Chapter 22
My birthday was June 11.
I’m not entirely sure, but does it really matter?
I only chose it because that was the date of my first virtual-reality connection.
It may actually have been earlier, but it couldn’t have been by much.
Coincidentally, the day I was rescued from the capsule was also exactly June 11. In other words, I saw the light of the world exactly seven years later.
But June 11 wasn’t special simply because it was my birthday.
[No Seola: 2022. 2. 21 ~ 2045. 6. 11.]
Since I couldn’t determine Seola’s exact date of death, I personally set my birthday to the date her soul had departed this world.
So that I could remember her forever as I went on living.
The columbarium was packed with urns containing people’s ashes.
It made me uncomfortable to think that everyone enshrined here was no longer in this world.
Would their spirits live on forever in their families’ memories? Or was death itself the end?
Well, if they were lucky, perhaps they would be reincarnated in some fantasy world.
I think I stood there praying for quite a while, simply so Seola could be granted eternal rest.
“There’s no picture.”
The niches containing the other deceased were decorated with flowers and family photos in addition to the urns of ashes.
Seeing Seola’s stark, empty niche made me feel a little sorry for her.
“I’ll bring you a present next time.”
I left the columbarium with a heavy heart, wondering what Seola might have liked.
A full moon was already hanging high in the sky. Professor Cheon Gyu-jin got out of the car and welcomed me.
“Your mother would be happy. You’re such a brave daughter, after all.”
“Do you think so?”
“Of course.”
While I was visiting Seola, Professor Cheon Gyu-jin had stopped by a street food stall and bought steamed buns, handing me one.
“It’s hot. Blow on it before you eat it.”
“It’s good. I could make this my dinner.”
“You didn’t order lunch today. Have you eaten nothing all day?”
“How did you know...?”
Could he have heard my stomach growling right before I got in the car?
“I didn’t get a payment notification, so I thought there had been an error. But I guess you really hadn’t eaten anything.”
“I didn’t eat much to begin with. Potions fill me up, too.”
“I know this sounds like an old man lecturing you, but you need to eat properly if you want to grow up healthy. By the way, what you’ve been drinking is a potion, not medicine?”
“Yes. Would you like to try some?”
“I thought only war mages could drink potions, but I suppose pharmacies sell them too.”
That’s what I thought. But if you gulp it down like that...
“Cough! Co...cough! Hic—cough, cough!”
It might be a little hard to stomach for Po x ri S x t, though.
It was a good thing the driving system was AI-controlled. If this had been thirty years ago, it would have caused a major traffic accident immediately.
Professor Cheon Gyu-jin kept coughing so hard he could barely function, and he continued to cough lightly as though the sensation still hadn’t left his tongue.
“Ahem... Cough. Cough. You’re saying I have to drink this every day?”
“Professor, you’re being way too dramatic. It’s not that bad, you know?”
“Even so...”
It was true that the potion was disgusting, but its effectiveness gave me a certain boost, which was a positive factor in its favor.
I agreed that the aftertaste was hard to endure, but Professor Cheon Gyu-jin showed an even stronger aversion to it.
“I suppose I’ll have to find a better potion. Ahem. Cough.”
By the time we got home, it was already eight in the evening.
Since neither of us had eaten dinner, we stopped by a fried-chicken restaurant on the way and bought a whole chicken.
He set two plates and two cups on the table, then took a bottle of beer that looked truly ice-cold from the fridge.
“Pour me one, too.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, was there an age restriction on drinking in Korea?”
He was selfishly pouring only for himself, so I asked him for a cup too, but then I vaguely remembered the laws here.
“Have you ever had alcohol before?”
“No, of course not. I was talking about water.”
Smelling alcohol for the first time in a long while made me want some.
Old memories came flooding back. Still, I had to focus on the chicken leg radiating a seductive allure right in front of me.
“You weren’t bored all day?”
“I had a pretty good time. I used the capsule in my room for a while, too. Did anything special happen for you, Professor?”
“For me? I just signed the final grades for the university students in my classes and wrote the settlement report. In between, I checked to see whether the students in my lab were making progress with their research.”
