How to Survive at the Academy
Chapter 246

TL: TangSanFan

ED/PR: Tanthus

***Bellbrook Subjugation Battle (14)***

Late at night, in the sparsely furnished research lab on Arken Island, Sylvania Robespierre opens a book.

The tome gathers records of the divine magic she spent her life researching, a work that would later be known as the ‘Sage’s Seal’, the subject of scholarly study. She had just finished writing this grimoire.

Soon, she would enclose herself in a temporal prison to witness the darkness-veiled future firsthand with her own eyes.

It would be a long fight against the darkness, but all she could do was encourage herself to endure it by any means necessary.

She had lived chasing the slim hope of summoning a being that could tear open the sealed possibilities of the future.

Out of sheer desperation, she spent her life studying divine magic, yearning to call out to a man living in solitude beyond the light of the distant stars.

She never got the chance to see the results of her efforts.

It was uncertain how or when the man would arrive in this world, or if his arrival would yield any meaningful outcome. Nothing was assured.

From where she now stood, she could only do what was in her power.

She knew only fragmentary information about the man from that distant world. In a world filled with towering buildings, surrounded by mechanical contraptions, he had always faced life-threatening crises.

He persevered through the deaths of countless comrades. Despite facing defeats and sinking into despair and sorrow, he had tried to live out the life given to him to the very end.

He was someone who sought to survive, despite any kind of despair and frustration.

So even if Sylvania couldn’t observe him now,

if one day he arrived in this world, surely he would remain until the end, opening new possibilities.

Therefore, she writes with her quill pen to the man who may appear someday.

She sends a tale filled with respect to that man, urging him to survive and stand tall at the end of this stage.

The preface to the Sage’s Seal.

She had slowly written these words at the start of her magnum opus, entrusting her life within them.

– ‘To you who have survived,’

Ed Rothtaylor rises from the debris, shouting a kihaps (spirit shout). To lift his bloodied body, he had to muster every ounce of his strength.

In the midst of desperation, his will burns fiercely. As a backdrop of spirits filling the skies, a tertiary extra, insignificant as both a hero and a main character, stands up.

– ‘The end of your long, treacherous journey may be quite different from what you envisioned.’

Ed Rothtaylor scrapes together every last bit of his mana to materialize the high-ranking wind spirit, Merilda, once more. Blood pours from his mouth, and a trickle of blood flows from his ear.

Even as his blurry eyes fixedly glare at Sylvania, the great wolf of the wind rises.

Sylvania, recognizing something familiar in its form, can’t help but swallow her breath.

– ‘Yet what remains unchanged is that you have bravely persevered through a grueling journey and survived proudly in the end.’

A flustered Sylvania stumbles in her actions. Ordinarily, she would have drawn upon her magic instantly, but the overwhelming sense of panic clouded her thoughts.

Ed Rothtaylor unleashes elemental magic. A mere basic wind blade strikes Sylvania’s right arm, and a stream of blood swirls in the air.

Sylvania clutches the wound on her arm, incredulous that she allowed such basic magic to hit her.

Even the wave of high-level magic covering the sky couldn’t wound her.

But merely looking at the steady-standing man… Sylvania could not still her trembling pupils.

Perhaps, the one standing in the midst of this reversed current of the future… was none other than that man, Ed Rothtaylor.

– ‘You, were you happy to have survived?’

Memories of writing that introduction in her research lab on the isle of her exile, occasionally gazing out at the starry sky through the window.

– ‘Or were you afraid of the pain and agony you had to endure to continue your life?’

Memories of nights when she fell asleep believing that one day, the man who could break through the sealed future would come.

– ‘Did you find a reason for life?’

– ‘Was it a life worth living?’

– ‘What did you gain and what did you lose?’

– ‘What did you succeed in and what did you fail at?’

– ‘How did the euphoria of happiness and the despair of defeat shape you?’

Letters sent to the distant future man with the firm belief that he would endure and arrive at the end.

The man survived.

He made it to the very end of the stage.

The journey was long, arduous, and difficult.

Yet, he never once accepted death.

– ‘Why do we cling so desperately to life, knowing that in the end, it all ends in futility?’

Taily, Aila, and Zix leave with Elvira from the Ophelius Mansion.

Priddy takes flight, watching the commotion where Glascan rages in the square, and runs off.

Supporting character Belle Mayar watches them go, hoping they stay safe and endure to the very end to put a stop to the catastrophe.

– ‘Within the preordained end of life, why do we futilely struggle to change its course?’

Sword Demon Clevius cleaves through a horde of beastkin, reaching the square. He indulges in the madness rising from the bloodlust, storming into the thick of it.

Tyke follows, clenching his fists and sprinting forward. The battle students also suppress beastkin Clevius hadn’t taken care of, charging towards the battlefield.

– ‘Why do we so uselessly flail in our struggle to survive?’

