About three days previously, on the first day of orientation…
The reaction among the students hadn’t been great when Ludger had shown his guts by keeping his teaching style a secret.
It wasn’t just a few students that were opposed to the fact that the new professor, a man from the fallen aristocracy, showed such behavior at the prestigious academy.
Students from aristocracy in particular were the angriest.
-How dare a new professor from a fallen aristocrat family…
Ironically, however, the students who actually witnessed Ludger's orientation didn't say much.
Only some aristocratic students with high pride appeared to have been huffing and puffing as they seemed to be looked down upon, but nearly 40 of the 50 students in the classroom were rather impressed by Ludger's guts.
Still, since he came as a professor at Sören Academy, wouldn't they have something to believe in about him?
Of course, no detailed information about Ludger was known yet, so students had to be cautious.
It was an obvious fact that if they took a wrong class on the first day of school, they would suffer for a semester.
If any information about Ludger was released, they would trust him only once and take the class, but if not, they could think of him as an experimental rat.
On the second morning, when many students were contemplating…
One article was posted on the community, commonly called the , the student-only Magic Exchange Integration Center of Sören Academy.
Title: Did you hear about the Ludger Chelysie’s, the new professor's, rumor?
—A title that was deliberately designed to attract people's attention, not knowing if it was good or bad.
Naturally, the students had no choice but to click on it, and the content spread out as if it had been waiting.
This was the summary of the contents that had spread far down:
The article contained an extreme admiration for Ludger Chelysie.
He was the youngest wizard to reach 4th rank. He had been appointed as a military officer. He had contributed himself in Cryptid hunting. As a freelance wizard, he was also listed on the magic tower. His accolades continued.
It contained Ludger’s past records.
It was enough for students to be full of anticipation while inwardly asking, 'Is it really true?' as they didn't know that the secret society's desperate attempt to somehow highlight their First Order.
The most enthusiastic person, in particular, was the Third Order member who had contacted Ludger first.
'I can't ruin Mr. First Order's class! I need to get as many students as possible to take it!’
She wrote all day long about how wonderful, great, and incredible he was.
Perhaps because of the persistent posting of appraisals for Ludger in the last two days, more people were interested in Ludger's class than those who protested the excessive praise.
Moreover, the fact that the first years could also take the class stimulated the interest of the freshmen who still don't know anything.
During the revision period, the number of students who wanted to take Ludger's class increased rapidly, and the maximum capacity of 80 students was filled.
And on the long-awaited first day of the class…
The students all sat down and waited for Ludger with anticipation.
—Half out of pure curiosity, half out of triumphant feeling to see how good he actually was.
And when the class was announced to be held at nine in the morning…
The door of the lecture room opened, and Ludger walked in.
***
‘What the hell is this situation?’
The lecture room didn’t have a single empty seat.
The number of people that I thought would be 30 at most had actually achieved the maximum.
As I stood in front of 80 students, I felt a headache.
‘Why in the world?’
‘I’m sure I secretly warned them that my class was a landmine at the orientation three days ago, though?’
‘Don't you think it's a loss to take this professor's class unless you're a fool?’
Above all, those students whose uniform badges were blue…
Those were the first years who had just entered the academy.
More than 60% of the students who gathered in the classroom were first years.
'Why the freshmen?'
‘Why are they taking this class knowing that they're going to take the same class as the second years? Aren't they supposed to avoid the class because it's burdensome to take classes with their seniors?’
I never expected that there would be more first years.
At that point, I wondered if someone intentionally threw malicious information about me somewhere I didn't know to put me into trouble.
'Maybe I underestimated the students too much.’
Sören Academy was obviously a place where only selected students could enter after fierce competition in the admission period.
As it was a place where the best children are gathered across the continent beyond the empire, it was problematic to think of them as ordinary students.
I decided to humbly accept my mistake.
My behavior did not raise students' vigilance but rather set fire to their pride.
