WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 40

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I stared blankly at my trembling hand.

This tremor was not a physical reaction. My body was in perfect health. The infirmary had restored it completely.

It came purely from mental fatigue. I had gone nearly two months without rest. My mind was already worn ragged. The Sapling in my chest kept gasping too, releasing magical power in uneven bursts.

I had long since gotten used to the gap between this body and my mind. This trembling hand was nothing more than a minor side effect.

A bitter laugh slipped out. There was a reason people said too much could be worse than too little. I had started all this out of greed for points, and I never thought it would end up pressing down on me this hard.

Of course, if I simply maintained the status quo, the situation would end someday. Two years had passed since the lecture began, so I only had to endure three more years.

Then I would be free. Whether I could actually last that long was another question.

Still, maybe because it had been so long since I went outside, my steps felt incredibly light.

I suddenly thought of last week. It had been Professor Irian’s ninth lecture. The treasure this time was called the ‘Twisted Grasp of Warped Thoughts.’ Apparently, it was a piece left behind by a tree that had once been a great spirit.

Before the lecture began, Professor showed me the real thing, and I was half bewitched by it. As I drifted closer in a daze, strange whispers rang out and muddled my mind.

In that dizziness, I saw a blade stabbing into me. Then it actually appeared in reality. The blade drove straight into my chest.

If Professor had not stopped it, I would have died on the spot. I stumbled back in shock, and Professor laughed loudly as she put it away.

That Grasp had the power to manifest the user’s thoughts into reality. Of course, there were limits to its power, but she said killing one or two mages like that was nothing. It was a perfect treasure, except for the fact that it had already been corrupted and had a nature that tried to lead its owner to ruin.

The lecture began like that, and once again, no one obtained the treasure.

In truth, aside from Jun, who had obtained the Space-Eating Box in the first lecture, no one had managed to obtain a treasure. Professor’s environment played a large part in that, but the bigger reason was that the students were hostile to one another.

The mages opposed one another, and the groups that had joined hands for profit opposed other groups as well. If word spread that someone had gotten close to a treasure, every group would join forces to drag that person down.

As a result, the 24-hour time limit often ended with everyone being thrown out. Through all that, their hostility toward one another showed no sign of lessening. After this latest lecture ended, a full-scale war even broke out.

Jun’s group had ambushed the sword-wielders and interfered with them, so the sword-wielders, holding a grudge over it, launched attacks in every direction right after the lecture ended. In just one day, around twenty people had their limbs cut off.

The reason they could fight so freely was largely because of the infirmary. After the second floor opened, they could go to the infirmary at any time. As long as they did not kill anyone, it was fine, wasn’t it? After that, their fights became extremely fierce.

That war finally ended three days ago. The sword-wielders blocked the area in front of the infirmary and cut down everyone who approached, so Jun declared surrender. It was a shame.

He must have challenged them because he believed he had gathered enough force, but the sword-wielders were stronger than he had thought. Of course, I suffered like hell cleaning up the aftermath.

Professor grumbled while watching them too. She said she had laid several layers of traps to protect the treasure, yet they never reached them because they were too busy fighting one another.

During all that time, Professor never came out of her room even once. Whenever I went up to recharge Butler’s magical power, she was always asleep. Recently, she had been sinking into sleep even more often.

I was so jealous of how relaxed she looked.

I would definitely have that kind of leisure too. I made that vow and glanced down at my feet. My shadow had poked its head out and was dipping its arm into the black river flowing beside us. It looked rather comfortable.

It was about time to go in. I looked up at the black tower before me. The more I learned about my shadow, the harder it became to understand this tower. Sometimes, I even felt as if something was watching me from within the shadows.

I folded that thought away in a corner of my mind and passed through the tower’s door. Darkness rippled and drew me inside. Quite a few shadows were wandering around within.

I made my way through them and headed to the center of the tower. There, a black sphere floated in the air, scattering shadows in every direction.

I saw several people approaching the sphere. Beside them stood shadows that looked exactly like them. They were students taking the class with me. They put their bodies straight into the sphere.

I followed after them. Class would begin soon. The moment I stepped into the sphere, my shadow surged up and covered my body. In turn, I became its shadow and seeped into the ground.

This was how one moved inside the shadow world. According to Myra, if a living person entered this place normally, their body would be stolen in an instant.

This world was like an anthill made of countless passages. Shadows writhed and moved everywhere, across the walls, the ceiling, and the floor.

I avoided them and slowly moved down the familiar path. I could see people going ahead of me. After following them, I found a black puddle. It was a strange puddle that shone like a mirror.

My shadow threw itself into it. Then my position and my shadow’s position switched again, and I found myself standing inside the lecture hall. Many people had already arrived and taken their seats.

I quietly went to a seat in the corner. It was the spot where I always sat.

After waiting a little, class time arrived, and Myra appeared through the shadows. Professor Heisen had not shown himself since the first class. Since then, she had conducted every lecture.

“Today’s test is... survival. The person who... survives the longest... passes....”

The moment she finished speaking, darkness covered the lecture hall. As I felt myself blending with my shadow, I fell back into the shadow world.

Survival. Survive from what? There was no need to think. It meant surviving the other students. Every test was more or less like this.

After going through this lecture, I could tell right away which students were strong. The ones who had passed before were proof of that.

Among them, the one who stood out the most was a man named Baun. He had taken first place in every test. If the same person could pass more than once, then no one but him would have passed at all.

