NOVEL NEXT Chapter 796
<796 - How to Prevent the Corruption of Professors (7)>
The Goblin Warrior gritted its teeth at the professors who had shamelessly escaped underground to avoid mana detection.
There were kin underground.
If anything was destroyed carelessly, both professors and kin would be buried alive together.
Artificial residence.
Fake life response.
Unless the professors were lured into a trap, it meant that an earthquake could not be triggered anywhere.
[Structural Analysis - Derivative Method]
[Mental Analysis]
The Goblin Warrior captured one professor to analyze their brain for trap design.
What do professors like?
What traps do they fall for with a moment’s lapse?
What reactions do they guard against and fear?
How can those reactions be concealed or used as tricks?
Various pieces of information were analyzed in the Goblin Warrior’s head.
One of the results was this place.
Ancient Magician’s Secret Research Lab Dungeon.
“Wow, look at this! There’s a dungeon!”
Titosso, unable to contain their joy upon discovering the dungeon underground, jumped up and hit their head on the ceiling.
Holding their head, Titosso desperately tried to hold back a scream, suffering silently, and Saintess Yufi reluctantly cast a restoration spell on them.
“Be careful. Judging by the low ceiling of the passage, this seems to be the dungeon of a goblin magician.”
“Dungeons for small races have cunning traps in places out of sight, so if you run around excitedly, you’ll end up activating a dozen traps and exploding gloriously!”
Guide Dorothy’s kind warning pulled Titosso’s long-buried inner weakness to the surface.
“Waaah, I’m so scared. I’m never going to lead. I’ll just be a light stand shuttle from the back…”
“So you’re willing to shuttle, huh? What a good child.”
“Hehe.”
Titosso, feeling good from Irene’s praise, stopped crying, and everyone gave a thumbs up to Irene from angles Titosso couldn’t see.
Even the usually expressionless Northern Grand Duchess Irene smiled slightly at Titosso’s shy demeanor.
It felt strangely similar to when dealing with Oknodie, which intrigued Irene herself.
‘Is it because Titosso has been best friends with Oknodie for a long time?’
If bestie Jiang heard that, he’d immediately frown and press his mask down with one hand while brandishing an assassination knife with the other – what a disgraceful thought it was.
But the disgraceful sounds were not just heard within Irene.
The sounds of carrying materials.
The bubbling of a boiling experimental pot.
The ground-shaking footsteps of a substitute teaching assistant golem to compensate for the lack of teaching assistants.
Thud… thud…
At the heavy footsteps echoing from the dungeon, the female students quickly activated both physical and magical concealment as if they had made an agreement.
Based on countless experiences, they recognized that the professors’ research lab, where the sound of a golem’s footsteps could be heard, was of poorer quality than the lab where their seniors’ moans could be heard.
Just like safety rules in an industrial site are written in blood, the Gift Academy’s safety rules were forged from the innocent sacrifices of curious and fearless children.
“Let’s hurry. It sounds like there’s a gigantic golem ahead!”
“Izabel, can you pull the dumb ear?”
“Waaah!”
With Titosso’s ears held, they made a whimpering sound and spun around like a glass jar trapped in Izabel’s hand.
“I can faintly hear voices.”
“Shh. Everyone be quiet.”
Jiang closed his eyes and listened closely.
A small, faint voice gradually became clearer, detectable even through the mounds of dirt from a wriggling zombie.
– We’ll cook our own meals, do our own laundry, do our own research. What the hell is this bastard mentor even doing?
– If we have to live like this, let’s poison the food.
– What are you going to do if we get stuck on an anti-poisoning spell and get boiled in the cauldron’s broth?
– Ugh, I really can’t handle this disgusting situation anymore.
– Hey Peter, stop talking nonsense and wash that ladle before disinfecting it, then stir the pot again.
– Why isn’t the door opening? That crazy mentor really blocked the exit completely.
The lively backtalk was hardly different from teaching assistants gossiping about professors.
“Well?”
The peers eager to hear the results of the reconnaissance.
Before their expectant, wide-eyed stares, Jiang firmly stated, “It’s a trap.”
“Of course.”
“I knew it.”
“There was no way ordinary people would make such noise in the midst of that chaos above.”
Having just sent out scouts for confirmation, the students nodded, already sensing the oddity.
Should we just go without a second thought? Ishtar desperately masked her expression.
“So what do we do?”