“The chicken is really good, too. Thank you for buying it.”
“Oh, come on, no need to thank me... You’re making me embarrassed!”
Why had food like this not existed in the previous world?
I even had the silly thought that perhaps the development of cuisine was inseparable from the fall of the imperial family and the rise of the bourgeoisie.
If I’d known this would happen, I should have brought down the Kaizen Imperial Family even one day sooner.
“Name, what was your old school like? Aren’t you sad that you’re going to part with your friends now?”
“Not particularly... I had a friend I was close to, but they transferred, and I was always alone after that. Do I really have to attend school?”
“Unfortunately, it’s compulsory education. If you’re okay with it, Name, I’d like you to enroll in an academy. What do you think?”
“An academy?”
What did he mean by an academy? Wasn’t an academy just a school?
When I looked bewildered, Professor Cheon Gyu-jin explained Korea’s academies to me.
“Compared to a regular school, you could think of it as a school specializing in magic. As you know, you couldn’t learn a wide variety of magic at the elementary school you attended, right?”
“At most, all we did was copy runes onto paper.”
“Magic is an extremely expensive field of study. That’s why schools established by the world-famous magic foundations are called academies. Around Gangnam, Sefiron Academy, founded by the Sefiron Foundation, is the most famous.”
“That’s fascinating. There are academies like that all over the country?”
“There are eight in our country in total.”
Judging from the knowledge of my past life, did that mean each mage tower had established an academy directly in the capital?
When I thought about it, even the mighty Kaizen Empire had only been able to establish two academies due to budgetary constraints. And even those had always been overflowing with talented people from all over the world.
“If I have to go somewhere anyway... I think an academy would be better.”
At least they wouldn’t charge me every time I used magic on academy grounds, right?
I’d have to look it up later.
“I think so too. Besides, you use slightly unusual grammar when drawing magic circles, don’t you? Even when I ran your work through an AI while grading it last time, translating everything one by one was exhausting. If you attend an academy, you’ll probably be able to learn the International Standard Rune Grammar.”
“It doesn’t really matter to me, but I’ll definitely need to master it if I want to read specialized books.”
“Exactly.”
“Did you attend an academy too, Professor?”
“As for me...”
Professor Cheon set down the half-eaten piece of chicken and sank into his memories.
“I attended Sefiron Academy through the middle-school division. But it didn’t suit me very well, so I left the academy and graduated from a regular high school.”
“For someone it didn’t suit, you’re now a professor at Hanguk University.”
“Ha-ha, I suppose so. You never know where life will take you.”
It seemed there were circumstances behind it, but I decided not to press him further.
Besides, I had only recently learned that Hanguk University was the most prestigious educational institution in Korea—prestigious enough to put the country’s name in its title.
Professor Cheon Gyu-jin went even further, serving as vice dean of academic affairs for the College of Magic and director of the Institute of Theoretical Spellcasting. I realized that he held a much higher position than I had expected.
“Cough! Ahem!”
Even if he was a noisy man who was currently stripping the meat from a chicken neck, he was still a good person.
‘Academies... Modern magic...’
Everything about it made me curious.
Just how advanced was the study of magic compared to my past life?
How many of the ‘Seven Problems of the Mage Towers’ had been solved here?
Even those people who did nothing but eat and draw magic circles had racked their brains over them.
Professor Cheon Gyu-jin’s suggestion that I enroll in an academy stayed on my mind for a long time.
* * *
“What do I need to do to enroll in an academy?”
“Huh? You’re thinking of going to an academy? Hey, jungle gank incoming—back off!”
“Apparently it would be a transfer, and they said I don’t need to prepare anything.”
After Professor Cheon Gyu-jin suggested I enroll in Sefiron Academy last week, Name couldn’t get the thought of an academy out of their head.
Sia and I ducked into the stronghold for a breather.
“Do you know how difficult it is to transfer into the high-school division? Especially for high school, I’m pretty sure you need a recommendation letter and have to go through three interviews.”
“What about the middle-school or elementary-school divisions?”
“It’s probably a little easier, but you can’t transfer into an academy without a recommendation letter in the first place. Are you planning to go? Or is it someone you know?”
