Prologue: The Day I Became a Graduate Student Translation Slave
Ever since I was a kid, my dream was to become a veterinarian. Not the kind where you shove your condom-sheathed arm into a house-sized cow’s vagina or snip a calf’s umbilical cord with butcher shears, but the kind that treats dogs and cats at a neighborhood animal clinic.
That’s why by the time I reached high school, I had already steeled myself to become a grad student. You could say I had accepted the future of forced unpaid labor as a veterinary graduate student. In 2013, I was a nineteen-year-old high schooler who willingly walked into the grad school everyone else avoided, ready to become a professor’s slave and the lab’s very own Dobby.
I somehow got into a decent university, finished two years of coursework, took a leave of absence, served my military duty, and planned to embrace “Re: Starting My Master’s and Doctoral Life from Grad School” with the resigned mindset of a man marching toward death after graduation.
…At least until the day I got blackout drunk on my discharge date and got dragged into another world.
On the first day of my new life in this other world, when I regained consciousness in the middle of a vast grassland, I genuinely believed it was all a nightmare. A ridiculous one, sure, but given my circumstances it wouldn’t have been strange at all. After finally escaping one other world called the military, I’d apparently been sucked into another called graduate school.
It took about half a day—once night fell and my stomach wouldn’t stop growling while the cold crept in—for me to truly understand the horror. This nightmare showed no signs of ending.
“Fuck. This isn’t a dream. Or a hallucination.”
After spending the night shivering in the dark, I gave up on denial. What followed was a miserable trek wandering across the plains. After several days of hardship, I finally reached a city, and that’s where the real trials of my otherworld survival story began.
“Hmm. A traveler, you say. Very well. Present your identification.”
“…Identification?”
“Correct. You would have received one had you followed proper immigration procedures.”
There was no convenient “just scribble your name and pass” policy here. The moment the guard demanded ID, I instinctively knew I had become an illegal alien. It was only natural that I would try to bolt before things escalated.
“Ah, I’m so sorry! I left my ID at home by mistake! I’ll come back next time!”
“Arrest him.”
“Yes sir.”
“Wait, what the fuck—ow! Hold on! Aaaargh!! Why are you hitting me?!”
And it was equally obvious that I would be thrown into a cell in under ten fucking minutes.
The twenty-three defendants, including the accused, are hereby sentenced to three years of slavery for the crime of illegal immigration.
A few days after my arrest, a white judge gathered all the filthy illegal immigrants in the same boat as me and reduced us to slaves. Wasn’t this racial discrimination? They stripped me of everything—including my brand-new 98,000-won underwear—dressed me in rags, and dragged me out to the slave market.
“Mister merchant, I’m cold.”
“So am I.”
Don’t empathize with me, you bald bastard. Give me some clothes. At least they had the minimum decency not to leave me completely naked, but standing half-exposed beside the road for a month was far from pleasant. When a young noblewoman passing by glanced at me and let out a small laugh, I felt a suicidal impulse stronger than anything I’d experienced even when my successor showed up with his phone during guard duty.
That hell lasted nearly a month. The state-sponsored slave market ran for a full month, after all. It only took a week for me to be classified as unsellable defective stock.
“Hmm… This slave doesn’t look very sturdy.”
“Yes, but if you put him to work he’ll labor like an ox!”
“Like an ox? Hah, with those soft hands that have never seen a callus?”
I had only recently been discharged, but I was naturally skinny. That probably made me look like poor slave material by this world’s standards. As a result, I still hadn’t found a master even two days before the market closed. My vision was starting to blur as I imagined myself being sent to the mines or used as a human shield on the battlefield.
That was when a group of scholars appeared at the stall where I was displayed.
“We’re looking for a slave to run errands. Got anything decent?”
It was a woman with short, navy-blue hair and ears as long as an elf’s. No—scratch that. She was an elf. That was the moment I first realized this was a real, honest-to-god fantasy world.
The party of four—two men and two women, led by the elf—chatted at length with the slave merchant who had come running, then finally walked over to the iron cage where I was locked up.
“Cheap. Two silvers? He doesn’t have some kind of defect, does he?”
“Absolutely not! Even if he looks like that, he understands speech perfectly and doesn’t have a single chronic illness!”
I wanted to ask what the hell he meant by “looks like that,” but I kept my mouth shut. If I failed to find a master this time, my life would truly be over.
“Hmm. If he understands speech, he should be able to handle simple chores… What do you all think?”
“He’s skinny, so he probably won’t eat much. We’re not using him for heavy labor anyway. Should be fine, right?”
“I disagree. He’s too skinny. Looks like he couldn’t even carry luggage properly.”
“If we feed him well, won’t he fill out? They say the hunting tribes of the distant East have strong, sturdy builds.”
After much whispering, they bought me for the bargain price of two silvers—roughly two million won by my standards.
“I am the archaeologist Yerna. And you are?”
“Kang Bukho, from the New Continent.”
Apparently the land where people with yellow skin like me lived was called Kitai. Naturally, I was treated as an illegal immigrant from there.
“Hehe. Your name is ‘Gang Buko’? What a strange name.”
The elf Yerna giggled brightly when she heard my name. It was actually Kang Bukho, but after a month of experience I knew explaining it would be pointless.
“You can call me whatever’s easiest for you. It must be hard to pronounce.”
“Really? Then I’ll give you a new one. What does your name mean?”
