ACADEMY'S UNDERCOVER PROFESSOR
The duel was over.
"The winner, Aidan!"
Along with the judge's yell, shouts erupted from the audience.
All of them were shouts of the commoner students who had come to cheer for Aidan.
"Aidan! You're cool!"
"You are so dope!"
"You are awesome! When on earth did you learn that skill?"
Leo and Tessie's joy was particularly significant.
On the contrary, the aristocratic students openly expressed their displeasure and then glared at Jevan, who was sprawled on the floor in defeat.
"Tsk. Jevan, that punk, has disgraced the honor of the aristocracy."
"He was always a sucker. He was a mere baron, yet he was trying to sponge off us like he was something, and that became bothersome."
"I can't believe he lost against a commoner. He's a disgrace to the aristocracy."
Words that could be heard noisily were very sharp.
Jevan looked around with a blank face.
'I… lost?"
He couldn't believe that it was real
But when he tried to wake up from this dream, he didn't wake up. Because it was not a dream, it was a reality.
The scornful gazes and the criticism that flew at him were all real.
On that stage, it was not him, but a petty commoner that he had been looking down on so much who was drunk with the joy of victory.
'No. Something, something must be wrong here!'
There was no way he had lost.
'Yes. There must have been some mistake. That dirty commoner must have used some kind of cowardly foul play.'
If that wasn't the case, then there was no way that he could use magic while moving.
'This damned commoner brat!'
Grit.
Jevan had erased the fact that he secretly drank a potion and doped because of it from his head.
If he knew that it was a shameful act in the first place, he wouldn't have done that.
All he had left was endless hatred for the commoner who had insulted him in front of everyone and his will to murder the commoner.
'I will kill you!'
Jevan began to wring out all of his mana.
When everyone was so focused on Aidan, who was within the spotlight as the winner, no one would notice Jevan's behavior.
Anyone would think so.
Who would expect that a man who had lost a fight would suddenly get up and use a spell as a surprise attack?
Jevan squeezed out all of his mana and prepared a second-tier spell.
It would take about four seconds before the spell was casted.
It was quite a long duration if his opponent was focused on him and dealt with the spell, but four seconds was a very short duration when everyone was off guard.
"Oh?"
Aidan was the first to notice the oddity. Something was wrong with the spirit that Jevan radiated as he was bowing his head.
Just as he looked back at Jevan, his eyes met Jevan's, who was glaring at him.
"Jevan?"
Jevan's eyes which were glistening due to murderous intent were bent like crescent moons.
And what Aidan saw was the spell technique that he was secretly implementing.
It was a second-tier fire magic, Raging Wave.
Now that the duel was over, Aidan had removed the safety device attached to his body.
Moreover, Raging Wave was an attack with the widest scope among the second-tier magics, making it practically impossible for him to avoid it.
However, it was impossible for him to defend himself from it because time was running out.
The magic had been casted.
Red flames swirled and surged toward him.
"Oh, ooh?"
The judge, who was about to check Aidan's physical condition, was also bewildered.
Never thinking that Jevan would do it, he hurriedly took out his cane and charged his mana.
He was a Sören employee, but he could also use magic to some extent.
But it was too late.
The spell had already reached just under his nose.
The hot flame approached them like a wave that was about to engulf them.
Fwoosh.
Aidan moved his body first before even thinking.
Aidan, who bounced like a spring, grabbed the back of the judge's neck, then threw the judge to his back.
Then he clasped the sword-shaped staff with his hands.
Within the slow flow of time, he could see the surprised audience with their eyes wide open.
The professors also jumped from their seats one by one as they belatedly realized the situation.
But it was already too late for them to step up.
—Because the waves of flame had just reached Aidan.
"Aidan!"
Tessie's cry echoed throughout the stadium.
But Aidan didn't look back at her.
He kept his eyes fixed to the front and lifted his sword-shaped staff.
He charged his mana…
And struck the flame.
