How to Live as a Quick Scholar (1)
“Nor. Nor. Wake up, dear. It’s already morning.”
Three years into my slave life in another world. It had been about six months since I finally paid off my sins and became a new man. I woke to the voice calling my name.
The sensation of a capped fountain pen poking my cheek. The woman’s voice in my ear was all too familiar.
Fuck. I’m screwed. That’s the advisor’s voice.
Getting caught sleeping in the lab meant I was about to get my ass handed to me. The last traces of sleep fled like a neighborhood mutt kicked in the rear, and I scrambled upright in a panic.
“Gwaaaah!! Professor Yerna Gracy!”
“Gwaaaah? What is gwaaaah? Anyone would think I was tormenting you, sweetheart.”
The beautiful woman gave me a gentle scolding, though she sounded slightly displeased. No matter how many times I saw her, she never looked anywhere near as old as she actually was. Elves were a race that came with permanent age-faking as a passive skill.
“Ah, I’m sorry, Professor. Still shaking off some old slave habits.”
“You need to get your mind right. You’re a research student now.”
“Yes, of course.”
Head research student in the Department of Archaeology at Carmine University. That was my current title. Pretty fucking amazing, right? A former slave like me had ended up on a super-elite course in this illiterate other world that rivaled what I’d had back on Earth.
“Ahem. Anyway, good morning. You’re in early.”
“Mm. I have to prepare for my transfer.”
The dark-blue-haired elf gave me a warm smile as I greeted her awkwardly. Her robe, shaped like a thickly-lined camisole, plunged deep at the chest. The elegant curves of her body, wrapped in that long skirt-like robe and shoulder drape, were violently distracting to a brain that had just woken up. No matter how many times I saw her, this elf—with her absurdly perfect looks—was none other than my former owner and current advisor, Yerna Gracy.
Though the title of “advisor” wouldn’t last much longer. Soon I would earn a proper degree, even if it wouldn’t quite match hers. More importantly, she herself would be leaving the university before long. Her contract with Carmine University was ending.
“It still doesn’t feel real that you’re moving to another university, Professor Gracy.”
“For me either. I only spent fifteen years at Carmine University.”
Whoa, fuck. The way elves measured time was on another level. The three years I’d spent here had felt like an eternity, but to her fifteen years was apparently just a short stint. Since her lifespan was far longer than a human’s, it probably felt like two or three years to her at most.
“I hear your successor has already been decided.”
“Yes. They’ve been looking since last year and finally found someone recently.”
“They managed to hire someone skilled enough to take over for you? That couldn’t have been easy. I guess Carmine University’s scouting ability is better than I thought.”
“Oh, you. We won’t be seeing each other much longer—why are you still polishing my halo?”
“I mean it~”
Yerna Gracy might be a long-lived elf, but if she hadn’t produced results, the university would never have renewed her five-year contract three times. The fact that she kept delivering meant the school had willingly let her stay for fifteen years. Of course, half of what I’d just said was pure flattery, but flattery built on facts was the easiest kind. Brown-nosing a superior with smooth talk was nothing to a guy who’d spent two years in the Korean military.
Even if we wouldn’t see each other again, Yerna Gracy was a well-known figure in this field. There was no telling when I might need a favor from her, so dropping a few compliments cost me nothing. Even high-school kids gave their homeroom teacher a nice word when they transferred—how could a former slave in his late twenties not rub a few palms together in front of his advisor?
“So? Is this the paper you’re submitting to the academic world this time?”
“Yes. It’s a masterpiece I was only able to create thanks to the knowledge I gained under your guidance, Professor. You could practically call it your own paper.”
What Yerna Gracy pointed at was the thesis I had stayed up for several nights to finish. There was still a week left before the submission deadline, but in this industry no one with a functioning mouth would dare call one week “plenty of time.” If I missed this window, I’d have to wait until next year. That was why I had pushed through until my nose bled to finish it in a hurry.
“A masterpiece, you say. That’s quite the confidence.”
“I also have several certifications now. If things go well, I might even snatch a doctorate right away.”
