Chapter 24
I should go to the Mage Guild.
After returning to the inn and agonizing over it for a long time, I came to that conclusion.
Actually, I had planned to devote today entirely to writing my thesis. I intended to at least draw up a rough outline for a paper on the correlation between the hieroglyphs discovered in the ruins and the Ogam script.
The Audumra Guild had said they would call in people who could interpret the inscriptions in the ruins. Surely, before long, a professor from some university—or people acting under that professor's orders—would come and go.
The people from the university would inspect the inscriptions in the ruins and take their interpretations and research results back to their lab.
Their lab was probably organized as a team—the lab head and their slaves—and they would work together. So if I sat around idling at the inn just because nobody had arrived yet, I would end up publishing a belated paper after the rest of academia.
For an individual like me to publish a paper faster than people working as a team, I had no choice but to put the time lost to their round trip to good use.
‘But fuck, my dick is more important than any of that.’
I could write another paper later.
There was also the fallback option of briefly returning to academia, checking their paper, and designing one from a different perspective.
Besides, if they were an entire university department team, they probably had several projects in progress at any given time. Their research related to those ruins might even be pushed back to the next quarter.
No, it almost certainly would be.
Fuck, I knew from experience. Work never fucking ended. I endured three years of hearing, “It’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Friday, Friday—it’ll be over soon, so let’s hang in there just today.”
The bastards coming this time would almost certainly be graduate students—the official term was “research students.” Maybe those bastards would secretly wreck the inscriptions in the ruins because they didn't feel like working.
‘When working, you must never confuse your priorities.’
That was the greatest lesson I had learned while living as a research student at Carmine University. Handling work without rules or order was a perfect recipe for frequent late nights or consequences that couldn't be cleaned up.
The priorities in my life were life > purpose > everything else.
Of those, publishing a paper belonged to my purpose—the process of finding a way to return to Earth—while my dick belonged to life. It belonged there fucking more than anything.
If I had to choose between my future as a scholar from this otherworld and as a eunuch from Earth, I had to pick the former without a second thought.
Crumple─.
I crumpled the paper with the typo on it and tossed it roughly into the trash can.
Putting your goals in writing was a great help in preparing your mind. So I planned to organize my priorities as guidelines for my actions for the time being.
Sliiide.
Scratch, scratch.
What I had to do from now on was as follows.
1. Resolve the status ailment afflicting my dick.
2. Discover the principles and origins of Beast Regression.
-----------Fucking impossible wall-----------
3. Write a paper based on the newly discovered ruins.
4. Raise my adventurer rank to Bronze class.
‘Something like that, I suppose.’
I wanted to write ‘0. Find Yerna and beat the shit out of her’ above number one, but I held back.
─Professor Krapika of Britain once said.
The thing I feared most was not death, but that this anger might weather away.
I agreed with him. Releasing anger and hatred too often diminished their explosive power when it truly mattered.
It was like how not masturbating increased your load, while quitting cigarettes or alcohol was the only way to save money. I couldn't waste my hatred by cursing that fucking elf bitch in trivial situations every time.
Emotions were a resource that wore down.
When I faced Yerna, I couldn't have anything left inside me but some half-assed anger.
That would be the time to unleash all my libido and shriek like a madman—Kieeeeeek!!—like releasing into the yard a hunting dog that had been kept inside the house for a month.
“That’s what catharsis is.”
Nod.
Having set my goals, I put on the clothes I had laid out on the bed. They were a black robe and mask I had obtained separately.
Flutter─!
Swoosh.
I had bought these clothes after stopping by a clothing store on the way back. Against people like those in the Mage Guild who flaunted their academic credentials, you needed a position with a certain amount of gravitas to earn respect.
For example─ a master's degree in archaeology from Carmine University.
“Heh heh heh.”
The Carmine University diploma & archaeology master's certificate I had never used once glittered in my hand. Both were simple identification badges shaped like elegant brooches.
‘There’s no need to worry about my identity being exposed.’
These badges were enchanted items, rare even in the otherworld.
Their purpose and effects were similar to those of credit cards or identification cards in modern civilization. At most public institutions and large organizations, these badges alone were enough to verify the authenticity of my identity.
They were perfect for hiding the fact that Nord, the lowly adventurer from the Audumra Guild, was a master's-degree archaeologist. Even if I happened to lose one, it could be deactivated remotely, so I was safe.
The people at the Mage Guild wouldn't tell me to take off my mask. Archaeology was a profession that dealt with relics, and there were always a fucking lot of people everywhere who wanted to get their hands on expensive relics.
Archaeologists who had to conceal their identities were common. Even through the brooch, nobody could learn their personal details.
That was why I was certain the people at the Mage Guild wouldn't ask me to remove my mask. In fact, the identity-verification function had been built into the brooch specifically to protect archaeologists.
Swoosh.
