Chapter 57
“I rewrote the paper McRoyver ruined last time.”
In the calm atmosphere of the café, Tirsi began.
She must have rushed out in a hurry, because today, just like last time, she was wearing a pink nurse’s uniform under a doctor’s coat.
But who was McRoyver again?
My brain stalled for a moment, but after thinking it over, I remembered that the racist alchemist bastard’s surname was McRoyver.
As expected, I have a good memory. I just hadn’t wanted to think about that racist bastard for a moment because he was such a piece of shit. I understood my brain’s laziness.
Tirsi said in a listless voice.
“I was going to send the completed paper to Haisvent. I heard I could have it evaluated by the Mage Guild there.”
“That was for the promotion exam─wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I thought if I asked the guild to evaluate it, that vicious bastard might interfere again. But if I’d known things would turn out like this, maybe it would’ve been better to let him interfere.”
Tirsi tapped the drink in front of her.
Knowing Tirsi’s situation, I sank into an indescribable sadness. Who would’ve thought our papers would both get stolen at the same time? What a cruel coincidence.
Somehow, Tirsi and I always seemed to suffer the exact same misfortunes. It had been that way ever since the sewers.
‘Still, this time, I couldn’t call it a coincidence.’
The Transport Guild’s wagons departed every few days.
Tirsi had probably waited for things to settle down after cleaning up that racist bastard’s mess. Given the wagon schedule, it must have been unavoidable that her paper ended up on the same wagon as mine.
“Did you keep a draft of the paper?”
I asked, gauging the atmosphere.
Even on Earth, when writing something important, people repeatedly backed it up and revised it, producing files like ‘Paper revision 9-9-9.hwp.’ In a world where everything was written on paper, that went without saying.
Making backups was much more of a pain than in the twenty-first century─there was no Ctrl C+V─but it was still common to keep some copies.
‘It’s not as if I couldn’t write mine again.’
I did have the original paper, in a sense: the rough draft I’d written every night while working in the fields.
‘But why should I?’
Anyone who’s done college assignments or office work would know.
Even if you struggled to recreate it from hazy memories and the materials you still had, how could the result possibly be identical to what you’d originally written?
Even if you could write it exactly the same, that still wouldn’t make it right.
Why the hell should I have to start from scratch on something I’d worked so hard on for days, just because of some thieving bastards?!
People flew into a rage even over a power outage caused by lightning. And here was someone trying to erase the fruits of my labor and make me repeat all that grueling work.
And they weren’t even remorseful about the wrong they’d done!
‘Now that I think about it, I’m getting pissed off again.’
I’d already been getting ready to take the promotion exam with Frang today, all smiles and laughter.
Stealing my paper was unforgivable under normal circumstances, but they had to do it on the day of Frang’s and my important promotion exam?
─Bubble, bubble.
Stress made my insides boil. Ever since awakening my mana, I could almost physically feel the simmering rage inside me. Like right now.
“The drafts… Heh. Not a single one survived.”
At my question, Tirsi answered hollowly.
“I was really stupid. The least damaged draft I had left was the paper McRoyver had completely ruined. I got so angry every time I looked at it that I ended up burning it.”
She must never have thought someone would steal it. Since I was in the same situation, I didn’t think she’d done anything foolish.
“I don’t know what to say, but… I understand how you feel.”
Seeing the sorrow in Tirsi’s manner, I, too, chose my words carefully as I replied.
“When something similar happened to me, I tore everything up so there wouldn’t be a trace of it.”
“Hehe. Have you been through this before, Mr. Wayne?”
Tirsi asked with a bitter smile. Well, if someone told me they’d had their paper stolen more than twice, I’d have nothing but a bitter smile too.
I could tell stories all day if I got started, but there was no point, and it would only make me sad, so I decided to drop it.
Professor Kripika’s Theory of Eroding Hatred still had room for practical application. I’d bury my anger at Yerna for now.
“Well, yes. It’s nothing to be proud of, so please don’t ask for the details. If I think about it, I’ll get so sad I’ll start crying.”
I wouldn’t actually cry, but I said it anyway.
“Yes. I know how to show that much consideration.”
Tirsi laughed as if the joke had cheered her up a little. It was a forced laugh by anyone’s standards.
“I wrote that last paper by struggling to make it good enough for that man. I couldn’t stand the sight of it. But now, I wish I still had even that.”
“The Mage Guild won’t be able to help, will it?”
I asked, clinging to a straw despite seeing little hope. Tirsi shook her head.
“I heard that thieves have been stealing herbs the Mage Guild recently purchased, but the losses aren’t very large, so they’re leaving it alone. Instead, the guards in front of the guild have become very on edge. They say they can’t even catch the bandit gangs operating around the city.”
The guards had become on edge…?
Hadn’t they acted that way when I went to the Mage Guild too? I distinctly remembered them suddenly laying out a magic formation and thrusting their spears at me.
To think those bandit bastards were the reason I’d been treated like a thief for no reason at all!!
“Grrrghghgh...!!”
I bit my lip to hold back my anger, and bright-red blood dripped from beneath my mask. How much more harm did those fucking ninja bastards intend to do to my life?!
“M-Mr. Wayne! You’re bleeding!”
Tirsi, startled, took out a handkerchief and offered it to me. I calmly declined and wiped the blood with my own handkerchief.
I’d started carrying this handkerchief around for Frang’s sake.
“──I got a little carried away. I’m sorry.”
Anyway, couldn’t those petty thieves be classified as vermin by now? Nobody would blame me if I killed those human scraps on sight.
