WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 71

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The tower was alive with an incredible commotion.

I walked slowly through the crowds moving here and there, looking around. Members of the various groups, who had once been too busy growling at one another whenever they met, were now laughing and chatting.

It was a pretty awkward sight. Still, they no longer needed to fight, so it made sense. The final lecture had ended a month ago.

The course ending did not mean they had to leave the tower right away. They were given about a month of free time, just like now. During that time, they relaxed and enjoyed themselves.

Of course, I had not been able to do that. I fiddled with the papers tucked under my arm.

In any case, all that free time had passed. Today was the last day, so they had to clear out of the tower. That was why everyone was packing and making such a racket.

Without stopping, I headed straight for one door. Once I stepped through it, the inside of the room came into view. It looked even more chaotic than outside.

That was only natural. Countless things had piled up there over five years. Over those five years, each room had been remodeled however its occupant pleased. The rooms reflected the tastes of the people who had lived in them.

I remembered Hongryeong’s room, which I had visited earlier. The furniture inside had been very luxurious, and within the tower’s magical power, it all harmonized to create an even cleaner, more beautiful atmosphere.

When I handed him his paper, I also received some of that furniture from him. He said it was a gesture of gratitude. I did not refuse. Each piece was worth at least a few hundred points.

If anything, I accepted them with great gratitude myself. After all, they had satisfied this one a little.

I glanced at the puppet beside me. She was smiling while examining the mirror she had received from Hongryeong. Since she had received so many things like that, maybe she would quiet down a little from now on. I clung to that hope.

Anyway, compared to Hongryeong’s room, this place was a lot messier.

The area was packed with people. Dozens of them were moving busily. If Hongryeong’s room had been a high-class inn, this place felt almost like a military barracks.

As I went a little deeper inside, I began to see someone gesturing here and there while giving orders. Several people moved with discipline according to those gestures.

I slowly approached him. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, noticed me, and waved. He was holding a small box in that hand.

I raised my hand slightly in return. Then he began walking over. His steps were extremely light.

It was Jun. The thing in his hand was the space-swallowing box. He seemed to have grown fairly used to handling it now. Five years had already passed, so that was only natural.

Truthfully, whenever I saw it, I always felt a pang of regret. When Professor first declared that she would give it away, I had failed to grasp its value properly.

Then I went to the auction house. But even the items there did not surpass that thing. Even so, they sold for millions of points. Then how many points was that thing worth?

That was why the students had been so obsessed with treasures. If someone managed to obtain even a single one, it was truly a chance to turn their life around. Jun himself was living proof of that. I spoke to him.

“I apologize. You must be busy. This was urgent, so I could not contact you in advance.”

“No, it’s no problem at all. So what brings you here?”

“I came to give you this.”

I handed him one of the papers tucked under my arm. He received it and began examining it. Along with a short piece of writing, Professor’s magical power clung to the paper.

“Oh, this is.”

A smile slowly spread across his face. He took his eyes off the paper and grinned broadly at me. It was a smile full of happiness.

“An acceptance certificate. This is my first time receiving one. I hadn’t heard anything, so I had half given up.”

“Professor handled it carefully. Even so, if not you, Jun-ssi, who else could receive this?”

“That’s true, haha!”

He burst into a very confident laugh. He was completely different from when I had first met him.

Just as I said, if Jun could not receive this, then no one could. Because of that, I felt no hesitation at all in giving him the acceptance certificate.

Of course, if it was only a matter of growth in strength, the others were no pushovers either. Among the great family people I had just visited, some had even reached the third floor. They said it had taken ten years since reaching the second floor.

When comparing pure strength, Jun could not beat those people from great families. So I gave them acceptance certificates. They had perfectly proven their strength.

But if I considered how far everyone had come from before the lecture to after it, no one had achieved better results than Jun. He had obtained a treasure, reached the second floor, and was now joining an enormous organization called the Throne Society.

“How do you plan to proceed from here?”

“Mm, since I now belong to the Throne Society, I suppose I’ll have to move to their city. That place will be my stronghold from now on. I plan to take my next lecture somewhere nearby too.”

He said that while stroking his chin. Then he glanced around. I followed his gaze. The people who had been receiving his orders were sneaking looks at us. He smiled and gave them a small gesture.

“The others decided to follow me too. We built a new group over five years, so wouldn’t it be a shame to disband it like this? Once we get there, I should at least create a small organization and try to claim a place for myself.”

