Chapter 14
“You all worked hard on your exams.”
An uproar erupted here and there.
Some students exhaled sighs of relief while others let out sighs of despair, and thus the eventful major course finally came to an end.
“Although this was a make-up course, please give another round of applause to our teaching assistant for working hard over these ten weeks.”
After sending the students’ final evaluation papers to the office, Professor Cheon wondered how to wrap things up.
“You worked hard too, Professor. Will you be teaching any courses next year?”
“Unfortunately, I won’t. On top of that, I’ll be taking a sabbatical starting next year, so I probably won’t return until after you’ve graduated. That is, if you manage to graduate safely.”
The students began to relax a little after that small joke.
“This lecture started with fifty students, but now only twenty-eight elite students remain.
Don’t worry too much. I’ll grade everyone, including those who dropped the course, so as long as you did about average, you should receive a grade that won’t disappoint you.
This was Professor Cheon Gyu-jin of Micro-Nano Transmutation Circle Analysis. Thank you for working hard during the winter make-up semester.”
Amid thunderous applause, the students logged out one or two at a time.
Although their time together had been brief, he grew sentimental as he sent off the students whose names he had memorized from taking attendance every day.
There was the student who dozed off in the back every day, yet somehow managed to do brilliantly on the midterm.
That student was so curious that they bombarded him with questions every day even after class ended, occasionally leaving him at a loss. Naturally, it had been just as rewarding.
The teaching assistant was responsible for the first round of grading the exams.
There wasn’t much time left before the grade submission period, so he needed to start grading now if he wanted to account for possible complaints.
The teaching assistant also asked Professor Cheon Gyu-jin for his understanding and left the room first.
In the end, the only one remaining was the mysterious little girl he had met during the summer semester course.
At first, he had thought she was an acquaintance who had retired before him and had come to tease him, but as the lectures continued, it became clear that she was genuinely attending his classes.
“Were the exam questions manageable?”
“More or less...”
“Haha. I’m looking forward to seeing your score. Our students are all outstanding talents as well, but I’m worried they might be outperformed by you, Ms. Namhee.”
“It’s not Namhee. It’s Name. NoName.”
“Name?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry for misunderstanding you all this time. As you can see, young people these days practically live in virtual reality, and this is only my second time teaching a class in virtual reality, so I’ve found it rather awkward.
If it wouldn’t be an imposition, I’d like to meet you privately somewhere other than virtual reality. Would that be all right?”
The girl wasn’t one of his university’s undergraduates. Even so, he was curious about the identity of the child who attended class every day and showed such outstanding performance.
“I don’t have much time. If you really want to, then let’s meet during the appeals. You said you’d be doing them face-to-face.”
Still, he was curious about her exam score.
Professor Cheon Gyu-jin smiled brightly at her answer.
“Then I’ll be going.”
“Do you know how to get here?”
“...”
“If you don’t, I’ll tell you now.”
* * *
After Arin was adopted, I left Merlin Orphanage without looking back.
For several months, I spent every day sleeping at Gung PC Bang.
It was fortunate that the shutdown law had been abolished two years ago. Otherwise, I might have ended up mooching off the homeless people at Seoul Station.
Perhaps there were many cases like mine, because the nun didn’t seem to mind much. She gave me the 150,000 won that had originally been mine and sent me on my way.
This was no time to play around. I was in a situation where I had to earn 30,000 won a day just to solve my housing problem among the necessities of life.
But my stubborn refusal to play games lasted a long time, and after setting my category to ‘Just Chatting,’ I began running a somewhat peculiar stream where I solved snot-nosed children’s homework for money. It turned out this was the only talent I had.
The minimum donation was 1,000 won, so even after the fees, the money quickly piled up after answering a few questions.
[‘HoyaMoyaHo’ donated 1,000 won!]
-It’s homework I have to finish by tomorrow, but I still haven’t solved it all! Please help me!
“Thank you for the donation.”
I opened the photo attached to the donation window.
Since I wasn’t much of a talker by nature, the only sound quietly echoing through the room was the berceuse melody playing on the background playlist.
I set up a digital blackboard beside the donation window and began explaining.
“Although this problem is based on a transmutation circle, in the end, it’s a problem in mathematics, not transmutation theory.
So there’s no need to go out of our way to analyze the transmutation circle itself.
All we need to do is find the angle the problem asks for. See how this line bends unnaturally here?”
I drew a horizontal auxiliary line from the middle of the bent line.