“Of course we should avoid it.”
The clever students didn’t fall for the goblin warrior’s traps laid to lure the professors.
If the professors were to hear this dialogue, they would realize they were wealthy enough to have disciples, that wild faction research was ongoing, and that the master had left.
They wouldn’t even entertain the thought of why voices from humans could be heard if they were using golems because they lacked human apprentices.
Because it’s a trap.
A trap hastily constructed based on erratic memories, so even if there’s a contradiction, it’s plausible.
“Still, thanks to being tormented by the professors, I’ve been able to resist temptations to step into the dungeon of a wild evil magician,” one said.
“Hmph. I feel strangely grown-up now.”
Rosgini and Dorothy dug in a direction far removed from the dungeon, feeling a sense of growth.
Had it not been for the butler and the invasion of alien predators, this situation would have ended warmly, but it was instead disrupted by the attack of powerful beings.
Rumble rumble rumble!
“Huh? What’s going on?! Did a professor just pass over our heads?”
“It’s an earthquake. A massive quake like no other!”
As the Goblin Warrior sensed an intruder and prepared to repel them, the sound and mana wave shook the world like the collision of Oknodie and the director.
Naturally, if the world was shaken, Gehenna’s soil would be a mess.
It was impossible to withstand the colossal weight of the earth falling from an individual’s magic during an earthquake.
“Get to the dungeon. Now!”
“Our mana is being drained! Hurry!”
Urged by Rosgini and Irene, the students had no choice but to dive into the dungeon with tears like someone forced into eating mustard.
“Ugh, I fell into a trap!”
“There’s no sound from the boiling cauldron, just the sound magic!”
The empty cauldron was eerie, but most chilling was the golem.
The golem pressed the buttons of a magical device with voice playback one by one from the top.
– Save me.
– I don’t want to work overtime anymore.
– I want to sell all the research data and take a break…
The voice data enticing the professors with seductive sounds was playing back, causing the students to tense up in unison.
There was no way they could coexist with a golem that set traps as crafty as the man-eating fiends or demons.
Sure enough, while they were distracted by the playback, the golem extricated a third arm from behind and operated the dungeon control panel, sealing off the entrance they all had come through.
“Kill the professors.”
“Kill the humans who slaughtered goblins.”
The golems’ eyes gleamed as they collectively turned towards Titosso, who had the mana levels equivalent to professors.
“Is it me again?!”
“It’s becoming a bit pitiful now…”
Just as the golems were about to unleash their attack on Titosso, suddenly, their angular hexagonal heads all turned towards another entrance.
“More mana.”
“Stronger professors.”
“Change of priorities.”
If you lined up the students with the most mana in the world, none would have more mana than Titosso, who would proudly hold his chin up, puffing his chest out.
But Oknodie, who ate everything and grew lots of mana, or Dark Empress Masugaki, who learned how to waste the nation’s wealth as her mana increased through her lineage, would be there too.
If it were these masters of dark mana, they could easily shove Titosso aside and make him bawl.
But there was no reason for the two to be here right now.
In the end, the only thing left was the professors.
The students’ suspicions were correct.
“Hmm? Is this a new trap by the Goblin Warrior?”
“It seems the students in another realm are visible. Based on the captive professor’s memories, the Goblin Warrior created a seductively talented student to lure the professors.”
“They seem to be stronger than they originally remembered, which really is enticing.”
“I’d want to take them as teaching assistants and roughly shove research assignments down their throats, even if they begged not to!”
“But if we leave them alive, they might suddenly start spouting humanity extermination spells, right?”
Embarking on a similar trap experience made the professors prepare to attack without hesitation.
The students, who had gone pale, deployed defensive spells, which the professors mocked as piercing magic bore through their defenses.
Boom!
When the thick smoke lifted, both professors and students were bewildered.
“Why are we unscathed?”
“Why didn’t it break through?”
The students who had suffered severely from the director’s variable assembly magic showed an overall increase in ability in dealing with transformed spells.
Having grown weary from their difficult lives in another realm, the professors lacked enough mana to exert their full power since any mana explosion could bury them alive alongside the students.
Due to these two reasons, an astonishing phenomenon occurred where the professors could not overpower the students and their attacks were blocked.
“Hm… so, you’re saying that the professor who gave me a C grade got weaker…?”
Awakening a long-held grudge in Ishtar’s eyes, the professors instantly sensed something was wrong.