“I see. I am sure you will do well there too.”

I smiled along with him and looked at them. Jun’s people began packing again. The gathered items were sucked into the box in Jun’s hand.

An organization, huh. I understood why they were following Jun. Most of these mages were wanderers. To people like that, Jun’s proposal must have been very appealing.

Of course, they could not enter the Throne Society like Jun. But if Jun created an organization, they would at least be treated as a subordinate group of the Throne Society.

Being able to belong, even in that way, to an organization that ruled a city had a special meaning. I knew that power very well too. I had been on the receiving end of it myself.

I spent quite a while chatting with Jun like that. Until the puppet beside me touched my shoulder.

“Excuse me, are you going to keep doing this? You said you had to hand all of those out.”

The puppet pointed at the papers tucked under my arm. I snapped back to my senses. She was right. I bowed my head slightly to Jun.

“I apologize. I need to hand out acceptance certificates to the others as well. I will get going first.”

“I’m the one who should apologize for keeping a busy person for so long. If you ever come to that city, contact me. I’ll treat you well.”

“Haha, I look forward to it.”

Leaving Jun, who was waving, behind, I exited the room. There were five people left. I made my way through the crowd and handed out the papers.

Those who received them looked ready to leap for joy. It made sense. I wanted one too.

That was how important an acceptance certificate was. It was the biggest reason every student attended lectures. Without it, they could not graduate.

To complete the basic curriculum after reaching the fourth floor, one needed at least three acceptance certificates, and only one-tenth of the students in each lecture could pass. Any more than that could not be marked as accepted.

Our lecture had two hundred people, so only twenty could be chosen. And I had to choose who passed. It was a job Professor had dumped on me.

I had spent the past month agonizing over their grades. Choosing the top ranks had been easy. The middle ranks, though, had been quite fierce. That was the problem.

In the end, I graded them by referring to the duel tournament rankings. That was the only way to distinguish them. Well, aside from Jun, not a single person had obtained a treasure.

After deciding the successful applicants that way, I submitted the list to Professor. Professor then roughly poured magical power into the paper I had written and completed the acceptance certificates.

After handing over the final acceptance certificate, I looked down at my empty hands.

I wanted one so badly I could hardly stand it. But I could not have one. I had not applied for this lecture, and I could not apply for it either.

From the moment I was accepted into the university, I already belonged to this tower. Because of that, I was forbidden from participating in the tower’s lectures. If it had been possible, I would have showered myself with acceptance certificates. What a shame.

A lecture, huh. I needed to take other lectures too. I needed acceptance certificates, after all.

Of course, I did have one. It was the one I had received from Professor Heisen. It was not a simple acceptance certificate, but proof that I had perfectly completed the lecture. I felt grateful to him again.

Truthfully, I had been keeping an eye on new lectures all this time, looking for something that seemed worth getting an acceptance certificate from. But nothing really appealed to me, and time had passed until now.

The list of lectures available for course registration changed every year. As with our lecture, most lectures opened on cycles of nearly five years or longer.

Sitting on a chair in the first-floor central hall, I took out several papers.

This was a list of lectures likely to open next. Of course, whether they would really open would only be known once the course registration period arrived.

Some lectures even took a few years off. There were probably cases like our Professor, who played around for a thousand years.

Still, I found a few lectures I liked among them. They were structured around completing assignments in areas like theory or experimentation. They were less popular lectures with lower competition rates.

If I applied for a lecture, I would have to pour in a lot of points. Not just the regular application cost, either. I would need to outright purchase a seat.

I sighed. Points were always in short supply. They would stay that way in the future too.

Until now, most of the points I earned had come from the students in the tower. And they were leaving today. I watched the people exiting the tower.

There were two months left until course registration. The new lectures would start after that. Then how was I supposed to earn points during that time?

Of course, I did have points coming in from elsewhere too. The fee for handing over mirror bugs. If I had known things would turn out like this, maybe I should have sold more, even if it meant giving up on my own growth. That kind of regret crossed my mind.

That was how short on points I was. Most of it was because of this one.

I looked at the puppet sitting beside me, still examining the mirror. Our eyes met through the mirror. She frowned slightly and glared at me.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Ah, right. I’m not very satisfied with the arm structure you revised this time. I looked at the list sent by Arcana General Trading Company last time, and there was something I rather liked. Please change it to that.”

She said that while waving her hand. I gave a bitter smile. When had she looked through that again? I had deliberately hidden it deep inside the workshop. A whole chunk of points was sure to disappear again.

