Asterion raised an eyebrow at that remark.

  Honestly, whether he got expelled or not didn’t matter to him in the slightest. What were they going to do, kick him out of a school he didn’t even go to? Oh no, the horror.

  The real problem was...

  Drag me to the Dean’s office?

  Going to the Dean’s office meant crossing paths with the Academy Dean. And the Dean would likely be even more skilled, or at least more perceptive, than the one standing in front of him.

  If Asterion’s true identity was discovered, things would get incredibly annoying, incredibly fast.

  The entire continent would be in an uproar over him coming back from the dead, and if that happened, he could kiss his peaceful slumber goodbye; he might just end up spending the rest of his life laboring away in a research lab!

  Even before he went to sleep, endless hordes of mages used to cling to him, begging him to teach them just one thing, anything at all.

  “Master Asterion, please review my thesis!”

  “Master Asterion, how do you invert a gravity matrix?”

  And how could Asterion, soft-hearted as he was, possibly turn away all those earnest pleas?

  He took a moment to pity himself before returning his mind to cold calculation.

  But if he just ran away right now... an investigation team would be dispatched to look into who exactly breached the academy’s fortified wards, which was its own kind of headache.

  Ultimately, the most efficient way to end this was to just show them a standard [Fireball] and get it over with.

  “Now, stand here, Ivan,” Professor Eckert said, pointing a stiff finger at the center of the elevated dais.

  Asterion trudged up onto the dais. Glancing sideways, his eyes landed on a polished mahogany nameplate resting on the professor’s desk, intricately engraved with gold magical runes.

  [Department One Head Professor: Sylvaine von Eckert]

  Eckert?

  Asterion briefly rummaged through his dusty memories. A hundred years ago, there might have been an apprentice mage with that last name who copied down a few pages from Asterion’s basic grimoire.

  Is he one of his relatives? Wow, that family really moved up in the world. To think an Eckert became a head professor in magic.

  Asterion skimmed the eight-step formula written across the entire chalkboard and clicked his tongue internally.

  ...What is this? If you’re going to plagiarize my grimoire, you should have done it right, Eckert!

  Furthermore, shooting a target with a [Fireball]? If Asterion were teaching, he would never conduct a class this way.

  This was exactly why he had avoided interacting with other “professional” mages in the past.

  Because the frustration of watching them overcomplicate simple things felt like it was going to physically kill him.

  “You do remember the eight steps, don’t you, Ivan?” Professor Eckert asked.

  At those words, Asterion slowly opened his mouth. He looked the man dead in the eye.

  “Professor Eckert.”

  “...Speak,” Professor Eckert replied, clearly suppressing his boiling anger.

  However, Asterion’s next line was more than enough to completely blow the final fuse of the professor’s patience.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I can’t do the eight steps.”

  “What?” Professor Eckert whispered, blinking behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “I can’t do the eight steps,” Asterion repeated slowly, as if explaining something to a toddler. “Because I only know until step two.”

  Professor Eckert’s thought process temporarily crashed.

  He had just threatened Lenia with expulsion for trying to reduce the eight steps down to four, but two steps? This went far beyond mere ignorance of modern magic.

  “Two? Are you concussed?”

  At this point, the student standing before him didn’t even seem sane.

  Had his internal mana circuits in his brain gotten tangled and fried from a botched practice session?

  A brief flash of genuine, educator’s concern crossed Professor Eckert’s eyes behind his glasses.

  But as soon as he saw the boy standing there completely fine, looking utterly bored and shameless, his judgment immediately swerved back to “rebellion.”

  A thick vein throbbed like a trapped earthworm on Professor Eckert’s forehead.

  “It seems Lenia’s arrogance is contagious. Have you even read the Introduction to Basic Arcanology before coming to this lecture hall!”

  Asterion fought a valiant internal battle to swallow a yawn and replied as sincerely as he possibly could.

  “Nope.”

  “You haven’t? You haven’t?!”

  Professor Eckert spat the words out like a shriek.

