Fortunately, Diret was not such a heartless person as to chew out a junior who had rushed over in good faith without understanding the situation.

“Just die already!”

“Why???”

But Direkt was absolutely the sort of senior who would chew out another senior for using that junior.

Diret attacked while Yukbeltire was weakened from doing magical research.

Diret had gone to the trouble of exempting Yukbeltire from the workshop’s defensive spells, and now this so-called friend had repaid that kindness with betrayal. Bound up tight, Yukbeltire reproached Diret.

“Diret. To resort to such a dishonorable ambush. You’ve fallen to the level of White Tiger Tower.”

Diret gagged Yukbeltire’s mouth too. There was no end to the nonsense coming out.

“So what were you doing?”

“We improved the magic circles here.”

Among the stack of hundreds of pages, Diret found the newly drawn magic circles and structural diagrams, then began reading through them with small exclamations.

It was clear enough what direction that friend had been trying to take the improvements.

“Clever.”

Yukbeltire nodded as if that were only to be expected.

“But this still isn’t the kind of thing you should be asking a junior to help with. It’s too difficult and too vast. This is the kind of thing you should be doing alone. Why are you asking a junior to help with this?”

“Mmph.”

“…I’ll untie you, so don’t say anything useless. No talk about dishonor, insult, White Tiger Tower, wasted time, any of that.”

Once the magical gag disappeared, Yukbeltire could speak again.

“I obtain a junior’s assistance, and the junior learns magic. What exactly is the problem?”

“What magic is he supposed to learn here? Do you really think a second-year junior is going to learn anything by helping with your magic? At a minimum, the levels have to match at least somewhat before there’s anything to learn.”

“Professor Bivle said the junior from House Wardanaz was at that level.”

“……”

Caught off guard, Diret fell silent.

Lee Han shot an encouraging look at the senior, telling Diret not to get pushed back.

His eyes plainly said, Stay strong, Senior. You can do this.

Inside, Diret cursed Professor Verdus for answering thoughtlessly, cursed Yukbeltire, and finally cursed the junior too.

A student ought to be merely excellent in moderation. If a junior was out here helping with professor-level magic, of course a situation like this was bound to happen.

“Professor Bivle was talking nonsense.”

“Professor Bivle is usually accurate when it comes to magic, Diret.”

“Be quiet. In any case, you can’t drag a junior into your difficult research over one opinion from Professor Bivle. He’s only a second-year.”

“The principal said he was at that level too.”

“……”

Diret stared at the friend in horror.

What kind of…?

“D-don’t lie. With your personality, there’s no way you went and asked both of them.”

Yukbeltire shrugged and answered coolly.

“Professor Bivle was inspecting my research when the principal came by.”

“Why?”

“How would I know the reason? He attacked the professor immediately. After the attack was over, I had a chance to discuss my research, so I asked both of them. They both agreed it was a good opportunity.”

…Should I really have filed that complaint after all?

Diret ground teeth at the two people who were no help whatsoever.

They should have stopped this, not answered like that.

Of course, from a purely magical perspective, that answer might have been correct.

Objectively speaking, the junior did have the skill to help, and might well have had the skill to learn something in the process too.

But anyone with a conscience ought to have recognized what kind of situation the junior was in, and ought to have predicted where things would lead if they gave Yukbeltire a positive answer.

“Enough. I’ll help, so forget the junior was ever part of this. Understood?”

“Your help and the junior’s help occupy entirely separate domains…”

Ignoring the friend completely, Diret beckoned to Lee Han. It meant get out, now.

“Junior. Never come to this workshop again. Understood?”

“I think you may be interfering with and directing a junior a bit exces—”

A magical gag was stuffed back into the princess’s mouth. Diret gestured to Lee Han one more time.

Go. Now.

*****

…This doesn’t sit right with me.

Even after being let go, Lee Han still felt a faint discomfort lingering in one corner of his mind.

It felt as if that senior had ended up stuck there because of him for no good reason.

Of course, Diret had personally said, I’m just helping because we’re close, so don’t get strange ideas, but still…

“Professor Verdus, are you in?”

Lee Han knocked on the door to Professor Verdus’s workshop.

When no answer came, realization struck him a beat late.

Ah. He must have gone to the punishment cells.

Come to think of it, Professor Voladi had borrowed relics from the principal’s room.

Professor Voladi was smart, so surely instead of going personally, Voladi had sent Professor Verdus to the punishment cells in their place.

I’ll have to come back later.

He had planned to ask each professor about the lecture material he had missed while resting through the weekend, then study it on his own, but it looked as though he would have to ask about Professor Verdus’s class another time.

And thinking it over a little more, there ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) was not really anything to ask about Professor Verdus’s class in the first place.

It was self-study from the start…

“What do you want?”

“!!!”

When Professor Verdus opened the workshop door and stepped out, Lee Han jumped in surprise.

“P-Professor!”

“Why are you calling for me?”

“You didn’t go to the punishment cells?”

“I didn’t.”

“…Did Professor Garcia or Professor Bagreg go to the punishment cells, then??”

“They didn’t.”

“?!”

Lee Han was even more shocked.

None of the three had gone.

So they weren’t caught?!

If he told the members of the <Teleportation> Club, they would probably call it a miracle.

Resolving to ask Professor Voladi later just how things had been put back in place, Lee Han asked the question he had originally come for.

“Professor. I came to ask about the contents of the lecture I missed.”

“Instead of that, how about helping with my work?”

“No.”

Professor Verdus grumbled at the disciple’s refusal.

Helping with Professor Verdus’s work would be a much better learning opportunity than asking about lecture contents!

“I was curious whether the older students had come up with any ideas related to wands.”

