spell this complex, equivalent to fourth circle magic, and he didn’t find it that hard?!
Since his first year, Lee Han had been handling all sorts of odd jobs for Professor Verdus and learning whatever magic he needed for each; by now, his fundamentals had become absurdly solid.
Even the forcibly learned spells like -Bible’s Mana Emission Enchantment- and so on now made it easier to understand.
“It’s not hard! Are you listening?”
When Professor Verdus yelled from the side, Lee Han yelled back.
“Damn it, it’s not hard! Satisfied?!”
“Uh, okay.”
Professor Verdus flinched at Lee Han’s outburst. For a moment, he sensed the same murderous intent he sometimes felt from Professor Garcia.
Lee Han kept grumbling as he learned the magic.
“Not hard… damn it. This is just absurd.”
‘Is he crazy?’
For the first time, Professor Verdus felt fear.
His student’s behavior defied all logical explanation and was starting to terrify him.
“This one here is -Bible’s Mana Amplification Enchantment-, right?”
“Yes.”
“This one is -Curvature-, this one is -Acceleration-?”
“Yes.”
“Can you write more legibly?”
“If you recognized it, then I wrote it well enough. What’s your deal?”
“…I’m not doing this.”
Suddenly, Lee Han stood up from his seat.
His anger had built up over how easy the spell was, and now the professor was provoking him.
Professor Verdus was startled.
“What? Why?”
“Because your handwriting’s sloppy.”
“You figured it out! What are you talking about?!”
“I don’t care. I’m leaving.”
“I’ll still pay your wages just like I promised Kettle?!”
Professor Verdus dashed left and right, trying to block him somehow.
Any other student could have been replaced, but not this one.
Ignoring it all, Lee Han simply dodged aside and used his staff to deactivate the magic ward.
“I’ll write it properly! I’ll write it properly!”
“Hmph. I’ll be watching.”
The disciple finally stopped and sat back down. Professor Verdus muttered under his breath in complaint.
“If you recognized it, what’s the point of all this inefficiency…”
“I’m leaving.”
“No! No! No!”
- * *
Bwooooong—
Gazing at the floating object in the air, Lee Han looked on with admiration.
Then, suddenly, he had a question.
“Professor. Why aren’t we flying the sailboat, but instead having me launch something new?”
What was floating in the air right now was a makeshift wooden raft, hastily fashioned from one of the stable’s pillars. Lee Han wondered if this was really okay.
‘It probably isn’t.’
He resolved to report Professor Verdus when the stable-keeper came looking for the perpetrator later.
“It’s to get an exact comparison by having you try it yourself.”
The reason Professor Verdus brought Lee Han was simple.
- Put Lee Han aboard the small sailboat.
- Lee Han overloads the mana arrays installed on the small sailboat.
- Test spells like -Bible’s Launch Enchantment- or -Bible’s Flight Enchantment- using the mana thus secured.
- If something unexpected happens, Lee Han on the boat immediately supplies mana to reserve magic arrays to stabilize things.
- If that fails, he takes over controlling directly.
- Absolutely do not break anything!
“So you’re really just going to stay below and only record, Professor?”
“I’m casting magic too, though.”
“But the mana’s all from what I supply, right?”
“Yep.”
Lee Han nodded instead of getting annoyed again.
Frankly, he had no right to get mad just because a professor left all the prep, execution, review, and recording of his experiment to a student.
That was typical professor behavior, after all.
“Let’s get started then.”
“Leave the gap in the middle of the deck empty. Casting now!”
Professor Verdus pulled out a scroll and threw it exactly into the empty space in the middle of the deck.
Instead of steering with the helm, this was a slot in the ship’s magic array that let it move based on the professor’s magic alone.
As soon as the spell was activated, the launch would begin.
Wooooong—
Mana was drawn from the magic array installed on the small sailboat.
Thanks to the extra mana Lee Han pumped in, surplus mana became easily available.
Otherwise, they would have had to completely dismantle the magical arrays and reconstruct them for automated operation. Artifacts like this required precise mana calculation; adding new spells on top of that was quite complicated.
“Go! Launch Enchantment!”
Professor Verdus jumped up and down, cheering.
The small sailboat floated and moved powered purely by magic, even without Lee Han controlling it. Lee Han observed its movement carefully.
If it behaved differently from the wooden raft he’d just launched, that would mean something unexpected was happening.
‘They match.’
“How’s that?! Looks like they match, right?!”
“Yes!”
“Good!”
Professor Verdus gave the signal to land. Lee Han threw the anchor, and the sailboat slowly descended.
“Amazing. Just looking at how it floats, you could say it’s fully autonomous, right?”
“That’s the easiest part. Also, smaller sailboats like this have fewer errors.”
The more and the thicker the spells, the more collisions and discrepancies there would be.
So it was only natural the small boat worked better than a giant galleon.
“Alright, next is -Bible’s Flight Enchantment-.”
“I see. What do I do?”
“Learn it like you did before.”
