Book 3 Chapter 16
Chapter 65
“If equations are used for magic with a single target, it is common practice to use inequalities for area-of-effect magic.”
Professor Owen neatly wrote down the formula for systems of linear inequalities on the blackboard, explained the theory, and then looked back at the students.
“Does anyone know the reason for this?”
Kasena Page felt like hiding even behind a book. She wanted to avoid making eye contact with the professor and having to present that.
“You, you, you, you monkeys, less than monkey droppings! Is there really not a single one among you who knows this reason?”
For some reason, the muscular professor looked like he was about to cry. Then, his gaze suddenly landed on Kasena.
“Hmm, yes.”
Oh, no.
An ominous premonition enveloped her entire body, making the fine hairs on her back stand on end. As if to drive a wedge into that premonition, Owen flashed a knowing smile.
“The poor monke— who transferred into my class this time—”
“—Professor.”
At that critical moment, the person who raised his hand was Lain Ludwig. Owen’s attention immediately shifted to him.
“May I explain?”
The deal was to prevent Kasena from being humiliated… it was really annoying, but there was no helping it.
Normally, Krista would have raised her hand and shown off, but that guy had been acting a bit strange ever since he exchanged pleasantries with Kasena earlier.
At Lain’s confident remark, Owen’s eyebrow twitched.
“Your confidence is outstanding! Alright, go ahead and enlighten this ignorant professor. You top student who smells less like poop.”
“First, inequalities are divided into absolute inequalities and conditional inequalities.”
“Even the cat at my house, licking its own butt, knows that, Lain Ludwig!”
“In the case of conditional inequalities here, one can roughly find solutions even by substituting values within a specific range.”
“Hmm, and so?”
“Given the nature of area-of-effect magic, where the exact impact point of the spell doesn’t need to be precisely calculated, utilizing these properties of inequalities is simply perfect.”
As the students listened to the explanation with blank looks and blinked, Kasena also stared somewhat blankly at Lain next to her.
‘I knew he was good at studying. I knew it, but was it *this* good?’
Perfect… Owen also mulled over Lain’s explanation and admired it once again.
‘An understanding that grasps the core simply and clearly enough for even a child to understand…’
It was so good that it could be put directly into a reference book without issue. However, Owen’s personality was too twisted to just offer praise here.
“That’s correct! As expected, the top student is different. I had thought of one hundred and thirty damned sentences to crush your personality, but what a shame!”
If he had been wrong, he would have been terribly humiliated, Owen said, smacking his lips with that expression.
“Yes, it really is a shame.”
He meant it. Because Lain had been greatly interested in Owen’s artistic command of language since their first meeting.
Owen’s assistant began to write down what Lain had just explained on the blackboard, but their movements were strangely slow. It was probably because the content they had prepared was more complex and difficult than what Lain had explained. Being compared is a sad thing.
* * *
The southeastern frontier port region of the continent.
In a grand mansion, hideously half-destroyed by the feast of fly-infested corpses and the reverberation of immense magic, a man sat. His face was quite small and common-looking (if someone from 300 years ago saw him, they might have mistaken him for the Archmage Lin), but he was tall and had a robust physique.
“What did you just say?”
The man suddenly burst out, as if shouting. In the physical world, only the corpses heard his voice. But in the mental world, which the man had accessed through sorcery, there were five comrades who heard his voice. The world reflected in the man’s eyes was not a mansion filled only with corpses and maggots, but the inside of an underground temple with myrrh smoke rising.
[I said we still need to observe more.]
The wriggling figure in seat number 1 repeated what had just been said. Immediately, the man’s voice took on a threatening heat.
“Observe what more?! If we just catch that brat, Lain Ludwig, and rough him up, we’ll know for sure, won’t we?!”
[What if we catch him and rough him up, and he’s not the person we’re looking for?]
“What’s the problem with that?”
[It is a problem. An even bigger one from my position, having infiltrated the school. How about you try thinking a bit?]
“What, you bastard?”
As the two figures’ magical powers clashed, the runes forming the mental world began to squirm painfully. The voice from number 5 stopped the situation.
[Let Valencidis handle it. He has to do the most important job in our plan right now. It would be troublesome if he were discovered now.]
“Leave alone the bastard who killed Ribeni?”