“You don’t have to apologize. I feel like tearing my hair out like this too.”
Tirsi mimed pulling at her white hair beneath her nurse’s cap. Then she smiled tiredly again.
“This time, I really worked hard, thinking, ‘This time, for sure…’ I even made sure the spacing was right on every line…”
“Every line?”
At Tirsi’s words, my jaw dropped. She had even spaced every line in a handwritten paper? Did she have some kind of compulsion?
“H-how is that even possible?”
“I place a ruler on the page every time I write. I had a ruler custom-made to match the size of my handwriting.”
“Good heavens… You went that far?”
More than admiration, it gave me chills.
To scholars in this otherworld, a paper’s ‘legibility’ was a kind of aesthetic—or something close to toxic hazing.
Like soldiers obsessing over the angle of a folded blanket, the alignment of their three stripes, and the stiffness of their uniforms──it was a sensibility you couldn’t understand unless you’d experienced it firsthand!
Even people who initially wondered why the hell they had to do this would find themselves obsessing over it and revising their work a few years later; and if they didn’t, their obnoxious superiors would keep chewing them out for it. A vicious tradition!!
That was the culture behind the ‘legibility’ scholars of this otherworld pursued.
I knew because I’d been hassled countless times over my handwriting by obnoxious professors. The reality was that young scholars privately loathed the culture of pursuing ‘legibility,’ yet still found themselves clinging to it, knowingly or not.
But Tirsi’s obsession was on a level beyond mine.
To think she’d written her paper while considering the size of her handwriting and even the spacing on every single line!
That was no longer a paper. It had reached the level of a kind of paper art!
“You’re saying… you lost a paper like that?”
I was so shocked I couldn’t speak.
─Tremble, tremble.
So hands really did shake like that in real life. Looking down at my trembling hand, I muttered hollowly.
“I… I can’t keep up with reality itself.”
It was like ironing my uniform perfectly and polishing my boots because I had leave the next day, only for another company’s standby-duty soldier to barge into the barracks, step all over them, crumple them, and steal them to wear.
I felt like my heart would burst from anger I couldn’t contain. The trauma of my past churned through my brain. My thoughts wouldn’t settle, as if a whisk attached to an electric drill had been stuck into my brain!
Just like the day after the CSAT, when high-schooler Kang Buk-ho, who’d tried Red Bull for the first time in his life, clutched his heart and threw up in a PC bang!!
“Pffft.”
Laughter burst from my mouth, and my vision turned white. When anger exceeded the limits a person could bear, it burned calmly instead.
‘──Ah, I see. So that’s what it was.’
As I let out mad laughter, wrapped in white-hot rage, a sudden enlightenment pierced my mind. It filled my chest like sunlight breaking through a frozen river on a snowy plain.
‘Those bandit bastards──they’re no different from professors.’
That’s how it is.
People who torment others for their own selfishness. People who refuse to reward those who work hard for them. People who treat others harshly and exploit them.
They’re all professors.
This otherworld was full of professors who would even make Satan a grad student.
“Then I──”
Then I.
“──I’ll become a Professor Slayer.”
I will bring justice to this world.
“Y-yes?”
Tirsi looked at me in confusion as I stood up. She hadn’t noticed my awakening.
“Ms. Tirsi.”
I spoke to her, looking at her with a profound gaze as she stood there unsure what to do.
“I’m going to hunt down that bandit gang and get our papers back.”
“S-suddenly? No, more importantly, how?”
“I have a way. It’ll take some preparation, but I think I can find their hideout and wipe them out, even on my own.”
It might have been an arrogant judgment, but honestly, it seemed quite possible. There was no way some humanoid trash mobs who did nothing but steal could be strong.
Before pursuing them, I planned to do a little preliminary investigation. But that bandit gang wasn’t some massive criminal organization like the mafia. The crimes they committed were tiny in scale. They were surely just a bunch of local delinquents.
If they were a group made up of real powerhouses, why would they only rob traveling merchants in some rural city? The scale of this incident was no more than someone stealing the neighborhood’s Coupang delivery van.
They were trash mobs left alone because they were good at fleeing or hiding, and dealing with them wasn’t worth the effort.
Those petty-thieving bastards were just like repeat juvenile offenders who committed crimes believing the juvenile justice system would protect them.
There was no reason not to kill them.
“So before that, I have one question.”
With my Elite Brain working at full speed, I worked through the logic and then asked Tirsi.
“──Would you like to come with me?”
I could go alone. If Tirsi refused, going with Frang was an option too.
But Tirsi was also a victim of this incident.
She had every right to vent her anger, just as much as I did.
“Is there… a way?”
Tirsi asked, her eyes burning. Though she looked delicate, she was an adventurer too—a mage with the ability and will to take revenge on her enemies.
I answered with confidence.
“It’s possible.”
It was a method I’d often used since my days as a slave.
***
“First, let’s do some preliminary investigation.”
After saying that, I asked Tirsi to go to the Adventurer Guild and gather information. Since Tirsi belonged to the Mage Guild, the guild receptionists would be more willing to give her information about the bandits.
And I headed to the Transport Guild.
Whether or not his claim that his son had been kidnapped was true, that bald representative was obliged to answer my questions.
“Y-you said you were going to drive off the bandit gang?”
The bald representative, summoned out once again, opened his eyes wide at my words.
“Please! Save my son, my son!”
Then he prostrated himself before me, his voice choked with sobs.
“If you do that, I’ll give you a reward, of course, and even all the stolen goods our company bought from its customers!”