Surviving in the Magic Academy - Chapter 222

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Chapter 222: 222

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I looked out the window.

As always, beyond the dense flow of people, I could see a crowd gathered in front of the Arcana Puppet Workshop at the center of the city.

I smiled faintly as I watched them.

Ah. So it had finally begun.

I had heard screams echo loudly last night as well. That was probably why they had gathered there. As I observed them, I took a glass bottle from inside my robe.

Inside was a woman-shaped puppet, resting with its eyes closed within magical power. It was a corpse puppet I had rented from that workshop. I rolled the bottle in my hand and lightly scratched my chin.

Over the past while, I had tried giving this puppet quite a few functions while studying their puppets. You had to understand your enemy before you could deal with them.

Jegang's process of encroaching on my territory had been excellent. Using the corpses of weeds as puppet materials was a truly innovative method.

Just as I had created a new deficiency, he had dug into a new possibility. That also meant Jegang had thought very hard about how to deal with me.

That was probably why he had connected himself to Gaon's side. No one would be more accustomed to turning humans into puppets than they were. He must have learned about my conflict with them while investigating me, making them even more useful allies.

In that way, Jegang had expanded the territory I had built into something much broader. I had no choice but to admit that he was quite capable.

The puppets he made had drawn in around twenty percent of the mages coming and going on the first floor as customers. Considering that the first floor's resident population was roughly three hundred thousand, that was quite remarkable.

I thought back on my own past. It had already been two and a half years since I began doing business. Yet the number of customers I had gained was only a few thousand.

Of course, I had deliberately refrained from increasing my customer base too much. Even so, it was still a rather small number. Attendant puppets were a field entirely monopolized by me.

There were many reasons puppets had not properly spread among people, but the biggest was the discomfort people felt toward them.

Puppetry was a niche among niches. And the most efficient material for puppetry was mages themselves.

Naturally, mages were wary of puppeteers.

But Jegang had succeeded in washing away all that lingering discomfort. That had only been possible because of his exceptional business sense.

Based on the way I ran my business, Jegang had created an even more complete system. He linked nearby stores through puppets and used capital to build a system around his customers.

With only a few months of effort, he had built a business on such an enormous scale. Put another way, he had moved a field that had remained on the outskirts into the center of the city.

I nodded lightly.

From what I had learned, he was merely a wandering mage like me. His business sense was likely why someone like him had managed to secure a position in the Trading Company.

Perhaps that was why Jegang had been so confident that he could eliminate me quickly. He must have seen that I had failed to expand my business on a large scale.

To someone who had climbed that far on his own, I might have looked like a lucky fellow who had happened to be taken under Professor Irian's wing.

Well, that was certainly true. Without Professor, I would probably still be preparing for the entrance exam.

So to him, I must have looked easy to devour. The puppeteers he had brought in as partners were all superior to me as well, so he had probably felt even more certain.

I looked down at the puppet in the glass bottle and smacked my lips.

This corpse puppet was a very simple puppet, yet it was also quite sophisticated. Cleanly cutting away a soul to this extent was difficult even for me.

The person who made it was undoubtedly in a higher realm than I was. That was probably how they had managed to steal all the magic contained in my puppets. I smiled bitterly as I sensed traces of my own magic within the puppet.

Still, even copied results could have value.

Just as they had stolen magic from my puppets, I had learned many things by studying theirs.

I slowly flowed magical power into the puppet. Then I felt the faint ego contained inside it and nodded.

The structure I used to create soul Saplings, or Fake Life, was quite complicated. I had to use my tree branch as a sacrifice, create a domain like a shadow, and acquire a soul to offer as well.

Still, if I had to summarize it simply, I put incomplete souls into a single vessel and applied endless pressure until they became one.

The incomplete gathered together and imitated perfection.

I placed a hand over my chest and felt the flow of my unique magic. Before this magic was engraved into me, creating soul Saplings had been extremely difficult. I was lucky if one attempt succeeded out of five.

After gaining this magic, the process became somewhat more stable. Now, about one out of every three attempts succeeded.

Of course, I had to offer even more of my tree in return.

In pure quantity, I had to burn away roughly half of my tree to create a single Sapling. Amid those countless sacrifices, one very small Sapling would bloom.