  Completely unaware that Asterion was wondering if the professor was going to collapse from a sudden spike in blood pressure, Professor Eckert continued his tirade.

  “Y-You vulgar little...! You haven’t even read the basic arcanology primer that even apprentice mages have mastered?! How did you pass the entrance exam? Did your family pull strings to buy your way in? It seems the proud legacy of Aeterna Academy is finally starting fall low!”

  Shaking his head, Professor Eckert let out a long sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of his soul.

  “You, an uneducated layman who hasn’t even read a single page of theory, dare to butcher the sacred eight-step procedure established through the blood and sweat of the Hero himself? This is an insult to the art of magic, an insult to the Aeterna Academy!”

  Professor Eckert pointed a trembling finger at Asterion. His face had already turned a shade of purple.

  “Let’s see what kind of consequences your ignorance of the basics will bring! If you fail to conjure even a single spark of a [Fireball], know that this won’t end with mere expulsion today! I will report you to the Imperial Mage Association and have your mana permanently sealed!”

  Panting heavily, Professor Eckert took a step back, folding his arms in a gesture of finality.

  Mana sealing? Asterion thought, holding back a snort of laughter.

  This guy couldn’t pull anything even close to that, but the man certainly had a long tongue and a flair for the dramatic.

  “Go ahead, try it. And know that if you collapse from mana reflux, you have no one but yourself to blame!”

  While Asterion remained completely unbothered, Lenia rushed forward, her face pale.

  “I-Ivan! Are you okay? You... you didn’t have to do that... This is all my fault….”

  Lenia grabbed Asterion’s sleeve, whispering desperately.

  Her large eyes were already brimming with tears. She clearly believed that “Ivan” was intentionally taking the fall to defend her, a failing student, from the professor’s wrath.

  Oh right. I completely forgot she was here, too, Asterions realized, looking down at her.

  He hadn’t been defending her. He had simply told the truth.

  He had never read whatever Introduction to Basic Arcanology was.

  He genuinely didn’t know how to cast an eight-step formula.

  That was the unvarnished truth regarding the Archmage’s magical prowess.

  “Lenia.”

  “Huh? Yes, Ivan. Tell me. If there’s anything I can do to help...”

  “You’re stretching my clothes, so let go for a second. And it’s dangerous to be standing this close. Step back.”

  Asterion gently brushed Lenia’s hand away, took a step back himself, and looked at the target dummy positioned a few feet away from him in front of the room.

  The stares boring into the back of his head were intense.

  The students probably wore a wide variety of expressions. Some would be nervously glancing at the professor; some would look genuinely terrified; while others would look excited, clearly anticipating when they could spread this juicy gossip to their friends.

  But the most intense of all, of course, belonged to Professor Eckert, whose eyes held a murderous gleam.

  “Hah. It seems you actually intend to try and make a fool of yourself,” Professor Eckert scoffed, adjusting his glasses. “Throughout all of history, no mage has ever managed to cast a spell in a mere two steps.”

  Was that really how the story was known now? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time the truth had been lost to history, would it?

  Asterion turned his attention forward and closed his eyes.

  There were no preparatory movements. No controlled breathing.

  He simply stood there and imagined it. The image of a blue flame shooting straight forward.

  Just from that alone, the dormant ocean of mana inside his body woke up. It wagged its tail like a dog spotting a fresh piece of meat. Without needing to be coaxed, the raw ether rushed through his veins, bursting from his skin to effortlessly form a mana cube hovering just an inch above his open palm.

  He had to actually struggle to keep the mana from overflowing because of the Overcharge.

  The moment he issued the wordless mental command regarding the exact location he wanted the [Fireball] to fly toward, the mana obeyed.

  A [Fireball] of blinding blue flame bloomed in thin air.

  It drew the most efficient trajectory possible, and slammed into the dead center of the training dummy.

  With a hiss, the blue fire burned a smooth hole through the fire-proof metal, leaving the edges dripping with glowing orange slag.