Magic Academy's Bastard Instructor

Chapter 257: Iron Lotus [3]

Karina leapt down from the vessel as sheets of ice spread across the ocean. The sea froze in an instant, locking the cthulhus in place before the ice shattered under their struggling forms.

Forced onto solid ground, they were dragged into direct confrontation with the Bundesritters.

Each time the ice broke, it reformed just as quickly. The battlefield reshaped itself in an instant, denying the creatures any chance to surface freely. This was not a place where they could rise and vanish at will like moles.

Here, the terrain itself refused to let them escape.

“Major!”

One of the Navy officers shouted from behind her as the ice continued to spread across the sea.

Karina did not turn. Her boots pressed against the frozen surface. The Cthulhus thrashed, but none of them managed to break through.

With a quick incantation, a magic circle bloomed behind Karina. A moment later, ice bolts rained down in a relentless barrage, piercing through frozen flesh and shattering anything that still moved.

Ice continued to rain down as Karina moved relentlessly across the frozen terrain.

“Slow down, Major Maeril.”

Karina came to a halt. Hovering before her was the Great Power herself, Iridelle Vermillion.

“Vice Admiral Vermillion.” Karina brought her hand up in a salute.

Iridelle regarded her for a moment. “You’re pushing too far ahead of the formation.”

Karina turned to look behind her. In her wake, several Cthulhus were destroyed. But the gaps she had left behind were just as evident. Empty spaces had opened in the line, and the rest of the Bundesritters were scrambling to fill them under pressure.

Three units had already been cut off.

———!

Before orders could be shouted, a Cthulhu lunged. Its fangs tore straight through one of the navymen. Blood stained the ice in an instant. More of the creatures fell moments later, crushed or impaled by magic and steel.

Yet even as they did, more navymen were dragged down or torn apart in the chaos.

“What’s the matter with you?” Iridelle frowned.

“….”

But Karina didn’t answer. Her eyes remained fixed beyond Iridelle’s shoulder. Sensing it, Iridelle turned as well.

“….”

Vanitas stood atop the wall that marked the boundary between land and sea, as if he were a General overlooking the battlefield.

“Is it because of him?”

“…No.”

“There’s nothing for you to prove to a man like that,” Iridelle said. “Pull yourself together. If you don’t, I’ll remove you from the battlefield.”

Karina’s eyes widened. She had not expected that reaction. Just a month ago, Iridelle had seemed aligned with Vanitas. Now, there was clear hostility in her eyes.

“What did he do?” Karina asked.

“It’s…” Iridelle started, then stopped, recalling her last exchange with Vanitas. “Nothing.”

“….”

* * *

After the first siege, Iridelle’s vessel withdrew to regroup, and Admiral Julius emerged to lead the next charge. Three vessels had been sunk during Iridelle’s advance, and more than three thousand men had been lost.

Even so, the Bundesritter navy did not allow the casualties to weigh them down.

It was considered a small price to pay for the gains they had secured.

Their lines pushed farther into the sea, claiming more territory with each advance. Yet despite the losses inflicted upon them, the Cthulhus showed no signs of slowing.

“Has the leyline been uncovered yet?” Vice-Admiral Romulus Neuschwan asked.

“Unfortunately not, Vice Admiral,” replied a mage from the Bundesritter Information Domain Service, who was cooperating closely with the navy.

While the Bundesritter Navy ruled the sea, the Bundesritter Information Service functioned as its eyes and ears. They specialized in intelligence gathering and often worked alongside the Bundesritter Exorcism Division on sensitive operations across the land.

Now, their mages were focused on a single task. Tracing the leyline hidden somewhere in the ocean’s horizon.

“Let me see that.”

In unison, they all turned at the sound of that cold voice. Every movement stiffened as Vanitas Astrea approached, having appeared out of nowhere

His eyes were already fixed on the magic circle before tracing the spellformulas with his fingertips.

“This configuration is inefficient,” he said. “You’re dispersing the signal instead of anchoring it. At this rate, the leyline will remain nothing more than noise.”

The mages exchanged bewildered glances, but none of them spoke.

“What do you mean?” one of them finally asked. “This is the most advanced system currently available—”

“It isn’t,” Vanitas cut in. “The Scholars Institute has nothing more elaborate because I’ve never published anything related to systematas.”

The word drew a pause.

Systematas were, in essence, surveillance magic refined to its purest form. Observation alone was meaningless without continuity, and continuity required tracking.

When layered correctly, perception, fixation, and propagation could be fused into a single operational framework. With a few additional parameters, that framework evolved into tracing magic.

Most modern systems relied on diffusion. They cast wide nets, hoping volume would compensate for accuracy.

But systematas worked the opposite way. They broke information inward and anchored every observation to a fixed causal thread. Instead of searching for a signal, they forced the target to acknowledge the observer’s presence within the magical equation itself.

Vanitas adjusted another sigil. The circle shuddered. Its geometry warped as redundant formulas dissolved into cleaner, more concise constructs.

“What do you think you’re doing, Astrea?” Romulus Neuschwan bellowed, no longer bothering to hide his hostility.

“Correcting it,” Vanitas replied without looking at him. “You’re treating the leyline like a passive structure.”

The magic circles converged, light sinking into a deeper hue.

“You’re overriding a sanctioned system,” one of the mages said. “If this destabilizes the formation—”

“Then it was unstable to begin with,” Vanitas interrupted. “A system that breaks under refinement was never fit for deployment.”