From the perspective of efficiency, it was an extremely bizarre process. I was consuming something greater to create a life that had not even reached the Sapling realm.

Yet I continued creating Saplings because this was the path I had to follow. No matter how much I sacrificed, that was enough if I could take even one step forward.

Besides, I had received a request, so I had no choice but to keep making Saplings steadily. I shook my head as I recalled the tree branch Professor On had entrusted to me.

Professor On's tree branch, carefully enshrined in the tower, was still vividly alive and moving as it scattered clear magical power. Tiena's tree branch remained beside it.

Like their owners, the two branches were intertwined, exchanging magical power. The connection stretching toward one another was endlessly gentle.

But weaving them together to create a single life was another matter entirely. I had conducted much research to fulfill the request, but I still had not found a clear solution.

There were many reasons for that, but the biggest was that their power was simply too great for me to handle.

From what Professor Irian had briefly told me, Professor On had borne fruit on their tree. They had succeeded in stepping onto the path toward becoming an archmage.

That made it easy to understand why they were leaving the university.

No wonder that tree branch contained such powerful force. I clicked my tongue lightly. The power it held far surpassed my realm. How could I possibly handle something like that?

On my own, I could only understand that Professor On's tree branch contained powerful life force. I had gained many insights from that, but it was nowhere near enough to understand the branch itself.

Perhaps she found the situation somewhat frustrating, because Professor helped me a little. At this rate, I might have been dragged into Professor On's tower according to my promise with them.

Thanks to her help, I could at least understand the nature of the magical power contained in the tree branch. I also began to realize what the fruit borne by a mage meant.

Professor On's tree branch was overflowing with life force because it contained a world within itself.

That was what fruit was.

Holding a world inside oneself.

Of course, that was only a passing realization. At my current level, that was all I could perceive. To understand more, I needed to rise to a higher realm.

I let out a quiet sigh.

Right. A tree branch contained a small world within it. Then what kind of vessel could hold such a thing?

For life to be born, something had to become an egg. There had to be an existence that could withstand the shock of their union. And the thing I had mainly used in the process of creating soul Saplings was a puppet.

But among the things I could obtain at my level, it would be extremely difficult to find something that could endure Professor On's soul. Even Professor Irian's treasures would surely burst apart under that power.

The force dwelling in that small tree branch was stronger than every treasure I had seen so far. To contain it, I needed a vessel with even greater power.

How was I supposed to obtain something like that at my level?

I glanced down at the puppet.

In that sense, this puppet might become a clue for fulfilling the request.

The soul Saplings I created came from a process of sacrificing something more valuable. And I had revealed that method to everyone in the puppeteer association.

The puppeteers attached to Jegang knew it as well. Perhaps because of that, they had created puppet egos based on the method I had shown them.

Of course, their approach was completely different from mine.

I tried to combine incomplete things to form perfection. They tried to divide something perfect and turn it into something incomplete.

It was already a method they were familiar with.

I slipped a little magical power into the puppet. Then I could sense a soul burning around where its heart should have been.

Burning souls to obtain magical power was something corpse-puppet users commonly did, as I had seen through Isabella before.

They had designed the process of my approach toward perfection in reverse, making it into a process of failure instead. They had carried out a ritual that degraded souls.

The soul was shaved away, leaving behind only faint fragments of ego.

Of course, it was incomparably more worthless than the life I had created. But it had an advantage of its own.

It did not require particularly valuable materials to make.

This was a ritual that headed toward failure. There was no reason to invest something valuable into that failure.

I nodded deeply as I felt the corpse puppet's soul.

Although it was different from what I had intended, this puppet structure was astonishingly efficient. It could not create life, but it would be enough to implant into a puppet. It would also be a great help in maintaining simple puppets like this one.

In that sense, it was a method many puppeteers could learn from. They could raise the overall quality of the puppets under their command.

Perhaps because of that, Mauro and the others in our association had each acquired one of these puppets to study. They wanted to learn its limits and understand the dangers of this method.

I was no different.

As I stared at the glass bottle in thought, someone approached me. When I glanced over, I saw Isabella holding a small tray.

[Master, I prepared some refreshments.]

“Thank you.”

I accepted the teacup Isabella handed me and savored its aroma. A refreshing scent suitable for the morning lingered at the tip of my nose.