My reflection in the mirror had a somewhat batlike appearance, partly because the robe was black.
Still, the mask on my face was shaped like a bear. It represented my respect for Vector Man Bear, my idol and a great hero.
It would have been nice if this mask also had a voice-modulation effect, but it wasn't a problem even without one.
“Vector—drop your voice.”
I consciously put on a sexy, husky voice. It was lower than usual.
With this, my disguise was flawless. Now nobody would be able to mistake me for the adventurer Nord!
“Kheh heh heh. Perfect. Kheh heh heh… huh?”
As I chuckled to myself, I suddenly realized a major problem.
“Kheh heh heh heh. Fuck. I showed my face when I bought the clothes.”
What the fuck was I thinking, doing something so stupid? Even if I had been distracted, this was an unbelievably idiotic failure.
At this rate, the Mage Guild could trace me back to my bare face with even a little investigation of this robe. All they had to do was go to the clothing store and ask whether anyone had bought a robe like this.
There probably wasn't another black-haired, black-eyed adventurer in all of Sargadis besides me!
“Goddammit.”
I had failed to realize something so obvious because I was worrying about my enlarged cock swinging around.
The dick club thudding against my thighs was so fucking irritating that there was no way I could concentrate on anything. I hadn't noticed it when I went to the smithy, so it hadn't been a problem then.
─Whoosh!
─Thump.
I took off the robe and mask and threw them onto the bed. I had to give up on going to the Mage Guild wearing those clothes.
Should I buy a new costume? Even so, clothes bought at a store would probably be easy to trace, so I was reluctant to wear them. The problem hadn't been whether I showed my face at the store in the first place.
But that didn't mean I could make a fucking homemade suit and wear it, either.
That was something only a person with good dexterity could do. This time, I would even have to alter the mask, so ordinary skill wouldn't come close to being enough.
I had never made or repaired clothes in my life. The last time had been during high school technology and home economics.
Hoping to make decent clothes with that level of skill would be insane. For the very first clothes I ever made to turn out looking even remotely decent, I would have had to be born with all-purpose, cheat-code-level dexterity.
“─Ah.”
Right. For example.
Like the dwarves—the blacksmith race.
***
The human body deteriorated the less it was used.
This wasn't limited to muscles. Even the brain, divided into left and right hemispheres, suffered a decline in function if you didn't use it regularly—like people who started fumbling even basic arithmetic after growing old.
That was why I had forgotten the name of the inn where Francesca was staying.
It was all because becoming an adventurer had reduced the amount of thinking I had to do. It definitely wasn't because I was stupid.
Anyway, even though I had heard the name just yesterday, all I remembered was that it was something about children. Fuck, it wasn't Seo Taiji and the Boys; what kind of inn name was that?
With no choice, I went to Dorka and asked.
“What inn? Are you moving to another one? You’re really going to hurt my feelings like this?”
“Here. Three days’ lodging fee. Found it on the way.”
“It’s probably The Children of Mutarat.”
Thanks to Dorka's capitalism-induced, split-personality-worthy change of attitude, I arrived at the inn where Francesca was staying.
I had put the black robe and mask I had bought earlier in the bag on my back. To avoid leaving behind a witness report that some suspicious bastard had been walking around with a suspicious bag, I had also packed various odds and ends of equipment so I would look like I was about to head out on a request.
─Jingle-jangle.
“Welcome~. Staying with us?”
The innkeeper was a plump-looking middle-aged woman. I answered her greeting without much fuss.
“No. I came to see someone I know for a moment. Do you happen to know a Ms. Francesca who’s staying at this inn?”
“Frang? Who might you be?”
The innkeeper had the eyes of someone looking at a suspicious person. Racism was practically ingrained in her bones.
Was Frang a nickname for Francesca? It suited her perfectly—a name that sounded like it would roll around and around if you gave it a push.
Come to think of it, if she was close enough to be called by a nickname, Francesca must have had a good relationship with the innkeeper too. Not as good as the one between me and Dorka, though.
“We’re adventurers who worked together. I have some business with her.”
“Business? What kind of business brings you all the way to her lodging?”
“She said we should have a drink sometime, so I came by. There’s also something I wanted to ask her about personally.”
My real purpose was to customize the robe and mask, but I didn't do anything stupid like say that. But why was this auntie's expression getting sour? Had she gotten pissed off because a ching-chang-chong bastard said he wanted to drink at her inn?
“She said she wanted to have a drink? That girl?”
“Yes. Is there some problem I don’t know about?”
Could Francesca still be a minor? She was short, but judging by her face alone, she looked like an ordinary woman in her twenties.
“It’s not that. She’s the kind of girl who passes out after a drink or two.”
“Huh?”
Was that for real? Where the hell had she sold her dwarf genes for a half-dwarf to get blackout drunk after a few drinks?
