Magus Academy

The only reason why the Magus Academy didn't disappear from the map on the first day was due to the amount of effort put into reinforcing the infrastructure and the barrier that was isolating everyone from the outside world.

It might not be an exaggeration that whatever the thing that was used to maintain the barrier to possess more worth than the Nether Country's budget.

To one's surprise, it could even survive ten consecutive meteors and a couple of city destruction scenarios.

"The interior is surprisingly decorated too," muttered Lothair in the cafeteria as he gazed at the glass-art windows on the ceiling, while multiple elemental projectiles were thrown back and forth in the background. "What a peaceful place."

There were occasional lectures there and there but the majority of the activity within the Magus Academy was destruction, and learning how to control destruction, along with doing more destruction.

At one point, it was obvious to Lothair that this Magus Academy was only a training camp in disguise to bolster strong spellcasters for the army of the Overlord.

The amount of wild projectiles that Lothair received everyday topped up the amount of traumatizing memory he had when he was still a slave.

There were rules, but it was common sense that the rules were meant to be broken whenever possible, as long as nobody died. There were so many fatal flaws in this concept, but it was negligible as long as the government got what they wanted for.

Regardless of how chaotic Lothair's everyday life could be, he did his best to sponge every lecture and knowledge that were given by the Magus Academy. Especially their vast array of library content, which was one of the reasons why Lothair aimed to join aside from having no goal whatsoever.

Of course, he didn't get access to it right away.

"Why have a library so big when there are only a few people allowed to use it…"

He then tried to sneak in at one time, it was a total failure. The library was heavily guarded and it took a considerable amount of effort to escape from the officers.

It then came to the academy's attention that Lothair's huge amount of Ayin reservoir could be proven useful. The only problem was 'how' to prove it useful.

Despite showing above average soul conductivity on the entrance test, Lothair did horribly in spellcasting proficiencies.

Elements, Illusion, Creation, Manipulation… All kinds of categories that were presented within the Magus Academy, Lothair had unsatisfying results with all of them.

Considering that the Magus Academy wanted all of the potential they could grasp, lending highly potential students outside the genius and the privileged to access the grand library might be a rewarding thing.

So it came to the point where Lothair was given access to the grand library, in hope that he could fix his own problem on his own like some other special students before him. Albeit, they were allowed because of much more positive reasons than him.

"Your future still has some shrouding crimson clouds amidst the trouble you had when looking at the sky." Within the faculty room, the female professor handed over the license card for the library without batting an eye at Lothair. She possessed a tall figure, but not energetic enough to prevent her lazily slouching on the desk. "Must you break the law of nature and become a devil to your own conscience, we still expect the best possible outcome from you, Lothair."

Her short and wavy lavender hair brushed upon the documents she used as a cushion on the table.

"Thank you for your approval, Professor Majoreta!" Despite his ever manic eyes, Lothair's wide smile of joy looked genuine amidst the emptiness in his soul.

Seeing Lothair's enthusiasm in spite of his well known problem with spellcasting proficiencies, the professor finally faced him as she put a little snicker on her face when she turned to him.

"Always remember, Student Lothair." The professor gave him a middle-index two fingers gesture. "'Kill and recycle'. If there is something standing in your way of conquest, kill it! Then recycle them as you see fit. That's the demon way of taking care of the environment, both in our surroundings and in our mind."

"'Kill and recycle', yes! I will always remember it!"

He gave a bow before leaving the room with a creepy smile.

"Someone you know, Majoreta?" The other faculty member approached the lethargic demon. "It's been a while since you saw someone straight into their eyes."

"Nah, it's just that." She leered at the document presented in spread on top of her desk, with all of the bottom parts being anchored beneath her slouching chin. "I've found a terrifying individual amongst the students."

"Woooah! Someone that terrifies the Witch of Death? Who is this lucky fella?"

"Check the latest report, if you're too lazy to do that." Majoreta chuckled as she grinned. "Just wait a year to come."

"A year? What for?"

"For his name to spread across the nether country."

