Ch 11 Legal Punching Bag

What? Year 1125? Wait, is the dial broken?

Because if he went to sleep in 1025 and woke up in 1125… that meant a hundred years had passed.

“A century? What?”

Damn academy. If this diploma mill couldn’t even keep a basic timekeeping spell calibrated, no wonder their professors are such a mess.

But even as he tried to rationalize it, Asterion felt a slow, creeping chill settle in his chest.

This place hadn’t been a multi-level dungeon called the Abyss; it had just been a single-floor dungeon people called the Labyrinth.

He remembered scoffing at his friend back in the day, telling him it would take way more than a few decades to establish an academy where nobles and commoners actually rubbed shoulders.

His [Teleport] spell—which normally let him fast-travel anywhere he’d been as long as he remembered it accurately—had been completely blocked. The System map had been totally blacked out, too.

And above all else… his overflow of mana.

It isn’t just a day or two’s worth of growth, is it?

If for a century, drip by drip, his mana had been pooling inside his body, constantly compressing at the bottom of the Abyss…

If that was why his mana had doubled—

“I see.”

Now it all made sense.

Puzzle solved. Hopefully, that meant that damn cult had completely disbanded by now, too. Freaking stalkers.

He tried to force a lighter mood, but his brain refused to cooperate.

If a century had passed, then the merchant, Molt… he was already an old man back then, so he was definitely gone. Little Tess would be gone, too.

In this world, elves and dwarves had roughly the same lifespans as humans. And considering how brutal this world was, life expectancy wasn’t exactly high to begin with.

The only thing that kept you healthy and extended your expiration date was your total mana capacity.

Ah, crap.

He’d told Archduke Grant to prep a weeks worth of banquet for when Asterion returned after the battle.

Was this real? Was there seriously not a single person left alive who knew him?

The exact same sinking feeling from when he was first isekai’d into this dimension crawled up his throat.

He was in the same place, but time had fast-forwarded through time. How was this any different from being dropped into a brand-new world?

A new world where absolutely nothing was the same.

Why? Why did so much time have to pass? If I was going to wake up anyway.

No, if this much time had flown by, he should have just died in his sleep!

Why was it so damn hard for him to die.

“I’m basically a cockroach.”

How had he even survived that long?

It didn’t matter how strong of a mage Asterion was; there was no way he could survive critically injured, with zero medical treatment, and zero food.

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…Am I actually an undead?

Asterion opened and closed his hands. He could feel the warmth of his veins and the heat radiating under his skin. He took a deep breath in through his nose, felt his chest expand, and exhaled… then stared straight ahead.

It didn’t seem like he was an undead.

…But then again, what if he was? So what if a century had passed?

…I was planning on sleeping forever anyway.

There was no reason to be this shell-shocked.

Asterion blinked slowly. On the surface, he had cooled off, but his ancient bones felt heavier than they ever had before.

Let’s just go.

Once he got off the academy grounds, he could [Shadow Step] his way back down to the 11^th floor. He really didn’t want to deal with any people right now.

In fact, given how terrible his mood was, there was no telling what he might do to anyone who crossed his path.

He started walking, but just as he was about to exit the academy’s central quad, a corner caught his eye.

It was obscured by a hazy, purple fog. Asterion narrowed his eyes.

That fog…

It wasn’t natural. It was an artificially generated illusion ward.

A containment barrier designed to completely hide whatever was going on inside—nobody goes in, nobody comes out until it’s deactivated.

Why would anyone boot up a barrier like that right in the middle of a school campus?