Academy’s Undercover Professor-Chapter 305: Test Subject: Third (2)
Thud!
As the containment tank shattered, the new body of Luypholdt collapsed limply to the ground.
The unknown red fluid around him spread like a massive pool of blood.
“Wh-What in the world...”
Andrei stared at Ludger in disbelief.
Even after witnessing it with his own eyes, he couldn’t accept that Ludger had bypassed a barrier sturdy enough to withstand even high-tier spells and struck his target.
If he had known Ludger had such a technique, he would’ve responded accordingly.
But Ludger had hidden it perfectly.
He knew that if it was revealed prematurely, Andrei would find a way to counter it.
So he waited for the right opportunity—and in that fleeting instant, he succeeded.
It wasn’t that Andrei had let down his guard.
It was simply the kind of attack that was unavoidable if one didn’t already know it existed.
‘Don’t tell me... the one who destroyed the control mechanism for the underground facility was also him...!’
Even with such a sharp blade in hand, he never brandished it carelessly—only striking at the decisive moment.
Andrei now understood that Ludger was no ordinary magic professor. Yet, even so, he couldn’t suppress the rage boiling up from deep inside.
“You dare...! You DARE—!!”
Andrei’s demon-tainted yellow eyes blazed with murderous intent as he glared at Ludger.
The man who had ruined his life’s masterpiece—he had to kill him, no matter what.
The emotion in his gaze was pure, bottomless hatred.
But Ludger didn’t flinch.
In fact, he stared back at Andrei with calm, deep blue eyes.
Andrei couldn’t even begin to guess what Ludger was thinking as he looked at him like that.
More than that, something about his blue eyes was strangely off-putting.
It didn’t feel like a natural eye color—the blue of his irises churned like some endless vortex.
“Your eyes... what are—”
Andrei began to say something, then stopped.
What did it matter at this point?
What mattered was that Ludger had ruined his research—and that he would soon die by Andrei’s hands.
Andrei surged with black mana, and everyone braced themselves for battle.
They had successfully stopped the test subject from awakening, but with Andrei still standing, the battle was far from over.
The tension was suffocating.
If anyone so much as moved a finger, a full-scale clash would erupt instantly.
And then, the one to move first was someone no one had expected.
Twitch.
Luypholdt.
A 6th-Circle mage, a former officer of the Liberation Army, and a black mage of the Biotech School who had willingly become a test subject.
His body moved—just slightly, but unmistakably.
No one missed the motion—not with their alertness pushed to the extreme.
Luypholdt had moved.
It wasn’t post-mortem rigidity.
Immediately, Ludger and Casey unleashed their magic.
Passius and Terrina extended their sword aura and thrust toward Luypholdt.
No words were exchanged—they all knew instinctively.
He wasn’t dead. He had to be killed now.
But in the next moment, the explosion of mana from Luypholdt's body blew all their attacks away.
“What...?”
Terrina stared at Luypholdt in disbelief.
Even if the attacks had been launched without warning—they were strikes from Master-class knights.
And he had deflected them with nothing but a pulse of mana?
How immense would his mana reserve have to be?
Yet even in her shock, the mana pouring from Luypholdt didn’t stop.
It swirled around him like a massive vortex, and his body slowly lifted into the air.
Luypholdt looked like an ordinary man in his mid-thirties, with unkempt brown hair.
His scruffy, unshaven face made him look more like a laborer than a mage.
But now, he radiated a presence so overwhelming that everyone present felt the weight of it.
Floating in the air, Luypholdt slowly opened his eyes.
His appearance wasn’t much different from a normal man. However, one eye—just one—was stained black, just like Andrei’s.
The surging mana all at once stopped—and was sucked into Luypholdt's body like a sponge.
The storm had vanished.
A deep stillness fell over the space, as tranquil as a dawn lake.
As Luypholdt slowly touched down, he glanced around blankly with an expressionless face.
“Where... am ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) I...?”
His apparent confusion prompted Passius to act.
