NOVEL NEXT Chapter 51
<51 - Nature-Friendly Professor>
The professors at the Gift Academy are quite the oddballs.
This is an academy protected by a principal who seriously dreams of world domination with a hint of possibility.
In certain countries or organizations, students wouldn’t dare dream of receiving exciting support or conducting forbidden experiments, but this is a paradise where those dreams can come true.
Many professors coveted that support and those experiments, but Professor Weird of the Magic Department, who teaches the third period class on Fundamentals and Understanding of Mana Usage on Mondays, had slightly different aspirations.
Her goal was to spread the excellence of Dryads, the tree fairies, to a wider world!
The Gift Academy was the world’s number one academy where she could unfold her ideals to the fullest.
‘Hehe. It was a great decision to become a professor at the Gift Academy after all.’
From her first lecture in the first year, her classroom was packed.
It was filled with students eager to learn the greatness of nature magic.
“Wow, look at the professor’s outfit.”
“For heaven’s sake, how can she walk around dressed like that?”
“I’ve decided! I’m going to become a druid starting today.”
Professor Weird wrapped herself in vines and leaves instead of clothes.
It wasn’t because she had a condition where she needed to show skin, but rather because she belonged to the Dryad race, born from nature.
Fairies generally have no hesitation in showing off their natural bodies.
Entranced by that beauty, there were many students, regardless of gender, who sat mesmerized in the classroom, but among them, one commendable student showed enthusiasm in a different direction.
“Of course, it’s only natural for a Forest Keeper to attend a Dryad’s lecture!”
A rare intellectual among the students who registered just based on appearances.
The bold apprentice Forest Keeper, Dorothy.
She listened intently from the front row, her eyes sparkling like Oknodie, but the Oknodie sitting next to her didn’t think so.
“Just because I’m short and can’t see the front, she tells me to sit in the front row. It’s not like I can slack off now.”
Thanks to being the tallest in the class, she had always chosen the back row in the game, being 230 cm tall, unlike her current reality of sitting at the front at 133 cm, which felt humiliating.
Each time the lecture was boring, she used to enjoy watching the shocked reactions of the students in front as she shot them deadly glares!
“Mana is a puzzle. Even if you don’t memorize or perceive the whole puzzle, just knowing a small piece can help you realize that this is mana.”
“For an ordinary magician, finding that piece is incredibly difficult, but for natural magic users, it’s different. They can find a natural mana puzzle piece much easier and at a much higher rate than other magicians.”
“It means their speed in finding the puzzle is significantly faster than other magicians.”
A student raised their hand.
It was a proud student from Group B, with an expression like he had “I’m superior” written on his face.
“I am Rosgini, an apprentice magician from the Red Mage Tower. May I ask a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“What you said refers to the characteristics of attribute mana, right? Surely, even fire and ice mages can find their respective fire and ice mana puzzles.”
That filthy fire guy.
Professor Weird felt a little annoyed by the words of a first-year student with an attribute opposite to nature.
“What do you mean ‘a little’? To what extent? It might mimic nature somewhat, but other attributes have their limits. It’s simply not a common attribute found in nature.”
Professor Weird spoke emphatically.
“Have you thought about why you can survive? The ground you stand on is also derived from nature. The food you eat daily benefits from nature.”
“This means we should always be thankful to nature?”
Dorothy said with a bright smile.
Professor Weird replied with a sinister grin.
“Yes. Always be thankful. The reason you can spend your daily lives like this is thanks to the ground not splitting and swallowing all the beings on earth.”
“…….”
“Nature could always gobble up every living thing on this earth, but it shows mercy.”
What is this professor? Scary.
“The power of natural magic lies in its versatility, and today we’ll confirm that right here in this classroom.”
“The basic overview ends here. From now on, we’ll practice feeling the natural mana puzzle pieces. Please put on the monocles I handed out.”
Despite displaying a bizarre praise for nature, Professor Weird was generous in preparing tools to help the students keep up with the lesson.
While people might be dangerous, the difficulty of the lecture was relatively easy.
“Now, you need to find the natural mana puzzle pieces from ten different objects in this classroom. The first student to find all ten will…”
“Will we earn points?”
“Will we get extra credit?”
“I’ll give you the chance to become a teaching assistant, helping with my lectures.”
However, there was a downside to her casually throwing students into an evil trap.
Unaware of how tough being a teaching assistant would be amid their busy schedules, the students, excited about the possibility of extra credit, donned their monocles and started searching around.
Dorothy, feeling motivated as she looked around, noticed an unusually unresponsive student.
“Oknodie. What’s wrong? We have to search hard to become teaching assistants!”
“Let those who want to do it, do it.”
While the students from Group A and Group B were competing with each other in friendly rivalry, Oknodie, the top talent from Group A, clicked her tongue like a wise sage.
“Dorothy. We have to choose two common required courses from all departments, three departmental courses, and two electives. That’s seven classes in one semester.”
“And?”
“The lecture time is two hours, with seven classes. Normally, with classes only twice a week, that means we only have 28 hours of lectures, right?”
“Yeah. I’m so happy, I can learn a little and become a lot smarter!”
“Do you think the professors don’t know that?”
“Hmm?”