Lord Keheln leads a group of merchants and mercenaries into the fray. Cutting down the oncoming beastkin, they combine their mana and advance toward the square.

Upon encountering the Holy Maiden Clarice and her cathedral knight squadron from the opposite direction, they communicate with a mere nod before joining forces to rush to the square.

– ‘This book is a record of contemplation for those answers.’

Princess Phoenia and Princess Sella part ways.

Phoenia looks at Bellbrock, while Sella supports the Emperor.

One seeks to end the situation; the other to protect the Emperor’s well-being.

Their values are clearly different, but neither can be called the wrong answer outright.

Thus, people diverge.

Some are protagonists, while others are supporting characters.

Some march glamorously, spotlit on the stage; others strive to live their lives with all their might in the shadows, unnoticed by the lights.

Yet, they are certainly there, as everyone’s life tends to be.

Tanya Rothtaylor in the square, suppressing the beastkin to protect the students; Professor Krayd making way to defend them; Obel Forcius, tied at the altar of Replacement, clutching the last remnants of the seal; Trissiana Bloomriver, protecting a group of magic department students—they all look up at a sky filled with spirits and divine magic.

Before they know it, they no longer feel fear at the roar of Bellbrock.

They are resisting. Sheer will to survive fuels them.

– Bang!

Sylvania quickly reacts to Merilda’s wind magic.

Though momentarily caught off guard by an unexplainable confusion, she’s not lost enough to allow a secondary hit.

She then raises her staff, gathering more divine power, when Lucy descends from the spire, landing on the ground, and smites her with high lightning magic, ‘Heaven’s Punishment.’

– Huff, boom!

Before the effects of the lightning dissipate, the phantom ‘Blade of Darkness’ rises from the ground, aiming to penetrate Sylvania.

Yet Sylvania, with her beyond-human reflexes, generates a protective array, deflecting all the attacks.

Exhausted Yenika rises to her feet. Seemingly blind, her empty eyes look into the void, but her sense of mana flow remains sharp.

She’s already assessed Sylvania’s location.

As Sylvania tries to escape Ed’s spiritual range by taking to the skies, gathering divine power for a leap through space, Lucy suppresses her attempt with raw magical force.

“Where do you think you’re going.”

Amidst blood flowing like a river, Lucy’s voice chills to the bone, a calm amid chaos.

She’s barely standing, hunched over, nearly unconscious, yet her resolve to subdue Sylvania is firm.

On the brink of losing consciousness due to the drawn power of the future, she remains intent on overpowering Sylvania.

Gasping, Sylvania lifts her staff once again.

To utilize High divine Magic, one must first subdue Lucy, as she alone could suppress the High divine Magic of Sylvania. Lucy was nearly lifeless, easily subdued with a single direct hit from proper elemental magic.

At that moment, when Yenika held back the demon races and Lucy blocked Sylvania’s High divine Magic, there was only one person who could draw upon the High divine Magic.

Ed Rothtaylor activated ‘Forced Gathering,’ using the forcibly extracted High divine Magic. Only High divine Magic could counter itself. However, Sylvania’s High divine Magic was already being suppressed by Lucy, who was on the verge of losing consciousness.

Sylvania’s body was pulled back toward Ed Rothtaylor. He thrust his dagger once more into the shoulder of Sylvania, who was within striking distance.

“Kuh, ah…!”

Ed pressed his full body weight onto the dagger without giving her the chance to scream in pain.

Lacking strength, if not for the counterweight provided, delivering an effective blow would have been difficult.

“Huh, uh…”

The pain surging from the dagger in her shoulder flooded Sylvania’s mind.

Before she could draw more magical power, Ed flipped Sylvania over and pinned her down.

“Keh, hak…!”

As Sylvania rolled on the ground with the dagger lodged inside, cries of intense pain spilled from her lips.

Ed pulled out the dagger from Sylvania’s shoulder and, summoning all his strength, he readied to plunge the dagger with both hands.

Then…

– Clang!

Ed’s dagger collided with Sylvania’s barely raised staff. Sylvania trembled from the dagger-inflicted wound, and Ed was so fatigued from overexerting his body that he couldn’t muster any more power.

The delicately maintained balance of strength prevented Ed’s dagger from advancing. The dagger, aimed at Sylvania’s forehead, shivered, oscillating up and down. Ed’s blood dripped onto Sylvania’s face.

Below the shading from Ed’s hanging bangs, his eyes still blazed with a will to survive. With the trembling dagger between them, the two fought for power.

Any relaxation of the strength in their arms while trying to gather magical energy would surely result in the dagger plunging in.

Sylvania, enduring the sharp pain surging from her shoulder, pushed to divert the balance of strength to one side.

However, Ed, already a wreck from the battle, gritted his teeth as he directed the dagger towards Sylvania with what little strength he could gather.