And the reason I remembered him was simple.

“Hey, I’ll send you off quickly again today. Go get some rest.”

A shadow dropped in front of me in an instant and spoke. It shot forward at once and tore my shadow apart. He was the one who always killed my shadow first like this.

I was thrown straight out of the world. The shock sent bile rising in my throat. When I opened my eyes, I was back in the lecture hall. I quickly slumped over my desk and forced myself to settle down.

For a moment, I almost lost consciousness. My mind was already exhausted, so the impact hit me hard.

“You came back... thirty minutes earlier... than last time...?”

A faint laugh sounded beside me. I quietly raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. When I lifted my head, I saw Myra smiling.

“What can I do when I’m this weak?”

I gave a bitter smile. Every time, I was eliminated first like this. Not only Baun, but everyone targeted me.

That was because every test gave bonus points for catching someone. In their eyes, I was nothing more than a walking bonus point.

So my shadow was always caught and torn apart like this. At least it was not my real body. The thing seemed to have recovered already, because it rose up in the lecture hall, wobbling.

“You’re still... such a cute friend....”

Myra poked its body. I remembered the first time she had spoken to me. It had been after the third test ended. She said she had spoken to me because my shadow was interesting.

She said it was the first time she had seen a shadow recover this quickly. Of course, aside from that, there was nothing special about it. Even after that, she often came over and talked to me like this.

“So... how did it go... this time...?”

She asked. I simply shook my head. This experiment had failed too.

I had thought it was fairly plausible, but resistance appeared in an unexpected place. I calmly opened my mouth and reported the progress of this experiment to her.

This time, I had tried to combine a puppet and a shadow.

A puppet had its own shadow. If I tried to forcibly attach another shadow to it, an extremely severe rejection reaction appeared. I had learned that from the previous experiment. In the end, the most important thing was naturalness.

But a puppet’s own shadow was very faint because it had not accumulated years behind it. The power contained in that shadow alone was nowhere near enough to move the puppet. So, in order to let the shadow help the puppet move, I reconstructed the circuit inside the puppet and created one huge shade that wrapped around the mana heart.

In other words, I had tried to create a shadow heart over the puppet’s mana heart.

This attempt looked fairly successful. The shadow covered the puppet’s surface and changed as if it had become the puppet’s outer skin. The shadow moved according to the puppet’s form, just as I had set it up beforehand, and tried to guide that movement.

But the shadow began to reject the magical power. It could not handle the magical power I had put into the puppet and melted away. Each time the puppet moved, that rejection grew worse, and the shadow soon faded.

Overlaying a shadow onto a puppet like this had failed. So I needed to move on to the next step. For that, I reconstructed the circuit.

This time, I arranged it so the shadow could combine more easily, melting the shadow as if it were part of the magical power and allowing it to flow together through the circuit.

The puppet moved through the shadow’s power and minimized its consumption of magical power. For a short while, it looked successful. But soon, the shadow collided with the resistance of the spells inside the puppet, and the circuit became tangled.

Once that happened, the puppet’s magical power grew unstable. In the end, the magical power and shadow separated, and the puppet itself exploded.

It took two months to test this entire process. But the result was terrible. The shadow could not fully assimilate into the puppet’s flow of magical power, and they collided and exploded.

The shadow was not compatible with the puppet’s circuit at all. But I had learned something else through this experiment. Shadows possessed a very autonomous nature.

Because of that, when I tried to force them together like this, the puppet became even more unstable instead. Going forward, I needed to pay attention to the shadow’s autonomy and proceed in a way that harmonized it with my magical power.

That would be the theme of my next experiment.

After hearing all of that, Myra covered her mouth with her hand and laughed softly.

“What a cute... little concern....”

The result of research I had squeezed out of time I did not have was nothing more than cute to her. I felt a little hollow.

But that was exactly why I told her everything. Aside from Professor Heisen, there was no expert on shadows better than her.

It had been six months ago. When I first told her about my worries, I honestly had almost no expectation of receiving an answer. I only spoke because I felt like I was clutching at straws.

But unexpectedly, she answered kindly. After that, once every three months, whenever I was eliminated, I began receiving brief advice from her.

Last time, I even asked why she helped me like this. In truth, she had no reason to help me at all. At that question, she smiled and answered.

“Because... it seems certain... you’ll end up in a position... similar to mine....”

From those words, I felt a sticky joy and excitement. They seemed warped in some strange way. Something gloomy and unpleasant was mixed inside them. I shuddered at the ominousness contained in those words.

Anyway, what she told me was very helpful. Over the past year, I had received a great deal of help from her.

The same was true now.

She tapped her lips and organized her thoughts for a moment. Soon, she opened her mouth again.

“The research... was interesting. You can... continue with it... as is....”

Did that mean the direction I was thinking of was not wrong? I nodded. Just hearing that much was already a great help.

“Try... looking deeply... into the shadow world... once.... Then... it will help you....”

She continued like that. Then she melted into the shadows and disappeared. I carved the words she left behind deep into my heart. I bowed deeply toward the empty spot where she had been and gave my thanks.

Then I collapsed onto the desk. Until someone passed, every student had to remain here. It would not end for quite some time, so I had plenty of time left.

I had to rest even a little at times like this if I wanted to endure more later. Soon, my mind went dark, and I fell asleep as if I had passed out.

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