"... You know that your statement can be recorded as a prophecy by the Chaos Embassy, right?" The jolly horned demon lost his grin almost immediately.

At the same time, many of the personnel in the faculty room began to drift their eyes towards Majoreta and her conversation. They all possessed serious expression, but despite the tension, they were all just curious.

Majoreta knew that she needed to satisfy their curiosity before she could leave this room.

She then sighed, before proposing a question. Still with her eyes on the desk.

"Have all of you ever smiled genuinely in front of an Overlord?"

""... Genuine?""

"Like this?" One of the swarming professors put on a wide smile facing Majoreta.

"Nope." Majoreta raised her left index and middle fingers as she grinned. "You smiled for a mere collective amusement, such a pretentious thing doesn't really come close to what I call a 'genuine smile'!

"Also, your breath stinks."

"Dear Majoreta, your tongue stung too deep sometimes." The professor who prompted the smile frowned with broken heart.

Majoreta chuckled. "What I mean by 'genuine', I mean it in the most literal way."

"Genuine, huh."

"Are you referring to an outsider of this continent? I couldn't imagine a demon doing anything genuinely."

"Hey you, the one with a swirly mustache and one horn, have you ever done anything without anything underlying your action?"

"I'm afraid not, sir."

"Tell me your most genuine thoughts right now!"

"I want to watch each of your writhing cries as I sit and feast upon my lunch that I made this morning," said the janitor with no change in tone. "Of course, I didn't really mean that in the truest manner."

"... You hide more gruesome things than me, old man."

"See? Even a janitor gets it."

"Of course, that's so obvious."

"After all, being 'genuine' is the last thing a demon would do."

The laughter echoed in the faculty room, with the topic of 'genuine' becoming a chain of amusement propagated by the faculty members.

And the unseeming prophecy told by Majoreta ended up passed off as a joke.

"Well, not like a thing will change anyway." Majoreta continued to probe her documents with her eyes half asleep.

Since that day, Lothair began to do an all nighter on the library after every lecture and brawling session. Books of many topics in spellcasting were ravished of their knowledge. At some point, Lothair even ditched his own class and used his whole day to cram himself inside the endless-looking library.

They all knew that the contents of the library that were moved to the Magus Academy were unfiltered. Of course, the administration of the academy had prepared many contingencies for all kinds of scary consequences. From the summoning of the Outer Gods to the mass teleportation of the entire continent, there were more 'undo' buttons than the amount of janitors, ready to be pressed when such a grand-scale thing happened.

The academy staff were also blunt about this to the students at the entrance ceremony. Sometimes, Lothair felt like there was still an underlying purpose behind this place. He had many hypotheses about this place being a top-secret weapon storage or a last-stand bunker for the Overlord, but Lothair couldn't really get his mind to dig deeper.

Despite all of that preparation, the academy had a terrifyingly crucial blindspot within their library content.

"What a strange looking book, ha ha ha."

The worst possible scenario, made by the worst possible interaction, and in the worst possible timing.

It was a peculiar book with a blank white cover on the back and the front. Normally, Lothair would leave such an odd looking book in its place. After all, he couldn't waste more time on such a thing where he needed to catch up with the student of his year.

Though, despite having learned and understood the material that was far above his current spellcasting qualification, he couldn't really use them if he didn't have enough proficiency to put it into practice. Especially since his affinities with all of the spell types were downright horrendous.

"Well, I guess I have read pretty much every high tier spell book for the last few months." He smilingly tilted his head, still amused by how incompetent he was after all of that effort. "It won't hurt to consume other stuff too, right?"

As Lothair heaved the strange book out of the lines of its kind, he pressed his thumb on the edge of the cover before unveiling the first page.

The moment his eyes met with what was in front of him, a strange sensation of discovery was bestowed onto his mind.

At the surface of the paper, lies the illustration of a barely menacing-looking boy donning a long scarf veiling a set of foreign light armor as he lifts up a half-broken sword in the air. Above him was a row of unknown symbols from an unknown language. Along with the barely drawn background, all of these were only composed of black and white with a variant shade of gray.