I looked outside again and channeled magical power into my eyes. Beyond the people protesting with corpse puppets in their hands, I could see Jegang dealing with them with a slightly troubled expression.

Watching that scene somehow made the tea taste sweeter.

I took a sip with a small smile.

[Just as you said, Master, the puppets are collapsing after all. They must have prepared for this, so it is truly strange.]

Isabella sat beside me with a light smile.

I nodded slightly.

The reason this had happened was obvious. Their puppets could not withstand the consumption of magical power and had begun to collapse on their own.

It was unavoidable. Their puppets were fundamentally consumable. They obtained magical power through souls, so once they burned through even the last wick, they naturally stopped functioning like that.

Of course, souls replenished themselves as they were emptied. The souls they had cleanly divided regenerated endlessly inside such magic circles.

But replenishing a soul inevitably took a long time.

This had not happened before because the magic engraved into the puppets had been first-generation magic. The magic circles I had stabilized to the extreme for efficiency consumed very little magical power, so even those souls could manage them easily.

But with second-generation magic, the form of the magic circles had become rougher and less efficient. Naturally, consumption had increased beyond the rate at which souls could recover.

That was why the puppets had broken down.

I took another small sip of tea.

Still, as Isabella said, they were not idiots. They must have known that the puppets' consumption would grow.

Jegang solved that problem through a system that covered all his customers. He dispatched mages who repaired functions. They did not stop at adding functions. They also maintained the puppets.

They assessed the puppets' consumption and forcibly restored or replaced them before they broke down. Then, while the original puppet fully recharged, they could provide another one.

The replacement process happened naturally. It was only possible because their customers treated puppets as mere tools. Complaints were not severe, and Jegang reduced the burden on the souls in his own way.

The system had worked quite well.

That was probably why Jegang had rejected the earlier contract. He had been confident he could survive well enough on his own.

If he stopped trying to keep me in check and focused on protecting his territory, the field he had built would surely continue expanding despite some losses. There was ultimately a limit to how many puppets I could increase.

After negotiations with me collapsed, Jegang had instead gone aggressively into business. He had likely judged that no matter how much I ate into his territory, he only had to increase his customer base beyond that amount.

And his judgment had been entirely correct.

I could not interfere with him, and he steadily expanded his territory. If not for one very small problem, it would have continued working well in the future too.

“Hmm. I suppose it is time to release this puppet as well.”

I quietly put down my teacup and opened the glass bottle containing the corpse puppet.

I had gained much help from dissecting this puppet and understanding them. In a way, I owed it a debt.

Then I had to grant what it wanted as well.

I glanced at Isabella. According to her, degraded souls naturally sought salvation. If so, I should fulfill that wish.

I lightly flicked my finger.

Magical power rose, and the magic engraved into the puppet slowly began activating.

Soon, the puppet raised itself up. It blinked quietly and looked at me. There seemed to be a slightly clearer light of reason in its eyes.

The puppet wore a somewhat relieved expression, then quietly closed its eyes.

Its body went limp and began falling to the floor. I gently caught it with magical power and nodded.

Since I had guided its soul, it probably had not felt much pain.

I closed my eyes as I sensed the soul's presence fading in the air. Soon, the soul disappeared completely.

It had vanished here.

[The soul has been freed now. That is such a relief.]

Isabella smiled softly. A faint smile remained on her face.

Had she thought the departing puppet's soul resembled her? She had once existed in a similar form as well.

Isabella had been able to wear a puppet body because she was a mage. Not only her soul, but also the tree dwelling within her supported her, allowing her to maintain her ego.

But the soul dwelling in this corpse had belonged to nothing more than a weed. Such a weak soul was bound to completely break the moment it became trapped inside a puppet.

So allowing it to disappear like this would be better for the soul.

I looked at Isabella and lightly scratched my chin.

Originally, I wanted to study the soul a little longer. But she had strongly requested its release, so I had let it go.

Showing such compassion did not suit a mage at all.

Well, that made her more trustworthy.

I had trusted her from the moment I first saw her. Yes, of course I had.

I rolled my eyes and looked outside at the commotion.

All the fallen puppets were the same. Their souls had disappeared.

And every one of those souls had disappeared through the workings of my magic.

The magic engraved into their puppets had all originally been mine. They were the result of thoroughly copying my magic.

The same was true for the magic of second-generation puppets.

