After the lecture by Primus resumed, a strange phenomenon occurred: certain students gradually started to lose their vitality as time passed.
Faces marked by faint dark circles.
Voices that seemed devoid of energy.
Unsteady steps.
Seeing the condition of their friends, juniors, and seniors, who couldn’t even be called normal, they asked, “Are you okay?”
“Do you have something on your mind?”
“You look like something’s hurting.”
“Is something wrong?”
“…Sorry. I’m a little busy right now…”
However, in the end, the responses they received were all the same: “I’m busy. Let’s talk later. I don’t have time right now,” and so on.
Even those with a more relaxed personality were too preoccupied with muttering or memorizing things.
Despite this, a small group succeeded in prying out the cause of this strange phenomenon, after sticking around until the students finally gave an answer.
The name they heard was “Letter Yurt.”
For some reason, there seemed to be fear in the voices pronouncing those five letters, and it didn’t seem like a momentary illusion.
“You must never…”
“The Mana Design course.”
“Don’t even think about taking it. Not until Professor Letter steps down. Actually, not until you graduate.”
“If you want to live, listen to me.”
Only then did they discover a common point.
All the students who looked exhausted lately were enrolled in the Mana Design course.
However, Mana Design, in the eyes of the public, was known as one of the most basic subjects.
Those who hadn’t attended Letter’s lectures couldn’t understand why their friends, seniors, and juniors were struggling.
‘Mana Design?’
‘That was a course we took in our freshman year.’
‘Wasn’t it just to get a credit?’
I thought it was to see Professor Letter.
‘How hard could Mana Design be, really?’
With the surrounding people showing zero empathy, instead of comfort, the Mana Design students only felt more frustrated.
But what could they do? The last chance to drop the class was something they themselves rejected.
So, in the end, they had no choice but to endure, feeling as if their brains might freeze, day by day.
After all, there was no option but to endure.
‘What would happen if I fall behind, even for just one day…’
Irina, a teaching assistant and student of the Mana Design course, was briefly lost in painful thoughts.
She slowly lifted her head.
At the end of her tired gaze, she saw a strangely cheerful young professor.
She instinctively rubbed her forehead.
“…Is something good happening?”
She asked with a voice half curious, half resentful, wondering why he was humming a tune.
It was no surprise; that youthful face was the root cause of everything.
Yet, he seemed unaware of his role as the cause, which made him a little more annoying lately.
“It seems the students are following along better than I expected. As an educator, it’s quite rewarding.”
“Ah… I see…”
Look at that innocent, unaware malice.
Irina had realized that he was on a completely different level of common sense from her, and she had given up on trying to challenge him.
To be honest, it wasn’t impossible to follow the class.
The fact that Irina and the other students received new assignments every class was proof of that.
However, after completing the assignments and preparation for class, nine out of ten students would collapse from exhaustion.
They had no energy left to take a short walk to catch their breath.
It was the fine line between impossible and possible.
If even one more assignment was added, it was obvious that many students would give up on both the grades and everything else.
It was a maddeningly difficult course.
‘And the fact that Dean Ainel even adjusted it…’
In the past, Irina had believed that Ainel, the dean, would be her final support.
But even she had only slightly lowered the course intensity.
Irina had personally heard that after a private meeting with Letter, she rushed to the medical office for some psychological treatment.
Of course, it wasn’t an unhelpful course.
It was clear that the students in the class were making meaningful progress in their magical studies.
It was beneficial, useful, and practical.
Everything they learned in the vast lecture hall from Letter was definitely ‘useful.’
If they had any doubts or questions, she would almost always accept them and offer help.
However, no matter how informative the class was, When information was crammed into a student’s mind to the point where they couldn’t remember it all, they would end up feeling not fulfillment, but nausea and vague fear.
Even Irina, who had a very gentle personality, couldn’t bring herself to support Letter because of that.
***
Another teaching assistant, Evan, seemed to approve of everything Letter did, likely because he had once saved Iris.
For now, though, solving Letter’s assignments was the most pressing task at hand.
Today, I took my gaze away from the young face that looked so irritating and buried my head in the brown parchment again.
However, as a result, Irina had to lift her head again in less than 10 minutes.
The reason being…
“Could you read this letter for me?”
Letter, who had been happily scribbling something, came up to Irina with a rather long letter in hand.
Reluctantly, Irina accepted the soft parchment that Letter handed her.
But the content was strange.
In a bad way.
Especially the name of the recipient at the top of the letter made Irina question her own eyes.
“Theodor… Lionheart?”
The six noble families that led the Empire.
Among them, the head of the White Lion family, in charge of the Empire’s defense, Theodor Lionheart.
The name of the old man, whom even the Imperial Princess Irina could not treat carelessly, was at the very top of the letter.
In other words, the letter that Irina was holding, which had no manners at all, was a letter of defamation…!
“P-Professor! Are you out of your mind?”
The letter was supposed to be sent to the head of the White Lion family.
Irina, shocked, didn’t return the letter to Letter for this reason.
“Why are you so surprised? There’s nothing false. I wrote it in a relatively soft tone.”
“Oh, no… yes, as you said, Professor, let’s say Atar Lionheart invaded Primus.”
“It’s not just ‘let’s say’—he really invaded.”
“Anyway!!”
After that, Irina did her best to explain what the letter Letter had written felt like.
It’s not just about using a soft tone.
This is practically insulting the head of a noble family by telling him to properly manage his children.
“That’s what I’m saying. A person who’s the head of a family should be able to manage their children properly.”
“No, that’s enough! I understand what you’re trying to protest, but still, this is going too far, Professor.”
“Did you have a grudge against the head of the White Lion family?”
Irina, with a flustered look on her face, said this and tried with all her might to stop Letter.
However, the answer that came back was a meaningful statement that maybe it could be considered a grudge.
Unknowingly, Irina asked, “Did something happen with the head of the family?”
“It wasn’t anything happened, but something almost happened.”
“…Huh?”
“Well, something like that.”
***
A moment later, Letter returned to her desk and took out a new piece of parchment from the drawer.
Irina, seeing this, walked up right next to Letter and started checking the contents of the new letter she was writing, one by one.
What was unexpected was that the newly written letter was teetering on the line of being unacceptable.
In other words, it meant that Letter, who knew how to write properly, had deliberately written a provocative letter.
“Do you think this one is okay to send?”
“Uh… sure…”
Irina couldn’t help but be flustered again.
‘If that was the case, wouldn’t it have been better to just write a proper, respectful letter from the start?’
That question arose naturally.
So, in the end, she asked Letter once more.
“I think whatever letter you send would have the same result. Since we’ve already made a fuss, I wanted to annoy that old man… I mean, the head of the family a little.”
Irina received a strange reply.
She still didn’t know why Letter wanted to make Theodor Lionheart uncomfortable.
It was also unknown that, with the Sage having disappeared, Atar Lionheart’s responsibilities now fell to his father, Theodor Lionheart.
Since Atar had been declared the heir of the North, it would have been no problem to hold Theodor accountable for anything Atar did.
‘Those old men should be a little thankful to me.’
This was roughly what Letter was thinking right now.
It was just a simple venting of frustration, nothing more, nothing less.
However, now that things had come to this, she thought it might be a good idea to ask for something more substantial from the head of the family.
“…So, I’d like to request a tour for the students. It will definitely help their development.”
A brief request was added as a postscript to the letter.
It was a strange request, enough to make the old man’s head spin.
***
“What… is this?”
“It’s a field trip application. For the Northern Front.”
“…Are you saying you want to let students experience a battle with demons?”
“Yes.”
“…Sigh… Well, okay. Let’s hear your reasoning first…”
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