The headmaster explained the rules and made it clear that they could only fight using spirit arts, because that was exactly what she expected their new tutor to teach at the academy.
Some of the students gathered to watch the match, including Myria, who stood among the spectators. She was excited, because this was the first time she would see the skinny lord personally engage in a battle.
Jin already understood how this would end. He let out a quiet sigh and allowed the institute to witness his power for themselves.
Argus, however, began to feel uncertain. This was the first time he would actually see the person he had recommended fight in front of others, and he worried that Jin might end up embarrassing him in front of everyone.
Lord Gita, on the other hand, looked extremely excited and seemed eager to end the match quickly. While putting Jin in his place, he declared that he would take the opening move, and immediately launched a huge fireball that he believed would be enough to defeat Jin in a single strike.
Jin avoided the attack calmly and effortlessly, while the skinny lord remained convinced that he could still win and prove the captain's judgment wrong. He followed up with his ace attack, called lightning spears, while Jin continued dodging every strike and slowly got on his nerves.
While Gita believed that all Jin could do was keep running away, Jin himself quietly sighed and thought that this kind of power was never meant to be used against people. However, since there was no other choice left, he finally decided to demonstrate his ability and intentionally revealed a unique spirit art.
He used a gravity manipulation attack and forced Lord Gita down onto the ground, pinning him there, making it clear that he had never stood a chance and that his arrogance had meant nothing in the end.
The headmaster and Lord Rudman were both left shocked by what they had witnessed. Even Argus and his sister Myria stood there with their mouths open after seeing such a clean display of power, the like of which they had never witnessed before. When they asked what exactly had just happened, Jin calmly explained that he had simply manipulated the gravity surrounding Lord Gita.
When he heard people saying they had never seen anything like it before, Jin smiled quietly, realizing just how much there was for the students, and the instructors of the academy, to learn.
Lord Gita ground his teeth in frustration as he lay flat on the ground, looking absolutely miserable. Out of sheer pity for the wrinkled old man, Jin finally released the gravity pressure pinning him down.
Gita had a meltdown, shouting that a spirit technique like that should not even exist. He insisted the inferior must be using some kind of illegal trick. Jin quietly stood there and took the verbal abuse like a champion. And while the old man screeched in his face, the headmaster calmly made her decision.
The surrounding students were impressed as well. Myria in particular could not understand how he controlled that much divine power. Normally, inferiors barely possessed any at all. Her curiosity spiked, and she was determined to uncover who Jin really was.
A week later came the welcome ceremony. There, the headmaster announced that Harness Academy had been founded to train warriors capable of eliminating invading threats. Anyone too weak to keep up had no place within its walls. However, those who succeeded were practically guaranteed a future filled with status and influence.
Observing from above, a few demi-humans standing near Myria were surprised by how many newcomers had gathered. Quite a few of them did not even come from noble families.
A lion demi-human named Ryus greeted Myria casually. He mentioned that it was unexpected to see her attending the welcome ceremony in person. While chatting, he suddenly noticed an inferior sitting beside the faculty and nearly choked. When Myria revealed that the inferior was actually their new teacher, he completely lost his composure. She asked Ryus for his honest first impression, based purely on appearance. When he bluntly described the man as an average nobody with no wife and no life, she admitted that had been her initial judgment too.
Feeling multiple stares drilling into him, Jin quickly realized he could not start investigating the academy too openly from day one. Before anything else, he needed to rebrand his image from a worthless inferior into something more neutral and unthreatening. Right now it felt as though he had a giant target painted on his back.
After the ceremony concluded, it was finally time for his first class.
Meanwhile, Lord Gita gathered the senior students and announced that regular classes were officially back in session. He bluntly warned them not to fall behind the promising new talents who had joined this year. That said, he angrily demanded to know why most of the class was absent. The old man smiled on the inside, fully aware that many of them would rather die than sit through a lesson taught by an inferior. He had even gone out of his way to spread the word that today's lecture would be handled by Jin.
Surprisingly, the new professor did not seem bothered in the slightest. He stood confidently at the podium and introduced himself as the new spirit techniques instructor.
Without missing a beat, Ryus shamelessly asked whether he truly had what it took to teach the most elite class in the academy. Jin responded with a calm smile, saying they would find out soon enough. He even told the lion demi-human that he was free to leave if the class proved beneath him.
With that established, he laid down one rule immediately. He told his students they must never use divine power against humans under any circumstance. To clarify his reasoning, he explained that divine power had been designed to suppress the regeneration abilities of the invaders. Humans, however, recovered normally after being hurt, which revealed that its true purpose had always been to eliminate invaders.
Hearing that, some loudmouth at the back started talking trash, calling him soft because he supposedly lacked divine power. The boy insisted he had every right to use his strength however he pleased.
Slightly annoyed, Professor Jin invited him to test whether he was truly as weak as claimed. Right there in the middle of class, he told the student to hit him with his strongest move. The boy grinned arrogantly, declaring that he would never attend class again if the professor so much as scratched him. Seizing the opportunity, he conjured a lightning spear crackling with energy. Even Lord Gita tensed up, worried the classroom might not survive such a reckless attack.
Without hesitation, the student launched the spear straight at Jin, kicking up a massive cloud of dust across the room. Everyone assumed the inferior had been destroyed, and then a blade shot out from the haze and jammed into the wall behind the boy, barely missing his face.
Jin calmly explained that the sword would have gone straight through him if he had truly meant to finish him off. With that, he delivered his first lesson of the semester. Never judge someone purely by appearance.
Ryus watched in silence, wondering whether that technique even qualified as a spirit art.
Professor Jin continued smoothly, explaining that inferiors were labeled that way because they were considered weak. Then, as someone clearly leagues above them, he asked what that would make him. His aura surged to its peak as he answered his own question. That, he declared, was what you called a teacher.
Next he delivered a second lesson. He asked the same boy whether he knew the criteria required to activate spirit arts. Acting as though it were common knowledge, the student answered that it all came down to vivid imagination. If you pictured something clearly enough, the spirits would carry it out.
Professor Jin agreed that imagination mattered, but added that there was one critical element they were all missing. He explained that spirits responded to different wavelengths, and that those were what really triggered their actions. There were eight primary wavelengths in total. Among them, ignition, discharge, healing and freezing were the four most people knew. However, gravity control, light control, atmosphere control and spatial manipulation existed as well.
Lord Gita nearly choked at seeing him use all eight of them so casually. With that revelation, Jin formally began his first real lecture.
Later that evening, he considered where to start his investigation into the academy's secrets. The campus was crowded with students at every corner. After the display in class, he was the main topic of discussion. If he wanted answers, he needed access to somewhere students were not allowed to enter.