It had been six months since I was freed from slavery. Using my translation ability, I had piled up language certifications. On top of that, I had earned archaeology-related certifications from the knowledge I picked up while helping Yerna Gracy over the past three years. Still, that was the equivalent of a middle-school dropout passing the high-school equivalency test and collecting seven language certificates—impressive, but hardly enough to storm the academic world. Especially since I was aiming for the archaeology department, not linguistics.
In this world, degrees were awarded by the governing academic society of each field rather than the university itself. A research student who built up achievements would receive a degree from the Archaeology Society, not from Carmine University. In that sense, I had not yet officially been granted a degree by the archaeological community.
Right now I’m still just a grad student at best.
The fact that my title was “research student” rather than “researcher” said it all. Hell, to be brutally honest, I didn’t even have a university diploma, so I was worth less than an intern at a small company. I could practically see the Earth grad students screaming, You think we’re trash?
The career I built during three years as a slave? It didn’t exist. What professor would put a slave’s name on their paper? These creatures barely tolerated adding their own grad students’ names and acted like they were doing them a huge favor. There was zero chance that the free translation slave called Nor would be listed as first author, co-author, or even in the “and thanks to everyone else who helped” section.
But there was exactly one way for someone like me to earn a doctorate immediately.
“Since this thesis will decide my status in the academic world, I can’t just throw anything together.”
The degree thesis system. It was basically a special admission track for foreigners like me. Carmine University had a system that allowed foreigners to receive degree evaluation based solely on certifications and theses. Think of it as giving outsiders a chance to have their qualifications recognized in this culture. If regular university entrance was the standard exam or early admission, this was like special admission through a foreign-language essay—or a transfer exam. An unconventional route.
If you proved sufficient ability here, you could earn anything from a bachelor’s to a doctorate. Cases of people grabbing a doctorate in one shot were almost unheard of, but I thought I might actually pull it off. I had a mountain of language certifications, and the thesis I was preparing was shaping up to be terrifyingly high quality.
“Hmm~ Even though your records show no completed formal education, with your certifications alone you could probably claim a master’s, Nor.”
Yerna Gracy acknowledged that much because she knew my specs. My public profile at Carmine University listed me as fluent in seven languages and holding advanced archaeology certifications. Most of those certifications came from my translation ability, but they still put me far above the average research student. Two of the language certificates in particular were for Rune and Elune—languages that scholars and mages could study their entire lives and still not master. Entire specialized departments existed for them.
To outsiders, I probably looked like a genius who had produced results comparable to professors who had studied for decades, all by the age of twenty-five. The university’s official opinion was that I was some naïve bookworm who had been tricked by a broker, entered the country through illegal channels, got caught, and ended up enslaved.
“But a doctorate might be difficult, no?”
“Well, yeah. Honestly I’m not aiming for a doctorate. I’d be satisfied with a silver-seal master’s.”
A silver-seal master’s was a kind of tier. This world seemed possessed by the ghost of some dead gamer who loved nothing more than dividing everything into ranks. Scholars didn’t stop at attaching ranks to degrees—they even did it to adventurers, splitting them into Bronze, Silver, Gold, Mithril, and Adamantium. If these people ever learned about online games, they would spend a full week after every patch arguing about how the job tiers had changed. Eventually they would create their own damage charts and neatly classify everything from Tier 1 to Tier 10.
This obsession extended to the professors’ sense of hierarchy and superiority. A slave was obviously beneath notice, but even as a research student I was not allowed to intrude when the honorable professors were engaged in lofty discussion. Even if the topic was something trivial like whether today’s lunch tasted bad. They would ask for my opinion, then get angry when I asked if I could leave. The academic elitism of these ink-blooded bastards didn’t end there.
For example, even if there were typos in one of their papers, I was not allowed to point them out. The logic was that a guy who hadn’t even earned a doctorate had no right to find fault with a professor’s work. So what did I do? I quietly corrected the typos without saying anything and revised the paper. Fuck, and this barbaric other world doesn’t even have Word or Hangul Office.