He moved silently, aiming to strike at a weak point.
A Swordmaster moving like an assassin—so quiet that even Andrei momentarily lost track of his motion.
Just as Passius was about to swing at Luypholdt's neck—
A face emerged from Luypholdt's back and locked eyes with him.
“What the—”
Even Passius, a veteran, was thrown off by the surreal sight.
In that moment of hesitation, a compressed bullet of wind fired straight at him.
The face had opened its mouth—and unleashed the magic.
Passius aborted his strike and raised his sword to defend.
The wind bullet, spinning at terrifying speed, slammed into him and sent him flying.
It grazed past the roots of the World Tree, struck the cavern ceiling—
KRA-KRA-KRACK!
The expanding blast shredded the surrounding rock with countless blades of wind.
“Sir Passius!”
Veronica cried out and swung her sword.
From the tip of her blade, an explosion of icy aura erupted in a crescent shape toward Luypholdt.
Luypholdt, focused on the fallen Passius, didn’t even notice the attack coming from behind.
But once again, something unexpected happened.
Another face appeared on his chest—and opened its mouth.
Whoosh!
This time, flames burst forth. A rapidly-formed fire spell collided with Veronica’s icy aura.
The flame engulfed the cold aura and dissipated it in midair.
Everyone stared in disbelief—everyone except Andrei.
Andrei gazed at Luypholdt with trembling joy.
“Ohohoh! At last...!”
He had believed the experiment to be a failure—yet the test subject had truly awakened.
Andrei shook with elation.
It hadn’t failed.
His work had borne fruit.
Only one of Luypholdt's eyes was demonized, so it seemed incomplete, but still—he had succeeded.
On the other hand, the extermination team looked grim.
The fact that Luypholdt had noticed Passius’s ambush, and blocked Veronica’s strike so easily—
His power was far from ordinary.
Especially those grotesque faces sprouting from his body.
Each time they opened their mouths, magic was unleashed.
‘According to intel... Luypholdt was not capable of using fire magic.’
This was what most concerned Ludger and the others.
Luypholdt had originally been a mage who specialized in wind, with some proficiency in ice and lightning.
He had never shown any affinity for fire.
Every mage has a fixed set of elemental affinities.
Unless one is a novice just learning magic, they don’t suddenly gain access to a new element.
“It’s the faces.”
Casey finally spoke.
“Those faces are casting magic in Luypholdt's place.”
Everyone turned to her in shock—wondering if it could be true.
Andrei chuckled quietly.
“You’re more perceptive than I thought. Correct. That is the masterpiece we poured everything into. Do you have any idea how many ingredients went into that thing?”
“‘Ingredients’?”
Chris’s voice sharpened. “What do you mean by that?”
Andrei merely grinned without answering.
Instead, it was Terrina who spoke up.
“...You ground up mages and put them into it.”
Terrina felt a certain certainty take root in her from both the appearance Luypholdt had shown and Andrei’s words.
“There’s been that recent case of unaffiliated mages going missing, hasn’t there? Normally, it wouldn’t be strange for such people to suddenly drop dead somewhere, but one of them was a 5th-Circle mage, so the Empire’s intelligence bureau took interest.”
“Huh. You really are the commander of the Nightcrawler Knights. Fast with information.”
Andrei’s words were essentially a confirmation of what Terrina had said.
“The material... was mages? Don’t tell me, then, that man’s body now contains—”
“That’s right. The missing mages—however many there were—are all housed within that one body.”
Andrei grinned as he looked at the grotesque form.
“Yes. And that’s not all. We added demonic power and World Tree cells as well. Everything we refined through experimentation is contained within him. That thing is no longer the Liberation Army executive Luypholdt.”
The ultimate experiment.
Codename ‘Third’.
“This is nauseating.”
At that moment, Luypholdt, who had been silently standing, spoke up.
“And I’m hungry. This unknown hunger... I don’t know what it is.”
Luypholdt's gaze swept over the people around him.
A smile spread across his face, like that of a gourmet seated before a grand banquet.
