Conquering the Academy with Just a Sashimi Knife (Novel) - Chapter 106 - Night of Purge (5)

Chapter 106 – Night of Purge (5)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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A middle-aged man had appeared out of nowhere. He stepped leisurely out through a clean hole that looked as though it had been measured and cut with a ruler.

At that powerful entrance, the two assassins faltered for a moment. They must have sensed it as well.

That this man was on a completely different level from the rabble of villains they had cut down so far.

Shock and bewilderment appeared on both their faces. I too had flinched for an instant, but.

My reason was different from theirs. What surprised me was that man’s identity.

‘Professor Damian of the Blessings Department.’

To think the person who had even listened to my personal counseling before the festival was the one behind everything.

No, more absurd than that was this.

On the surface, I had assumed he was merely being called `the professor,` but his actual position was that of a real professor.

And not just any professor, but a very competent and famous one. Somehow I had known something felt off ever since he had offered me Russian black tea the other day.

Still, to think he had been the one in the background.

‘That aside……’

Why hadn’t I seen through Damian’s identity back when I was getting counseling from him? For a moment I didn’t understand, but the reason came to me quickly.

At that time, I had absentmindedly failed to bring the sashimi knife with me. It had been a truly exceptional circumstance, and of all times, that had been when I was alone with Damian.

It was enough to make me laugh at how perfectly crossed that timing had been, as if someone had intended it.

‘I take back what I said about things going well.’

While all sorts of stray thoughts ran through my mind, the dark-skinned villain suddenly lifted his chin and shouted in accusation.

“Hey, Professor! What took you so long, huh!? If you’d just come sooner, things never would’ve turned out like this, damn it!”

“Hmm.”

Standing with his hands clasped behind his back, the professor looked around. He swept his eyes over the surroundings with a cold, indifferent gaze and replied:

“To complain to me over your own weakness. How foolish. You are more childish than even the cadets I teach.”

“What, you bastard!?”

The man, who until moments ago had looked as if he’d just been reunited with a long-lost family member, immediately bared hostility over the slightest insult.

The more I looked at villains, the more I felt that they were a species deeply faithful to instinct. As if their brains skipped straight past any kind of filter.

Thinking about it calmly, Choi Seol-ah seemed the most sensible among all the villains.

At least Choi Seol-ah knew how to judge a situation in a crisis. This man, by contrast, was now barking furiously at the professor, his only ally.

‘Is he an idiot?’

“Hey, are you ignoring me!?”

“Haa……”

At the man’s shameless behavior, the professor let out a long sigh. Shaking his head, he spoke.

“No matter how much empty barrels make the loudest noise, to think it would be this bad. It’s embarrassing enough that I belong to the same villain category as someone like you.”

“What?!”

“If possible, I had meant to let you live, but you’re too noisy. I’ll have to correct you.”

“Yeah, ri-”

Before the man’s mouth could fully open, the professor snapped his fingers.

Pak- a sharp sound. Then blood burst upward.

The man’s head, which had been resting on his shoulders, vanished without even having time to scream. No, `vanished` was the correct word for it.

“Th-that.”

At that sight, Nox’s lips trembled. It seemed even he, whose specialty was speed, hadn’t been able to catch it.

Altair, the patriarch, likewise had his expression stiffen in an instant. The confidence of a veteran born from countless battles.

And yet even for him, that magic had to be something he was seeing for the first time. It made perfect sense that even he had flinched.

With that single spell from the professor, the wind reversed.

The two assassins let out low breaths and tightened their grips on their hilts. Their hands were loaded with the force of men who had steeled themselves for death.

They looked ready to leap forward at any second, so I signaled with my eyes for them to wait a moment.

We were dealing with an enemy whose full strength we hadn’t yet grasped. If they charged in recklessly, all that awaited them was a pointless death.

Altair and Nox seemed to have no objection, and both gave a small nod.

Cladi crawled toward the professor with a face shining in delight.

“Y-you came to save me!”