“Then this and this are parallel, so this angle is 30 degrees. This and this are also parallel, making this angle 45 degrees. So, when you add the two together, it’s 75 degrees.”
After teaching a few of these, I even memorized that this was a first-year middle-school-level problem.
After solving a problem like that, I would close my eyes and rest again.
The viewers didn’t particularly try to disturb me and entertained themselves just fine, so I was very satisfied with the situation. Though I was still struggling with money every day.
-Why are you paying money to ask this?
-We’d solve something this easy just from the comments, for real lol
-The only angles given are 30 and 45 degrees, so obviously you add them together to get 75, you little brat lol
-It’s embarrassing to call this math. It’s just arithmetic.
-This streamer is seriously getting paid for doing nothing. Why is everyone watching this?
-Because the avatar is freaking cute.
-Agreed.
[‘SaveTheGradStudent’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Would you happen to accept questions about complex analysis as well?
Ah, just as I was about to fall asleep, another donation sound rang out.
“...Yes.”
I was so groggy that it took me a while to answer because I had to check the question again.
-Come back with the right donation amount lol
-What the hell is the streamer’s real identity? They know everything.
There wasn’t really a set donation amount, but whenever a problem looked like it would take a while, I posted it at a higher price on my own.
If I had posted things like that for just 1,000 won, a riot in the comment section would have been inevitable.
[‘SaveTheGradStudent’ donated 10,000 won!]
-Would this be enough?
More than enough. I calmly looked over the material sent by another precious viewer.
-Why is their username SaveTheGradStudent?
-Because I’m worried that if I fall into the lake in front of the school and shout ‘Save me!’ no one will rescue me, so I’m trying to get used to it.
-Lol, you’re not a person until you graduate.
“Just a moment.”
I needed help from the internet. I understood the concept itself, but I didn’t know the terminology used in this world.
At a loss for how to search for it, I typed in whatever came to mind.
-Internet lifeline!
-No, I just looked it up, and that question is brutal lolololol
-This person is the real deal.
-Does the streamer actually understand it? Is their lack of knowledge finally being exposed?
“Ah, here it is too. To derive the conclusion, you need to understand what a perfectoid space is. Explaining it is a pain, so just take a rough look at TreeWiki...”
-There really isn’t anything TreeWiki doesn’t have.
I agreed with that opinion. Even back when I worked at the Mage Tower, there weren’t many people who knew about it.
“Then open sets can be defined like this. Fix a prime number p, and when we have a field like this, we can extend the field as follows.”
It wasn’t particularly difficult. The only reason it seemed that way was because the concepts were so unfamiliar.
“Anyway, the formula you wanted can be derived as follows. If you have any more questions, I’ll explain them.”
There was no answer for a while, so they were probably struggling to understand the formulas I had written earlier.
It wasn’t as though I was going to erase them, so there was no need to rush.
-Why on earth do people learn this stuff? Is it actually necessary for living?
-You’ve spent all this time beating up little brats, and now that something you don’t know comes up, you start whining about what it’s used for lol
-What are you even going to use that perfect-whatever for lol
-Then is finding the angle of a transmutation circle supposed to make sense?
The comment section turned into an arena once again. But this time, I had no intention of standing by as a spectator.
That was because I mostly agreed with one side.
“This is a basic theory that allows you to move freely between fields and rings, and it’s extremely important from the perspective of magical theory as well. For example, it could let you cast third-circle magic with only first-circle qualifications.”
It was extremely important. The ninth-circle magic that only the legendary dragon race could use could never be cast by humans, who possessed biological limitations, but even reaching the seventh circle would allow someone to activate it conditionally if they were granted the proper qualifications.
[‘leviatan’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Talk sense. If that were possible, wouldn’t everyone in magic games be firing guided missiles from the tutorial onward?
“Why wouldn’t it make sense?”
[‘leviatan’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Then prove it yourself, streamer. Install WoA and do the tutorial. Go go.
“What’s WoA?”
[‘leviatan’ donated 1,000 won!]
-You don’t even know World of Arseria? Anyway, if you install it, you can use mana almost exactly like in reality, so you don’t need permissions or anything like you do in real life.
From what I heard, it seemed to be a program that had even implemented mana in virtual reality.
I had thought replicating mana would be difficult, but the technological prowess of the future was truly impressive.
“Let’s give it a try.”
It was a PC bang, so surely it had most common programs already installed.
As expected, World of Arseria ranked second in popularity.
One rank above League of Legends, which I had played until I was sick of it.
