Chapter 16
Professor Cheon Gyu-jin's year had been nothing special, just like any other.
At one point, when he was hired as a professor at a prestigious university, he felt as though he had achieved all the dreams he'd had as a child, but as human nature dictated, everything eventually grew dull.
He had never lost his passion for academia, but there had been times when he felt saddened by the fact that fewer and fewer students could keep up with it.
Professor Cheon Gyu-jin always described himself as a boring person.
That was why, unlike his younger sibling, he had never started a family.
He hated going home, so his only pleasure in life was occasionally ordering late-night food for the graduate students struggling away in the lab and spending time with them.
You could call it a slump in life. He had gone through countless slumps, but he had no idea how to take one like this.
Since next year was his sabbatical, he had planned to distance himself from his work for a while and spend some time seriously considering what to do with the future.
That was, until a suspicious auditing student appeared in his final class.
[I don't think there's any need to be bound by the subject matter.]
A student wearing an avatar set to the minimum age supported by virtual reality.
Geniuses were often eccentrics.
In most cases, that tendency stemmed from loneliness.
Their desire to fit in socially was no different from anyone else's, but differences in their thought processes, values, and verbal and mathematical abilities placed barriers in the way of communication.
They eventually became absorbed in one-way pursuits.
Whether it was anime or sports cars, things of that otakuish sort.
Could this student be one of them? But her answers had always been anything but ordinary.
Unlike in the United States, Korean students really hated being asked questions.
Students grew tired in their own way, while professors became isolated in theirs.
In an effort to bridge that gap even a little, the College of Natural Sciences at Hanguk University had been among the first to introduce virtual-reality classes.
As you could see, the results had not been very different.
But one day, she happened to drop in. Though she wasn't even an enrolled student, she breathed new life into Professor Cheon Gyu-jin.
Few students not only understood and applied what they learned with ease, but also gave him problems to ponder in return.
But look. Wasn't this student different?
[No matter how I think about it, the formula is too inefficient. If it takes 0.3 seconds even at maximum casting speed, there's no reason for this transmutation circle to be Fifth Circle.]
When she asked him that question in class, he promised to look into it by the next session, then stayed up for two full nights to prove her claim.
But that very day, when she wrote down and showed him the exact same formula, he couldn't help but marvel.
‘This student is a true genius.’
Although the operators she used in her transmutation circles were somewhat unusual, creating differences in the appearance of the formulas, they were ultimately identical in their broad structure.
That was why Professor Cheon Gyu-jin had been looking forward to this day.
She still hadn't appeared in the auditorium after two hours. Just as he began to wonder if she wasn't coming after all, he spotted a child who looked exactly like her avatar.
‘Had she been attending all this time using her younger sibling's account?’
But why had her younger sibling come instead of her?
If it was because she was too ill to come here, he would feel terribly sorry for having summoned her, so he kept his questions to himself. Then a shocking statement slipped from the child's lips.
“I'm late introducing myself. My name is NoName, and I've come to check my grade for the Transmutation Circle Analysis course.”
“You're Name?”
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
At first, he wondered if she was making fun of him.
Judging by her height, the child was so small that he would have believed she was five or six years old, yet she looked up at him fearlessly.
Since people could use virtual reality from the age of seven, she had to be seven or eight at most, even if he gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Because she felt awkward, Name wrote a transmutation-circle formula on the large stack of scrap paper kept beside the grading sheets.
It was the ‘Kaizen Complete Transmutation Matrix’ she often used.
“Our handwriting should match. Take a look.”
As if possessed, Professor Cheon Gyu-jin flipped through the answer sheets until he found her name.
[Name: NoName (NO Name)]
“...”
But then Name's complexion suddenly grew pale.
Professor Cheon Gyu-jin realized that her distress stemmed from her grade.
[195/200]
“Where exactly did I go wrong?”
It was as though an insurance company had ruled a traffic accident 90:10 and she was determined to meticulously argue that she wasn't at fault—not even 10 percent, not even 1 percent.
“Let's see. This part here.”
“I can't see it.”
Name stretched up on tiptoe as far as she could, but it remained outside her line of sight.
Seeing her tremble, Professor Cheon Gyu-jin finally realized his mistake and handed her the answer sheet himself.
She could barely see the answer sheet, and only by taking it in her tiny hands and stretching it out as far as she could with both arms.