“Looks like there’s plenty to eat here.”
There was no way that gaze belonged to a person looking at fellow humans.
The grin that wrinkled his face was filled with a repulsiveness that defied description.
“You... Are you really Luypholdt?”
At that moment, a war mage who had come with Veronica muttered under his breath as he looked at Luypholdt.
He was someone who had once served in the military alongside Luypholdt.
One could even call them comrades-in-arms.
They hadn’t been particularly close, nor hostile either.
But after Luypholdt deserted, everything had fallen apart.
That’s why the man had volunteered for this mission—to end it all, as a former comrade.
But now, after all these years, facing Luypholdt again—he was no longer the man he once knew.
“Luypholdt?”
At that, Luypholdt tilted his head.
“Ah, right. That was my name, wasn’t it? Or... was it? Who am I? Luypholdt? David? Names keep surfacing. Gellraud. Chade. Jenna...”
Incomprehensible words began to pour out of Luypholdt's mouth.
As if confused, he clutched his head with both hands.
Andrei clicked his tongue at the sight.
The names Luypholdt was mumbling were all the names of the mages whose essence had been implanted into his body.
It seemed the numerous transplants had brought about a confusion of memories.
‘Well, this might actually be for the best. I’ll just gather new data through Luypholdt.’
And the test subjects to provide that data would be these uninvited guests.
Andrei issued a command toward Luypholdt.
“Test subject Third.”
“Uuuuugh. Th...ird?”
Luypholdt reacted to Andrei’s voice.
His pupils trembled, as if an earthquake had struck, and slowly locked onto Andrei.
“That’s right. You’re Third. And I... am your master, Andrei.”
“I... I am...”
“Who you are doesn’t matter. Aren’t you hungry? There’s prey overflowing right before you. Isn’t devouring them your priority?”
At Andrei’s words, Luypholdt's trembling ceased completely.
The mumbling that had spilled from his lips came to an abrupt halt.
As if something had undergone a dramatic shift within him.
He lowered his hands from his head, and his expression returned to the same composed look he had when he first released his magic.
“Right. Who I am doesn’t matter right now. What matters is how I’m going to satisfy this hunger.”
“That’s it, Third. So devour them. That’s what you were made for!”
Andrei shouted as he widened his eyes.
Then, with a look of disbelief, he glanced down.
Luypholdt's hand had pierced into his lower abdomen.
Despite the distance between them, Luypholdt's arm had stretched unnaturally and driven straight through Andrei’s gut.
And the abnormality didn’t end there.
Black veins began to writhe up Luypholdt's arm and started drawing power from Andrei’s body.
“You... what the hell are you...?”
Andrei stared at him with a disbelieving face, and Luypholdt grinned.
“You looked the most delicious.”
“Y-You lunatic! You dare bite your master?!”
Luypholdt was now absorbing the demonic power housed in Andrei’s body.
Andrei gritted his teeth and tried to endure it—but it was useless.
Like a man trying to swim free of a vortex, there was no escape.
The purified demonic power Andrei had forcibly contained was no match for the raw, primal essence Luypholdt was now drawing in.
And Luypholdt wasn’t stopping at just the demonic power.
He sought to absorb Andrei’s magic as well.
“You bastard!”
Andrei shouted and gripped Luypholdt's arm with both hands.
He clearly had no intention of going down so easily. His eyes burned with fierce determination.
At that moment, a compressed blade of wind flew in from somewhere and severed Luypholdt's elongated arm.
The absorption stopped, and Andrei quickly pulled back, widening the distance.
Luypholdt retracted the extended limb and inspected the severed stump.
The cut arm regenerated in an instant.
Luypholdt's gaze shifted toward the one who had interrupted him.
The black-haired, handsome young man who had been watching this whole time with a smug expression.
“You...”
Luypholdt's face twisted in irritation at having his meal interrupted.
Rudger met that look with a cold sneer.
“Do fools always wait for their enemies to finish growing stronger?”