"A picture book? Wait, that's not quite it."

As Lothair flipped the rest of the pages, he was met with structurally unique pictures and bubbles with the same unknown symbols inside them, sometimes being kept inside or unconfined by variants of panels.

The way the illustration was organized, and the way that he was able to feel the emotion behind the expression of those characters, Lothair had never been as this piqued before.

"Hmm, maybe there is a record about this language somewhere.."

Not wanting to spoil himself, he stopped from flipping the pages any further. Instead, Lothair began his intensive research about this unknown language in order to be capable of comprehending the story behind the 'blank book'.

"'Yamato'? There isn't really anything that says what the language is called. Now that I look into it, this is quite an old language. Maybe even older than this continent."

From a mere pique of interest, became a severely heated obsession.

Learning this new language was by no means easy. Because there wasn't a good and consistent single book of material to learn, the path of learning began to branch in a contorted manner.

Days become weeks, and weeks become months. While he barely touched any reading material for spellcasting, his improvement curve didn't really change that much. Especially since he had memorized the majority of theories for all kinds of spells.

"A language with 46 letters of two different kinds." He began to scratch his head in frustration, amidst the smile that was ready to take on the challenge. "The first kind is meant to spell the native words of the language origin, and the other is used for foreign sounds. It's simple, yet so annoying…

"And then there are more than four thousand special symbols, with not less than fifty of them that I need to learn in order to read that 'blank book' proficiently…"

Not only that there are massive disparities in grammar and phonetics with the demonic tongue, this Yamato language has its own fair share of confusion when it comes to crafting words and sentences.

And with no clear reference nor teacher to untie the dreadlock, it was deemed almost impossible to be learned.

Then again, it didn't matter much to Lothair and his obsession with the 'blank book'.

His limp neck couldn't support his head any longer as his face fell onto the library table. The thud was deafened by the thick tome which he planted his face to.

"MmmMmghmmgh…"

This incomprehensible mumbling went on for an hour, before he continued his selfish research once more with a new vigor.

"Alright, I might be able to finally read it in a week!"

He felt a lurking gaze in the background.

He ignored it for the time being.

But after a while, it became persistently unbearable. Sheepishly pissed off, he slowly turned around to the source of the disturbance.

"You can come out now, lest I drop a meteor above your head," Lothair threatened, donning his unhinged stare.

"Ayaya, I thought I'm already stealthy enough with my presence." A confident posture and a whimsical smile, it was a greatly-covered demon, clothed fully with the academy uniform and black gloves, leaving only the skin on his face being shown. He possessed an obsidian gray skin, veiled by neck-length, curly golden-stripped silver hair and a pair of curly horns like that of a sheep. His pair of blue eyes gazed, unseemingly soothing within sight. "Ten points for observation, minus five points for intimidation! After all, it's quite well known that the Nerd-Wick Lothair can barely cast anything."

His voice was crystal clear with no layers of intent, but the best facade had always been those undetected.

As Lothair kept his eyes on his unsuspecting guest, the demon took his time fiddling with his knife in one hand. After all, he was already found out, there seemed to be little reason to keep it concealed.

After confirming that there won't be any immediate tricks up to that stranger's sleeves, Lothair finally began to articulate his sentence.

"Nerd-Wick, huh. That's one hell of a nickname they gave me." Lothair snickered. "What am I? A candle?"

"I didn't find it fitting either." The demon playfully giggled, admiring the fresh blood on his knife. "If I were to name you, it would be the 'Unknown Messiah'!"

Dismissing the stranger's illusive remark, Lothair put on his usual plain smile. "It feels weird hearing my name being well known in this academy. What about yours? It seems unfair if I don't know this guest of mine along with his intentions to stalk a plain nobody like me."

"No, no, no!" The demon clicked his tongue as he waved his index left and right. "Many refer to it as 'stalking', but to me, it's keeping distance, just extremely close behind~!" He slipped his knife onto an artificial gap on his right horn, before reaching out his hand, anticipating a handshake. "The name's Terma, and I'd like to give you an offer of a lifetime."