How to cut through Dragon Speech and a dragon’s breath?
By Dragon Speech, he meant that Dragon Speech magic.
And by a dragon’s breath, he seemed to mean its breath attack.
Was this guy out of his mind again?
I was dumbfounded by the nonsense spilling from the skeleton’s jaw in front of me.
I could understand an unshakable mind capable of enduring Dragon Fear.
Though such a skill only appeared around the latter half of the game, it was not as if it did not exist at all. As proof, did I not possess the related trait, Dragon Strength?
But Dragon Speech was one thing.
He was saying he would teach me how to cut through a breath attack?
This was starting to smell like a scam.
I knew the skeleton before me was strong.
He was a level-90 skeleton on par with the headmaster over there, who was groaning as she sorted through documents. It would have been stranger if he were not strong.
Still, cutting through a breath attack was another matter entirely.
In the game, the breath exhaled by an actual dragon was less of a skill and more of a mechanic that instantly killed you if you failed to dodge it.
Dawnstar Academia did have instant-death skills, such as Dragon Fear.
But a dragon’s breath was on an entirely different level from other instant-death skills.
Even level-90 powerhouses who had reached the same realm as the skeleton before me could not cut through it.
Even the female leads at max level got a game over if they failed to evade it.
And he could cut through the breath a dragon unleashed?
I had only played through the game twenty-nine times, so it could have been a hidden piece I did not know about.
But I could not imagine that gag character of a skeleton possessing a skill like that.
"You have the expression of someone who finds that difficult to believe."
"Honestly, I would be lying if I said I believed you."
Facing the quietly burning blue flames, I nodded.
"Then..."
Professor Luke slowly nodded as if he understood, then continued in a low voice.
"You have nothing to lose by believing me, do you?"
With that, Professor Luke drew his sword from its sheath and shrugged.
At that moment.
The atmosphere grew heavy.
Not merely because it felt that way.
It truly did.
The bookshelves, chairs, and even the mountains of stacked paperwork had not changed.
But Insight Eye showed me otherwise.
Space was gradually warping around some central point, spewing out mana.
"Warp."
A calm, emotionless word.
Yet with that one word—
An enormous amount of mana began to converge, soon enveloping Professor Luke’s entire body.
There was an overwhelming turbulence of mana, yet nothing visibly changed.
What changed was the headmaster’s movement.
A simple motion: taking a sheet from the pile of documents and signing it with a pen.
There was only the scratch of the pen and the rustle of turning pages.
Yet at the headmaster’s one word, the space around Professor Luke—
Specifically, only around his upper body—began to change.
Mana slowly closed in around Professor Luke’s body.
It was the moment that condensed mass of mana, as if poised to pulverize everything in order to obey the dragon’s command to warp only the skeleton, was about to move.
"Like this."
Yet Professor Luke casually raised his sword as though it were nothing and kindled his aura.
Starlight emitting a bluish glow—an Aura Blade.
He swung the sword wreathed in the Aura Blade from top to bottom.
Slice.
With the sound of something being cut, the mana itself was severed just as Professor Luke had said.
The mana that had sought to pulverize him vanished like a mirage.
Just as he claimed, he had cut through Dragon Speech.
He had really split it apart?
It looked like cheating, but what the headmaster had tried to use on Professor Luke was undoubtedly Dragon Speech.
And yet Professor Luke had cleaved it apart as if it were nothing.
As I made an expression of utter shock—
Ding!
Insight Eye brought up a status window before my eyes.
[You have witnessed Luke Eaenril’s Narrative, ‘Breath Cleaving.’]
[You are learning the Narrative, ‘Breath Cleaving’...]
Breath Cleaving?
As expected, it was a skill I had never seen in the game.
But no notification appeared saying I had learned it.
Insight Eye did not show me anything further.
When a skill could not be acquired immediately, it was usually one of two things.
Either it had a long casting time, like Mad Orlando.
Or it had separate forms, like Olivier-style Swordsmanship, and I had not yet been shown everything.
But since all he did was swing downward, it did not seem like there was anything more to show.
Well, it was a high-difficulty skill capable of cutting through even Dragon Speech. Maybe watching it once simply was not enough.
At that moment.
"Then, please proceed to the advanced course."
Professor Luke spoke quietly to the headmaster.
Hearing him, the headmaster sighed and snapped the fingers of her left hand, the one not holding her pen.
Space warped, and my vision changed.
[You have witnessed Ash Bell Drayg’s Narrative, ‘Teleportation’ and ‘Levitation.’]
[You are learning the Narrative, ‘Teleportation’...]
[You are learning the Narrative, ‘Levitation’...]
[The required Circle does not exist.]
[You have failed to learn ‘Teleportation.’]
[You have failed to learn ‘Levitation.’]
