Chapter 113
Chapter 113
"…a teacher's attitude."
Professor Iris lifted her glasses and warned me in a pointed tone.
"You really shouldn't be accusing me of being shameless, Cassian."
Her voice was as calm and rational as always.
But thanks to my sharpened senses, I could tell clearly that the hand on my back had tightened ever so slightly compared to just a moment ago.
I scratched the back of my head and puckered out my lips.
"Ah, that's why I said we should just let it slide."
"……."
"You were the one who asked first, Master."
Professor Iris clamped her mouth shut at my protest.
Swish.
The hand on my back carefully withdrew.
I glanced sideways to inspect her face.
It was still that icy expression that never showed emotion, as always.
'Huh?'
Just a little.
So slight that I wouldn't have noticed it if my senses weren't in this bizarrely heightened state right now.
The tips of her ears were faintly tinted rose.
She was clearly embarrassed and flustered.
She'd only been exploring her disciple's mana for purely scholarly reasons, but now she'd been cast as some pervert groping around inside her student's body. It made sense she'd be flustered.
'Ah.'
For an instant, I felt a strong urge to seize the opening and tease her mercilessly.
'Professor, your ears are red. Did you actually have ulterior motives?' If I started needling her like that, how would that facade come crashing down?
But I swallowed the joke that had risen to the tip of my tongue.
'Let's hold back.'
Lately, she'd already been showing all the signs of feeling hurt that I hadn't been treating her as my master properly.
If I pushed the line any further here, it was obvious I'd either get struck by lightning on the spot or make my academy life a whole lot harder from here on out.
I was already struggling enough with the role of keeping the villainess in check; I couldn't make my professor go berserk too.
I figured I'd better stop while I was ahead, and forced my expression back into place.
"Then."
I cleared my throat and changed the mood.
"Looks like I just misread the situation. Should I proceed with the final casting now?"
"…Yes. Go ahead."
Professor Iris answered in a voice that had regained its composure, then took a step back.
This time, she didn't place her hand on my back.
Instead, I could feel her unique, razor-sharp powers of observation aiming at me, as if to pierce straight through my whole body.
I took a light breath and stared into the open space of the training ground.
It was three times a day anyway. Once this was done, today's schedule was over too.
[Skill Activated: Fixer]
[Remaining Uses Today: 0/3]
A familiar mechanical voice rang out in my head.
Bwoooom───!
But then.
'Wait, what?'
The moment the ability activated, I snapped my eyes wide open at the unfamiliar sensation washing over my body.
More than when I cast the second spell just before.
No, even more than when I had just felt Professor Iris's mana as if it were liquid.
I could feel my sensitivity to mana explode.
'Wh-what is this?'
The thing I was sensing more keenly wasn't just the professor's mana that had burrowed into my body.
Swoooosh!
An intangible flow suddenly wrapped itself tightly around my entire body.
The natural mana dispersed in the air began to gather fiercely around my fingertips, as if seeking the center of a massive whirlpool.
Even without any wind, my clothes were flapping wildly.
The whole process of mana touching my skin, brushing past it, and condensing in the air was stimulating actual tactile sensations, and I could perceive it all with startling clarity.
'Uh…?'
The seed of flame gathering at my fingertips had expanded into something like a sun in just a few seconds.
I was genuinely frightened.
'Is this really right?'
Even if I couldn't control the Fixer's output, the density of mana condensing at my fingertips right now was beyond imagination.
It felt like I was holding a small nuclear bomb in my bare hands.
'If I fire this thing like this... am I not seriously going to cause a disaster?'
An ominous feeling flashed through my mind: this wouldn't just be on the level of destroying a dirt-floor training ground, it might blow away half the academy's main building.
I had to stop it.
No matter how I looked at it, this didn't seem right, and I wanted to cancel the spell.
What do I do? Damn it?
Just as I was floundering, unable to figure out how to stop it,
"Cassian...?"
Professor Iris called out to me in a trembling voice from behind.
"If you say it like that, how could I not know?"
'So this really is bad news.'
So I wasn't just overreacting because my senses had suddenly become hypersensitive and I was feeling things too strongly on my own.
But regrettably.
Without regard for my will, the already compressed mana had found its own path to explode and was raging outward.
Flash───!!!
My vision was bleached white in an instant.
And then.
Kuuuuuuuuung────────!!!
