An Old Man from the Countryside Becomes a Swords Saint: I Was Just a Rural Sword Teacher, But My Successful Students Won’t Leave Me Alone! - Chapter 128

“Your magic is…?” I asked.

“Yes, fortunately, once you leave the school building, you can use it like before… but for some reason, it’s completely useless inside, goodness,” Quinella said with a troubled face.

They can’t use magic. This is what really matters. I don’t know the source nor the mechanics of magic, but this is still strange.

At the same time, I understand now why they were struggling with the shadow wolves so far. What if magic, the single greatest means of offense for most Magician’s Academy staff, was sealed? They can’t do anything at that point.

“By the way, nothing like this has ever happened before, has it?” I asked.

“No, not even once,” Quinella said. “Is it the same for you, Prof. Thyssel?”

“Yeah,” Thyssel said. “I’ve been in terrible shape, but never completely unable to use it.”

I asked, but I got the answer I expected.

If I were to compare it to myself, it would be synonymous with my sword arm suddenly failing me one day. It’s obviously strange that it happened without any warning. However, the strangest thing is actually happening before my eyes.

Conversely, it cannot happen without some cause. There’s no way something like this would happen naturally, so it’s reasonable to assume that someone did something wrong, and now:

“It looks like it would be better to find the cause… toh!” I yelled as a struck.

“I agree,” Thyssel said. “I’m in trouble if I can’t use magic.”

Even while we were talking like this, the shadows didn’t stop attacking.

We converse while cutting down the attacking wolf monsters. At this rate, things are going to go poorly, and I can’t leave them behind and run away. Luckily, even I can deal with it well enough, so let’s explore the school building while kicking these guys away.

“I’ll go inside and check it out. What about you, Thyssel?” I asked.

“I’ll go in, too,” Thyssel said. “Even if I can’t use sword magic, there’s the swordsmanship you taught me, Master.”

“That sounds plenty reassuring,” I said. “But don’t overdo it.”

It seems that Ms. Quinella can use magic as usual if she doesn’t enter the school building, and if that’s the case, she won’t fall behind an opponent of this level. The fact that there is no worry about contingency plans is quite psychologically helpful.

“… Understood,” Quinella said. “Please leave the protection of the students to me.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll leave it to you.”

Students at the Academy of Magicians are more or less knowledgeable about magic. It may be counted as a force by numbers.

However, most of them have no combat experience. It’s a little unreasonable to suddenly say they have to fight in an emergency.

So someone has to protect them, but let’s let the teachers shoulder that responsibility.

Besides, I have a vague trust that Ms. Quinella will do well. Even as I am, I have an eye for good people, you know.

“For the time being, I’ll take a look around the inside while destroying these things,” I said. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah. No problem,” Thyssel said.

If so, it will be a frontal assault. Even if I wait here, things don’t look like they’re going to turn around any time soon, so it’s better to rush in quickly.

The Magician’s Academy is quite large, after all. It seems that the damage to the outside of the school building has been suppressed so far, but if this spreads outside, it would be a bit ugly.

Even though it was temporary, as long as I was teaching staff, I had to protect the students. Well, even without that position, it’s a situation that I can’t overlook because I’m a witness and a trained swordsman.

There are two main purposes for this charge.

Find out the cause of these hostile shadows coming out, and find out the cause of the mages suddenly being unable to use magic.

The problem is that both causes are completely unpredictable. Ms. Quinella and Thyssel don’t understand how it happened at all, so as a result, I have no choice but to use brute force.

However, there is only one advantage regarding this enemy.

I don’t know why, but the opponent doesn’t have any physicality, so there’s no need to worry about the sharpness of the weapon.

In other words, you can slash without worrying about blade damage. This is not possible with humans or live beasts.

“Okay, let’s go in, shall we?” I said.

“Yeah,” Thyssel said.

“Be careful!” Quinella said. “I will devote myself to protecting the dormitory!”

With Ms. Quinella’s words at my back, we rushed into the school building.

And when I did, several shadows immediately noticed me and attacked me.

“Toh, they’re so fast!” I cried.

A shadow rushed in, I struck with my sword. While Thyssel couldn’t use magic after that, she skillfully dealt with multiple shadows with a sword slash you could describe as “flowing.”

It’s a beautiful style, and yet it’s a practical swordsmanship technique. If this is the case, there will be no problem at all even if I leave her behind.

The slashed shadows disappear on the spot like popped bubbles.

I tried slashing them a few times, but they’re not physical beings after all. After defeating them, there are no corpses left behind, so I don’t have to clean it up later, and thinking that it’ll be that easy, I slash the shadows springing again from around the corner.

Even so, are sword attacks effective because of the opponent’s nature, or is the sword I’m using special? As Thyssel can defeat them just as well with her sword, it’s probably the former.

If you can’t use magic but you can beat it with something other than magic, it wouldn’t have been so bad.

“There’s only one kind of shadow, huh…?” I asked.

After defeating some of them, I noticed that there is only one shadow that appears as an enemy so far, the wolves.

I don’t feel the intelligence of wild wolves, and I don’t see any coordination. It’s just that they find enemies individually and rush in.

