Chapter 77
Earth-wise, this was around early March.
“Wow… It’s huge….”
“I’m definitely going to graduate at the top of my class…!”
Today was the Academy’s entrance ceremony.
It was also the day when new students arriving from all across the Empire officially moved into the dormitories.
“Ugh, do those commoner brats even wash properly? I think I smell something.”
“Tsk, once they’re dead, they’re all just lumps of meat anyway….”
“Hey, you commoner, what did you say?”
“Oh dear, did this lowly one say something?”
They might say everyone was equal once they entered the Academy, but how was that equality in anything but name?
Watching those people already busy bristling at one another,
Akion smiled contentedly.
“But who’s that on the podium?”
“Isn’t he one of our students? He’s wearing the Academy uniform, so why is he up there?”
“Is he this year’s top entrant? But I never heard that House Enersis had a new student….”
He was wearing the Academy uniform just like them.
Akion was actually standing there as a professor of the Magi-Engineering Department in the Faculty of Magic, but did they know that?
If one got technical, Akion was somewhere between an assistant professor and a full professor. Anyway.
“Professor Akion. Are the cadets’ stares getting to you?”
“It is a little embarrassing. I should’ve just worn my formal uniform.”
Of course, Akion was the department’s only professor, which meant he also served as its department head in this utterly absurd situation.
“No matter what you wear, Professor Akion, your entrance is going to be outrageous, isn’t it? If I were in your shoes, I’d have demanded an explanation from His Majesty Theodore, saying I had questions.”
“Sir Montefio, were you and His Majesty the Emperor classmates at the Academy?”
“Indeed, indeed. That was a long time ago.”
Montefio, who stood beside Akion, was both the dean of the Faculty of Magic and the head of the Imperial Mages’ Corps.
He was chuckling as he recalled his younger days.
“His Majesty back then was known as one of the Academy’s delinquents alongside Duke Volkov. I played my part too. Heh heh!”
“That’s not something to brag about.”
“It’s still a fond memory, isn’t it? Heh heh! In any case… I’m looking forward to Professor Akion’s speech today!”
Apparently, he was looking forward to seeing the shock on the cadets’ faces.
In fact, Akion was twenty years old by the full count, and the age gap between him and them was only about a year.
A guy like that was going to stand in front of them and give a speech as a professor?
“If you look closely, Sir Montefio, you really do enjoy playing pranks.”
“Indeed. Though I only realized that recently. Heh heh.”
What kind of reaction would they show?
Montefio and the rest of the professors were extremely, extremely eager to find out.
“May the blessings of Heaven and the dragons follow you on the paths ahead.”
Meanwhile, the Emperor had also shown up for today’s entrance ceremony wearing his golden armor.
“Young Master Akion. Please stop Father….”
“How am I supposed to do that…?”
The imperial family’s exclusive exosuit—the Imperial Force Armor.
The Emperor had been wearing that one, packed with the highest-end options for his personal use, every single day since the day he received it.
A declaration of war against the nobles, like the one he had made at the New Year’s ceremony?
A powerful statement of his willingness to go so far as war?
Those things were certainly part of it,
“He likes it so much that he wears it all day… Even Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Dowager gave him an earful!”
“So how am I supposed to stop him? That’s the imperial family’s responsibility.”
“Come on, if you made it, you must know how to shut it down!! Take responsibility!”
“My only crime was obeying an imperial command, thank you very much. And I only handled the materials; I’m a complete layman when it comes to the magic arrays.”
He simply wore it every day because it was so incredibly cool.
He must have been going too far for even Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Dowager to nag him to show some restraint.
“Next, we will have congratulatory addresses from each department. First, Sir Montefio, Dean of the Faculty of Magic.”
“Heh heh, I’ll show them some dignity as a senior. I’ll be off!”
“Yep.”
Thus, the professors congratulated the new students on their admission one by one.
As each one went out and returned, they sent signals toward Akion,
looking half like they were cheering on a successor and half like they were teasing him, saying, “Go show them what you’ve got!”
“Finally, we will have a congratulatory address from Young Master Akion Enersis, an assistant professor of the Magi-Engineering Department, newly established in the Faculty of Magic this semester.”
As soon as Akion was called, he stood up from his seat.
“What?”
“Th-that’s a professor?!”