Just as Vanitas was about to make another adjustment, Romulus Neuschwan seized him by the back of his collar and yanked him away from the circle.

“Enough,” Romulus said. “You don’t get to interfere with Bundesritter operations on a whim.”

The magic circle’s light destabilized for a moment before freezing in place.

Vanitas slowly turned his head. His pupils met Romulus head-on with a calm that felt more cutting than anger.

“Let go,” Vanitas said.

“Zyphran asked for your cooperation,” Romulus replied. “Not sabotage.”

Vanitas did not raise his voice. He did not struggle either. “If this were sabotage, the circle would already be gone. What you’re seeing is refinement.”

Romulus’s grip tightened at Vanitas’s matter-of-fact tone. “You don’t get to decide that. This is a Bundesritter operation, not one of your private experiments.”

Vanitas glanced past him, toward the magic circle. Its light seemed to struggle, waiting for the final input that had been interrupted.

“And yet,” he said, “you asked for results. This is how you get them.”

“….”

“V-Vice-Admira,” one of the mages began frantically. “The formation… it’s—it’s responding!”

Romulus followed their gaze. The circle’s fluctuations turned into something close to coherence.

He released Vanitas at once.

Vanitas adjusted his collar slowly before turning away. He took a few steps, then stopped and looked back at Romulus.

“I came here to help,” he said evenly. “Not to be dragged around unconsented.”

His brows furrowed.

“People like you are the reason Zyphrans’ philosophies never change. Fixated on procedure, afraid to touch anything you don’t understand.”

A brief pause followed before he continued.

“Primitive. That’s all it is.”

The room went silent.

Romulus bristled, but before he could respond, the magic circle flashed again.

One of the mages said, “Vice Admiral… the signal locked.”

Vanitas did not turn back.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You’re one step away from fixing your problem.”

“Was that the same look you wore when you killed my younger brother?” Romulus asked.

Vanitas paused.

“Your brother?”

“Did you look down on him with that same cold gaze,” Romulus continued, “as if you knew everything?”

“…Ah. Roman Neuschwan.” Vanitas tilted his head. “Karina’s supposed stepfather.”

There was a hint of amusement in his tone.

“Look down on him? I didn’t even need to. Livestock don’t get the privilege of looking up before they’re sent to the grinder.”

“Roman—”

“Was nothing more than a deranged man who wrote his own death,” Vanitas cut in. “He bit off more than he could chew and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I merely provided the means.”

“You bas—”

“Tard?” Vanitas finished for him. “I’ve heard that more times than I can count on one hand.”

With that, he turned and left the room.

* * *

In the days that followed, the mages set aside their pride and got to work. Using Vanitas’s framework as a foundation, they constructed an entirely new systemata that no longer relied on broad detection or brute force amplification.

This iteration functioned as a distributed sensory lattice. Rather than searching for the leyline directly, it established fixed observation nodes that were planted across the sea.

Each node acted as an anchor, embedding itself into the ambient mana flow and synchronizing with its surroundings. Individually, they were limited, but together, they formed a coherent network.

The systematas interlinked with one another, much like satellites that function in the sea. Information no longer traveled in straight lines. It propagated through phase alignment, allowing disturbances in one sector to be reflected and interpreted across the entire grid.

“Not bad,” Vanitas muttered.

In truth, this was magi technology Zyphran had developed in every route he remembered.

Even if their theoretical foundation lagged behind that of the Scholars Institute, mages who devoted their lives to the study of magic were still geniuses in their own right.

They did not need to be led by the hand.

All they ever needed was a single push.

Once given a direction, their interpretations filled in the gaps on their own, reaching conclusions through sheer intellectual momentum.

By then, the nature of the operation had changed.

Rather than pushing blindly into open waters, small vessels were dispatched to deploy observation nodes across the ocean with the hope that it would catch the resonance of the still undiscovered leyline.

But of course, the change in strategy did not bring the fighting to a halt.

Waves of Cthulhus continued to rise from the depths, hurling themselves toward the shoreline in attempts to breach the land. But the siege endured regardless.

One ship sank. Then another. Then another after that.

Still, the Bundesritter did not relent. Yet the cost of maintaining absolute control over a single stretch of sea grew too high to sustain. The losses mounted, and the decision was made to regroup.

That withdrawal came at a price.

The Cthulhus pushed past the wall, forcing those who remained atop it into constant, desperate combat. The structure broke away in sections as the battle moved onto the land.

Knights surged forward under the banner of Aetherion. Alongside them marched forces of the Celestine Hegemony, another empire that had answered Zyphran’s call.

Together, they met the invasion head-on.

“Are you staying up here?” Franz asked.

“I’ll observe for now,” Vanitas replied.

To inspire soldiers, a true ruler did not buckle or yield to the world’s cruelty.

An emperor who remained unseen was nothing more than a symbol. An emperor who fought alongside his soldiers became proof.

History remembered those who led from the front.

“Suit yourself.”

Franz turned away and descended toward the battlefield. From the wall above, Vanitas’s gaze followed Margaret as she fought below.

———!

A wave of Cthulhus fell one by one before her blade. As the last of them crumpled, Margaret looked up, sensing his presence.

Their eyes met for a brief second before she flashed him a warm smile.

A week later, a signal was detected.