Theses here were literally written with ink on paper. No backing up a computer file, deleting the mistake, and typing a few characters. If there was a typo on a page, you had to copy the entire page by hand and only then fix the error. And if the professor didn’t like the handwriting after you fixed it? You’d be dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and ripped apart. I was lucky Yerna Gracy didn’t have that vicious hobby. If I’d spent three years under a different professor, I would have stabbed them in the gut and been executed long ago.
Anyway, I’d gone off on a tangent. The point was, these rank-obsessed, status-obsessed bastards weren’t going to hand out high degrees easily. Even back on Earth, transfer admissions were stricter than regular admission. Naturally, this degree thesis system had a much higher difficulty than normal degree acquisition. The examiners would probably grade my work with the same merciless rigor as a company commander who just got dumped by his girlfriend judging a military discipline contest. Even if I submitted a Nobel-level thesis, they would find one hundred percent of the flaws.
That was why I wasn’t expecting much. I planned to submit it with the mindset that earning a silver-seal master’s would be enough to satisfy me.
“May I read it?”
“Of course, as much as you like. Shall I make you a cup of tea?”
“Oh, would you? Thank you.”
Look at that. She actually said thank you. What boss thanks a subordinate for making coffee? I didn’t know how many times I had thought how lucky I was that Yerna Gracy had bought me. This person really was my goddess. I headed off to make the tea with a light heart.
Though for some reason it still felt like slave mentality. Why was that?
“Hm? This is an archaeology thesis?”
“Yes? Ah, that’s right.”
Hadn’t I told her the topic? Shit. If I admitted I forgot to mention it, she would dock points. Full brain power—three thousand percent! Hold on, my head!
“You were busy preparing for your transfer, Professor, and I didn’t want to add to your workload. I managed well enough on my own.”
“Hehe. Is that so?”
Luckily a plausible excuse came out. Yerna Gracy didn’t seem upset. A successful display of quick thinking.
“I assumed you hadn’t asked me anything because you were writing in linguistics. That’s my weak point—I’d be the one learning from you there.”
“Hehe. Working under you made me really interested in archaeology, Professor. Rune and Elune are… a bit difficult, too.”
At first I had considered going for a degree in that field. Rune and its variant Elune were languages closely tied to magic. Magical graduate student Nor—sounded so cool! But those languages were basically coding. In other words, I was a computer illiterate who somehow knew how to code. If I wanted to live as a Rune or Elune scholar, I would have to start from magic and learn a mountain of things. It would cost a fortune, too.
I’m not planning to live here forever.
I needed to build a foundation and find a way home someday. I didn’t want to waste time. Fortunately this world was full of ruins and dungeons, so archaeology—studying the past—had a strong position. Otherworld archaeology was a field with bright prospects. If I used the three years I’d spent as a graduate slave here, I could establish myself quickly.
“It turned out today is the first time I’m showing it to you. I finished the framework a month ago.”
I brought two cups of tea over to Yerna Gracy. She was reading my thesis without answering.
“So? What do you think of my thesis?”
“Uh, um?”
Yerna Gracy, who had been staring at the paper so hard her eyes might fall out, finally lifted her head.
“Ah, yes. It’s good. You worked hard, didn’t you?”
“It’s the paper that will decide my degree, after all.”
It was like the otherworld version of the college entrance exam. I couldn’t just scribble something. I had to start at Platinum like Faker the moment I began if I wanted to become a great elite who made a name for himself at a young age. It wasn’t that getting something through effort was bad. I just didn’t want to fail to produce results when I knew I was capable.
“…Yes. It really is a good thesis.”
Yerna Gracy stared at my paper a while longer before setting it down.
“In that case, if you’re okay with it, shall I help you with some editing?”
“What? Really?”
An offer I hadn’t even dared hope for. Getting my thesis corrected by a professor whose career was longer than my entire life? That was technically what an advisor was supposed to do, but thanks to my ingrained slave mentality, it felt like a dream.
“Of course. How could I not touch a thesis this good when you’ve put my name down as first author?”
Fuck, what grad student doesn’t put their advisor’s name on their thesis? That would be crazier than a first-time director erasing every sponsor’s name from the credits and putting only his own.
“I’d love that. Since I already put your name on it, turning in a low-quality thesis would be like smearing mud on your face, Professor.”