“Heehee, yes, this is what I wanted to see!”
“Go toy with those cadets and come back, Professor Akion! Heh heh!”
Everyone from the people below the podium to the new students’ families had their eyes popping wide.
Since that was the reaction the professors had been expecting, the faculty burst into laughter,
while Akion himself quietly let out a deep sigh before stepping onto the podium.
Countless gazes stabbed into him: curiosity, surprise, jealousy, anger, and so on.
It was unexpectedly familiar to Akion from his previous life.
There had actually been people who spread all sorts of rumors behind his back because he was supposedly going to graduate at the top of his class.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, new students who will illuminate the Imperial Academy’s future.”
When those people were investigated for defamation based on false statements, they had smeared him by claiming he was attacking his classmates.
Akion could only marvel now at how he had managed to endure those days.
“What I am wearing is the prototype of the new Academy uniform you are wearing.”
But isn’t life the real deal? Once you’re adults, you have to take responsibility.
And as it happened, the person who defended him back then was the very department head who was an abusive professor.
Having cast all that off and become a professor after reincarnation, Akion rapped his knuckles against the prototype he was wearing.
“Some of you who watched my duel with Carlos Bentish may have experienced the power of this Academy uniform. For the record, what I wore then was the exact same model as the one you are wearing.”
“What? This thing?!”
“Woooow……”
Akion also informed the cadets of just how great a benefit they were enjoying.
He told them that for four years, they would almost never have to worry about dying while wearing it.
“When I was young, I once imagined how wonderful it would be to make things like this: clothing that could stop anything, a light source several times brighter than a mana lamp, and a device that could blast out water without magic.”
- Click, whirrr~!
“Even a portable fan.”
Akion went on to show them the hand fan that had recently become popular among noblewomen.
The eyes of several new students began to sparkle, so it seemed he had succeeded in his goal of attracting interest.
“So that innovations capable of shaking the Empire may be born from your hands… I, too, will do my utmost to teach you.”
Learn this, and you’ll be able to make them too.
It was a temptation that was half true.
“Ho ho, Professor Akion. Were you that desperate for students in your department?”
“That thing wasn’t easy to make….”
“Everyone’s going to apply to the engineering department as a minor anyway, so I have to do this much.”
In any case, engineering was unfamiliar to everyone, and Akion did not have many lectures to teach.
It was His Majesty the Emperor’s gracious favor that he was to spend his free time developing engineering.
Akion simply had to find his own manpower, so he planned to take it step by step and ask, “Would you like to come see our lab?”
“Come to think of it, the orientation for Introduction to Basic Science is tomorrow. May I audit it?”
“Oh, don’t make the cadets feel pressured.”
He hoped that one day his lab would be full of engineering research slaves for a comfortable daily life with them.
With grand ambitions, Akion watched the entrance ceremony draw to a close.
*
The next day.
“He’s here!”
“Professor Akion!! Do you remember me!! Gale from Altera!! It’s been a while!!”
“Professor!!! What in the world is the law of conservation of energy?!! No mage will tell me anything!!!”
“Good grief.”
Akion had been assigned a lecture room that could seat roughly fifty people.
But that lecture room was packed—not merely with fifty people, but with enough that some had to stand.
Academy students identified their affiliated faculty or department by the badges pinned to their chests….
“Please teach us the principle behind the explosive force Sir Denzel realized!!!”
“Teach me the secret of inch-force too!!!!”
“Why are students from the Faculty of Knightly Arts here?”
Apparently, word of the conversation between Denzel and Akion had reached them, and the Knightly Arts students had packed Akion’s lecture room as well.
“This isn’t that kind of lecture. Any cadets who came to learn martial arts, go home.”
“Aww!”
Akion sent everyone out except the actual undergraduates who had come to study engineering.
Even so, the lecture room remained crowded enough that people were still standing.
In the very front seats of that lecture room….
“Heh heh, hello.”
The Seventh Imperial Princess Flare, who had decided to enroll in his department, was sitting there in her Academy uniform and fluttering her fingers.
- Nod.
“Oh, I see.”
She wanted to greet him politely, but since this was an orientation….
Akion merely gave her a small bow before stepping onto the podium at the front of the lecture room.
In his previous life, Akion had once sat in a lecture room like this, looking up at a professor standing on the podium.