[Ah, so if it’s determined that he’s the killer, Valencidis will handle it himself. What’s the problem? What’s the hurry?]
The man glared. The other cowards remained silent, as if they intended to follow Valencidis’s judgment.
“You pathetic, cowardly rats, beyond hope.”
Then, before his comrades could dissuade him, the man’s figure vanished from the mental world. At the same time, he rose from the corpse he had been sitting on.
‘Valencidis, if that cowardly bastard can’t do it, I’ll do it myself.’
He'd just go into the school, beat up anyone who got in his way, catch that guy, and beat him up too. He might get scolded by ‘Mother’ for his impulsive actions, but as long as he wasn’t caught, it didn’t matter. Even if he was scolded, it would just be a reprimand. After all, like Ribeni, he was a son created by Turreina from nothingness.
* * *
“Ugh, I don’t get it, I just don’t get it!”
Lunch break, on a bench in the campus courtyard.
Kasena, who had been staring intently at the summary Lain had personally prepared for her, finally slumped back against the bench, letting her head fall backward.
“If you don’t know, you study until you do. Isn’t that the basic principle of studying?”
Lain, who spoke so annoyingly, seemed tireless as he turned the pages of a thick reference book. Kasena glared fixedly at him.
“Why aren’t you wearing the glasses I gave you?!”
“It’s not night, why would I wear them?”
“Just wear them!”
What an absurd insistence… Just then, something appeared that brought a pure smile to Lain’s lips.
Flap, flap.
Carrying the clear, fluttering sound of wings, a being had crossed the languid summer sky: Pipi.
“Pipi, did you sleep well?”
“Slept well. Slept well. Slept well.”
As Pipi, perched on Lain’s shoulder, bobbed its head back and forth, Lain chuckled and stroked its head. As he did so, he felt an intense gaze. Kasena was staring at the scene, her eyes sparkling brightly.
“What is that? A sun parrot, right? I’ve seen them in books!”
“That’s right. It’s my companion bird.”
“Where did you get it? Me too, let me touch it too!”
“No, you may not.”
To protect Pipi from Kasena, who was wildly reaching out with both hands, he stood up from the bench and pulled his body back.
“Why not?!”
The headstrong personality of a young lady who has lived her entire life giving orders is truly terrifying. He could just let her touch it, but he decided he needed to correct that rotten personality of hers, even just a little.
“It’s time for the Young Lady to study, isn’t it?”
“Study, study, study.”
“We can just count this as a short break!”
“Rest, rest, rest, rest~!”
Kasena watched Pipi, who was mimicking human speech and rubbing its face against Lain’s cheek, drooling.
“Only those who have finished their tasks can rest. Young Lady, you have a mountain of tasks to do, don’t you? Pipi, I’ll see you at the dorm later.”
Kasena, who had been staring blankly at Pipi receding into the distant sky, had her cheeks puff up irritably, and tears welled up in her eyes.
‘No, this is unfair. It’s not like he’s saying I can never touch it…’
Kasena, who had been glaring sullenly this way, lay sprawled on the bench with her hands clasped behind her head. As expected, it was not an action befitting a noble.
“Hmph, fine! How would the genius Lain, who knows everything, understand my feelings?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s just that I don’t know anything! I don’t even know basic math formulas! My head hurts every day, as if it’s going to split open. Because I don’t know anything.”
Kasena, shielding her face from the sunlight with her summary notebook, added in a gloomy voice a moment later:
“It must have been greed after all. Coming to school should have been postponed. I only don’t know things, how can I not be humiliated?”
So Kasena had her own difficulties, too. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand her feelings. It was truly annoying, but he decided he had to address this clearly here.
“Why is it painful to not know many things?”
“What?”
“Doesn’t not knowing many things mean there’s a lot to learn? And having a lot to learn means there’s only room for future improvement.”
And silence fell. He hadn’t intended to convince her from the start. He simply judged that it would be fine if he could just create a small crack in that defeatist mindset.
How much time passed after that?
Roughly five minutes later, Kasena abruptly sat up and began to glare at the summary again, as if to kill it.
‘Hmm…’
There was certainly some reward in teaching. Seeing himself satisfied like this, a slightly poignant feeling pricked his heart.
