Entrance Ceremony (4)
—
“…What a mess.”
When we arrived at the east gate, one of the entrances to Tilete Academy, the situation was worse than I had imagined.
The beasts had emerged from the ground, leaving the roads torn apart. It would probably take a week to repair everything.
That wasn’t the most urgent issue right now. With Lotte protecting me, we ran from the east gate to the open-air theater. My breath was getting short, but I couldn’t afford to worry about that.
Damn, my tuition fees.
My beautiful first-day plan of holing up in the library’s reading room was ruined. My schedule to look into academic clubs was pushed back further.
Thinking about the time lost made me want to punch whoever caused this mess. I tried to calm the boiling anger in my mind and focused on what Lotte was saying.
“Horde told me to make sure to bring you.”
“Horde? Who’s that?”
“Vermel Horde, the elf guy who got in as the top student this time.”
Could it be the guy I briefly made eye contact with at the written exam…?
Our conversation ended there. Soon, we reached the central fountain.
From the center of the campus, it was easy to see which areas were most damaged. The northern side, where the open-air theater was, seemed to have the most beast activity.
Professor Hereline was gathering students around the central plaza, protecting them.
Armored dinosaurs were charging from all directions. They were mostly mid to high-level beasts, which Professor Hereline’s golems could handle, but the problem was their numbers and directions.
The beasts kept coming from all directions. Even so, it was better than being cornered with no escape routes.
The ‘greeting’ had turned into a full-blown rampage. The steel mountains, which started as a few dozen, were now swelling into hundreds, even thousands over time.
The role of Professor Hereline and the other professors was not to ‘destroy’ but to ‘protect.’ In combat doctrine, the latter is considered more challenging than the former. If even one of the hundreds of students were injured, it would be a huge problem.
There could be no mistakes. This must have been a significant burden on Professor Hereline.
Fortunately, there were students who could help lessen that burden.
“Bow your heads, you idiots!”
A kid holding an anti-tank weapon turned three drakes charging from the rear into corpses in an instant. With a deafening roar, the drakes were split in two.
“Where did that come from?”
The question didn’t last long. Frey reached out to the bisected corpses and created another anti-tank weapon using them.
Seeing her conjure weapons like that, she must be a geo-mage. Something seemed off about her, though.
“Professor Hereline!”
An elf male student quickly scanned the central plaza. Beside him, a fierce-looking female student chased after him, holding a large icicle.
[That must be Vermel Horde.]
Vermel and I looked at each other briefly before turning our eyes to the central fountain.
There was no time to waste. To stop this situation, we had to speak up immediately.
“The fountain is the core of the summoning array!”
“We need to destroy the fountain now!”
[Huh?]
What’s with this guy?
—
“Is it true?”
“Yes. The core is here. We need to remove the water and expose the ground right away while the beast activity is low.”
Vermel Horde was indeed the elf guy who sat next to me during the written exam. I had expected him to pass, but I never imagined he’d take the top spot.
This elf knew the core of the summoning array was at the fountain.
Summoning arrays are hard to pinpoint with detection magic unless the creator reveals their location. I learned about it directly from the creator, but how did he know?
It was puzzling, but given the situation, I set my curiosity aside and focused on the task at hand.
“It’s worth a try if both the top and second students say so. Let’s do it.”
Listening to us, Professor Hereline directed her golems to demolish the fountain. The ground sank slightly, and water splashed everywhere. The core of the summoning array was exposed in a deep groove.
“It’s really there!”
The exposed area emitted the smell of burning hydrocarbons. The heat radiated instantly, making my face flush. The intense heat was due to continuous construction.
[They must have deliberately placed the core under the fountain for cooling.]
At that moment, Vermel made a request.
“You handle this.”
I knew what he meant.
There are two main ways to dismantle a complex summoning array.
The first is to carefully interpret and disassemble the array like defusing a time bomb. The second is to destroy the circuits from the outside, rendering it nonfunctional.
The first method is safe but time-consuming. The second is quick but risky. An unskilled person trying to forcibly dismantle the array might cause an explosion.
However, a summoning array is still a circuit.
[You only need to know a couple of things to dismantle this array.]
[□ Basic Theory]
[Kirchhoff’s Circuit Laws (Condition Met)]
[Thévenin’s Theorem (Condition Met)]
Simplifying the complex circuit into an equivalent circuit and manipulating the magic flow should suffice.
[Here, take the mana I was going to use earlier.]
I received 100 sieverts of mana from the hardcover book and gathered it with my staff.