“There’s 168 hours in a week, but if you only spend 28 hours on lectures, that leaves 140 hours, right? So, they can throw as many assignments as 20 hours as they like.”
“Eh??”
“Do you get it? Professors are time murderers. If you become a teaching assistant, you won’t even have enough time to do your assignments.”
Dorothy muttered with a shocked look on her face, “Then when do we sleep?” but the main culprit, Oknodie, who spread the harsh truth of academy life, turned away with an indifferent expression.
‘It’s nothing hard for a veteran player.’
With absolutely no desire to become a teaching assistant, Oknodie casually pressed the button on her monocle, delaying her interaction.
Slither, slither.
Seeing the vines growing along the walls sealing the classroom door was proof that this person was just as much a personification of disaster as Professor Bronze.
A prisoner play that seals off the classroom until the lecture is over without the students noticing!
‘Why are they having such a hard time finding just ten?’
Unlike in the game, she worried about not being able to feel mana, but it turned out she could use wand magic just fine.
Even when practicing with Jonnas, it was the same; receiving the Mana Detection Assist effect from the monocle made her feel invincible.
‘Everything is visible.’
The wood of the wooden desk.
The dirt floor of the classroom.
A portable mirror ball toy brought by some dummy.
A squirrel thief sneaking under the desk to pick students’ pockets.
A beetle stuck to a girl’s pants, mistaking her scent for tree sap, etc.
Targets possessed by the natural mana puzzle pieces were scattered everywhere.
‘Can’t someone just find all ten and finish this?’
She was bored and had already found over 50 puzzle pieces just by looking around.
“Hehe. I’ve already found seven!”
The apprentice Forest Keeper, Dorothy, was over the moon, excitedly clicking the buttons on her monocle while collecting puzzle pieces, while another student began to stand out in Group B.
“Is it really that hard? It’s all visible to everyone. Are they pretending not to see them?”
“…….”
“I want to hit that guy.”
“Hold on! We’re both in Group B, remember?”
“Magicians are inherently annoying.”
It was Sandkooker, an apprentice magician from the Yellow Mage Tower, gifted with the skills of a geomancer.
Already starting shenanigans while planning to grow under Professor Weird’s guidance in the original work.
“Professor! I found ten!”
“Excellent, Sandkooker from the first year. I grant you the position of teaching assistant to help me in future lectures.”
“It’s an honor to be able to assist you, Professor.”
“Ah, I found them all too!”
Dorothy, who found hers just a moment later, stamped her feet in frustration.
Professor Weird’s eyes sparkled.
“There seem to be many talented students this year in natural magic.”
“Professor, wasn’t the teaching assistant position only one for first place?”
Sandkooker glared suspiciously at Dorothy.
Professor Weird nodded.
“The teaching assistant position is a glorious one, a privilege given only to the most outstanding talents.”
“Of course!”
“Once today’s lecture ends, I’ll have you take all 100 monocles, put them in the case, and carry them back to my research lab.”
“…Isn’t it more joyful to share the honor of becoming a teaching assistant with a friend rather than just enjoying it myself? Please consider appointing her as a teaching assistant too!”
“Cooperation and mutual growth. That’s not a bad way of thinking, naturally. If Sandkooker insists, I’ll accept Dorothy as a teaching assistant as well.”
“P-Professor? I-I don’t need to be…”
Crack.
Following the professor’s hand gesture, the podium collapsed.
“What did you just say?”
“…I really wanted to do it! Truly, really!”
“I’m very pleased to see that students are so motivated. Then I’m counting on you after the lecture ends.”
Poor Dorothy.
Even though she gave hints, she worked too hard.
Oknodie turned a cold shoulder to Dorothy’s desperate gaze for help.
*
After the lecture ended.
Professor Weird, reviewing the visual data from the monocles linked to the magic clock, detected something strange in the students’ achievement records.
“What is this student?”
Though she hadn’t told the students, the monocle has an ‘auto-capture’ feature.
She communicated that students had to press a button to recognize their findings during class, but in reality, simply seeing it triggers automatic capture.
This was a safeguard to identify those who unconsciously sensed mana without realizing it was the mana puzzle piece, a raw talent.
However, absurd records had appeared on this safeguard.
[Discovered natural mana puzzle pieces: 122 pieces]
[Time to find 10 pieces: 7 seconds]
[Recorded natural mana puzzle pieces: 10 pieces]
[Time for 10 pieces captured: 30 minutes]
30 minutes for 10 pieces.
In a talent-rich environment like the Gift Academy, that wasn’t a bad level of skill.
However, in terms of potential, it was far beyond the records of the chosen apprentice geomancer Sandkooker or the apprentice forest keeper Dorothy.
“What on earth was this student doing?”
Could they be a secretly nurtured apprentice of the yellow mage tower’s owner?
Or perhaps a wild girl raised directly by the lord of the forest?
Professor Weird couldn’t resist her curiosity and opened Oknodie’s academy life record.
[Noteworthy Points]
– Has a hobby of collecting stones.
– There have been reports of occasionally eating stones from her guardian, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
“…Eating stones? Is she a Stone Golem?”
Does feeding kids stones enhance their nature affinity?
Curiosity sparked in Professor Weird’s eyes.
“I need to experiment with the fourth-year students.”