Also, it seems that these guys don’t suddenly appear from an empty space, they are born from somewhere and rush towards us.

Then, perhaps, there’s a master.

“Maybe there is a boss,” I said.

“I think so too,” Thyssel said.

We seem to have been on the same wavelength.

I’m not very familiar with this kind of thing, but these guys are probably subordinate to something. You could call them summons.

“Do you feel like you can’t use magic after all?” I asked.

“Yeah… when I try to harness my magic, something gets in the way,” Thyssel said.

Thyssel was still unable to use sword magic and dealt with them only with pure swordsmanship. Even so, that she can move as well as me is probably the result of her regular training and awareness that she can’t rely too much on her magic.

“Then, if we’re talking where the boss is likely to be… do you have any ideas?” I asked.

“Hmm…” Thyssel went.

It’s fine to explore the entire school building and comb it through, but if possible, I’d like to set up at least a minimum range. Besides, I don’t know everything about the Academy. I also want to avoid wasting physical strength and time by making random moves.

“How about underground, or something…?”

“Hmm……”

The Magician’s Academy’s basement.

If I remember correctly, Deputy Headmaster Brown told me to stay away from there specifically. Even Thyssel doesn’t seem to know what’s underground.

I can’t say I wasn’t curious but I didn’t bother about it. I don’t think I’d go out of my way to go to a place where I was warned not to go near, but the basement is exactly my destination now. If there is even the slightest possibility that’s the source of all this, it should be included in the search destination candidates, we should search it.

“Okay, let’s aim underground for the time being,” I said. “If our guess misses, we’ll just have to search some more.”

“Understood. The basement is this way,” Thyssel said.

Now that we have a goal, Thyssel runs around the institute, and I follow behind her.

We fight off the shadows we encounter, move on, meet them again, and kill them again.

After repeating it several times, I was almost convinced that these guys weren’t born out of thin air, they were coming out of a base somewhere.

As evidence of that, I haven’t been attacked by shadows from behind since I decided to head underground. Everything is coming out from the front. In other words, there is a high possibility that we’re moving where they’re coming from.

“Looks like we hit the mark?” I said.

The entrance to the basement was next to the central stairs of the school building. In a slightly recessed place, there is a door that can be said to be rather elaborate.

However, the door was quite large you could feel its importance, though it was half-open it didn’t look like it had been destroyed.

“Did someone come in first…?” I asked.

“It’s usually closed. I don’t even know where the key is,” Thyssel said.

Even if those wolf-shaped shadows were created from inside and headed out, if you think about it normally, this door should have been damaged in some way. Because it’s supposed to be closed normally, those shadows shouldn’t be able to come out without busting it down.

But in reality, the door is open. Since there are no traces of destruction, there is no doubt that someone unlocked it and entered this basement.

Then, did someone steal a key somewhere and break into the basement?

Or someone who knew where the key was kept took it and broke in.

“… We have no choice but to go,” I said.

“Yes……” Thyssel said.

We make up our minds and step inside the door.

From here onward is an unknown area that even Thyssel doesn’t know a thing about. Given the location of the Magician’s Academy, I would like to think that it doesn’t have a strange layout, but it is a section that is considered a forbidden area even for the Academy staff. You should be ready for anything that pops up.

At the end of the door was a passage that was wider than I expected, and the stairs leading downward were slowly stretching on. I can’t see ahead. It seems to go extremely deep down.

“Yoh-to,” I gasped.

I stabbed at the shadows that sporadically attack us, as usual.

The width of the passage is not so wide, so I can’t swing my sword horizontally or vertically. It naturally turns into a thrusting battle, and it helps that our opponents aren’t very smart. If one sees us, it will simply attack, and we’ve gotten so used to them that it feels more like a chore than a battle.

“Master, are you okay?”

“Ah, there’s no problem with this level of opponents. Just to be sure, watch your back.”

“Understood,” Thyssel said.

I can’t walk side by side with Thyssel, so I’m in the front. I don’t think it’s likely, but it would be unbearable if I was attacked from the side in a place like this. Let her take care of my back and proceed cautiously.

“Hmm, another door. It’s open,” I said.

If you go down such a monotonous path, you will lose your sense of time. It seemed like it was both long and short, but after going down the stairs, a door with a different style appeared.

A simple and plain door. It also feels quite old. It’s just a guess, but I feel like this door was made first, and the heavy entrance door was made later. That’s how much of a difference in the time I felt.

“… A room?” I asked.

After passing through the door, it seemed that it was a space with defined dimensions, unlike the almost infinitely extending passage from earlier.

The fact that the lights are on, albeit only a few of them, suggests that this place wasn’t simply sealed for a long time and that someone has been here recently. The frequency and purpose are unknown.

“… Master, that’s…”

“Hmm……”

Thyssel peeps into the room from behind. At the end of her gaze, she saw something, and she let out an unusually shocked and emotional voice.

“Hi, hihi… hihihihihi…!”

Who was inside?

An old man crouched on his knees in the corner of the room, repeating sounds like he was sobbing.

It was Faustus Brown, the Deputy Headmaster of the Magician’s Academy.