And now, after reincarnation, that same man had become a professor teaching basic science.
Akion was overcome with emotion.
After calming his surging feelings, Akion picked up a piece of chalk.
- Tap, tap, tap, screech.
A single graph took shape beneath his deft hands.
“What is that……”
“Isn’t that… change? The amount of change…?”
The x-axis, the y-axis, and the graph line.
Then he marked the two points on the graph and labeled the base and height of the right triangle Δx and Δy.
- Tap.
“I assume you all know basic mathematics. From what I heard a moment ago, some of you even have a certain understanding of differentiation.”
Akion was talking about the most fundamental disciplines of science and engineering, which he would be cramming into his students’ brains over the course of this first semester.
Mathematics.
More precisely, engineering mathematics: a bundle of the basics of calculus, vector geometry, and other mathematical theories capable of making your head explode.
“Then I presume you also know about integration, the opposite of differentiation.”
“Well, that one… we can infer it.”
“Everyone knows that. Is he really going to teach it all over again?”
Of course, while teaching Goldie, the Tower Master, the mages of the Tower, and the Enersis mages,
Akion had discovered that their magic was based on mathematics to a certain extent.
Perhaps that was why science and engineering had felt familiar to them.
“Science is the same.”
“Oh?”
“You can think of science as the study of quantifying and formulating natural phenomena to their limits through differentiation, integration, vectors, geometry, and so on. It overlaps with magic to some extent, since magic manipulates those natural phenomena through mana and our will.”
That was why Akion liked the bright eyes of these people who might one day become engineers.
“That is why, although this semester may be boring, I plan to lay the foundations from the basics so that the mathematics you all know will be easier to use in understanding science.”
“Ugh.”
“Ughhh, do we have to rack our brains over math again?”
Of course, the students of the Faculty of Magic clutched their heads at having to study all of that again.
Even so, Akion wanted to motivate them.
“It won’t be terribly difficult. I also plan to offer rewards based on your attitude in class, grades, and so on.”
- Click, whirrr!!
Advancing in rank was something they could handle on their own.
Akion planned to place a prize in the hands of the undergraduates who showed outstanding results this time.
“For example, this hand fan that young ladies are said to love.”
“Wow, wow wow!!”
“Really?!”
This hand fan was still backlogged because the Enersis workshop had not yet been industrialized into a factory.
That was why it even had a premium attached,
and the price had risen further because the noblewomen and young ladies absolutely refused to part with theirs.
Akion, of course, was skilled enough to make one in a flash as long as he was supplied with the parts, so he planned to give them to his students.
“The young masters seem a little unimpressed, but I won’t object if you sell it and use the money as pocket money.”
“What?! Really?!!”
“Professor Akion is a god!!!”
When even the young masters erupted into cheers and made a commotion,
the attitudes of every student shot toward the top.
“Then, Goldie. Big Sis Aisirel.”
“Yes!”
“Yeah.”
- Thud!!!
That was until they saw the absurdly thick textbooks placed in front of each of them.
《Engineering Mathematics—Volume 1: Basics of Differentiation, Basics of Vectors and Geometry, Basics of Integration》
“……”
Several of them opened the books, and their eyes began spinning at the formulas and problems packed tightly inside.
Partial derivatives? Multiple integrals? Vector fields?
What was a cylindrical coordinate system supposed to be?
“Um, Professor Akion?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Are we learning all of this over the course of this year?”
That was when everyone realized.
“No? You’ll learn it all this semester. Volume 2 is still being written, but… well, surely you can understand at least Volume 1 within a single semester.”
“Eek.”
- Thud!
“This is homework to review what you’ll learn today. The schedule is a little tight, so I have to start lecturing immediately even though this is only the orientation, all right? Sorry, everyone.”
They had to understand all of it well enough to master it in a single semester.
And unfortunately, new Academy students had no option to change their courses.
They had chosen this themselves, so they would have to endure it through grit and guts.
Flare had enrolled to get closer to Akion, only to be blindsided.
“Goldie was going to tell you to run… but the Tower Master stopped me, so I couldn’t do anything. I’m sorry, Your Highness the Princess….”
“……”
As Goldie sadly handed over the textbook,
Flare began seriously considering whether she should issue an imperial command.