So was Francesca a half-elf rather than a half-human after all?
Francesca, the new human species that was half-dwarf and half-elf.
It was a genetic combination that gave the eugenics of this world the finger right to its face. I had learned that, aside from humans, even different races within the same human species couldn't have children together.
I began to worry about Francesca's safety. The day this fact came to light, biologists who wanted to become the otherworld's post-Darwins would kidnap her and try to dissect her.
“Hmmm. Really? That girl?”
It was while I was considering from a biological perspective whether dwarves had a great deal of alcohol-degrading enzyme in their livers or whether they simply excreted alcohol directly without absorbing it. The innkeeper looked me up and down.
“Hey, you.”
“Yes?”
“Frang is only twenty-two. She’s an adult, but that’s still too young to get by alone in an unfamiliar land.”
“Yes? Yes.”
I didn't know why the auntie was telling me this, but I pretended I understood more or less. I was already used to the contextless way middle-aged men and women talked.
“Even though she must always be lonely and have a hard time with nowhere to turn, she’s working so hard to get by. Do you understand?”
She sounded as though she was lecturing me. But fuck, didn't what she was saying apply to me too?
“I didn’t know the details, but I do know that Ms. Francesca is a good person.”
“Good. That’s all that matters.”
The innkeeper folded her arms and nodded as though satisfied with my answer, then pointed inside the inn.
“Come in. Frang went out saying she wouldn’t be back before evening, so if you have nowhere to go, wait inside.”
“She went out to work?”
“Today was the day she had to pay her lodging fee.”
The plight of tenants was the same everywhere. She had only just finished that brutal request yesterday, yet she had gone out to work again to make a living. My heart ached for her difficult life.
Dwarves might be sturdy, but adventuring was grueling. That was even more true for Iron-class adventurers, who lived from one day's earnings to the next. As a fellow adventurer who had crossed the line between life and death with her, I hoped she would work only enough not to damage her health.
I looked out at the clock tower beyond the inn. It was five in the afternoon. She had said she would return in the evening, so it probably wouldn't take that long.
“I’ll wait, then.”
”Good thinking. Or would you like to have a drink first?“
“I don’t know when she’ll arrive, so getting drunk alone would feel a little wrong.”
“My, how polite. It’s rare to see a man who’s been well-mannered from a young age.”
“I have wit too. I’m an all-around entertainer.”
I tossed out an appropriate answer and sat in a corner. I didn't want to get in the way of business. If the currency system hadn't been structured to make small payments impossible, I would have ordered something to drink.
Ordinary merchants and residents usually used cheap goods, such as flour, whose prices were set by the gram in place of money. In other words, it was a form of barter.
I couldn't do that because, fuck, I had no way to buy flour by the sack and manage it.
As a result, money was leaking away at an astonishing rate. Rather than saving my request rewards, I was living by eating into my savings. That was because I wasn't going out to work diligently and was blowing everything every day on eating out and lodging.
‘By Bronze at the latest… I need to find a place by the time I reach Silver class.’
Finding a home right now would be reckless.
Iron- to Bronze-class adventurers were easy prey.
If an Iron-class nobody like me bought a house and started showing off how much money I had, it would be disastrous. Some bastards might not stop at robbing an empty house—they might target me and try to steal my wallet too.
An Iron-class adventurer with money but no skill.
To the poor of this otherworld, I would be the kind of mark that made them want to close their eyes, smash me in the back of the head, and steal my wallet.
Whether they were caught and arrested later or not, for people living without a future, dying one way or another was probably all the same.
As I killed time looking out the window, it soon passed six.
That was when the person I had been waiting for appeared.
─Clomp, clomp.
Francesca appeared in the inn's wide-open doorway. I had been lost in thought, but I recognized her arrival at a glance. It would have been harder not to recognize that tiny figure, barely 160 centimeters tall, in a gray robe.
“Ms. Francesca.”
“Huh? Mr. Nord?”
When I called out to her, Francesca startled and took off her hood. Leaving my bag beside the table, I walked toward her.
“Huh? Ah, wait! Don’t come over here!”
“What?”
Francesca held out a hand and refused to let me approach. So I stopped halfway through walking, frozen in an awkward pose.
I couldn't understand why she looked so disgusted. Had her invitation to have a drink meant, “Being with you was disgusting, so let’s never see each other again,” to her?
“I-I went on a request in the sewers today!”
“…Ddet?”
Francesca shouted that and hurriedly backed away. Wind blowing in from behind the door brushed against her gray robe and struck the bridge of my nose. It was the sewer stench I had once become sick of smelling.
Today, she was a color that had come from the sewer.
My head filled with memories of the sewer.
I mean, the fun memories of the otherworld's Great Big Katydids—their mouths splitting horizontally beneath their enormous compound eyes─.
“Gak.”
PTSD, ON.