The Academy's Time Looper-Chapter 48: Aim

As Athen felt a sudden wind breeze rush against his face, cooling the temperature around him, he smiled and opened his eyes.

Arrogance...it was a weird feeling to describe for Athen.

Athen always felt this subtle feeling of superiority when he looked at his fellow beggars and townspeople back in Blackthorne.

It was because of their desperation.

Why were they so desperate?

Unlike everyone else in his town, Athen never let his desperation and greed consume him, always acting rationally, as shown by his periodic use of his time-stopping ability.

However, after reaching the academy and seeing all the powerful and influential figures around him, Athen was humbled.

Or, so he had thought.

Perhaps seeing Professor Caldris act like he was a speck of dust had caused his ego to reemerge.

Widening his eyes, Athen glanced around the room, seeing the flaming-hot fireball frozen right in front of him.

However, the temperature was cool...like it was winter.

Ignoring the fireball, Athen glanced past and smiled upon seeing Professor Caldris.

The teacher wasn’t even looking at him.

He was gripping his wand and leaning against the wall while looking backward at the arena behind.

After taking a quick scan of the room, Athen immediately moved to the right, attempting to phase through the walls of the hallway.

However...something interesting happened.

When Athen sprinted straight into the wall to his right...nothing happened.

His incorporeal and purple-highlighted body didn’t pass through and instead remained completely still.

Yet, Athen didn’t feel anything.

His face didn’t hurt a single bit despite full-on hitting the brick-hard wall.

In fact, his body didn’t even bounce back when he failed to phrase through the wall—it just remained still in front of the wall.

From that alone, Athen could conclude the wall wasn’t real.

"A barrier of some sort..?"

Not wasting any more time, Athen simply accepted that he couldn’t phase through the wall and ran forward.

One second, he was running away from the fireball, and the other, he was running towards it.

Without any hesitation, he dashed straight through the massive fireball, and like normal, he simply phased right through it.

After passing through the fireball, Athen glanced forward and spotted his frozen briefcase a few meters in front of the professor’s figure.

If the professor had been looking in Athen’s direction, he might have figured out Athen’s ability had something to do with time-stopping or teleportation, but thankfully, he wasn’t.

As the light-purple hue surrounding his figure began to flicker, Athen leaned downward and kneeled against his briefcase, ready to pick it up as soon as his ability ran out.

Without even counting or looking at his body, he knew that time had returned to normal when the temperature around him suddenly heated up again.

As a bead of sweat rolled down his face, Athen immediately threw his hand forward and grabbed the stock of his crossbow.

Pulling the crossbow out of the briefcase and towards him, he hovered his right hand over the trigger and used his left to stabilize his aim.

At that moment, Professor Caldris yawned and slowly turned to face Athen’s direction, his wand still hovering in his right hand.

Still kneeling, Athen looked through the scope and raised his crossbow until Professor Caldris’s figure was there.

Then, without any hesitation, he pushed the trigger, releasing a barreling arrow right at Caldris’s oblivious figure.

Not waiting for the outcome, Athen dropped the crossbow, allowing it to fall right onto the red carpet, and sprinted after his arrow.

Unlike in the real world, there was no wind to put Athen’s arrow off course.

That meant his arrow would be exactly where he aimed it...if gravity didn’t get to it first.

However, Athen was close enough to Professor Caldris, and his arrow was fast enough to stop that from majorly changing the aim of his arrow.

Athen had also aimed his scope slightly above his target to account for gravity.

Finally, as Professor Caldris looked back forward and spotted Athen, it was too late.

The arrow was already upon him.

Even with Caldris’s trained and experienced instincts, he couldn’t move fast enough to dodge that arrow.

*THUNK*

With a resounding thunk, the arrow...perfectly hit its target, knocking the elegant wooden wand right out of Professor Caldris’s hands.

The tip of Athen’s arrow perfectly hit the top portion of Caldris’s wand, causing it to do a graceful flip out of the teacher’s hand.

*THUD*

As the wand free-fell and hit the carpet, the arrow veered off course, sloping upward at the ceiling instead of straight.

Not giving the professor any time to react, Athen arrived and threw his fist straight into the teacher’s chest.

However, at that moment, a faint light-blue hue surrounded the teacher’s chest...but it wasn’t enough.

When Athen’s fist made contact with Caldris’s chest, he was sent falling backward onto the ground.

Seeing the falling teacher’s arm immediately reach right and toward the wand on the ground, Athen immediately kicked his left leg up.

Within a second, Athen’s shoe burst upward and hit the teacher’s stretching right arm, knocking him back.

*THUD.*

Due to Athen’s kick, the teacher completely lost his balance and fell back, landing back-first onto the floor.

Pausing for a moment as if deciding what to do, Athen was about to grab his crossbow when he recalled something

"...the challenge for this one isn’t knocking the teacher over, is it?"

Before Athen could do anything, the teacher, while still lying on the ground, tensed his legs and jumped up in an impressive acrobatic movement.

Within seconds, the teacher’s entire body was surrounded by a light blue hue, much brighter than the one Kai had shown him.

Leaving the wand lying on the floor, the silent teacher finally spoke, patting the dust off his back.

In a dead serious voice, the teacher reached out his hand and said.

"30 seconds."

As those words echoed through the vast hallway, Caldris’s hand began shining a very bright blue, lighting up the vicinity.

A small bright-blue sword, made entirely of mana and seeming intangible...almost like an illusion, appeared in the teacher’s hand.