Looking at those eyes…
They were wild, hyena-like gazes that would bite me if I made a mistake.
It was my first class today, so I couldn’t believe that kind of pressure existed.
At that rate, I would be eaten by the students in the classroom.
'Now that this has happened, I have no choice but to do my best to give the lectures.'
I looked at the faces of the students who were gathered in the classroom.
It was full of children with unique hair colors. ‘I guess that's common in this world.’
Some of them were especially noticeable compared to other students.
—Especially the girl student with the ears of a non-human beast on her head. She was a beastperson who lived in the desert on the southern continent.
Well, in a world where there are magic and wizards, to point out the interesting thing about beastpeople was that in this world, the demi-human species was a very small minority.
—Even more so in Sören academy.
The beastpeople were also a tribe that was colonized and enslaved until 50 years ago, and 50 years later, there were still remnants of discrimination and persecution against them.
It was still like that.
The evidence was present in the other students around her, who looked at the beastperson student with quiet gazes.
‘That kid, I think she’s new to the school; her student life in the future is going to be tough.’
'Well, I'm not in a position to worry about anyone right now.'
For the moment, the matter of the class was a priority.
"My name is Ludger Chelysie, who will be teaching the overall process of the development of magic casting."
"If it's the overall process, does that mean you will teach us all four specialties?"
Someone raised his hand and said so. He was a boy student with a somewhat rude impression.
I immediately issued a warning to him.
"Ask questions only when I say so."
"…Yes, sir."
* * *
* * *
"It's the first time, so I'll let it pass. However, if there is a person who cuts off the flow of my class again, I will give you a penalty point. The same is true for explicitly challenging the authority of a professor."
Some students were shocked to hear a penalty point that they had never heard before.
"However, a student who has done their task well will be given an award point. The higher the award points a student has, the better the benefits they will have, so do your best."
Well, I didn’t know about the third years but it was a well-known fact that first or second years, who are in the middle of their burning youth, don't really care about penalty points, as they are still far from graduation.
However, there was a big difference between being warned by the professor and not being warned at all.
"To answer the question that was just asked, it's a 'yes'. I will teach you, one by one, about “release”, “element property”, “telekinesis”, and “reinforcement”, which are all affiliated with magic casting."
Most of the students showed a shocked expression at what I had just said.
No matter how far I would conduct the magic casting class, specialization was definitely another field within the same category.
The previously mentioned "release", "element property", "telekinesis", and "reinforcement" are the four specialties of the "magic casting system" that I had mentioned.
They were often called the four major specializations of casting.
Usually, it was enough to teach only two of them, but I had said that I would teach all four specializations to them.
For the students it might’ve sounded like I was bluffing, and it seemed like an incredible lie.
But it was never a lie.
I hadn’t achieved complete mastery of either subject, but I was proud that the overall spectrum of my knowledge was quite wide, as I'd lived throughout the years.
So…
"We're starting the class."
‘I'll show you what I prepared for the class this time.’
***
"You know, Cheryl. Isn't that professor really interesting?"
Cheryl tried to hide her uneasiness as she heard a voice calling to her and turned her head to a friend sitting next to her.
The one who spoke to her was a girl with skin so white that it was almost as if she was transparent with long blue hair up to her waist.
She was so beautiful that it seemed like she was a doll made by a craftsman, even the boy students sitting near her kept glancing at her.
"Flora, don't tell me that you're once more…”
"What do you mean 'once more'? That's rude. What did I do to make you say that anyway?"
Cheryl couldn't bring herself to speak to Flora, who had asked back playfully with a subtle tone.
—Flora Lumos.
She was the daughter of the Lumos duke family, one of the most noble families in the Exileon Empire.
She was beautiful, fascinating, and excelled in both literary and martial arts, and she seemed like a living work of art just by staying still. She was famous for having the title of 'genius' in her sophomore year at Sören.
Even students who are called geniuses in the world were common at Sören Academy.