An enormous roar that seemed as if it would swallow every sound in the world tore through the training ground—no, through the entire academy.
What burst from my fingertips was a fireball at least five times larger and far more monstrous than the ones I'd fired before, as if the flames of hell had descended upon the mortal world.
KWAAAAAAAANG!!!
The moment the fireball slammed into the training ground floor, the earth screamed and convulsed.
The explosion itself was five times bigger, but
the shockwave and the thunderous blast it produced felt easily fifty times greater.
A gigantic pillar of fire shot high into the sky, and a pitch-black cloud of dust rose like a mushroom cloud.
A heat wave rolled in like a tsunami and shook my hair and the hems of my clothes mercilessly.
Ssshhhkkk───!!!
"……Shit."
I stood there with my mouth hanging open, staring at the devastation before me.
The Third Magic Training Ground, which had already been riddled with three craters, had now seen half of itself evaporate into nothing.
Melted soil and rock were boiling up like crimson lava, giving off an awful heat.
Buzz, buzz! Chatter, chatter!
"Wh-what happened?!"
"A terrorist attack?!"
"It's over by the Third Training Ground!"
Because the explosion had been so enormous, people over by the main building and the dorms came rushing in from all directions like a swarm of ants.
The guard patrol's frantic whistles and the students' shrill, panicked chatter were drawing closer.
I stood there in a daze, staring at the scene.
'...Is this really right?'
Even though the academy had coolly agreed to let me blow the place up and repair everything in one go afterward.
This seemed like it had crossed the line where repairs were even possible.
At this point, they'd need a full terrain restoration project, not reconstruction.
Not knowing how to deal with this situation, I slowly turned my head to look for Professor Iris behind me.
"Professor?"
I called out cautiously, but
"……."
Professor Iris gave no answer.
Not even noticing that her glasses had slid down to the tip of her nose, she stared back and forth between the boiling lava pit in front of her and me, mouth half open.
Dazed. Frozen in a stupor.
'Damn it.'
I clutched the back of my neck tightly.
If even the teacher who was supposed to be the most rational one freaked out and lost her composure like that, what exactly was I supposed to do?
At this rate, the cleanup would be my job again.
……I did cause it, though.
……Still!
* * *
Clatter.
Professor Iris's private laboratory.
After we somehow drove away the people and guard soldiers who had swarmed the training ground with the absurd excuse that 'the professor had given a special magic demonstration,'
we hurriedly left the area and came back here.
But even now, after returning to the lab and sitting face-to-face on the sofa,
Professor Iris still looked as blank as someone who had been bewitched.
The black tea on the table was cooling, but she didn't even think to pick up the teacup, just stared into space.
Unable to stand it any longer, I tapped the table with my finger and spoke.
"Seriously, what's been wrong with you since earlier?"
Professor Iris's gaze slowly turned to me.
"...What do you mean?"
"It's not really something I'd dare say to my master, but..."
I propped my chin on my hand and answered with a crooked grin.
"You look like you left your mind back at the Third Training Ground."
At that, her eyebrows twitched slightly.
I know. Even I can tell that's pretty shameless.
"You're right. That's not exactly an expression a disciple should use with their master."
Professor Iris adjusted her slipping glasses and let out a small sigh.
"Still, I can more or less imagine what my expression must look like right now, so I'll make an exception and let it slide this once."
Good, so she does know.
At least she realizes how completely out of it she looks right now.
"So, why are you so surprised?"
I shrugged.
"You already agreed to demolish everything and have the academy foot the bill for repairs all at once. It's just broken a little more than planned, but the conclusion's the same, isn't it?"
"……."
At my easygoing answer, Professor Iris looked at me as if she were dumbfounded.
A deep weariness settled in her red eyes.
"Cassian."
"Yes."
"You... really don't know anything, do you?"
About what?
I answered confidently.
"Yes. I don't."
"Are you saying that seriously?"
"I do know that I've apparently gone through some absurd change that ordinary mages don't experience, and I also know that the fireball I shot out is ridiculously huge and absurdly powerful, but."
"Then what exactly do you not know?"
Professor Iris asked, pressing a finger to her brow.
I added with a serious expression.
"I have absolutely no sense of just how incredible I am."
A suffocating silence settled over the laboratory.
Professor Iris froze with her hand half-raised toward the teacup, and I blinked back at her, waiting for her reaction.