Cladi was grinning broadly, shamelessly and pathetically.

The professor tilted his head with a transparent, unreadable expression.

“Me? Why would I?”

“…P-pardon? If that weren’t the case, there would have been no reason to gather the villains at my annex.”

“Puhahaha!”

The professor suddenly burst into loud laughter.

That wicked laughter echoed thunderously through the corridor. Cladi stood there blankly stunned.

“My, my, thanks to your little joke, Elder, I’ve laughed like this for the first time in a long while. But really now, why would I bother saving you? A man like you, with not even a hair’s worth of value, clinging like a bat to whichever side benefits you.”

“……”

“There is no word sufficient to describe you. Insect, imbecile, trash, filth, none of them are enough. Your father, fallen into the pits of hell, must be weeping.”

The professor mercilessly carved Cladi to pieces with words. Aside from the line-crossing jab about his father, most of it was simply fact.

Cladi’s brows twitched once, then twice, and soon his entire expression twisted viciously.

“A-and you’re one to talk, villain!?”

Apparently he still had some pride left, because Cladi suddenly barked back.

“That joke wasn’t even amusing. What does that make you, then, begging creatures like us for aid? A man without conviction, without even the intelligence to tell right from wrong.”

The professor’s lowered eyes were cold.

“And the reason I gathered the villains here. Let me tell you.”

“……”

“You were a kind of bait. Bait to tear their forces apart. Even for me, if the Sword Emperor, the Headmaster, and Auditore joined hands, I would be no match for them. My target was never some `small vermin` like you.”

Saying that, the professor suddenly turned his head toward us. Then, with the same benevolent smile he always wore, he said to me:

“It’s been a while, Cadet Kang Geom-ma. Have you been well?”

“……”

“You seem to be wondering how I came to be here. I’ll tell you why, so do try not to be too angry.”

The professor continued in a gentle voice.

“I had merely considered the possibility that Miss Choi Seol-ah might betray us. As you know, Cadet Kang Geom-ma, her attachment to life is remarkably strong. Pathetically so, in fact. I was certain that when cornered, she would cling to you.”

It was an undeniable fact.

“So I secretly placed an eavesdropping spell on her. One of my unimpressive little talents.”

“……”

You insane pervert bastard.

No wonder the villains had appeared with such perfect timing. So this bastard had been laying groundwork beneath the surface.

When I frowned, the professor waved a hand.

“I have no such vulgar hobby, so I would appreciate it if you didn’t misunderstand. I merely knew her disposition well ahead of time, and placed the spell on her as a preventive measure.”

The shamelessness with which he spoke of a crime left me speechless.

…Well, he was a villain in the first place, so talking about crime openly was just part of the package. There wasn’t much point in saying more.

A bad person had simply done a bad thing.

Still, I felt a little sorry for Choi Seol-ah, who must have been going about her life cheerfully without even realizing she had been under surveillance.

‘If I tell Choi Seol-ah this, she might bite her tongue off.’

The professor turned his gaze back to Cladi. The warm smile he’d shown me had vanished, replaced by a cold expression.

“And the reason I summoned the villains here was to ensure that you wouldn’t panic and flee before everything was in place. Cladi, that is always your habit, isn’t it? When frightened, you run first. You’ve been quite troublesome because of it.”

“You crazy bastard!”

“It’s something I hear now and then as a scholar, but it is truly unfortunate that those will be your last words, Elder.”

Professor Damian lightly raised his right arm. His hand took the shape of thumb and middle finger pressed together.

“……!”

At that motion, Cladi’s whole body convulsed.

He had sensed it, of course. The death he couldn’t escape.

At last, perhaps overwhelmed by crushing helplessness, Cladi collapsed to his knees.

There seemed to be no more screams or pleas left in him to squeeze out. Only hollow emptiness drifted in his pupils.

“…Fuck.”

Watching it all made anger suddenly surge up in me. I had come all the way here intending to cut Cladi down myself, and now this professor bastard was trying to steal the last hit.