“The surname means ‘strong,’ and the given name roughly means ‘north.’”
My name, Bukho, meant to get along well with the North. That North. The communist dictatorship where the obese missile pig clapped and looked down on everyone. My grandfather had been separated from his family during the Korean division, so he named me hoping unification would happen in my generation. I never really liked it, so I only told her the “north” part.
“I see. Since it’s just a name to use while you’re a slave, we don’t need the surname… Good.”
The navy-haired elf smiled as she fastened a collar around my neck.
“From now on, your name is Nord.”
And that was how my three years of slavery began.
Although I had been sold at rock-bottom price as a chore slave, the period where I exhausted myself doing manual labor didn’t last long. There was a reason for that.
Just like how otherworld stories usually give the protagonist some convenient translation ability, I had been able to understand this world’s languages from the very beginning. This auto-translation ability was a ridiculously overpowered cheat skill.
Even in this world where gods supposedly created humanity, linguistic unity was impossible. Every country and race used different languages, and that reality became an enormous opportunity for me as a slave.
Just think about how many languages existed on Earth. The language barrier here was insanely high too. But the Papago translator inside my skull could smash through those barriers as easily as kids kicking over a sandcastle at the playground.
“It’d be stupid to waste an ability this broken.”
I immediately proved my worth to those around me. Once the professors at Carmine University learned I was a ridiculously competent seven-language speaker, they promoted me from manual labor to administrative slave.
“This guy works well.”
“Hehe. Thank you very much.”
“My goodness. You translated twenty pages of a Romanian history book in one week? Say, would you like to be our department’s slave for the rest of your life?”
“Why are you cursing me when I worked so hard?”
It didn’t take long to prove my usefulness. Thanks to that, the errand boy Yerna’s party had originally wanted was assigned to a different slave they bought half a year later.
And that was where the real bullshit began.
“So you’re the archaeology department’s slave? Good, you’re here. These are some documents. Translate them into Britannian by next week and leave them on my desk.”
“Yes!”
“I’ve heard the rumors. They say you’re quite capable. However, I don’t believe anything I haven’t seen with my own eyes. Translate these thirty pages of documents for this month’s academic submission along with the corresponding maps. Have them ready by the end of the month.”
“…Yes.”
“Hey, you. This is my thesis. Go to the library, attach ten pieces of supporting evidence and reference books each, and proofread the spelling too.”
“…Yes.”
“You there. Put my elephant in the fridge for me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ah, I misspoke. Park my elephant, then sort the ingredients and specimens I brought with it, label them, and store them separately in the cafeteria refrigerator and my lab freezer. By lunchtime today.”
“…Yes.”
“What are you doing? Hurry up.”
“…………Yes.”
What was the point of being so competent? My status was still slave. Slave! Competence! Free labor! With that triple debuff, I became the campus’s communal free translation machine—one that anyone could use at least once, like the coffee maker at a meat restaurant entrance.
This Easterner works for free!
“Fuck… this really is just like being a grad student.”
No matter how angry I got, that was the reality. Somehow I had become the translation slave of these crazy professor bastards in their labs. My outstanding translation ability—equal to any active professor—and the broad title of “university slave” turned me into a translation slave shared by over a dozen professors.
“Is this even a country? What the actual fuck?”
I had revealed my ability thinking it would make things easier, but the workload only increased compared to my chore-slave days. Back then I just moved luggage, cleaned, ran occasional errands, and the rest of my time was free!
“When I get back to Earth, I’m dropping out of college and working part-time at a convenience store until I die. If I ever go to grad school again, I’m not human.”
It was no joke—those three years were every bit as brutal as military service. I even regretted badmouthing the administrative soldiers back when I was in the artillery. Still, there was a reward for all that dog-shit, side-rolling, summersault-kicking hell.
When my three years of service ended and I was liberated, the reason I was granted the right to continue residing in this country was because the professors had offered me a research position.
“Have you decided what you’ll do once you gain free citizen status? These days finding employment is difficult, and obtaining residency qualifications isn’t easy either.”
I suddenly remembered our administrative officer who used to say, “Want a short-term sergeant position? You work hard.” The image of Yerna offering me the researcher position was still vivid in my memory.
Looking back now, it was the same kind of “kindness” professors use to lure students into master’s and doctoral programs.
“You may not have the formal qualifications, but you’ve already spent three years here. It would be a waste to throw it all away, wouldn’t it? We’ll pay you a salary, so why not work hard for a few years, earn your qualifications, and even become a professor?”
“And… if I refuse?”
“You’ll have to return home. We can at least cover the boat fare.”
Boat fare my ass. Do you professors have an inter-dimensional warp ship at home or something? It was obvious that even if I was kicked out, I wouldn’t be able to return to my homeland of South Korea.
With no choice, I decided to plant my roots firmly at the university. It wasn’t a bad move. To investigate ways to return home or make preparations, I needed a certain amount of authority and money anyway. It was better than starting from the bottom and banging my head against the floor.
So I decided to obtain a suitable degree and position at this internationally famous institution—Carmine University.
“I’ll do it. I’ll become a research student.”
“Really? That’s a smart decision!”
Even as I watched Yerna’s smile that looked like she had caught a sucker, I didn’t regret it much. After all, over the past three years I had gathered plenty of know-how and material for papers. I thought it wouldn’t take that long to produce appropriate results.
─But fuck. Looking back now, that was the single dumbest decision of my entire life.