Chapter 81: Professor of Magic, Selvis

The woman raised her head in a daze, tear stains and bruises still lingering on her face.

When her gaze focused on Helga’s face, those brown eyes—dull and lifeless from years of hardship—first flashed with utter confusion, then suddenly widened, her pupils constricting violently.

“…… Hai… Helga?”

Her voice was dry and hoarse, filled with immense shock and disbelief.

She instinctively raised her hand, as if wanting to touch Helga’s face to confirm whether this was a hallucination, but then nervously drew back, her fingertips trembling, “Is… is it really you? Helga?”

“It’s me! Teacher! It’s really me!”

The overwhelming joy instantly swept away all the previous gloom. Helga gripped Yuno’s icy hand tightly, her face blooming into a radiant smile as she nodded vigorously, “Eight years! Teacher, we’ve met again, you’ve gotten a lot older…”

Yuno Vayne’s residence was at the very end of the most remote and dilapidated alley in Whitestone Town.

Pushing open the creaking, nearly collapsing wooden door, a complicated scent rushed out—a mixture of old paper, dried herbs, and the lingering fumes of various alchemical reagents.

The sight inside the room confirmed Helga’s worst fears.

The space was cramped and low, more like a magic laboratory forcibly stuffed with the bare necessities of life than a home.

The walls were stained yellow from years of smoke, the corners piled with dust-covered books and scrolls, nearly collapsing under their own weight.

A rickety wooden table took up most of the room, covered with all sorts of glassware: flasks, retorts, crucibles, each holding residues of liquids or powders in various colors.

Strangely-shaped metal parts and dried magical plant specimens were scattered across the table and the floor.

The only proof that someone still lived here was the bed in the corner, pieced together from old wooden planks, with thin and worn bedding on top.

Other than these research-related items, the shabby little room was utterly bare.

There was no proper furniture, no decorations, not even a complete set of bowls or dishes. The air of poverty permeated every corner.

Yuno stood awkwardly in the center of the room, her hands nervously twisting the faded old mage robe she wore, her face burning with shame.

She looked like a child caught doing something wrong, her gaze darting everywhere, not daring to meet Helga’s eyes.

“Sorry, Helga… letting you see your teacher in such a pitiful state…”

She forced a bitter smile, her voice low and hoarse, “All these years… I’ve accomplished nothing, still just a lowly mage even the adventurer parties don’t want… It’s… really a joke for you to see me like this.”

Helga felt as if something was fiercely squeezing her heart, the sourness almost unbearable.

She forced herself to ignore the glaring poverty, letting her gaze sweep over the messy yet clearly well-maintained experimental apparatus, finally coming to rest on a stack of slightly warped parchment at the corner of the table.

They were densely covered with formulas, derivations, and scrawled diagrams of magic arrays.

“Teacher, please don’t say that!” she immediately retorted, her tone firm.

She walked over, carefully pulling out a few sheets of the parchment reports, brushing off the dust.

When her eyes fell upon those rigorous and groundbreaking symbols and deductions, her breath caught for a moment.

A powerful sense of déjà vu surged up inside her.

The way these symbols were combined… this model deducing how to leverage low-level elemental resonance to pry open high-level mana circuits… it was all too familiar!

Helga felt certain she had seen this report somewhere before, but if it was written by her teacher, there was no way she wouldn’t remember it!

A ridiculous and chilling thought seized her in an instant.

She abruptly looked up at Yuno: “Teacher, these theories… are these your research results?”

Yuno’s eyes instantly dimmed, filled with helplessness and resignation.

“I wrote them… but what’s the use?” She gave a self-mocking shake of her head, walked over to sit at the bedside, and wearily propped her head in her hands. “Just like these bottles and jars, they look impressive, but in reality they’re worthless. No mana… Without mana to support them, even the most exquisite theories are nothing but castles in the air, a pile of waste paper!”

Her voice was laden with deep powerlessness, her shoulders slumping. “I tried making enchanted trinkets… but those merchants, they’d take one look and toss them back, only willing to give a few silver coins… not even enough to cover the cost… Maybe… maybe what I make really is just that bad…”

Listening to her teacher’s numb self-deprecation, then glancing down at the report in her hand—a theoretical paper that would cause a sensation at any advanced magic academy—Helga’s chest churned with a mix of anger, absurdity, and intense heartache.

She finally understood where that overwhelming sense of familiarity came from! She really had seen these academic reports! But the author’s name was not her teacher’s!

