WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 67

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The reason I had joined the auction was to obtain materials for a puppet.

The kind of strength I had in mind required the byproduct of a powerful magical beast. It was an idea I came up with after realizing my own inadequacy at the advancement evaluation hall.

If I had been strong enough, something like that would never have happened. That was why I wanted a puppet. I wanted to put the talent I lacked inside it.

Of course, even that idea had been nudged into my head by Myra.

Still, the thought itself had not changed. Strength was the important factor at the foundation of everything. That was why, after forming the contract, I joined the auction again.

All sorts of items appeared at the auction house. I examined them carefully. Maybe because it was the final day, a great many precious things were put up.

And I was able to choose one of them. I fiddled with the card Miryeong had given me. If I picked the most expensive item here, I could make an enormous profit.

But I knew my own skill level. No matter how expensive a material was, if I could not handle it, it had no value to me.

It was not as if I could resell what I bought, either. That would make me feel guilty toward Miryeong. In the end, I had to take something I could actually handle.

After choosing and choosing again, what I obtained was Akur’s spine. This Akur was something I had never seen before either. It was an upper-grade magical beast with the trait of constantly deforming its own body and distorting its surroundings.

It resembled a wolf, but it also had a strange appearance that showed traces of other magical beasts within it. They said it was a precious item brought in from outside the university.

The moment I saw it in the booklet, I knew this was it. Because it was rare, the price climbed quite high, but I kept raising my bid without hesitation. They were not my points anyway.

That was how I obtained it in the end, and I used it to make a puppet. The power contained in the spine was exactly what I had imagined. I do not know how long I laughed after checking the result.

The biggest problem when I tried to make a combat puppet was that the puppet could not withstand that output. The mana heart I made could not endure other people’s magic.

This spine brought distortion to that mana heart. It adapted the puppet’s heart and circuits to suit the magic I wanted to use, and made it possible to imitate the power of others.

But I had not given it a shadow yet. The puppet was still incomplete. Everything about the puppet was half-subordinated to the spine, and its form kept changing as it was dyed by it.

If I gave an ego to a puppet like this, it would end up like the wraith tree from last time.

No ego would be born, and the puppet would simply become an accessory of the shadow tree. The puppet itself might even break.

That was how powerful the traces contained inside it were. I needed to erase them. That was also why I had brought the puppet all the way to this dangerous place.

I could not stop injecting magical power into it, even for a moment. I had to spend a long time steadily taming it with my magical power, assimilating the spine into the puppet, and removing those traces as cleanly as possible.

Of course, right now, that thing had taken it away from me as it was.

I looked at the puppet walking ahead.

The thing, which came up to about my chest, looked like what Professor might look like if she grew up. The only difference was that its hair was pure white.

I sighed. That was not the appearance I had wanted.

I had wanted a puppet with a huge build, about Goro’s size. That would make it easier to contain magic inside, and it would be more convenient to build its circuits too. I had also been counting on the pressure that kind of appearance would give off.

And that level of strength was also the limit my mana heart could contain. I had tried forms like Cassian and Hongryeong, but the heart still could not handle them properly.

Over the past month, the puppet had kept changing its form like that. Before we entered this place, that powerful body had been almost complete, but now it had turned into the form of a woman.

It was a change caused by the heart contained inside it. The heart had reconstructed the puppet with an extremely powerful force. The spine was subordinated to the heart in an instant, and that power transformed both the inside and outside of the puppet into what it was now.

To think the Fog Heart had really been here. To be honest, I had felt something familiar while checking the storehouse list.

A Mind-Eating Heart. Its traits had looked very familiar to me. So I had wondered, just in case. I had not expected it to actually be true.

A faint bitter smile rose to my lips. I felt quite a strange connection with that heart. Thinking about it, that heart had played a fairly large part in why I ended up here.

The first time I thought of the mirror bug was because of the fog that thing emitted. That strange fog made everything lose its way, and to break through it, I began communicating through the mirror bug.

After that, one event flowed into another until I reached the auction house, received Professor’s approval, and became the storehouse keeper. Then I was dragged in here. In the end, after going around in circles, everything had started from that thing.

The puppet stopped walking and looked back at me. A small smile rested on its lips. When our eyes met, it smiled at me with its eyes.

I flinched again at the sight. To think it could make such a soft and gentle expression with Professor’s face. I had been looking at it this whole time, but it fit so badly that it still gave me chills. It opened its mouth.

“Isn’t it strange? I said back then that we would meet again, and it really came true.”

“You can say that again.”

“Doesn’t that mean we are connected by fate?”

It approached me just like that. Then it gently leaned its head against my chest. I had no choice but to stand still. The fog flowing around us was holding my body in place.

“So why don’t you just open this for me? I want to go inside. It won’t hurt.”

I felt it grope at my chest with its hand. Fog leaked from that pale grip. It tried to dig into my chest.

Then it was bounced away. A golden ripple quietly rose in front of my chest. The puppet looked at it with a disappointed expression.

I swallowed and gave a bitter smile. It had already repeated that act at least twenty times. From the moment we first met, that thing had been aiming for my heart the entire time.

What the Fog Heart had first tried to dwell in was not the puppet, but me.

It had happened while I was running away from the other treasures. Fog suddenly rushed in. Inside it, I felt myself melting away.

But the key emitted light and blocked it for me. The fog left me and seeped into the puppet beside me. It all happened in the blink of an eye.

If not for the key, I would have died right then. I recalled the words I had checked before entering this room. Something about only things that ate people being gathered here. It had almost gone exactly that way.

I looked down at the faint golden magical power floating over my chest. This was the reason Professor had said I would not die. The key provided me with just enough safety to keep me from dying.

In a way, it was also exactly the kind of item I wanted most. This was the structure I had been imagining while making that puppet.