The most important thing to me while designing second-generation magic had been its incompleteness. The puppet needed plenty of empty space so it could fill it by itself.

But for that, the framework itself had to be simple. That was probably why they could copy the framework so easily.

Based on the framework I had built, they engraved new magic into their puppets in their own way. They had done for themselves what my puppets were supposed to do.

In that way, they had managed to imitate my second-generation puppets to some extent.

And that was what I wanted.

It was a trap.

I looked at Jegang and smiled faintly.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with the magic I had designed. How could I hide anything dangerous in magic I would also implant into my own puppets? Besides, they would inspect my magic beforehand.

There was no need to do something so unnecessary.

So they used my magic in their own puppets, just as they had before. They must have judged that there would be no problem based on their inspections.

Yes. If one considered the magic itself, there was no problem.

But there was something they had failed to consider.

The souls.

The egos they created were the results of shaving away souls. That made them incomparably incomplete. And incomplete things naturally wished to become complete.

It was a very natural principle.

I lightly placed a hand on my chest. I could feel the flow of soul fragments running through my tree.

I was proof of that principle myself.

Of course, their souls and egos were tightly bound into the circuits and magic composing the puppets. Even I could not easily intrude upon them.

So I changed my method.

I made the souls awaken on their own.

That was also why I built second-generation puppets with an incomplete structure. The direction of being incomplete while advancing toward perfection was embedded in the magic as a whole.

Those magic circles were engraved throughout the puppets. And within the structure formed by the interwoven magic circles, they created one great flow.

A flow that linked their weak egos to their souls.

This also supplemented the faint egos they had created in reverse. They had designed the process I used to create life backward, then stopped it deliberately just before failure and turned it into puppets.

Then all I had to do was guide it toward success.

The series of flows created by my magic strengthened the soul further.

Each time the puppet used magic, its ego connected a little more deeply with the burning soul inside it.

It was like installing a back door.

Of course, that alone could not save the soul. But it could at least create enough room for the soul to move on its own for a moment.

The soul then moved in the direction it wished.

It burned even more magical power and chose liberation through its own will.

That was why the screams they had left during the night were expressions of joy at escaping pain.

At least, that was how Isabella had described it. I did not really know myself.

If the puppeteers who made those corpse puppets had tried to create life through sacrifice as I did, they would have noticed this trap immediately.

But they had not chosen sacrifice.

So they could not have noticed my trap either.

I smiled faintly and looked at Jegang.

If he had chosen cooperation, I would have altered the magic structure somewhat. A partner should not be ruined, after all.

That was why I had demanded control over their puppets in the contract.

But perhaps Jegang considered it interference, because he rejected the proposal.

Rejecting my pure heart was truly regrettable.

Still, I needed to respect his will. He said he would solve it alone, so I intended to let him do so.

“Hmm. I hope Mr. Jegang comes to visit again.”

If Jegang organized the situation and came back seeking cooperation, I was willing to accept him.

Of course, he would first have to overcome his current crisis.

Could Jegang overcome it?

I did not know.

Several more days passed.

Perhaps because he was a Trading Company man after all, Jegang handled the crisis well enough.

He provided compensation for the fallen puppets, quickly figured out why they had collapsed, and sharply reduced the number of second-generation puppets.

The incidents of puppets bursting apart gradually began to decrease.

But it was difficult to restore trust once it had been broken.

Business was ultimately a matter of trust. Customers came to a shop only when they were confident that they would benefit too, rather than only the merchant benefiting.

But if the quality of the puppets made by a workshop became questionable, customers naturally became suspicious.

And if they could only use first-generation magic, their puppets would naturally be inferior to mine.

In the end, it was not long before the Arcana Puppet Workshop temporarily closed its doors.

Later, I received a message from Hwaryeong. She said the Trading Company had begun an audit of the workshop.

Seeing how quickly they moved, Hwaryeong had clearly intervened.

I nodded as I looked at the workshop's tightly closed doors.

It was a perfect victory for me.

“Hmm. Shall we gather everyone? The matter is settled, so I should hold a small banquet with the people who helped me.”

[Oh my, that sounds fun. I will prepare it properly.]

Isabella smiled gently.

She was someone I could trust with that. I nodded and smiled as well.

Jegang was only a small part of it, but he was still a Trading Company man.