The Academy’s Professor is Overpowered!

I jumped up from the cave. My eyes darted around as I stepped on the stalactites and stray rocks as a foothold on my ascent. Alongside the wind that was pushed back, the screams of my fellow captive filled my ears.

"AAAAAH!"

It must be sudden, but I had no choice. If Mrs. Frock was truly working to make a chimera, then I had to stop it before it could start.

I finally saw the giant boulder blocking the entrance of the cave. I pulled my leg back.

"Hold tight!"

“You monsterrr!"

The boulder was hit with the force of my kick, charged with all the physical strength I could summon. The boulder cracked at the center as the impact formed a small crater on it.

The cracks spread on it like spiderwebs, and in the blink of an eye—

—BOOOM!

A massive explosion blasted away the boulder blocking the entrance of the cave. I tossed my fellow captive through the cloud of dust and debris before landing on the outside of the cave.

it was a steep drop down again right behind me. Scary place.

Dusting my shoulders and my palms, I walked out of the cloud of smoke. We were deep in a forest, on a hill that I hadn't seen before.

"How far from the city are we...?" When did this happen? Was it magic?

On the ground in front of me, was my fellow captive Shirley flat on her face, covered in dust.

“Ptui” Shirley spat on the ground and pushed herself up. She sat and looked at the scratches she got from being tossed on the ground with a deep frown. What a ruffian. I hope my students don’t learn anything from her.

She glared at me and I ignored her.

It was a hill I never knew. A cave I had never seen. I couldn’t explore all of Glorenstein, but knew most of the dangerous places.

What was worse, I couldn’t even see Glorenstein from here. Mana flooded my eyes and my vision expanded drastically, but not a sign of the city came into view.

As my head turned to the other side, a sharp, brown object entered my view. My vision returned to normal immediately.

A branch was bulleting toward Shirley on the ground. A branch from the many trees around us.

“Look out!”

Shirley noticed a beat before me and rolled on her back. Her legs landed down and in she stood up in a swoop like a gymnast pulling a trick.

Shirley pulled out the daggers from her waist as two more branches came shooting for her.

At the same time, the trees all around started squirming and throbbing. The ground pulsed. Roots started swarming out of the ground like waves on a shore.

“KRRRAAAAA!”

Thunderous screams ripped through the air, and so did another thing—the barks of the tree.

Eyes and mouths ripped through the wood on the trees all around us as they started moving their branches and roots like arms and feet.

“Ents…” Shirley muttered. “They can’t speak either. They are rabid Ents.”

Ents generally had a level of intelligence like Goblins, but they could also end up as crazy wild killing machines.

Ones that were at least Level 4.

“Ah, so there was surveillance after all.”

“Joking even at a time like this? I thought Glorenstein professors are very upright.”

I shrugged. “It’s just my first year.”

Even though my words were light, my mind was scrambling in every direction. Ents? I didn’t worry about being swarmed by a dozen or so ents.

It was the fact Ents existed at all around Glorenstein which worried me. I could understand a highly protected laboratory, I could understand demiurges that looked exactly like humans.

But monsters? There was no way monsters out in the open would be able to escape the academy’s detection. And if not the academy, then Gladwin would have sniffed them out.

It was impossible unless they were in—

—A ball of vines studded with sharp branches came swinging to my head.

I gently stepped back, dodging the strike. After the dodge, I grabbed the vines sticking out and tugged it closer.

“Gwouh!?”

A strange noise left the Ent as I yanked it through the ground and pulled it toward me. Without even bothering to turn, I smashed the back of my hand into the Ent’s body and snapped it in half.

My eyes instead turned to my fellow captive.

Shirley nimbly moved around the Ents. Her daggers clashed with the branches as sparks flew out in all directions.

Anyone would think she was being overpowered, but five Ent corpses were splayed on the ground. All of them were pierced by a single strike.

Shirley aggressively pushed off the branches and slammed her foot ahead. Her shadow slithered forward and merged with the shadows of the Ents. The shadows climbed up the Ent’s frame and held it down in place.

Her shadow manipulation did not end there. Shirley held her dagger in a different grip, making its shadow bigger due to the light. She swung the dagger ahead, slicing the air.

But the dagger’s shadow fell over the body of the Ent.

And cut it through the middle. In a single strike.

Shirley did not bat an eye at the dead Ent. She moved her shadow to the next Ent annoying her and sliced it in the same way, and then the next.

Such an immense degree of Shadow Magic without even casting. A chuckle left me.

I never thought a talent like this would come in front of me inside a dungeon.

It only made me wonder about how strong the people she was collaborating with were, and how strong the ones who must have thrown her in were.

The Ents finally all fell and Shirley breathed a sigh of relief.

“The monsters, and the mana vein, all of them going unnoticed seem very strange to me,” I said.

Shirley nodded.

It was then.

Perhaps since the ones who had attacked all died. The entire mountain we stood on started to rumble and shake.

A vibration spread through the ground. The sand and the stones pushed up in waves as many more roots seeped out of the ground.

Every single tree on the mountain growled.

All of them were Ents.

I smirked and looked to my side, only to find the color drained out of Shirley’s face.

Her gaze was not on the Ents.

It was in the distance.

Moving under the clouds was a being larger than a mountain. With wines covering its ancient, enormous body, the creature’s every step sent the earth quaking.

A level 10+ monster.

A behemoth was raging in the distance.

This place was not near the Academy. It was not even the city. The only way so many monsters could escape us was if they were in a completely different dimension.

This was it.

We were in a dungeon.