Surviving the Magic Academy With Just Intelligence Stats-Chapter 44: It’s Just A Theory

In the aftermath of the demon’s departure, Ambrose remained perfectly still for several long moments, his Spatial Awareness extending outward like an invisible net. The ability granted him crystal-clear perception of everything within a fifty-meter radius, allowing him to confirm that the demonic presence had truly vanished. His eyes lingered on the spots where the demon had stood, then shifted to where Meihua lay unconscious, his mind already racing through possibilities.

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The demon’s words about Meihua gnawed at him. As a fellow transmigrator, something didn’t add up – how could she have pre-existing connections in this world? He wondered if he had been wrong in his earlier judgement. His brow furrowed as he recalled the spatial energy that clung to her when he first met her, for it to be artificially applied, one would need to be as strong as Victoria, and do it continuously for about a month straight for it to be that much.

And having spent days observing both her and Marcus in the dungeon, he’d noticed how the spatial essence around Meihua and the temporal energy surrounding Marcus had gradually faded. This meant that the energy they had earlier was probably not even the full amount, making it even harder to replicate. For someone to artificially replicate that…Ambrose didn’t even want to imagine how strong such a person would be so he quickly dismissed the thought. It was just too far-fetched. Yet this raised another question – why had the demon acted with such familiarity? It seemed as if the demon knew about her beforehand. Unless…the demon knew about her but she didn’t know about the demon.

Ambrose’s mind raced through possibilities, each thought building upon the last. Perhaps it wasn’t the demon itself but rather this mysterious "professor" it had mentioned. Could this professor possess knowledge of the future? Or more intriguingly, might they be responsible for Meihua’s transmigration?

He shook his head, discarding that theory almost immediately. It didn’t align with the available evidence. Ambrose had always been someone who didn’t like having gaps in his information. This was one of the reasons why he had agreed to take in Adelaide as he was interested in having his own information network. Drawing upon every scrap of information at his disposal, Ambrose began constructing a more comprehensive hypothesis.

The demon’s casual reference to enduring the professor’s "nagging" or "lecture" rather than any physical punishment was particularly interesting. While this could suggest the professor wasn’t violent by nature, Ambrose found that unlikely given their apparent authority over demonic entities. The more probable explanation was that the professor commanded respect through means other than raw power.

The Spider Queen’s appearance in the testing grounds felt like a piece of a larger puzzle. The spider they fought seemed to be a creation of that professor and they were probably testing it by sending it into this dungeon, but according to how the demon said that it was not perfect, it seemed that their test had failed, probably because it was defeated. If Ambrose had to guess, the spider was sent here to destroy the cadets since they would be the future heroes, what better way to test a demonic creation than against humanity’s rising defenders?

The demon’s intervention when Hualing was about to destroy the Spider Queen was particularly telling. Why would the professor care about such a weak creature when he could already command such a strong demon? He didn’t believe that the professor was worried about his creations, and even if that was the case, why would he send such a strong person just to retrieve it, couldn’t he have just sent an errand boy. The only possible explanation was that the creature housed something valuable – perhaps a kind of precious demonic core. That could also explain its endless reproduction. This led to an even more intriguing conclusion about the professor’s role.

Given the complexity of these experiments and the professor’s apparent authority over powerful demons without being controlled by them, they likely answered to an even higher power. Ambrose’s smile widened as the final piece clicked into place – the professor was almost certainly a cultist.

He constructed a likely scenario: A brilliant but controversial academic, expelled for experimenting with forbidden tools, likely fled with a powerful relic. The demons, recognizing the artifact’s true nature as the core of a demon god, struck a bargain – they would fund the research while the professor worked to restore their master, the demon god.

And seeing as the demon’s name was "Sin of..." even without the rest, he could guess that there were seven of these demons following the professor, and each of them were named after a cardinal sin. Ambrose dubbed them the "Seven Sins," they were probably ancient demons whose agenda differed from the current demon king’s. Their goal: reviving their true master, the demon god.

His gaze returned to Meihua’s unconscious form as another revelation struck him. They must’ve received some sort of prophecy or something similar, Meihua is probably compatible with the core and thus they are preparing her to be the demon god’s host. The demon’s words about accelerating their plans due to her "awakening" implied they stood to benefit from her growing power. Each step in her development likely brought them closer to reviving their demon god. The Spider Queen attack suddenly made perfect sense – crisis often triggered awakening, the demons must’ve planned to use the spider as a means to stimulate Meihua into awakening. As for any casualties among the other students it would have been mere collateral damage.

One question remained: How had such a powerful demon circumvented the dungeon’s defensive mechanisms? These dungeons typically restricted entry to beings no more than two ranks above their rating. A D-rank dungeon, for instance, would only admit up to B-rank entities. The only logical conclusion was that the demon had somehow utilized the demon god’s power to bypass these restrictions.

Ambrose let out a weary sigh as he realized they had likely encountered Meihua’s primary antagonist. With Marcus being a regressor, he presumably knew his own nemesis, leaving only Ambrose’s ultimate opponent unknown. Yet this uncertainty didn’t trouble him unduly. After all, he had navigated this crisis successfully – whatever came next, he would find a way to cope, just as he had done here.

A/N - I apologize if this feels all over the place, it’s my first time writing a thousand words of just a single character’s thought process. I just thought that I’d dedicate a chapter to the MC since he isn’t getting any screen time. (Disclaimer: Ambrose’s thoughts are not a reflection of the authors thoughts, he’s just making an hypothesis which may or may not be true)