WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 33

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I spent my time making several puppets. Every so often, a whisper announcing a dropout brushed past my ear, and someone would return to the clearing to rest. I promoted my puppets to them and earned a few more points here and there.

But I heard no news of anyone finding the treasure. Instead, several coffins began arriving here.

The first one to arrive had clearly gone through several traps. It was pierced and broken all over. The marks were so brutal that four of its legs had been torn off.

Even so, the coffin it carried on its back had mostly kept its shape. I quickly retrieved the puppet that had barely made it to the clearing and opened it. Unlike its battered exterior, the inside was perfectly stable.

Inside was a man covered in blood. One of his legs had been torn off and was leaking blood, and there was a huge hole in his chest, large enough to see through to the other side. I could not imagine what kind of fight he had been in.

The puppets pulled him out of the coffin. The moment he left it, blood began pouring out of him. I quickly sealed all his wounds with magical power. He had already lost far too much blood, leaving him deathly pale from head to toe.

He looked at me with his eyes half-open. I smiled and held his hand.

“Don’t worry. Once you close your eyes for a bit, you’ll be fine.”

Then I began drawing a magic circle. A quick check showed that about half his organs were missing. The status preservation magic inside the coffin had barely kept him alive, but death was only a matter of time.

I gave orders to the puppets. The most important parts were the heart and lungs. The puppets opened their own bodies and took out organs corresponding to the parts this man had lost. They were all artificial organs I had prepared in advance.

I grafted them one by one to the man’s magical power. I needed to find the organs that suited him best. Some caused strong rejection, while others did not match the grain of his magical power.

I quickly checked them one after another like that and found the organs that fit him. Then I connected them to the man.

From the outside, he looked terribly grotesque. Since all these artificial organs were externally attached, the squirming things clinging tightly to his entire body made it look as if they were eating him.

Despite that appearance, the man’s insides began to stabilize. For a mage, the only important thing was magical power. The body was just an accessory that came along with it.

All these artificial organs reduced the burden so his magical power could fully handle his body. Soon, the man’s faint magical power began to flow fiercely. It was a flow that started from his tree. It circulated through his body and began wrapping around the missing parts.

Then the vanished areas slowly began to regenerate. Bone grew from his leg, and the hollowed-out insides filled in. His magical power pushed away the artificial organs I had attached and filled the empty spaces.

Several puppets drew magic circles to assist the process. It was recovery magic that brought about growth and regeneration. Using that as a base, the man soon regained his original body.

The man slowly rose from his seat. After closing his eyes and settling his magical power, he bowed his head.

“Thank you. You saved my life.”

“Not at all. If I took your precious points, I should at least earn them.”

I said that as I helped him up. Then I led him to the table I had set on one side of the tent. I poured him tea and smiled softly.

“Sir, please rest here for a while. There’s still plenty of time left.”

“Then I’ll recover a little first. Also, my name is Jun. Please feel free to call me that.”

Jun, was it? I searched through my memory. I had memorized every course participant’s documents. He had enrolled seven years ago and was still staying on the first floor.

“So you were Jun-nim. I’m Evron. You can just call me Ron. Please rest.”

I said that and stood up. He nodded, then closed his eyes. The magical power around him began being sucked into him. He seemed to be recovering his body.

In the meantime, I checked the coffin puppet he had ridden in on. The main magic circles forming the coffin had not been damaged. I could use it again. I attached new legs to it right away. After tidying up the damaged body, it looked as good as new.

The puppet moved this way and that, inspecting its own body. At last, apparently finding no issues, it shrank and returned to my hand. Jun, who had recovered enough to move before I knew it, was standing beside me and watching it.

“Well, what do you think? This cute little thing brought Jun-nim all the way here. Would you like to rent it again?”

I said that and held the puppet out to him. Jun silently nodded and offered his ring. I received the points through it and handed him the puppet.

Jun left the clearing again just like that. He had not even fully recovered yet, but he was terribly impatient.

The same thing repeated after that. They rented coffins again, and others who saw them moving around perfectly fine also took coffins with them.

Watching my points fill up made me smile without meaning to.

Then should I start moving too?

Of course, I did not mean leaving the clearing. Why would I be insane enough to leave this safe area? The ones moving were the puppets.

If there were no customers, I could force a sale.

It was the thousand-point lesson I had learned at the entrance ceremony. I had to follow that example.

I scattered flying insects in every direction. Several puppets followed behind them. They would sweep through the area and tell me the labyrinth’s structure.

The paths kept splitting apart and merging back together. Through that repetition, the labyrinth formed a very strange maze. It was so confusing that even the path I had taken here was not easy to recognize.

Of those paths, I only moved the puppets through places where people had already passed. Most traps had been dismantled. A few puppets were broken by traps left behind by those who had gone ahead, but in the bigger picture, it was not a problem.

The puppets passed through several paths like that, searching for people. Some people broke the puppets, while others sent them ahead first to check for traps.

During that process, I found someone injured badly enough to be near death. Their body had been pierced by a tentacle that had come down from the ceiling. Mm, I had seen this mage in the clearing before, but they had not bought a puppet from me.

The tentacle was draining a great deal of magical power from the mage’s body. The puppets carefully approached it. Even with the puppets coming closer, the tentacle simply writhed in place.

The moment a puppet tried to touch the mage, the ceiling opened, and dozens of tentacles poured down. They pierced through the puppets in an instant. All the defensive magic the puppets carried collapsed at once before them.

Then red patterns began surfacing all over the puppets. The patterns sucked in all the puppets’ magical power, then drew a huge magic circle on their backs. The tentacles sensed danger and tried to break the puppets, but the magic circle activated first.