The headmaster’s office, once filled with the scent of wood, began to turn into the dark sky overhead.
The marble floor vanished, leaving empty air beneath us.
The warm indoor air disappeared, replaced by the cold night wind striking my cheeks.
I was briefly flustered by the floor suddenly disappearing, but—
"Do not worry, Cadet Ian. I have cast magic on your body."
Just as she said in her calm, businesslike tone, I did not feel as though there were nothing beneath me.
Rather than feeling like I was floating in the air, it felt as though I were standing on solid ground just like before.
But had she not already shown me everything?
Not that I minded.
I could not help hoping that, since I had not finished learning the skills yet, watching them a little more might let me acquire them.
Still, was it not excessive dedication to teleport us into the sky?
What on earth did she want to show me badly enough to go to all this trouble?
"Your eyes will hurt, Cadet Ian."
Her voice was as businesslike as ever, but the atmosphere began to shift.
The headmaster’s pupils slit vertically like a reptile’s as she began gathering mana in one place.
"Even so, I recommend that you do not cover your eyes."
The instant I realized what she intended to do here—
Was she seriously insane?
I swore inwardly.
All heat converged, and her mana gathered into a single point.
Then, when a faint fizz—the sound of a flame being extinguished—rang through the dark night sky—
As though that were the signal, a blaze powerful enough to incinerate everything shot straight toward Professor Luke.
A flame that devoured even sound, burning away all things.
One of the authorities granted only to dragons.
Dragon Breath.
Professor Luke assumed the very same stance before those flames.
Just like before, he raised his sword, wrapped it in an Aura Blade, and swung it downward. That was all.
The pillar of fire that shot forth as if to burn everything—
Was blocked by Professor Luke’s descending sword and split into two once again.
[You have learned the Narrative, ‘Breath Cleaving.’]
#
[Breath Cleaving Lv. 1]
The second requirement for facing a dragon: splitting its breath.
◈ You can cancel skills that use mana.
◈ When used against Dragon Speech or Breath, the mana consumption required is drastically reduced.
◈ The greater the level gap between you and your opponent, the greater the mana consumption required to use it.
So it really was true.
What Professor Luke said had not been empty boasting.
Once in the office and once in the sky, he had proven it.
The skill he intended to teach me was genuinely fucking incredible.
Of course, after about three seconds, he shouted for time, and his sword melted away so completely that not even a trace remained.
Just what the hell was this man?
Why did he possess skills like these?
But I only had that thought for a moment.
My vision warped again, returning us to where we had been.
The place beneath my feet was no longer the dark empty sky, but the marble floor of the headmaster’s office.
As if her business here were finished, the headmaster sat down, pulled out another document from the pile, and resumed her work.
Professor Luke looked down at his slightly scorched right hand. Blue flames flickered in his eye sockets as he opened his jaw and spoke quietly.
"The most important thing when using this technique is ‘flow.’"
Flow?
"Every being and phenomenon has its own flow. Like invisible threads binding one another tightly in order to connect cause and effect. And that..."
Professor Luke lightly mimed slashing across his own throat as he continued.
"Can be cut. Dragon Speech that molds all creation, and breath that burns the world—neither is an exception."
That did not make it any less absurd to split such things with a single sword.
Though he had just openly shown me that impossible sight right before my eyes, leaving me with little to say.
"That concludes today’s demonstration, Cadet Ian."
Professor Luke slowly withdrew the blue flames from his eye sockets and looked at me with his arms folded.
"Come to my office again at this time tomorrow."
"Why?"
"Why? So that I can teach you in earnest, of course."
Professor Luke’s jaw rattled in a tone that asked what kind of obvious question that was.
"Even if you had assistance from a magic tool, you have already experienced dispelling magic. And you copied Cadet Angelica’s Mad Orlando in a single day."
He continued, tapping his jaw with a bony finger.
"Roughly... six months should do it."
"Um, Professor—"
"Do not worry! I will provide intensive, one-on-one instruction, so Cadet Ian need not worry at all."
"...That is not what I meant, Professor."
"In half a year, Cadet Ian will be able to use a fucking incredible technique like this—"
"Well, I already learned it, Professor."
"That is right, you learned—"
Professor Luke’s hand, which had been raising a thumb bone with growing excitement, froze in midair.
Creak—.
His jaw, which had been opening eagerly, abruptly stopped with a bizarre scraping sound.
Even the fiercely burning blue flames in his eye sockets did not stir in the slightest.
He had become perfectly still.
A silence that had suddenly been cut short.
Clatter—.
In that space, where not even breathing could be heard, the sound of the headmaster dropping the pen she had been holding for her paperwork rang out with particular clarity.
Within the office, now sunk into such cold stillness that no one could so much as breathe—
"Bullshit."
The curse that shattered the silence burst from Professor Luke’s jaw.
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