Sören, which gathered only geniuses from all over the city and country, raised the standard of their students too much, and children with less talent were forced to become relatively mediocre.
It was not surprising if a child who had heard that they were a gifted child where they lived became one of those who got left behind at the Academy.
However, Flora was a girl who was called a genius, even in Sören.
It was a title that represented how great her talent for magic was.
She was one of the most famous students in Sören, with a good household, beautiful appearance, and excellent talents, so anyone could only envy her.
Only one thing couldn’t be envied…
—The flaws in her character.
Flora Lumos was notorious even among professors inside Sören Academy.
She was a genius and had never been taught properly by someone. On the contrary, she had challenged the authority of the professors and gained victories.
It was common practice for professors to point out the wrong magic techniques in the middle of the class.
On the contrary, she had come up with magic that was much better than the one being taught by the professors and smashed the professors in front of the students.
She has been steadily gaining such notoriety since she was in the first year, and it was the same even then when she was in the second year.
Moreover, because her specialty is in the field of magic casting, the incident was so famous that everyone in the academy knew why the two professors who were in charge of magic casting classes had left the previous year.
Flora became a sophomore, and she had come back to take the magic casting class.
Furthermore, at that time, it was the class of Ludger Chelysie, who was considered unusual from his first appearance.
Flora's friend Cheryl prayed that she wouldn't do it again, but Flora's expression made it seem that her prayer was just a vain hope.
Flora's nickname among professors was “the Little Devil of the Lumos family”, because she took out all the energy from the professors' souls in every class that she took.
Considering the people who had been beaten by her were trembling so hard, it was not enough to even name her King of the Devil, let alone Little Devil—that kind of nickname was too cute for her.
Flora chose Ludger as her prey for the semester.
"Cheryl, honestly, isn't it funny? It's just someone who looks like he's only in his 20s, yet he already learned all four of the specialties of magic casting. Well, of course he can learn them, but isn't it an exaggeration for him to teach them all?"
"That's…"
Cheryl had no choice but to agree with that part.
She didn’t know if it was his pride as a new professor or if he really had the ability to do that.
If his true qualities hadn’t been confirmed yet, she had no choice but to doubt it.
'But did he learn all four specialties so well that he could teach them all?'
There are a total of five affiliations of magic, and the specialties are divided for each affiliation.
The three specialties of Embodiment are Formation of Matter, Transformation, and Alchemy.
The four major specialties of Magic Casting are Release, Element Property, Telekinesis, and Reinforcement.
The four specialties of Summoning are Spirit, Golem, Magic Number, and Necromancy.
The six major specialties of Curses and Dispelling were Astrology, Captivation, Hallucination, Pharmacology, Witchcraft, and Enchantment.
And the last fifth specialization was Uncommon Magic.
In the case of Uncommon Magic, it was ambiguous to say that it's magic in this world, but it clearly means a category that can be expressed by ‘magic’.
This Uncommon affiliation belongs to the Vision Magic that descends from generation to generation in a family or to those who have pioneered unique ways themselves.
And of course, no professor taught an Uncommon Magic class.
Just in time, Ludger carved a magic technique on the magic board.
When he transferred his mana on the board with nothing written on it, the magic technique was drawn on its own.
It was Fluttering Flame, one of the third-tier flame element spells.
“It’s Fluttering Flame. There are seven elements: heating, combustion, compression, acceleration, expansion, and diffusion, complementing each other and forming the magic technique."
Although it was only a third-tier spell, it was a spell that had to be casted by placing the seven elements that made up the magic technique in the right place.
If there was enough time, students who took the class there could also use it.
"Since it's your first class today, I'll teach you something that will interest you before we proceed into the real lesson. It's a way to cast the spell much faster than the traditional way."
‘The much faster way for casting spells?’
Curiosity sprang into the students' heads for the first time.
"Let's see. The speed, yeah. It's more than three times faster than the traditional way."
The sentence made the students' eyes open wide.
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