"Hiss—"
"You actually hit me!"
Gut, who had been blasted out of the carriage, drew in a sharp breath. But thanks to his significantly improved physical condition, when facing Serie's magical bombardment again, he no longer had absolutely no resistance like before.
Although he was still blasted away, when his consciousness reacted, he managed to withstand that tremendous repulsive force through his extremely strong physical constitution. His hands grabbed onto the outside of the carriage to stabilize himself, and after the repulsive force weakened, he flipped back into the carriage.
Gut brushed the wood chips off his hands, then calmly sat back down beside the elf as if nothing had happened.
Only the large hole blasted open on one side of the carriage and Gut's disheveled clothes faintly told of the recent extraordinary event.
"Not bad, you've made some progress."
Serie looked over her disciple's body with slight surprise, then praised: "Next time, I'll increase my magical power output even more."
"You're... going to increase it even more?"
Before Gut could respond, Zenn, sitting on the other side, silently swallowed saliva after saliva.
Looking at the still-drafty hole beside him, Zenn vaguely began to understand why his senior brother dared to be so casual in his attitude toward their teacher.
Perhaps only such a powerful body dared to ignore the teacher's punishment when displeased.
After disciplining this rebellious disciple who repeatedly disturbed her peaceful dreams, Serie no longer planned to continue her nap.
Getting up from the small table where she had been lying, the elf changed through several postures before finally choosing to sit properly.
Legs together, waist pressed against the backrest, head tilted back slightly, even her expression changed from silent to somewhat grave, as if she had suddenly thought of something serious in that instant.
But among everyone, only Gut, who stayed by the elf's side, knew clearly that this wasn't his teacher thinking about something—she was obviously getting drowsy again.
If he didn't disturb her and let Serie continue "pondering," in a little while they'd probably hear the elf's faint snoring.
Sure enough, events unfolded as Gut predicted.
After a few minutes, the elf who had been deep in thought suddenly spoke, but what she expressed wasn't some profound important statement, but merely a long yawn.
At this, even Gut, who had just been blasted out of the carriage not long ago, couldn't help but complain:
"Teacher, this might be somewhat presumptuous to say."
"But I feel that compared to Miss Frieren, whom you've criticized for so long, you don't seem much more diligent?"
"Hm?!" The drowsy elf suddenly raised her head, probably not expecting her disciple to say such a thing.
But Serie didn't feel embarrassed by this. Instead, she stroked her chin, thought for a moment, then said:
"Before answering your question, let me correct an error in your words."
"You can't call Frieren 'junior apprentice sister,' because as of now, I haven't acknowledged Frieren's position in our school."
Hearing his teacher's stubborn refusal to admit their "senior-junior relationship," Gut couldn't help but laugh.
Serie shot her disciple a dissatisfied glare. Gut wisely withdrew his smile and "corrected" his way of addressing Frieren to "Miss Frieren."
Only then was Serie satisfied and seriously answered her disciple's complaint.
"Frieren and I are different."
"Perhaps it's the different concepts of time between humans and elves that gave you some mistaken feelings."
"Take the matter of staying in bed."
"From a human perspective, this is quite a lazy thing, because human lifespans are usually short—even wasting one or two hours counts as waste."
"But in the eyes of long-lived elves, staying in bed is an understandable normal behavior."
"After all, we possess unimaginably vast amounts of time. Even spending one or two hours daily on meaningless activities can't be called sinful."
"Sometimes even when facing a difficult decision, elves can postpone it for one hundred years, even two hundred years before deciding. Even delaying it for a thousand years isn't considered much to us."
"Moreover, moderate staying in bed helps with being energetic for the whole day, so it's not without meaning."
After listening, Gut raised an eyebrow: "So, teacher, are you arguing for the rationality of sleeping in?"
"No." The elf first shook her head, but after seriously reconsidering, she nodded lightly and said:
"My sleeping in a little is inherently reasonable."
"But what I want to say isn't this—it's the essential difference between Frieren and myself."
"As I just explained, the behavior of staying in bed isn't really much for elves."
"But what Frieren does, even from an elf's perspective on time, is extremely lazy."
"Stopping in one place for one or two hundred years, doing nothing but basic magical power meditation; occasionally acting on a whim, but spending enormous energy searching for meaningless folk magic."
"She clearly has decent magical talent and possesses the long time that human mages dream of, but after achieving some results in magic, instead of continuing deeper research, she stays in wilderness and villages for hundreds of years."
"I can tell that Frieren doesn't actually love magic much. Compared to magic itself, she even prefers the process of collecting junk (searching for folk magic)."
When Serie reached this point, she angrily pounded the table.
As a teacher, she had had many disciples throughout her long history who had proper attitudes and diligent research habits.
But they were either limited by magical talent or by brief lifespans. Despite lifelong diligent effort, they could only helplessly stop at their limits.
Therefore, whenever Frieren was mentioned, Serie would think of these disciples' unwillingness, so her attitude toward Frieren was always somewhat dissatisfied.
"I don't understand why the always-diligent Flamme would teach such a lazy disciple as Frieren, and what kind of illness the former Demon King had to be defeated by her?"
Gut listened to his teacher's continuous muttering, feeling somewhat helpless and wanting to laugh.
Indeed, whenever Frieren was mentioned, Teacher Serie's emotions inevitably became somewhat agitated.
However, his teacher's "defense" wasn't unreasonable. As she said, she and Frieren had essential differences.
At most, his teacher daily just slept in and visited antique stalls to buy some modern crafts. The vast majority of each day was still devoted to magical research.
Even when occasionally going out for relaxation, she would use travel time for magical power meditation or flip through magic books.
Looking at "Slacking Frieren" in contrast, perhaps slacking was her main profession, with magic being merely a "side job" she invested more heavily in.
Therefore, Gut could understand his teacher's unique "disdain" for Frieren.
It was like a world-renowned academician in his previous life extending an olive branch to a doctoral student brought by his prized disciple, wanting to lead her to publish in top journals like Cell and Science to advance human civilization.
But the doctoral student disdained this, decisively refusing this precious opportunity and turning to pursue "doctoral-to-specialist degree" studies. After three years, she published a paper in the Journal of Island City Hotel Management Vocational and Technical College.
Thinking about it this way, Teacher Serie's "anger" wasn't unreasonable.
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Powerstones?
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