Whooooosh!
"Oh?"
"Wh-what?"
Then, something unbelievable happened.
Following the trajectory of Aidan's staff, the magic of Raging Wave that Jevan had used was split precisely down the middle and scattered.
Whiiiirrrrr.
Eventually, the Raging Wave lost its power and disappeared after it was scattered into the air.
"What… was just happened?"
"He cut… the spell?"
While the students murmured blankly at the incomprehensible sight…
Ludger stared at Aidan as if he knew that would happen.
'Did he use that spell because it was a moment of crisis?'
Aidan was a wizard who could use Uncommon Magic.
Unlike the other four types, Uncommon was not properly classified by modern magic, and spells that weren't widely known formed a mainstream classification.
It was the same with what Aidan had just used.
One of the Uncommon magics, Anti Magic.
In other words…
A spell that erased another spell.
What Aidan used was exactly that.
"No… no way!"
Chris was simply on the verge of fainting.
He was already going crazy because of Jevan's cowardly act, and to make things worse, Aidan, whom he thought was a commoner, had used Anti Magic.
'Don't tell me… that man already knew it…!'
Chris's gaze turned to Ludger.
He had sat still in his seat and wasn't surprised when Aidan was attacked.
It's not that he wasn't surprised.
That man had no reason to be surprised in the first place.
—Because he already knew everything.
He had known that Aidan would win the competition and that Aidan was the owner of an Uncommon Magic.
"Oh, my God."
It was the same with Jevan Felio.
When he saw the Raging Wave that he had used with all his mana disappear in vain…
And the fact that Aidan was the one who cut the spell off…
He looked stunned.
Aidan walked toward Jevan, who had completely lost his fighting spirit.
"Jevan…"
"You, how the hell did you do that? How come a commoner used that magic…?."
"That's it. Clench your teeth."
"What?"
Before Jevan could ask again, Aidan moved.
Baam!
His clenched fist hit Jevan's cheek hard.
Jevan's body rolled on the ground.
Looking down at the fallen Jevan, Aidan spoke while glaring strongly at him.
"I thought that you'd at least take your defeat well, but I didn't know that you would be this much of a piece of trash."
Jevan could not answer him.
He had already been completely physically and mentally defeated by Aidan, so he could not maintain his rationality.
* * *
* * *
The judge belatedly rushed out and checked Aidan's body.
"Aidan! Are you alright?"
"Yes, I'm alright. But are you alright, Mister? Are you hurt anywhere?"
"Oh, no. Thanks to you. I'm grateful. I would have been in danger if it weren't for you."
Aidan said that it was nothing to the judge, who kept his head bowed down and apologized instead.
The professors and audience, who were watching the scene, were bound to see Aidan in a new light.
"Oh, my God. I heard he's an Anti Magic owner, so it was real."
Mary Ross, who had already vaguely heard some news about Aidan, put her hand around her mouth and chuckled.
Hugo's and Chris's expressions, on the other hand, were simply dejected.
It was just Ludger who had been expecting that to happen and maintained his unchanging attitude.
The students' response was simply enthusiastic.
"Did you see that just now? He cut the magic with a blade!"
"You idiot. It's not a blade but a staff."
"Whatever it is!"
"Even so, I didn't feel him casting a different spell. What the hell was that?"
"He erased magic? Is that possible?"
For the students who did not know about the existence of Anti Magic, Aidan's performance was almost like a fairy tale.
After an incredulous thing done by Jevan…
Aidan's magic was so great that even the incredulous event could be forgotten in an instant.
Among the surprised students, there were some who noticed what Aidan's magic actually was.
"That kid… Did he just use Anti Magic?"
A beautiful girl with white hair and a snow-cold impression stared intensely at Aidan.
Her tone seemed to consider Aidan lower than her, but she was also one of the freshmen who had just entered Sören.
The girl was definitely enough to be discussed as the one who held the best position among Sören's freshmen.