The sight was both comical and fascinating.
“This was a part where many students made mistakes, too.”
But Name wore a more serious expression than ever.
“Seriously, don't spout bullshit. How is this wrong?”
Name's face contorted violently.
* * *
Mistakes could not be tolerated.
It was a kind of obsession.
[This time, we must properly hold Princess Estasha accountable. How long are you going to tolerate her defying the august imperial decree and associating with the barbarians of the North?]
A barbaric world where a single mistake led directly to death.
[What are we to do... Things have reached the point where your life alone will not be enough to put an end to this.]
More than just my life was at stake.
[I'm sorry, Princess, but I don't think we can delay the conquest of the North any longer.]
I understand. But I can't understand.
None of you could understand me, either.
Every day felt like walking on thin ice.
Did that world without me ultimately meet a miserable end, or did it find a new hope?
I don't know. Now I don't even want to care.
But the habits etched into my soul over twenty-five long years still made up a large part of who I was, and that nature hadn't disappeared.
My heart was beating uncontrollably, and I felt myself growing furious.
I made a mistake?
Really?
No, I hadn't done anything wrong.
Not a single thing,
I don't make mistakes.
I can't make mistakes.
Because I have to be perfect.
“Hey, kid, calm down...”
“Why did you say my formula was wrong? Do you think the boundary points mean Lagrange multipliers can't be used?
No, if that's what you think, you're absolutely wrong. The optimization conditions I used are sufficient conditions that include the boundary points.
You still don't understand? How long am I supposed to keep running my mouth at you?!”
My vision blurred.
What was I doing right now?
My mind was hazy, and the world rocked like waves before melting away like ice cream in midsummer.
The world was too hot to be called cold and so bright it hurt my eyes to be called dark.
I had felt this unpleasant sensation before, like someone shining a floodlight on a soundly sleeping person at dawn and forcing them awake.
Mana withdrawal.
Mana withdrawal stripped away the ability to distinguish right from wrong and paralyzed rational thought. In the end, it usually caused extreme discomfort before making one lose consciousness.
At a time like this... Come to think of it, I'd forgotten to take my potion this morning.
I had also rushed out because an alarm went off during the stream.
I desperately needed that disgusting, foul-tasting mana potion.
* * *
[Mana withdrawal? You mean it isn't a mana rampage? Can mana be addictive too?]
Yeah, weird, right?
[So that's why you eat monster blood every day?]
Yeah, it's not like I eat it because I want to, either.
[That sounds really painful. I learned that monsters have toxic substances in their blood, too.]
Demonic energy is no big deal. Mana is far more dangerous, if anything.
[That's the first I've heard of it. The guild uncles said the more mana you have, the better.]
Let me give you an example. The air we breathe isn't actually made up of just one thing. It's a mixture of several kinds of air.
[Really? I didn't know that, either.]
There's one called oxygen. Oxygen is the only one we need.
When we breathe, our bodies select the oxygen on their own. We were designed that way from the beginning.
[That's fascinating. So we don't need the other kinds of air?]
No. If a person breathes only oxygen, they die.
Breathing becomes difficult, vision blurs, and eventually consciousness is lost.
They simply die like that, right in the middle of life.
[So mana is the same?]
Yeah.
Do you know why humans can't cast ninth-circle magic?
It's because our bodies don't have an organ that purifies mana.
The more high-level magic people use, the more their bodies fall apart.
They may look infinitely stronger on the outside, but they're slowly collapsing from within.
[That sounds a little scary. Then are you all right, Big Sis?]
Don't worry. Even if I fought the Demon King right now, I could win.
[You're always fine, but you always brag this much at the end.]
You don't get dinner tonight.
[Aaaaaaah! Why? Take it back, take it back! Big Sis is so cool!]
Anyway, there isn't a single thing in this world that isn't necessary.
Just as air isn't made up of oxygen alone, this empire can't be made up solely of the imperial family and the nobility.
Even when torrential rains fall, plagues spread, or war breaks out, a country exists because there are always people looking toward tomorrow.
[I wish those lofty people way up there would listen to you, Sis. Will the day ever come when the imperial family understands us?]
We have to try.
[What are you saying we have to try again? Could you go say the exact same thing to the baron right now? I'm so scared I don't think I could even meet his eyes.]
I could.
[You're bluffing again.]
Want to bet?