Whatever else happened, I couldn’t let Cladi’s life slip into anyone else’s hands. Only if I personally dealt with him would I sleep comfortably afterward.

And besides, in Korea there’s an unspoken rule that you don’t steal someone else’s last hit. In other words, Damian was about to cross the line hard.

‘That son of a bitch.’

Professor Damian smiled wickedly at Cladi.

“You’ve lived long and well-fed all this time, so I assume you have no regrets left in life.”

Taaak-!

As soon as he finished, the professor snapped his fingers sharply.

At the exact same time, I unfolded the domain of my inner world.

[Remaining time on the Blessing of Painlessness: about 5 seconds.]

Even factoring in the pain reduction rate, the duration of [Blessing of the Sword God] would be at most 10 seconds.

If I wasn’t certain, then we’d be the ones taking the hit instead.

So I had to operate the realm of the inner mind and find the answer.

—————-Sssss—————-

I felt time being finely split apart.

At first 0.1 seconds… then 0.01 seconds… then 0.0001 seconds… then 0.000001 seconds.

And then, within that drawn-out flow of time where the world itself seemed sluggish.

Suddenly, the air ahead rippled and condensed. My vision, already long beyond physical law, caught hold of the artificial phenomenon.

‘Found it.’

Perhaps because I’d cut down many enemies who handled magic until now.

The moment I saw it, I instantly understood the essence of that spell. Compressing the air with magic and making it explode like a bomb.

Void-element magic.

A fraudulent kind of performance that activated without shape, without mass, without even a medium.

Quite literally flawless. A spell that enabled one-sided attacks with no weakness.

And from the tiny gap between that professor bastard’s thumb and middle finger, a translucent thread extended outward.

In other words, that line had to be the fuse linking the invisible bomb to the caster.

However, even that thread itself had no real form, so cutting it would be impossible.

‘…But.’

On that impossibly thin line, another red line floated across my vision.

—————-Snap—————-

The moment my domain of the mind withdrew, I immediately gripped the cord tight and launched Murasame.

Shishik!

A ray of light shot across the gap between the professor and Cladi.

Only after that did the sound of the professor snapping his fingers ring out.

Paaang-!

A burst of displaced air.

The air bomb exploded in midair.

“……!”

The professor froze stiff where he stood. He turned his neck rigidly and looked at me.

“…Wh-what did you do.”

The professor, whose confidence from moments ago had vanished without a trace, now stammered. His pupils quaked with anxiety.

I tapped at my temple.

“You told me before that I was smart.”

“……”

Not only the professor, but Altair, Nox, and even Cladi, who had been gritting his teeth shut.

They too seemed to be at a loss for words, only blinking blankly.

Altair in particular looked like he wanted an explanation, but there was no time to spare, so I ignored the look.

Whirik!

I yanked on the cord and recalled Murasame. The hilt settled neatly back into my palm.

Maybe because I was a swordsman by nature, throwing was never as satisfying as gripping the blade and cutting with it.

I raised my eyes and looked quietly into the professor’s pupils. They were shaking violently.

The longer the academic pedigree, the more violently the mind tends to shake before an incomprehensible phenomenon.

And for someone to see through the secret of void-element magic, a spell both colorless and scentless, it made sense that he’d freeze like stone.

And honestly, Damian might try to differentiate himself from other villains, but to my eyes, one bastard was the same as the next.

The fact that he had exploded the head of the dark-skinned villain himself was already proof enough that the professor was just another villain in the end.

He had been so intoxicated with himself that he killed his only ally with his own hands.

To be blunt, he looked dumber than Choi Seol-ah.

At least Choi Seol-ah could sniff out a way to survive with ghostlike accuracy.

I took one large step forward.

“Damian.”

The professor took an involuntary step back. Then he immediately started scraping together magic.

‘Roughly 8 seconds left.’

Even `moment` would be too generous a word for the time remaining.

But to bring this messy, dragging situation to a close.

I spat the declaration at Damian.

“I’ll cut you down.”