She was the top student who had entered the Academy that year and the most promising extraordinary rookie from the magic tower.
—Julia Plumheart.
She looked at Aidan with interest.
'I just wanted to kill time at first, so I came to look around here for fun. It turned out that I witnessed something interesting.'
With her personality, she wouldn't even care about that kind of event.
—Because no one was curious about the result of the students' duel.
However, that time, the incident was bigger, and it had moved into a fight between commoners and nobles and not just one between students.
Moreover, the news that it became a pride fight between two professors had spread after that, so she had only come to see the duel briefly.
'When they fought for the first time, it was so horrible that it was hard for me to keep my eyes open, and I thought I'd go back right away.'
She was glad she didn't leave.
She couldn't believe that she was witnessing Anti Magic in a place like that.
'His name is Aidan, right? Where on earth did a commoner learn to do Anti Magic? Hmm. I got a little interested.'
Julia left the stadium as she saw Aidan knock out Jevan.
Other than Julia, there were also some people who were interested in the magic that Aidan had shown.
It was the same for Freuden, who had the most power in his second year and posed as the head of the aristocratic faction.
'Is his name Aidan?'
When Jevan, the eldest son of Baron Felio who wanted to join his faction, said he would fight Aidan…
Freuden hadn't bothered to stop him. His true intention was that he didn't even care about it in the first place.
No matter who Jevan fought with, he thought that it was ok as long as Jevan didn't become aggressive toward him.
Who would have thought that the opponent whom Jevan had fought against was a commoner who could use Anti Magic.
'I heard that all the newcomers in the first year can't be looked down on, so it was true.'
Freuden had a personality that could admit things neatly.
He highly valued Aidan's Anti Magic.
Of course, he didn't know how much Aidan could deal with Anti Magic, but his value as a human being was at least higher than that of the aristocracy.
"Let's go."
Freuden stood up from his seat while glancing at Jevan, who had fallen with a pathetic stare for the last time.
The students from his faction stood up in lines following Freuden.
Before Freuden left, he glanced sideways at Ludger, who was sitting in the professor's seat.
'That professor…'
Freuden, who had been staring at him for a while, soon turned his eyes as if he was not interested in him and left the stadium.
That was how the people left one by one and made a lot of ruckus about the duel incident that day.
The appearance of a new prodigy.
—Aidan, a wizard who could use Anti Magic.
"Oh, my."
Aidan scratched his head.
He originally had no intention of using Anti Magic in the duel.
Well, he also didn't intend to use it in the future while studying in Sören.
His teacher had said that such magic was very important, so he shouldn't use it unless he was really in a crisis. If he didn't do what his teacher told him to, he would be in trouble.
'So this is what my teacher meant.'
Looking at the passionate eyes of the students who already had high expectations of him, Aidan instinctively felt that his life at the academy would be very tiring in the future.
'Oh, yeah.'
Aidan immediately turned his head to the place where the professor-only seats existed.
—It was to find Ludger, who had helped him win the fight.
Fortunately, Ludger remained in his place, and it was not difficult for Aidan to find him.
Ludger's black outfit definitely stood out.
Ludger had his usual expression on his face and wasn't visibly happy about Aidan winning the duel.
After both of them looked at each other in silence…
Nod.
Ludger just nodded his head once.
"…!"
Of course, that was enough for Aidan.
When Ludger admitted that he did well, Aidan finally realized that he had gained the victory.
"Aidan!"
"You did well! You won!"
Tessie and Leo came up to Aidan and smiled beamingly. Aidan also smiled at his friends.
After watching the three for a while, Ludger got up from his seat.
Because the duel was over, it was time for another business.
"Professor Chris."
Chris Benimore, who had been standing uncomfortably in his spot the entire time, shuddered at Ludger's call.
His eyes turned to Ludger.
"We still had our own business left, right?"
Chris's face collapsed even more disastrously at his words.
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