“Understood, Ansim-ssi.”

I grumbled with a bit of resentment. I knew very well that she hated being called that. She glared at me with narrowed eyes.

“I told you not to call me that. Mira. How many times have I told you that I decided on that as my name?”

“It just does not really roll off the tongue. Mira, you say. It does not seem all that different from the name Ansim....”

“It is very different.”

She said it firmly, irritation in her voice. Reluctantly, I nodded.

Quite a lot of points had been poured into modifying Ansim, no, Mira’s body. It had been done at her request.

That did not mean I could refuse. The request was very reasonable. Even to me, using those parts looked better.

On top of that, she only chose items that fit within the points I had. I could not even use the excuse that I lacked points. And so my points only kept vanishing like snow.

Of course, thanks to that, she had become able to contain that much more power.

Through that process, I also changed my thinking.

A perfect combat puppet. Stealing other people’s talents and planting them. It was a dreamlike idea. At first, it had felt like a perfect theory.

But then the problem of cost appeared. To imitate their power and magic, I needed a lot of points. Just like with her beside me. A sad thing, really.

So I shifted my thinking. What if I used only part of that power instead of containing it fully? One perfect puppet was enough anyway.

I glanced at Mira. Our eyes met again. I gave her an awkward smile.

“Why have you been looking at me like that for a while now?”

“It is nothing. I made it, but I was thinking that it truly is a perfect body.”

At that, Mira snorted.

“It is still lacking. Try a little harder.”

“Haha, understood.”

I smiled bitterly. Well, just as she said, it was still lacking. There were countless points that could be improved. As I improved them, my points disappeared like mist.

So I wondered if I should make them light from the beginning. Instead of pursuing perfection, I could make them easy to produce as a mass-produced type.

That also suited my method of growth better. Considering the time it took for a puppet to adapt to its body, adapt to the information and knowledge granted to it, and even grow its ego.

The number of people leaving the tower gradually began to increase. She and I sat on the chairs and leisurely watched the flow of people.

Some people gave us small greetings. Jun and Hongryeong were among them. I bowed my head to them and returned their greetings.

The students slowly emptied the tower. Before long, silence settled around us. Even after waiting for a long time, no one else came out. I locked the tower door, and we headed inside.

When I went up to the workshop and looked out the window, I saw the backs of the students descending the mountain. All of them would leave on their own paths. Some would go to the city, and some would once again wander the continent.

“It will become very quiet.”

Mira said.

It was just as she said. From tomorrow on, no one would come. It began to feel real that the lecture had ended.

Even the mirror bug that had rung noisily every day was silent now. That was natural, since the people who had been using them were gone. The mirror bug in my pocket sensed my will and flew up.

I had recovered all the other mirror bugs. That had been the contract. I could not give mirror bugs to those who no longer belonged to the tower.

Still, I had handed out a few attendant puppets. All of them were ones whose ownership had been transferred while I modified them. That had been a trade made before the contract, so it was not caught by the contract.

Besides, if they got far from me, they would just become ordinary puppets anyway, so it was not a big problem. They had given me a lot of points, after all. I should at least do that much for them.

The mirror bug brought up a screen. Inside it were the records up to yesterday. The message board, where hundreds of posts had gone up every day, had become very quiet now.

I had been able to accumulate quite a lot of information through this. I would have to use it in the next lecture too. That would make it easier to raise my realm.

“Then shall we tidy up the tower a little too?”

Saying that, I tried to put the mirror bug away.

But at that moment, it began to vibrate. Someone had posted on the message board.

I was sure I had recovered all the mirror bugs. I checked the mirror bug again.

- Cassian: Come look at this cute bear puppet. Day 761.

[An unrecognizable picture]

[A picture with Cassian’s face blurred in it]

Old man, I have something to say.

I blinked while looking at that post. Then I slowly began writing a reply under it.

┗ Evron: How did you leave this post?

┗ Cassian: Our bear puppet wrote it for me.

┗ Evron: Where are you right now?

┗ Cassian: Outside the tower.

I glanced out the window. I saw Cassian waving toward the tower. The bear puppet beside Cassian was waving in exactly the same way. I had not expected a case like this.

“I think I know what this child wants to say. Shall we hurry over?”

Mira said. A smile full of interest had appeared on her face. She gently pulled me along.

Something to say, huh. I had absolutely no idea what it could be.

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