If mana had been implemented in the world, it would be practically identical to reality, so I couldn’t understand why anyone would go through the trouble of connecting to virtual reality to play it.
-Tears for our hero Leviatanㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-They’re actually doing it. They’re actually doing it. They’re actually doing it. They’re actually doing it.
-The buildup was insane.
-Turns out they weren’t a troll, but a criminal mastermind lol
[Would you like to connect to World of Arseria?]
[The stream has been running for 2:17:53. Would you like to continue?]
[May the World Tree’s blessing be with you.]
As when I first logged into League of Legends, a tingling sensation took over all five of my senses.
After roughly reading and skipping several tedious terms of service, a new world unfolded before my eyes.
[No avatar information is registered. Would you like to proceed with your main avatar?]
[User Name: Welcome, NoName.]
A bird chirped in the dense forest.
A chilly cold and clammy humidity clung to my skin.
When I didn’t move for a while as I surveyed my surroundings, the game’s help system dropped an arrow to show me which way to go.
-It’s the tutorial, so hurry up and go.
-If you rescue a girl named Repi near the lake, you’ll be able to use magic from then on.
It felt just like reality. The rustling of leaves with every step, the sunlight illuminating the forest through the gaps between the trees. So this was virtual reality.
Before I had time to lose myself in the scenery, I heard the sound of wolves in the distance.
[Prologue: The Child of the Oracle]
As the chat had told me, a small girl lay unconscious near the lake, surrounded by three or four wolves.
-Why isn’t there a tutorial?
-Looks like they skipped it.
-It’ll be hard to catch them if they don’t tell us how.
My mana circuit seemed to be completely closed, so I couldn’t use magic.
This body’s physical form didn’t seem much different from my real body. In any case, I needed to find a way to drive off the wolves.
I was a mage, not a mercenary.
This body had no skill at brute force whatsoever.
One of the wolves took an interest in me and approached.
As I backed away, the wolf began taking slow, stealthy steps.
The wolf wasn’t in any hurry.
It had probably seen prey run away without even looking back countless times.
I fell flat on the ground.
-???????
-What’s the streamer doing???
-Looooool, what is this supposed to be?
-Wolves tear people apart! Bears tear people apart! So should you play dead in front of wolves?
-The three-step miracle syllogism lol
First, I played dead. Then I watched the situation unfold.
Deceiving a predator was the most advanced tactic that only humans could devise.
‘Awooooo!’
As befitting pack animals, it called its two companions and surrounded me from all sides.
They slowly circled clockwise, but the distance between us kept shrinking.
The moment the wolf that had decided my escape route was blocked raised its foreleg to strike my head, I grabbed its other leg.
“Cast: Circuit Reconfiguration.”
The transmutation formula I had secretly created using the bare ground as a slate began to function.
The wolf leaped in fright, then soon staggered and collapsed.
There were many different reasons why someone might be unable to use magic.
Most such problems stemmed from a lack of understanding of mana, a lack of understanding of formulas, or a lack of understanding of magic itself.
It could also happen because of restrictions imposed on the caster. Their mana circuit might be blocked or destroyed, or it might be unable to function because of a curse.
If none of those applied, the environment was to blame, but judging by the wolves’ size and the shape of their horns, this forest was incredibly rich in mana.
If I had to call it something, I suppose it was a curse imposed by the system.
The circuit itself was open, but a special semipermeable membrane prevented mana from passing through the mana core.
The solution was simple in this situation. I could borrow another creature’s mana core.
The moment I gripped the wolf’s foreleg, I induced a synchronization phenomenon linking the earth, me, and the wolf, then used the wolf’s mana to synchronize its mana core with the earth beneath us.
Since the wolf didn’t naturally contain much mana, it would suffer dizziness from mana exhaustion, but it would regain consciousness before long. For now, dealing with the others quickly was the priority.
The other two wolves hesitated, then changed their minds and charged at me.
I didn’t want to miscalculate my mana reserves and suffer mana exhaustion myself, so I decided to use the spell with the lowest cost first.
“Cast: Friction Coefficient Adjustment.”
A spell that smoothed the surface of the earth didn’t require much work when it came to rearranging atoms.
The mana it consumed was also minimal.
It was a beginner spell mainly used by elementary students at the academy, but it was perfect against beasts like these.
The two wolves charged fiercely at each other, then slipped and slid after losing their footing.
Then they collided with each other and stood around helplessly.
Since my objective wasn’t to kill them, and rescuing that child would let me use magic, I said goodbye to the doggies.