“No, no. You wrote it very well. As expected from someone who studied hard.”
Yerna Gracy stood up with a bright smile.
“Then I’ll go fetch a few reference books from my study.”
“Ah, I’ll help—”
“It’s fine. They’re not that heavy. Wait here—I’ll be right back.”
And so we spent our time revising and polishing the nearly completed thesis. We added supporting materials to strengthen the existing logic. Yerna Gracy even asked other research students who had come in for work to organize her luggage so she could keep helping me. But in a world without typewriters, holding a pen and paper and working for hours eventually brought on crushing drowsiness.
“……Sluuurp. Guuuuh……”
When I came to my senses, I realized I was half-checked out, drooling while still seated. Dobby is free now. Dobby is going to the land of dreams.
“Hehe. Sleepy?”
“…Ahem. I’m fine. Sorry for dozing off.”
“It’s all right. You can rest your eyes a bit. Now that I think about it, I woke you up and put you straight to work. No wonder you’re tired.”
Yerna Gracy stood up as she spoke. She returned from the small kitchen inside the lab carrying two teacups. I wondered what she had brought in a world without caffeine, but the cups contained warm milk.
“Drink this and rest. There are still a few days until the deadline, right? When you’re tired, you make more typos and end up creating more work.”
“That’s true.”
She was right. A single typo meant rewriting the entire page. When your head wasn’t working, it was faster to sleep and start fresh.
“All right. I’ll take a quick nap and get back to it.”
“Sleep as long as you need.”
I drank the warm milk while looking at Yerna Gracy’s gentle smile. As the milk slid down my throat, my whole body slowly relaxed. I really must have been exhausted. I hadn’t even finished half the cup, yet my eyelids already felt as heavy as a pair of summer balls.
“Wow. This works… really fast……”
The moment I set the cup down, my consciousness sank rapidly into the swamp of sleep. In my closing field of vision, I caught a glimpse of Yerna Gracy smiling in a way I had never seen before.
Birds were chirping like crazy when I woke up.
“Tweet! (Sex!)”
“Tweet! (Sex!)”
This fucking translation ability. I still couldn’t get used to the flying sex parrots that screamed nonsense every morning. There was no need to translate animal speech.
“Good morning, you fucking lab.”
I stretched as I got up from the sofa. Judging by the sun hanging high outside the window, morning had passed long ago, but since I had just woken up, it was still morning to me. Come to think of it, how long had it been since I slept this deeply? Even after being freed from slavery, I had been tormented by certifications and my thesis, sleeping and waking like someone flipping a computer power strip on and off.
“You’re up?”
“Yeah. Slept like a damn log.”
I greeted the research student colleague who had been nearby—not a lab slave anymore—and stood up. But Yerna Gracy, who had been beside me when I fell asleep, was nowhere to be seen. I rubbed my eyes and asked my fellow former slave.
“Hey, where did the professor go?”
“What are you talking about? She left for her new post this morning.”
“What? Without even saying goodbye to me?”
It was surprising, and honestly a little hurtful. No matter what, we had eaten from the same pot for three years. To leave without a single word!
“Huh? The professor said she said goodbye to you last night?”
“…She said what?”
The moment I heard my colleague’s answer, an indescribable chill shot up my spine without warning. This was that feeling. The feeling you get when you oversleep on a day you have to go to work. The unique sense of impending doom that pierces your body when sunlight streams through the window and birds chirp, automatically screaming I’m fucked in your brain.
I looked at the table. The neatly organized surface didn’t have a single speck of dust or a single sheet of paper.
—Cold sweat ran down my back.
“…The thesis. Fuck, where’s my thesis?”
“Thesis all of a sudden? You still half-asleep?”
I ignored my colleague’s frown and searched the area. It wasn’t on my desk. It wasn’t in the drawers. I ignored the high-pitched protests and searched the drawers where Yerna Gracy used to sit. My thesis wasn’t there either.
It was nowhere in the entire lab.
“…Huh?”
With a crystal-clear mind that had zero sleep left in it, I realized the truth.
Yerna Gracy had run off with my thesis.