Lee Han calmly steadied his mind.
No matter what, the vampire professor wouldn’t be able to read his innermost thoughts.
- I’ll just quietly attend this lecture no one else is listening to and reap the benefits!
‘Hmm.
If I get caught, it’ll be more embarrassing than dangerous.’
“Did you say you had a question?” Professor Vladie slowly turned his gaze back to Lee Han and spoke.
“Can I ask any question?”
“No. It must be related to the lecture.”
‘Isn’t that obvious?’ It wasn’t like Lee Han was going to ask for advice on how to skip school...
But thanks to this, he felt like he had a good grasp of the professor’s personality.
A strict principled person, both to others and to himself.
Lee Han had met many people like this before, so dealing with them was actually easier.
‘The difficult ones are crazy professors like Principal Lich.’
As long as you diligently did what you were told, there wouldn’t be any problems.
What’s so hard about that?
“Do you have any questions?”
“Hmm...” Lee Han pondered.
What should he ask?
Professors always said, “Feel free to ask questions,” but if you really asked casually, they’d respond with, “Why don’t you know something so basic?”
Asking questions required skill.
‘Let’s start with the basics.’
“What is the purpose of practicing spinning this spirit stone orb?” Lee Han asked with genuine curiosity.
He asked because the professor said to ask about the lecture, but he was also genuinely curious.
What’s the point of just spinning this orb around?
Professor Vladie tilted his head slightly at Lee Han’s question, looking genuinely puzzled.
“Didn’t you read the name of the lecture?”
“......” Lee Han wasn’t flustered.
Professors were always like this!
- I taught you 1+1=2, so now solve this advanced differential equation.
You can’t? Why? How come?
“Yes. I know the lecture is called <Repetitive Learning of Basic Magic Combat>. But how exactly does spinning this spirit stone orb relate to basic magic combat?”
“Hmm.”
Upon hearing Lee Han’s question, Professor Vladie froze in place.
He stood still like a statue, and Lee Han was taken aback.
It was as if someone had turned off his power.
“... Professor?”
“Wait a moment.”
Professor Vladie spoke to Lee Han without even blinking.
What could Lee Han do? He waited.
How much time had passed? Just as Lee Han was starting to regret asking the question, Professor Vladie finally spoke.
“I can explain now.”
“Yes?”
“It’s so obvious that I was struggling with how to explain it.”
Lee Han was shocked.
He had been thinking about that all this time...?
‘No. Don’t panic.
Considering he’s a professor, this isn’t that strange.’
“Listen. I can kill you with just this quill here.”
“......”
This was definitely something to panic about.
Lee Han immediately reached for his wand.
Professor Vladie, seeing Lee Han’s quick reaction and balanced stance, spoke again.
“I’ll retract that. A quill might be too difficult.”
That wasn’t much comfort.
While Lee Han was debating whether to run or call for help, Professor Vladie continued.
“As you can tell from what I just said, what’s important in magic combat isn’t high-circle grand magic. The minimal magic needed to cut off your opponent’s breath is enough.”
After finishing, Professor Vladie looked like he regretted explaining in such unnecessary detail.
“Do you understand now?”
“... No. Could you explain a bit more?”
“!?”
The startled Professor Vladie froze again like a statue.
Lee Han realized he might have made a mistake, but it was too late.
‘Now that it’s come to this, I’ll definitely get an answer.’
After a while, Professor Vladie spoke again.
“The training of spinning the spirit stone orb is practice for controlling projectile-type magic. As you might have guessed, even the same <Magic Missile> spell can vary drastically depending on who casts it.”
‘I had no idea, actually.’
“A mage unfamiliar with combat won’t be able to cast spells properly when a battle breaks out. They’ll be overwhelmed by the noise, heat, and killing intent on the battlefield. But a mage who has internalized magic control through repeated training can do this.”
Professor Vladie cast a spell without using a wand or incantation.
Magic Missile.
Despite its grand name, it was a 1st-circle spell.
The principle was simple.
Gather mana into a sphere and shoot it out.
A fist-sized lump of mana would then fly out.
Being a 1st-circle spell, its power wasn’t particularly impressive.
Among mercenaries, the debate of “Is a hard-thrown rock stronger, or is Magic Missile stronger?” was a common topic.
...
But Professor Vladie’s Magic Missile shattered such prejudices in an instant.
The spacious lecture hall transformed into a galaxy-like scene.
Dozens, no, hundreds of mana lumps filled the space.
Professor Vladie swung his hand, and all the mana lumps flew in one direction in an instant.
Some flew straight, some curved.
Some moved regularly, some irregularly.
Some fast, some slow.
And all these movements converged on one target.
The enemy’s vital points.
Bang!
With a loud noise, the mana lumps collided and disappeared.
Lee Han felt as if he had seen an illusion of a nonexistent person being struck precisely in all their vital points and collapsing.
That’s how precise Professor Vladie’s magic was.
Lee Han realized anew that reaching the pinnacle of precision could be beautiful.