Professor Verdus’s lecture, <Wand Materials and Magical Amplification>, was an attractive class taken by talented, capable students.

There was the minor issue that it was usually taken by third-years, but that was not much of a problem for Lee Han.

The bigger problem, by far, was that Lee Han’s wand—more precisely, the spirit dwelling within it—had become a little sulky with him.

Lee Han felt he had used the wand diligently enough, but apparently the spirit did not agree.

To satisfy the spirit—to make it feel, Ah, I’m really showing what I can do—Lee Han needed to add more spells to the wand.

But to add more spells, he needed to replace and upgrade the wand’s materials and structure in the first place…

Now that I think about it, isn’t this hurdle way too high for a first wand-making class?

Since he had several times farther to go than everyone else, Lee Han wanted to see the seniors’ wands.

They had started before him and had spent longer worrying over them, so there had to be plenty to learn.

“I don’t remember.”

“……”

Lee Han glared, but Professor Verdus was serious.

“Professor. I’m going to file a complaint to the principal for neglecting your lecture duties.”

“That’s absurd! They were genuinely trash ideas!”

Professor Verdus cried out in wounded indignation.

If anything truly worthwhile had been suggested, Professor Verdus would have remembered it.

But the ideas the students had offered during the last lecture had mostly been garbage.

It was the beginning of the semester, after all.

That was the time when students threw out the worst garbage among garbage ideas.

“What if we made the shaft out of true silver and put behemoth bone fragments inside?”

“How are you planning to get either of those?”

“That’s what I’ll have to start thinking about now.”

“I’m taming a steel wand right now, but no matter what I do, the spirit says the smell is awful and refuses to enter. Does anyone know of a being that likes going into steel wands?”

“Hm. So if you add too much black magnetite to a wand, it explodes…!”

Even thinking back on it now, there had been nothing but trash ideas. Professor Verdus shook head once, clearing away the fuzzy residue drifting through memory.

“Then ask me again right now! What exactly are you curious about?”

“I need to choose a material for the shaft of a wand that’s going to carry an unhappy spirit and a gem given by a being from another dimension, and I’m having trouble deciding. Wood is stable, but it has limits. Metal is very hit-or-miss. But if I go with gemstones or rare metals, there’s no telling when I’d even gather enough…”

Professor Verdus yawned at the boring subject.

It might have been a fresh and troubling problem to a second-year disciple, but to Professor Verdus it was a topic treated thousands upon thousands of times over, and so not remotely interesting.

Lee Han glared again.

“Professor. I’m serious.”

“Hm? Right. Got it. How about this? I’ll stick another student on you, and you ask that person.”

“Hmm.”

That piqued Lee Han’s interest.

To be honest, Lee Han also thought he would be better off learning from a senior than from Professor Verdus.

“If it’s someone who knows a lot about wands, that would be ideal. Which senior is it?”

“Hm? Yukbeltire.”

“…Professor. Just recommend me a book and I’ll study on my own.”

*****

With a backpack heavier than before, Lee Han headed to the Hall of Imaginary Numbers, where Professor Paserlet of divination magic stayed.

The Death Knights spotted Lee Han, raised the visors of helms, and greeted him.

“Young Wardanaz, good to see you!”

“Hello. Ah, by the way, where is the principal right now?”

Since he had happened to run into the Death Knights, Lee Han intended to track down the Skull Principal and make an issue of what had happened.

Just look.

The Skull Principal had boasted so confidently that everything would be fine, and yet Lee Han had been kidnapped and nearly wound up staying at Einroguard for the rest of his life. Even now, the more he thought about it, the more horrifying it seemed.

And Lee Han was also a little suspicious about the part where the Skull Principal had apparently done nothing and simply sat back.

Could it be he deliberately left me there so I’d be forced to learn magic?

Given the Skull Principal’s character, it was entirely possible. Lee Han intended to confront the Skull Principal in person and denounce that scheme.

“Master seems to be quite busy. We haven’t seen him either.”

“……”

Lee Han sent them a suspicious look.

He wondered whether these knights had coordinated their answers for the sake of master.

“Is that so?”

“Yes. There were times in the past when Master would occasionally disappear like this too.”

“When he was plotting something evil?”

“Hahaha… Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say something a bit grander than that?”

“When he was plotting something bigger and more evil?”

The Death Knights pretended not to have heard the disciple’s irreverent question.

All of them had already heard that Lee Han had only recently escaped from the master’s insane duplicate.

“In any case, if you see the principal, please let me know too.”

“Understood!”

There was no point pressing them any further, so Lee Han exchanged farewells with the knights of death.

But the suspicion in his heart had only grown firmer.

That makes it even more suspicious.

At this point, an almost full-blown conspiracy theory was unfolding in Lee Han’s mind along the lines of, The Skull Principal and the insane duplicate are in league! In fact, the insane duplicate was the Skull Principal’s underling all along?!

Thump thump thump—

“Professor, are you in?”

“The professor is asleep.”

A senior Lee Han had never seen before opened the door to the Hall of Imaginary Numbers and beckoned him inside.

“Because of a prophetic dream?”

Dreams rippling with uncertainty and madness were always an excellent buffer against the shock caused by divination magic.

“No. Just stayed up late playing cards with another professor. You’re the one, right? The Wardanaz family student who takes classes from every school?”

“…Yes.”

“The professor told me to read this to you… Found it. ‘The student can keep up with the material perfectly well without going out of the way to ask about what was missed.’”

“But I didn’t attend the lecture. I can’t be that overconfident—”

The senior gestured for Lee Han to stay quiet, then flipped the card over and read the back.

“‘That isn’t overconfidence. It’s called objective self-assessment…’”

“……”

Inside, Lee Han grumbled that divination mages really were a deeply eccentric lot.