A minimum line of defense that could protect me, and a way to make the other side realize that cooperating with me was more beneficial than opposing me. That was my purpose in trying to make a combat puppet.

The problem was that it did exactly that much and no more. The key only protected me. It did not give me the power to break through the situation. So I had no choice but to be dragged around by the Fog Heart like this.

I calmly examined my surroundings. It had already been three days since I met her. It had been five days since I entered the room. During that time, I had been able to cover about half of this place.

This treasure room contained a very wide region made up of mountains and plains. It felt as if a real place had been moved here.

But not a single living thing existed. The treasures here had clearly sucked them all dry. There were traces that life had existed here long ago, after all.

While moving like this, I had encountered several treasures. But my target was nowhere in sight. It was quite strange.

I looked at the puppet. It was walking away from me again. Then it gestured to me once more. It was telling me to follow.

This time, we were heading to the northern end. We had already checked the west and south. That was the result of moving however that thing wanted. I had only followed the puppet.

There was nothing I could do. Whenever I tried to head somewhere else, it quietly blocked my path. It apparently did not want me slipping out of its hands.

After walking like that, before I knew it, I had climbed to the top of a mountain. The puppet looked somewhere far away and gestured.

“Over there. That friend is passing by again.”

When I looked in the direction she pointed, I saw a giant hand. It was something I had seen up close before. It was made of things that could be called fingers, whether they belonged to magical beasts or humans, all clumped together.

To be honest, I had moved around on the turtle at first. How was I supposed to walk through this huge area myself? I had simply planned to quickly check the target’s location first.

That way, I had managed to find several treasures. In this strange space, all the treasures were left to roam freely. Most of them did not move at all, and did not even leak magical power.

I should have moved a little more carefully then.

The reason they had not moved was because they had no purpose. Just as Professor had written, those things wanted to devour life.

The hand running wild right now was the same. It had been hanging limp like a corpse. So I thought it was safe and looked at it briefly from a distance, but the moment it sensed me, it immediately began rampaging.

The turtle was half-destroyed in that thing’s grip. The moment it was caught by that hand, the turtle’s shell was crushed like mud.

Fortunately, since it had not been long since it woke, its movements were sluggish, so I was barely able to escape. But it continued wandering around in search of me afterward.

That movement of magical power awakened the other treasures too, and all of them chased me. Through several crises like that, the turtle was nearly wrecked and was resting now. If not for the key, escaping would have been difficult too.

At this distance, that thing should have been able to sense me. Even so, there was only one reason it had not noticed me.

I looked at the fog surrounding me. This was hiding my presence. It was also the reason I could not leave that puppet.

The fog was trapping me, but it was also protecting me.

I watched the giant hand leave. It was heading west. It had caught the scent of the lingering magical power I had left behind to lure the treasures away.

But even with so many treasures rampaging around, the “Eye That Hung on a Star” was nowhere to be seen. That was different from what the Fog Heart had said about guiding me to it.

“Have you still not found where it is?”

I asked the puppet. The puppet glanced at me, then shook its head. Then it started moving again.

There was no way. With a commotion this big, that eye must have awakened too. So I could roughly understand what was going on.

If I still had not run into it after all this, it meant the puppet was deliberately keeping me away from it. Until now, it had only been a suspicion, but now I was half certain. That much time had passed.

I should not have let it figure out my goal. I let out a small sigh.

It could not be helped, either. The key protected my life, but it did not perfectly block the process itself.

That thing had skimmed through my mind and swallowed the memories of the past few days. From there, it realized I had come aiming for the eye. What happened afterward was exactly what was happening now.

The reason it would not take me to that treasure was clear too. It wanted to take over my body, like it had just tried to do. At this rate, I would have to wander around inside here forever.

I needed to break through this situation. I spoke to the puppet.

“Let us talk for a moment.”

“Mm, what kind of talk?”

The puppet spun around. Then it slowly approached me. I looked straight into the puppet’s eyes and said,

“Let us negotiate. I already suspect that you have found its location. If things stay like this, neither of us gains anything, so let us find a point of agreement.”

“You noticed? How did you know? Did I do something strange?”

The puppet widened its eyes. At those words, I gave a bitter smile. Just as expected.

“It was only a guess until now, but what you just said made me certain.”

“Oh my, this happened before too. I fell for a similar leading question again. How embarrassing.”

The puppet smiled softly. There was a little awkwardness mixed into it. The puppet stood before me and tapped my chest with a finger.

“Then shall we try this negotiation? I have said this the whole time, but I want to go inside that chest.”

The puppet beamed. I shook my head. Then it brought a finger to its chin and tilted its head.

“Then what will you do? Without my help, Evron-ssi will have to stay like this forever. I do not mind continuing to wander around like this.”

“You should know there is a time limit on the current situation.”

I said it while closing my eyes slightly. Since it had read my memories, it should know this too.

It knew I had come here under Professor’s orders. It also knew I had to bring back the treasure before the next lecture began.

What would happen if I could not finish the job in time? Professor might come and beat me until I was one step away from death. She would call it punishment for failing to carry out an order.

Then she would take the treasure she needed herself. I would probably be carried out in her hand as a bonus too.

The puppet knew that as well. It began to think for a moment. Looking at that face resembling Professor’s naturally made me think of Professor Irian.

What was Professor doing right now? She was probably watching my situation.

She might be laughing loudly at the sight of me being caught by a puppet I had made myself. I could almost hear her laughter.

So simply waiting for Professor was not a good method. She had told me not to run away.

If I did nothing like this, Professor might simply leave me here and go.

That was why I had to leave that as the last resort and somehow find a new way out.

“I will help you get outside. So please help me.”

I said that. I saw the puppet’s eyes lift slightly.

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