“Teacher!” Helga’s voice trembled with suppressed fury as she shook the report in her hand. “Did you know? The core theory in your report was published in last month’s ‘Arcane Frontiers’ by the Magic Association! The author was Selvis! A Professor of Magic! He used your work to gain tremendous fame and honor!”

Yuno’s body went rigid, her head snapping up, all color draining from her face, her lips trembling.

But that instant of expression was not shock at the truth being revealed, but rather…

A deeper, long-anticipated pain and helplessness.

“I know…” she murmured, her voice as parched as sandpaper, “I… I appealed to the Magic Association… not just once…”

She forced a bitter smile, uglier than crying. “But… Helga… Who would believe that a pitiful, impoverished low-level mage with barely a scrap of mana could propose a theory that shakes the very foundations of magology? They only think… I’m jealous, slandering the esteemed Professor Selvis…”

She took a deep breath, as if mustering all her strength. “Besides… these reports… they’re not entirely useless. They… helped me pay off some of my debt.”

“Debt?” Helga latched onto the key word, her doubts deepening.

Yuno’s gaze grew even more evasive, her fingers unconsciously twisting the hem of her robe. “Yes… I… I owe Professor Selvis money… a lot of money… fifty gold coins.”

“Fifty gold coins?” Helga was stunned—not because the sum was too great, but because it was ‘only fifty gold coins’?

In Helga’s eyes, these reports were already priceless, yet they weren’t even worth fifty gold coins?!

This was blatant humiliation for her teacher! Helga forcibly suppressed the anger in her heart.

“How did you end up in debt?” Helga pressed, her tone brooking no refusal.

She had a gut feeling there was a huge trick behind this.

Yuno lowered her head even further, her voice barely above a whisper: “Three years ago, my experiment… needed a very rare meteorite iron powder, and only Professor Selvis had access to a little bit of it, at a very steep price. I couldn’t afford it, so he… he said I could borrow it first, and we signed a contract. Later, I found out the price… was more than ten times the market rate… but the contract was already signed…”

Her voice was full of regret and despair, “I could only… only take on adventuring jobs desperately, and write research reports for him… paying off the debt with papers. Over the years… I’ve paid back about thirty gold coins. Still owe twenty gold coins… and the last ten reports promised in the contract…”

Helga felt a rush of hot blood to her head!

Her rage was nearly consuming her reason! A trap! This was a shameless trap from the very beginning, targeting her teacher—a genius in theory but completely inexperienced in the ways of the world!

Usury! Exploitation! Plagiarism!

The name Selvis had become synonymous with despicable shamelessness in her heart!

“Teacher!” Helga’s voice was resolute and powerful, brooking no argument. “I’ll pay off this debt for you! Right now! Immediately! We’ll go find Selvis! I’ll make him spit out everything he’s taken, with interest! I’ll make him confess his plagiarism to the entire magic world!”

“No! You can’t, Helga!” Yuno jumped up in panic, grabbing Helga’s arm with surprising strength, “You mustn’t! He’s a Grand Mage! Incredibly powerful! Well-connected! Provoking him will do no good! He’ll retaliate! We can’t beat him! I… I’ll pay it back slowly. I can pay it off…”

Terror made her incoherent, her body trembling slightly.

Selvis’s reputation in her heart was as immovable as a towering mountain.

“Grand Mage?” Helga gently pried Yuno’s cold, trembling hand away. Deep in her pale violet eyes, it was as if a whirlpool from the deep sea was silently turning—an aura of magic boiling together with her fury.

A calm yet undeniable power of reassurance spread from her palm.

“Teacher, look at me.”

Yuno was forced to look up, meeting those eyes.

In that instant, she seemed to see the trajectories of the stars, the pulse of elemental tides—a depth and majesty beyond her comprehension that made her forget her fear, leaving only confusion and awe.

“Trust me.” Helga’s voice was calm and full of strength. “And please trust Miss Irene as well. I’m no longer the little girl who needed your protection, who couldn’t even draw a proper rune.”

She gave Yuno no chance to hesitate, instead grasped her teacher’s hand tightly, pulling her along as she turned and strode toward the door.

Her steps were firm, her goal clear—the center of Whitestone Town, that towering magic tower built of black crystal, belonging to Selvis.

“You two, wait here. I’ll be right back.”

This was said to the two guards accompanying her.