‘Turreina, I wonder if I should have been a little kinder when I taught that mischievous girl…’
* * *
Two weeks flew by like an arrow after that. If there was any good news during that time, there was one thing. Ellin Ludwig had returned to school.
In her office, his aunt was sighing deeply as she organized the mountain of documents that had piled up over 50 days, then glared fiercely when Lain entered.
“You brat, what kind of trouble did you cause, taking advantage of the absence of me, the genius Professor Ellin Ludwig?”
“?”
“Kasena Page! You tried to elope with that little girl, didn’t you? No, that’s not important. How is she even walking… How did things end up like this?”
For Ellin, who had been planning to use the lineage of genius mages—Skarj-Cavurn, Ellin, Lain—to approach the prestige of the leading magic family, Kasena’s rehabilitation was quite a significant red flag.
After he explained how he got involved with Kasena, Ellin stared at Lain with a dumbfounded expression, then firmly pinched and pulled both of his cheeks.
“Ugh, I’m speechless, really! Just like a pathetic nephew! I went through all that hardship because of whom?! If you do something like that, it all goes to waste, doesn’t it? Huh?”
“I’m sho-sho-shorry…”
When Ellin released his cheeks with a sigh, Lain whined, gently rubbing his red cheeks.
“Strange rumors spread that Auntie was obsessed with dark magic. I thought I had to do something for Auntie’s professorship.”
“What?! You idiot! Who am I?”
“You are the genius Professor Ellin Ludwig.”
“That’s right! I am the genius Professor Ellin Ludwig, whom the world is watching! If they fire me, it’s <Delighten>’s loss. They would have protected me no matter what, so why did you interfere?! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!”
Although she scolded him, she wasn’t particularly upset because her clever nephew had done it for her. That’s why the strange phenomenon of her pounding his head while grinning like an idiot occurred. Ellin had no talent for hiding her expressions. Ellin seemed to snap at Lain whenever she had a chance, but this was actually her own supreme expression of affection towards her cute nephew.
‘Well, there’s no harm in being friendly with the Page family.’
Even Cavurn oppa, during his school days, solidified the family’s prestige even further through his senior-junior friendship with Madelia Page, didn’t he?
“Oh, dear, oh dear. You can go now! It’s final exams in two days, so you must be busy. Though probably not as busy as me.”
The problem was how Kasena started walking again. Was the rumor about her broken spine just a baseless rumor? But it wasn’t just a simple rumor; she had inadvertently overheard Cavurn and Brim talking about it…
Ah, I don’t know. My head is killing me from hearing secrets about Turreina, and I have so much work. I’ll think about it later.
“But Auntie.”
“Hmm?”
“The inquisitors… what did they say about Turreina? I don’t know what she did wrong for them to be like that.”
At Lain’s quietly uttered question, Ellin’s hand, which had been rummaging through a file, faltered and then stopped.
- Turreina is alive. I let her slip away by mistake…
- In fact, if you link it to Lin, Turreina becoming a leader of the Black Church makes sense…
It was because that troublesome story resurfaced in her mind again, and since there was a gag order on what was said then, she couldn't discuss it with anyone.
‘I can’t even predict what kind of incident will break out the day Turreina steps into the forefront…’
Her nephew was waiting for her answer, slightly hesitant. Since he had even borrowed books to read about her, he must have admired Turreina too.
‘Like most fledglings…’
She decided there was no need to crush that feeling with an ambiguous answer. And since final exams were coming soon, she didn’t want him to worry about other things.
“It was nothing much. It seems those dark mages used a few of Turreina’s books as an encrypted communication system. That’s why they said that.”
“Really?”
“Oh, you pathetic thing! If it wasn’t for that, I would have been tortured, would I have come back this quickly?”
A slight pang of guilt struck her for the lie she made up on the spot, but seeing her nephew’s face light up so brightly, that feeling immediately melted away.
“Thank you for letting me know. Then I’ll be going now, as I have student council activities. Auntie, you also look busy.”
As Lain turned to leave, Ellin snapped her fingers, as if something occurred to her, to get his attention.
“You’ve prepared hard for these final exams, haven’t you?”
“So-so.”
“So-so? You’d better work harder than that.”
“Why?”
As Lain tilted his head, Ellin grinned, as if handing over a secret gift.
“Your sister-in-law said she’s coming to see you. Bringing your pathetic younger siblings, too.”