A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 149 Invitation Letter
Time flies by like a white horse.

In the blink of an eye, June is coming to an end. Tomorrow is July 1st, and regardless of whether the plan to hunt down the hero succeeds or not, Quinn's three-month journey in another world will come to an end.

After that day, Xia Dai'er never came to see him again.

The windows were open, and a breeze swept into the classroom. Although it was already the sweltering heat of midsummer outside, the temperature in Grindelwald remained pleasant, and the students did not need to change into their summer short-sleeved school uniforms that exposed their arms and legs.

"Tachi——"

Quinn held an unsharpened katana, a teaching aid used for demonstration.

"This weapon is long, sharp, and has a large slashing area. It is highly destructive to Mana-type shields that lack physical structure. If the energy surface is not strong enough, it can easily be broken through by repeated slashes, thus losing casting time."

"Therefore, I need to introduce the concept of a blade sinew. To reduce weight, the blade of a tachi is usually not very thick. If the angle of the swing is not correct, the blade is very likely to bend. So we need to find ways to clash, to use tricky angles to break the blade sinew when the opponent attacks, causing it to chip, roll, or even bend and break—"

All fifty-one first-year students sat in the lecture hall, listening to Quinn's eloquent speech. With five minutes almost up, and after he had finished explaining a great deal about katana, a student finally couldn't resist raising their hand to ask a question:
"Teacher, we are arcanists, why do we need to learn about katana?"

Quinn glared at the stage: "This is a demon defense course, of course we have to learn it."

"Do demons use katanas?" The students exchanged glances. Demons are natural-born mages. Apart from a few high-ranking officers in the Demon King's army who are skilled in close combat, most of them prefer to use ranged means to deal with human armies.

Quinn thought to himself, "Wouldn't it be useful for me, a demon talent introduced and settled here?"
"It's hard to say. If a very skilled demon katana user appears, remember the countermeasures I taught you."

Quinn stepped down confidently and was replaced by the original lecturer of the class.

This is the weekly Demon Defense Department class, which teaches first-year students the basics of arcane offense and defense. How to deal with demons will not be taught until the third year. The first thing students need to learn is survival—arcanists can only cast spells if they survive.

Quinn, as a teaching assistant, should not have been qualified to teach, and he was also an employee of the Divination Department. However, for some reason, the vice dean, Hermes, specifically required him to give a five-minute talk every week, on any topic, to teach the freshmen how to fight.

Quinn's lecture content depends on what his boss took him out for training that week. It is practical and insightful, which makes the lecturer who initially had objections to the dean's decision look at him with new eyes. However, in order to fill the five minutes, Quinn always stuffs a few points of experience that can be summarized into completely unrelated content.

For example, regarding how an arcanist should deal with longsword-type melee weapons, deflecting the shield to collide with the blade when unable to dodge is indeed a good way to reduce damage, but adding a lot of katana knowledge is unnecessary and just fills in a useless tutorial.

With five minutes left in the class, the instructor decided to supplement Quinn's content to avoid leaving the students confused.

"It is widely believed in the arcane community that the precursors to modern arcane magic used by humans were sorcery, elven spells, and ancient dragon spells, with elven spells laying the foundation for the arcane framework."

"Mr. Quinn's approach to defending against melee weapons shares common ground with elven armor. Although the elves have been wiped out by the demons, the elven winged robes unearthed through archaeological excavations are extraordinary protective gear with deflecting force fields, capable of distorting the point of impact of melee weapons, thus resisting more damage with less cost."

"The latest research suggests that it was precisely because the physical defense of the elven winged robes was so excellent that the demons gradually abandoned their inefficient handheld weapons. The winged robes of the last elven queen, Tiresia, even blocked the demon king's spear and saved the hero Link in the final battle."

Listening to the gentle, eloquent lecture, Quinn gazed at the clear sky from the corridor by the door. The lush forest and the still, mirror-like lake stretched out before him. The beautiful clouds and the sky thousands of meters high had become familiar scenery to him. The wind in the sky was not as noisy as the earth, and it carried a sense of solitude, blowing on him in a vast and boundless way, making him feel carefree.

He leaned against the windowsill, but his mind wasn't on tomorrow.

Quinn wondered if there was any place in this world that he could like.

He wasn't an adventurer, and the extraordinary power that came with the extremely high risks didn't bring the thrill of achieving immortality like in cultivation novels, nor did it bring the fate of being crushed like a heavy truck, leaving him powerless to resist.
But compared to Earth, they seem to be about the same.

The wind in this world is more pleasant.

Mi Yutong's image appeared in his mind, only to be dispelled. Quinn chuckled self-deprecatingly, thinking that being so insistent on going back for something like this was truly insane.

"—Mr. Quinn."

A gentle voice came from behind him. Quinn turned around and Jacob was standing behind him.

"How did the class go?" "Just a casual talk, I don't have much combat experience." Quinn said shyly, "It's all thanks to Professor Baldwin who helped me supplement the content. If it weren't for him these past two months, I would have been fired by the students due to their bad reviews."

"You're too modest. Actually, Mr. Baldwin's assessment of you is quite high. Your views on the timing of arcane casting don't seem like those of a scholar who has only done divination."

"Heh." Quinn chuckled noncommittally. "Are you here to audit the class? But this lesson is about to end."

"No, I'm here to see Professor Cavendish. I haven't seen her for the past two days."

"She took leave to work on the roof tiles."

What is "da wa" (打瓦)?

"It's just about playing with my mom."

"?"

Jacob learned the new term and handed the document tucked between his arms to Quinn.

"Then please pass this on for me. This is the Abyss Contamination Research Data that Professor Cavendish requested."

"The Abyss. Corruption?" A strange light flashed in Quinn's eyes.

Amamiya Nene is very lazy, and she basically leaves all the paperwork to Quinn, but he doesn't recall ever submitting such a request.

Jacob rubbed his temples and complained, "She wanted to know why heroes aren't affected by the abyss's corruption. There's no definitive answer to that, so we just extracted all the parts about heroes from the relevant research data. Ten little minions spent a week scouring through it all and only managed to compile this much. Hopefully, nothing's been missed."

Quinn calmly took the file bag.

"I will pass it on."

"Oh, did Professor Cavendish say how long the leave would last?"

"It should be in the next day or two, what's wrong?"

"Tomorrow is the Arcane Festival. The R&D department and the city council are having an exhibition at the city museum. It's quite interesting. I heard that tickets are being resold for thirty gold pounds each outside."

“Oh, not bad,” Quinn agreed, not understanding why Jacob had suddenly brought this up.

"There's an opening banquet at the museum tonight, and the college has to send someone. You know, the professors don't really like these kinds of social events, so after drawing lots, we decided to send Professor Cavendish."

Quinn thought to himself, "What a coincidence, there can't be only one lot in the lottery box, can there?"
Jacob smiled mysteriously and handed Quinn two invitations bearing the emblem of Eswell.

"However, there are two invitations, so I'll trouble you to come along with them."

The school bell rang, and students rushed out of the classroom. The noisy chatter instantly filled their ears, and they could be heard greeting students to him and Jacob from time to time, but Quinn ignored them and just stared at the invitation.

The signature is Elon Branson's cursive handwriting.

Branson.
"Mr. Quinn?"

"I understand." He calmly put away the invitation.

"Since it's work, I'll go."

(End of this chapter)