The charging process wasn’t long. In fact, it felt more efficient than when I fought Lotte.
I hadn’t just been working part-time over the past month. I had refined my skills. Now, I could direct EMP pulses exactly where I wanted, avoiding previous mishaps like kids’ mana circuits shutting down or golems malfunctioning.
The time felt short. In less than three seconds, I had successfully transferred all the mana to the tip of my staff. I thrust the staff’s end into the summoning array created by the beasts.
The first technique of the Eightfold Path.
“Short Circuit.”
As I chanted the spell, one thought crossed my mind.
I hope they refund my tuition.
—
After destroying the summoning array, no more beasts spawned.
The professors cleaned up the remaining beasts, and the situation was resolved. Fortunately, there was only property damage and minor injuries, with no major casualties.
The incident concluded, but the board decided to send us home on the first day due to potential threats.
The school decided to give students disaster relief funds as compensation for the mishandled situation. It was a relief that the administration wasn’t entirely incompetent.
Tilete Academy was already struggling financially, and now they had to refund some of the students’ tuition and repair the northern sector.
As for compensation for the damage caused by the drakes in the eastern fifth district… well, they’d figure it out.
I ended up spending another night at Professor Hereline’s house.
[Today was truly eventful. I didn’t even step into a classroom, yet I’m exhausted.]
How cute. The book says it’s tired.
[But that’s not the important thing. You learned something new today, didn’t you?]
“Yeah.”
The speaker attached to the mutant drake that blocked my way this morning. The voice from that speaker had a terrifying power.
I could still feel the lingering fear. I was half convinced that the owner of that voice was a cataclysmic-level beast.
That beast spoke to me with a casual tone, as if all this was a joke. It even said everything today was just to ‘say hello.’
In simple terms, it was a veiled threat that ‘this is just the beginning.’
─ The Empire is half in our hands.
“That’s the most disturbing part.”
The Empire is an absolute monarchy. All power comes from the emperor and is used for the royal family and the nobles.
Tilete Academy exists as a gap in the class system, but it only serves to support the peculiar political structure of this country.
If what that beast said is true, the Empire is a house of cards.
[There’s another possibility. Maybe there’s a beast among the royal family or their close aides.]
“Is that even possible?”
[There are humanoid beasts. They are usually cataclysmic level or higher, and their mimicry skills are top-notch. They will go to great lengths to create alibis to infiltrate human society.]
Until now, I only saw mindless beasts, but the first beast I talked to didn’t seem like an easy enemy. They were smarter than I imagined.
I couldn’t just see them as machines. It was better to think of them as futuristic creatures with advanced AI.
The problem is… thinking like that complicates my mind.
Life is really a hell of a difficulty. Can I return to my original world before I die?
[The most urgent thing is to find a way to defeat cataclysmic-level beasts. Even if the current mages can somehow deal with disaster-level beasts, there’s no way to counter cataclysmic ones right now.]
If the claim that they’re manipulating the Empire isn’t a bluff, it means cataclysmic-level beasts can destroy humanity whenever they want but are slacking off for some reason.
That is the true terror. Fear of the unknown. It means an opponent we can’t defeat with current magic engineering is leisurely watching us from somewhere.
[Now I understand why Professor Hasfeldt was obsessed with developing flares. It doesn’t justify what she did to you, though.]
To survive and return, I need a way to counter cataclysmic-level beasts.
When I used all my knowledge, one method came to mind.
“Hey, from intermediate magic books onwards, you support writing functions, right?”
[Yes. You can develop your own spells. I’ll bring up a virtual keyboard,
so you can memo anything you want.]
A translucent virtual interface appeared before my eyes. Seeing this in a fantasy world was unexpected, but it wasn’t surprising anymore. It must be the goddess’s power.
[* Switching to admin mode.]
[Booting…]
[TOOL: Develop a new innate magic in the current environment.]
[Basic Theory Writing]
I typed the first paragraph into the development environment.
[□ Basic Theory: Mass-Energy Equivalence Principle]
[The total energy of a substance E is equal to the product of the Lorentz factor γ, the mass m, and the square of the speed of light c. Energy can be converted into mass, and mass into energy, with the amount of energy produced being proportional to the mass lost in the physical process.]
[TIP: This principle is crucial in developing nuclear weapons.]
I will attempt to extend this theory to the ‘Mana-Energy Equivalence Principle.’
An eye for an eye.
We must counter cataclysmic threats with cataclysmic solutions.