Using their own bodies as the medium, the puppets caused a huge explosion. The tentacles were caught in the blast and collapsed here and there. Still, there was no major damage. They had only been briefly scattered by the force of the explosion. I had not expected much either.

I only wanted to create an opening for the coffin puppet to snatch that student away. Using the explosion of the puppets as propulsion, the coffin puppet shot forward. It instantly expanded in size.

The puppet slammed straight into the tentacle feeding on the mage. The impact knocked the mage to the floor, and the puppet quickly placed the mage inside its own coffin.

The tentacle, furious at having its prey stolen, attacked the coffin, but the puppet rapidly moved its four pairs of legs and escaped.

It returned all the way to the clearing where I was.

When I opened the coffin to check, the mage was already halfway to death. They were in a similar state to Jun earlier. If any more magical power had been drained, they would have dropped out right then and there.

As I had with Jun, I quickly treated their body. Magical power restored their body, and as they regained consciousness, they opened their eyes. I met their gaze and smiled.

“Rest easy. This place is safe. It’s the starting point of the labyrinth.”

“Ugh… thank you.”

I waved off the thanks. I had only provided a service, so how could I accept gratitude? I held out my hand to them. It was my right hand, the one wearing my ring.

They looked at it in confusion. I took hold of their limp hand. Their ring was shining brilliantly. I touched my ring to it and said,

“The rescue fee is 10 points.”

Confusion spread across their face.

“That’s the calculated cost of saving you.”

“The rental fee for a puppet was clearly 2 points…”

I cut them off. Instead, I held an invoice in front of their eyes. On it, everything I had done for them was written in detail along with the costs.

“That is the fee for simply renting a puppet. Here, there’s the effort spent finding all of you, the magical power used to transport the puppet, the puppets consumed in the process, and so on. Once all of that is calculated, it comes to 10 points.”

As I said that, I held out the coffin puppet that had transported them.

“Something like this may happen again, so how about renting one puppet in advance? I’m renting them out for 2 points.”

They took the puppet with a reluctant expression. Just like that, they paid 12 points and headed back into the labyrinth. I stopped them again.

“Ah, and are you having any difficulty exploring the labyrinth? I prepared something for people like you. How about this puppet? These puppets were extremely useful when rescuing you. They get caught by traps in your place and explode…”

In that way, I managed to squeeze out 3 more points.

I smiled in satisfaction as I watched them leave. As expected, opportunity lay close to danger. This kind of field transport was the easiest way to earn points. There were many coffins, and even more people.

About six hours passed. During that time, even if I had not gathered enough tiny points to make a mountain, I had at least made a hill.

Every time I looked at my points, I felt happy, though there was a slightly bitter taste in my mouth too.

Recovering the coffin puppets was not as easy as I had expected. A little over ten percent of the puppets had failed to return. I tried to pick up signals to figure out where they were, but I caught nothing at all.

It was an expected loss. Even so, thinking about their value made it hard not to feel regret. The entire coffin was basically made from pieces of the turtle’s shell. If I calculated only the material value, one coffin was worth over 10 points.

I unfolded the map. It was a simple diagram of the labyrinth’s structure, drawn through the puppets so far. Most of the labyrinth was still unrevealed, but I had managed to grasp everything around this clearing.

The labyrinth did keep changing, but not to an extreme degree. It only repeated the process of adding and removing a few paths.

Roughly calculating it, the progress through the labyrinth seemed to have passed the halfway mark. Most traps had been cleanly dismantled, and not many people were dropping out anymore.

I felt uneasy. Professor was letting things proceed this easily?

There was no way.

The moment I felt that, I immediately took out the turtle. The turtle expanded to the size of a carriage and settled down in front of me.

I moved the entire tent onto its back, so I could leave at any moment.

But nothing serious happened. The labyrinth was gradually revealed, and the puppets soon reached the end of the area.

The treasure was nowhere to be found.

My unease grew stronger. I left only the bare minimum of luggage out and put everything else inside the spatial pouch, then cleared out the tent’s interior except for a few puppets.

Then, as if that unease had become reality, the labyrinth began to shake violently.

At first, I thought it would be similar to before, but I soon changed my mind. The shaking kept growing stronger.

This was on a different level from before. The ground and ceiling flipped upside down, and the paths were torn to shreds.

The clearing I was in was no different. The ground split open, and stones poured down from the ceiling. The turtle hurriedly dodged them.

Then even more stones poured down. They held magical power and aimed precisely at me. Damn it, this was definitely Professor’s doing. Apparently, Professor did not like seeing me stay so comfortable.

The turtle ran and dodged them, but the stones even changed direction in midair as they shot toward me. In the clearing, there was no way to avoid them.

In the end, I had no choice but to leave the clearing and enter a path that was thrashing wildly.

After that, the path I had entered through was blocked. The boulders had destroyed it.

Without even time to catch my breath, the space I stood in began shaking at random. I could only hold onto the tent with magical power and endure the tremors.

When the shaking finally ended and the labyrinth stabilized, I checked outside and could only give a bitter smile.

The familiar labyrinth had vanished without a trace, and a new form of labyrinth surrounded me. It was wider and held stronger magical power.

It was sure to be filled with far more dangerous things than before. A chilling killing intent came from beyond the path. I could not tell whether it belonged to a magical beast. What was clear was that it was dangerous. And it was also very clear that it was getting closer to me.

It was a killing intent I could not dare oppose.

I had to run before it noticed me. The turtle hurriedly moved its feet. I had no idea what traps were where, but I had to move first.

Everywhere in this new labyrinth, I felt Professor’s malice.

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