“I don’t know. Sia, we’re getting dived. The enemy mid is here too.”
“Huh? They’re doing a four-man dive at this timing?”
-Is the entire enemy team stream-sniping?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ This is basically a fan meeting.
-I’m a fan ^^
-I failed the entrance exams for the elementary, middle, and high-school divisions of an academyㅠㅠㅠ
-There are so damn many academy fanboys these days. Regular high schools send students to college just fine.
-There are only eight academies, but more than half the students at prestigious universities come from academies, you know. Yeah.
[Manager: Ahem, this is a gaming stream, so please talk only about the game]
-They were the ones who brought it up first.
-(This chat has been blocked – 600 seconds)
-Wow, she turns it around and kills threeㅋㅋㅋㅋ The game was over in eight minutes.
-NoName is truly a legend.
-Since Hye-Bam only plays support, I could believe she’s actually a local player. I can’t feel any Challenger aura.
-Supports can’t carry in the current meta.
-No, they can, idiot.
“Whew. Aren’t they a bunch of complete lunatics? They really should show some restraint. A blind dive with no minions?”
“Anyway, you’re saying there’s nothing else to prepare besides a recommendation letter for a transfer?”
“Huh? Uh... I don’t really know much about the current admissions process. I attended an academy too, but I never saw a single transfer student in my three years.”
[‘GeuGeuGeuGwen’ donated 5,000 won!]
-Hye-Bam, you attended an academy? How did I not know that?
“Huh? You didn’t know? Did I really never mention it? I never particularly hid it.”
-So the story about Hye-Bam being a goddess from a prestigious university is true too?
-How did this suddenly become a re-evaluation?
-You’re not secretly a military-service-completed high-school girl, are you?
“Academies are good. Good, but they’re sooooo hard. I’m not lying—anyone who sleeps six hours a day during exam season gets held back. University was more relaxing for me.”
[‘MiSolLaSiDo’ donated 3,000 won!]
-But your grades... Ah, never mind.
“Do you want to die?”
“This game is over.”
[Triple Kill]
Sia joined late and looked over the battlefield, which hadn’t been particularly intense to begin with.
“Is this really Diamond-Master? If you hid the tiers, I’d think I was watching someone farming Gold-Platinum players.”
Name agreed with her.
There was no denying that the enemy team seemed a little lacking to be called Masters.
“That’s because Asteria is broken.”
Even so, Name wanted to speak up for their side, at least a little.
-The enemy Calli has a 76% current win rate and was Grandmaster 812 LP last season, and she’s cryingㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-She’s getting demolished without even being able to breathe. Is this the dignity of a Challenger?
-It’s not Hye-Bam. NoName is the crazy one.
-NoName’s montage has tanked Asteria’s win rate all the way to 41%ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Is that a trash champion or a broken champion?;;
In the end, it was impossible to turn public opinion around.
“Wow, I’ve never had a 47-game win streak in my life. I think I understand why Riot got rid of duo queue.”
Sia scrolled through the match history from their previous games.
The smurf account ‘WhenHyejiBecomesNight,’ created mainly to target low-tier streamers, had already shed its dingy yellow outfit and donned a dazzling Diamond I.
And now Name’s account was staring down only the Master promotion series.
[‘DaerongHerong’ donated 100,000 won!]
-500,000 won if you reach Master undefeated!
“Huh? Five hundred thousand won?”
When a big spender appeared offering an additional 500,000 won on top of the 500,000 won promised for reaching Master, Sia’s eyes widened.
“If someone willing to give 500,000 won from the start had appeared, there wouldn’t have been any reason to take separate donations in the first place, huh?”
“Hey! You’re not supposed to say things like that out loud!”
Sia cut Name off by covering their mouth.
“We were originally going to do the promotion series tomorrow, but... Name, do you have time today?”
“I can play for about two more hours.”
“With two hours, we might be able to squeeze in a 3-0. All right, Name, let’s go for Master today!”
Sia changed the stream title. Her eyes were filled with more resolve than ever.
[NoName-Hye-Bam Invincible Tank Duo: Master Promotion Series _ _ _ _ _]