That look in his eyes, Sylvania knew it.

Memories of a man from ancient times began to seep into her thoughts… The man was a soldier who roamed the battlefield.

In the front lines, under a hail of bullets, he formed many connections. He met people with different nationalities and purposes for entering the war, finding time to laugh, to fight, and even reconcile. Some felt like more than comrades, almost like family.

And one by one, these connections met death.

In the midst of a battlefield drenched in blood, the man, clutching his head, trembled amid the gunfire. A friend with whom he once shared rationed bread lay with his head pierced on the ground, and his precious family photograph amulet was buried in the mud.

A female officer who he was fond of dies from grenade shrapnel while trying to hide him in shrubs.

Thanks to the officer’s sacrifice, the man and a comrade survive by hiding in the forest. But the severely injured comrade could not move. The man carries him on his back through the forest in the dead of night, yet still, the comrade bleeds out and dies on his back.

Now the man is alone; he never had a family to begin with.

In his hollow life, the man sometimes points a gun at his own head. What’s the point of continuing such a life?

But he shakes his head, grits his teeth, and lowers the gun. Somehow he returns to his unit, even making it back to the battlefield.

He gets deployed again, makes new comrades, makes attachments, and then watches them die.

Sometimes he saves someone, sometimes he doesn’t. Some die, and others live.

At the edge of life and death, the man fights to preserve his existence.

And like that, he survived, even within the turmoil of war.

He achieved great wartime exploits and was praised for his efforts, yet the bullet wound in his thigh never regained its sensation.

As an injured veteran returning to civil life, he was ordered to spend his remaining days in the peace of his homeland.

Unaccustomed to towering buildings and peace-inebriated citizens, the veteran found his native city foreign.

When he tried to sleep in his peaceful city home, the faces of his fallen comrades would appear behind his eyelids.

He’d get up at dawn, drink cold water, and suppress the nausea that inexplicably rose within him.

After long nights tormented by hallucinations and pain, he would somehow make it through.

The morning would always come.

The dawn light also enters the small window of his studio apartment.

No matter how long the night, morning surely arrives.

The man reads books.

He sits by the window listening to music.

He drinks coffee.

He has delightful phone conversations with surviving comrades.

He does rehabilitation exercises.

He cleans his room.

He plays games.

He opens the windows to let the air in.

He feeds his pet dog.

He takes a shower.

He changes his clothes.

He assembles new furniture.

He repairs a broken vacuum cleaner.

He checks mail.

He eats a simple meal.

Sometimes, he remembers the forest in the rain, where he struggled with pointing his gun at his own head.

Remembering the hesitation to pull the trigger, the man reflects on why. Despite having no particular reason to live, he chose not to end it.

His life didn’t change drastically after that.

No life-altering events occurred, no persistent worries went away.

Life just went on.

And so, he merely lived through it.

Finally, the man realized that even the uncomfortable peace, like wearing ill-fitting clothes, eventually felt natural, and he started to enjoy it.

He could sleep in soundly places where gunfire didn’t echo all day.

The faces of dead comrades that used to haunt him now seemed to smile back at him in comfort.

It didn’t happen overnight, but for some reason, when he finally took notice, it was so.

Living was like that.

– Clang!

– Thwock!

Ed Rothtaylor’s dagger penetrated Sylvania’s opposite shoulder.

Even for Ed Rothtaylor, close to death’s door, it was not easy for Sylvania’s small frame to fend off a dagger pushed with such weight behind it.

Pushing back steadily against the blade digging into her wound… slowly, Sylvania spoke.

“Listen.”

At her surprisingly clear voice, Ed’s eyes widened as he looked at her.

When had it begun?

Rational light flickered through his maniacal gaze. Ed’s blood dripping onto her white cheeks formed into droplets that fell toward the floor.

Confined within the darkness, navigating a long journey, Sylvania had repeatedly questioned herself.

She had been too frightened to voice it, but now she conveyed those words to Ed.

“Have I lived a life of value?”

Among those who hung their heads in token struggle, she had always stood upright. Was such a life worth living?

Ed Rothtaylor lowered his gaze and seemed about to say something but stopped.

It felt as if any words he uttered would seem insincere.

With his usual emotionless expression, Ed simply nodded.

That small gesture of affirmation was enough for Sylvania Robespierre to gently close her eyes and shed tears.

The strength drained from Ed’s hand holding the dagger.

Gradually, he was losing consciousness.

Bellbrook’s roar once more enveloped the heavens, and a barrage of magic swept across Arken Island.

The force, which emerged from the western coast and aimed to devastate the island, affected even the bustling entrance square.

Though Ed nearly got swept up in the aftermath, quickly, magical energy surrounded him and Sylvania.

Protected by a high-level High divine Magic ‘Space Barrier,’ they were secured from the shockwave’s impact.