“……”
Lee Han glared at Professor Verdus as if to kill. The professor, flustered, responded,
“Of course you had to!”
The disciple, murmuring with murderous intent, started learning again.
After an even shorter practice than before, Lee Han also succeeded in casting -Bible’s Flight Enchantment- on the wooden raft.
“Oh. It’s moving. Can’t we increase the speed more here?”
“To do that, you’d have to add even more spells. Fun, right?”
“No.”
Though Lee Han actually found it a little fun, he denied it flatly. Professor Verdus grumbled.
“But you are having fun…”
“I’m leaving.”
“N-no! No! I’ll make it boring, promise! Get back on!”
Nervous his disciple would attempt to flee, Professor Verdus quickly made Lee Han get back on the sailboat.
Lee Han, aboard, activated the launch scroll, made the boat float, then triggered the flight scroll.
The sailboat began to move across the sky with no steering, though there was a bit of shaking and swaying now.
‘Mana’s leaking.’
Since he was aboard, Lee Han was able to react much faster than Professor Verdus.
He noticed several spots on the sailboat where mana was unstable in the magical arrays. It was clear the newly added magic was causing issues.
‘Is it the hull reinforcing magic? And this… looks like wind resistance magic. Why do you even need corrosion resistance when you’re flying in the sky? I’ll just turn it off if needed. It should hold for now.’
“If it gets too bad, push mana into the reserve arrays! It’s shaking a lot!”
“It’s okay for now!”
Lee Han shouted down below, then shared what he’d figured out.
Seeing his disciple handle it so well, Professor Verdus felt proud and gave him some more work.
“Great! If you can figure that out up there, just write it down!”
“……”
The way the professor handed off his only job to his student left Lee Han silent.
‘I shouldn’t have said anything…’
While Lee Han took notes, Professor Verdus was delighted at the competence his disciple displayed.
Seeing results better than he expected, he felt confident he could entrust all sorts of work to him from now on.
“Land!”
Professor Verdus gave the signal. Lee Han nodded and got ready to land.
“Oh!”
“What is it?”
“Over there! It’s Lagesa!”
Professor Verdus pointed far below.
Unlike those leaving through the seventh floor, Lagesa was striding boldly toward the main gate, pirate slaves in tow.
That sight made Professor Verdus a bit flustered.
“She’s leaving faster than expected?”
“Then let’s give it to her now?”
“No! We just started! Haven’t even fixed all the new issues! Get down, quickly!”
Rejecting his disciple’s suggestion outright, Professor Verdus motioned urgently.
Whether Lagesa was disappointed or not, the important thing was to finish the work even better.
“…Wait. Where’re you going? Hey! Where are you going?!”
As he waited for his disciple to land, Professor Verdus grew panicked.
The small sailboat was flying not toward the tower stables but in the opposite direction!
“Come back! I said come back!”
- * *
Lagesa, walking toward the front gate, looked up in surprise as a small boat flew overhead.
‘What the? Is Bible coming at me?’
From its shape, it was clearly the one Professor Verdus had been working on.
When Lee Han leapt off the boat, Lagesa was even more surprised.
“What the?”
“Dame Lagesa. Professor Verdus has finally finished it and I’ve come to deliver it.”
“…Don’t lie!”
‘How did she know?’
Lee Han was amazed by Lagesa’s reaction.
How did she tell?
“Actually, he couldn’t finish, so I stole it to deliver it to you.”
“…Explain in detail.”
Lagesa looked completely baffled.
Lee Han briefly explained what had happened. Professor Verdus had finished it to some extent, but was getting greedy…
“This bastard’s crazy, isn’t he?!”
Even the pirate slaves chained behind Lagesa nodded reflexively.
For pirates, who committed all sorts of atrocities at sea, this sounded utterly insane.
Truly, all mages must be insane.
“So?”
“I figured if we just left him be, he’d end up making more enemies, so I swiped it and brought it to you.”
Lagesa erupted in laughter.
The old pirate laughed for a long time, then wheezed out,
“For all his other faults, Bible sure is lucky with students. He always picked ones just like himself, but looks like the winds of fortune finally turned…”
“Actually, I didn’t do this for Professor Verdus, but for the sake of justice in the Empire.”
“If you ever want something different, come down to the southern imperial privateers. I’ll let you have a blast looting beside Torgard’s daughter.”
Lee Han was a bit tempted, but quickly gave up.
No matter how he thought about it, piracy wasn’t a stable career in the Empire.
“Thanks, kid. Didn’t expect this kind of present. This Einrogard trip was totally worth it.”
With that, Lagesa handed the sailboat back toward Lee Han.
Lee Han was startled.
“Are you planning to return it to the professor?!”
“Are you insane? Why would I give anything to Bible?”
Lagesa looked dead serious. Lee Han immediately apologized.
“Sorry.”
“Kid, it’s a gift for you. If what Bible said is true, you’ll be able to improve it even more.”
“I don’t have the skills to improve it like Professor Verdus…”
“You’ll probably manage in a year.”
“……”
“Half a year? Three months?”
“No, thank you.”