“The goal of this training is to freely control projectile magic like this. Do you understand now?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Seeing Lee Han’s comprehension, Professor Vladie nodded with a faint look of relief.
If Lee Han still didn’t understand, he would have been at a loss for how to explain further.
‘I see.
So the professor wasn’t just collecting a paycheck for nothing.’
Lee Han felt a bit sorry for misunderstanding Professor Vladie.
He had thought the professor was just holding a strange lecture to collect his salary.
But upon closer listening, this training made a lot of sense.
Magic wasn’t something you could master just by knowing how to cast it.
Just as knowing how to swing a sword doesn’t mean you’ve mastered swordsmanship, mastering a single spell is no small feat.
Can you cast it faster? Can you cast it accurately even in chaotic and urgent situations? And so on.
Professor Vladie valued such things.
And this projectile magic control training was important for Lee Han too.
He had a pressing problem at hand.
“Professor. May I ask one more thing?”
“Go ahead.”
“I recently learned the <Low-Level Control> spell.”
“Continue.”
Professor Vladie didn’t ask where Lee Han had learned it.
That wasn’t his concern.
“But when I cast it... it activates, but it doesn’t stabilize afterward.”
Professor Vladie’s eyebrows rose.
It wasn’t that the control was poor, but that it didn’t stabilize at all.
This was a very unusual case.
Usually, novice mages either couldn’t move the object or couldn’t control it, but they didn’t have trouble stabilizing it.
Unless they had an enormous amount of mana...
“Wait. It seems you have more mana than I thought.”
“Ah, yes. I’ve been told that.”
Lee Han was delighted that Professor Vladie had figured it out so quickly.
If he could understand it that fast, there was a good chance he’d offer a helpful solution.
What method would he teach?
“Mana Drain!”
“?!”
Professor Vladie grabbed Lee Han’s arm and cast a high-circle spell.
It was a powerful and sinister spell that literally drained the target’s mana.
“Wai—”
Lee Han could feel his mana being rapidly drained.
‘At least explain before doing this, you crazy professor!’
But it was too late to stop.
The professor’s spell was already draining Lee Han’s mana.
“...?”
Lee Han noticed something strange and looked at Professor Vladie’s face.
As a vampire, his complexion wasn’t great to begin with, but now it looked even worse.
“Professor?”
“......”
“Professor?? Are you okay?!”
Thud!
Professor Vladie slowly let go and collapsed to the side.
Lee Han was shocked.
He had knocked out the professor.
Of course, he had imagined it many times, but he never thought he’d actually do it!
Fortunately, Professor Vladie soon regained consciousness.
The vampire professor quickly summarized the situation as soon as he woke up.
“You have more mana than I thought.”
“... Is that so?”
Strangely, Lee Han, who had his mana drained, was in much better condition than the professor who had absorbed it.
In fact, Lee Han didn’t feel particularly tired at all, despite having his mana drained.
“Yes.”
Professor Vladie nodded.
If it had been any other professor, they would have explained how absurd this situation was.
If an inexperienced person had more mana than their body could handle, they might collapse from losing control.
But for a mage of Professor Vladie’s caliber, it was a different story.
How much mana would someone like Professor Vladie have to absorb to lose control and collapse?
But Professor Vladie didn’t say anything.
He didn’t think it was important.
What was important now was something else.
“I tried to use the Mana Drain spell to reduce your mana and make control easier. But it failed.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
Lee Han understood what the professor meant.
Since having too much mana made it difficult to control projectiles precisely, the idea was to drastically reduce the mana.
...
Of course, it had failed.
“There’s another way.”
“What is it?”
“When casting the <Low-Level Control> spell, have you ever had the projectile go out of control and fly toward you?”
Lee Han thought for a moment.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Then that’s your instinct. Even if it seems like you’ve lost control, as long as the spell is active and the mage’s will is connected to the projectile, control is still happening.”
Lee Han nodded at the plausible explanation.
If the spell had truly been cut off, the projectile would have just fallen to the ground like a rock.
The connection was still there.
‘Wait.
Does that mean when I shot rocks at those guys’ heads, it was instinct?’
He couldn’t tell if it was coincidence or instinct.
Lee Han decided not to dwell on it.
Sometimes, some truths were better left buried.
“Instinct is powerful. If you harness that instinct, you might be able to take your projectile control to the next level.”
“I see...”
“Are you ready?”
“Huh?”
“Here we go. I’ll aim for your chin, so defend it at all costs.”
Lee Han was momentarily confused.
But the spirit stone orbs floating in the air explained it for him.
The orbs, trembling as if ready, began flying toward Lee Han’s chin like arrows.
In that moment, Lee Han felt his instincts scream sharply.
His body moved before his mind could react.
“Move!!!!!”
There was some good news, though.
Lee Han had gotten much better at handling the <Low-Level Control> spell.
The bad news was that Professor Vladie was much crazier than Lee Han had thought.
‘I was an idiot for trusting a professor at this school.’
He vowed never to trust them again!