The World Has No Mothers
I took a swig of the piss-flavored beer that tasted like it had been filtered through a Viking’s sock and muttered, “As far as I can tell, every professor in this goddamn world is a motherless bastard.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?! This bar gets professors too, you idiot!”
My heartfelt complaint earned me a sharp kick under the table from the research student sitting across from me. His face had gone bone-white.
“Ow! You son of a bitch! If you’re a scholar, use your words like one!”
“Bullshit. You want me to just stand by while my slave colleague runs his mouth and ends up getting beheaded by the faculty?”
It hurt like hell, but the cold glare that followed made my chest sting worse. We’d spent the last three miserable years grinding through the same professor-assigned shit together, yet apparently I still looked like nothing more than a slave in his eyes.
“Viking-level tomboy bitch… Even if you die, you won’t go to Mag Mell. You’ll end up in Valhalla, you bastard…”
“You really wanna die?”
Her purple curls stuck out like a bird’s nest as she stared daggers at me and kept drinking that watered-down excuse for beer.
That impressive mess of purple curly hair belonged to my friend Dana. Technically she was a girl, but after three years of rolling around in the same lab, gender stopped meaning anything to grad students. She was basically a chest-equipped comrade. If I had an older sister, this was probably what it would feel like. She was only one year older than me and I’d never once seen her as a woman, so yeah, pretty close.
“Just listen, damn it. When you become a professor, you’re already old as shit, right? Your parents would’ve kicked the bucket long ago. So they live however the hell they want, like they’ve maxed out their ‘Mom Joke Resistance’ stat.”
“I get the feeling, but if you keep running your mouth I’m walking out.”
“Please. Don’t abandon this poor former-slave master’s degree holder…”
“If you don’t want to be abandoned, then shut the hell up.”
Dana sighed and flicked a peeled pea at my forehead. The cheap bar snack bounced off my head and landed on the table. Watching that bean plummet to the ground like my degree and career, I shed tears of genuine sorrow.
“Fuck… Me, a master’s degree holder. Me, a master’s degree holder…”
“You should say it right. You’re a Bronze Master’s.”
“You purple-haired bitch…”
It had been exactly one week since that rotten professor Yerna Gracy stole the culmination of my three years of blood, sweat, and tears. That navy-haired thieving cunt had flown off to another country’s university, but before she left she copied my thesis word-for-word, slapped her name on it, and submitted it as her own. And that paper (my masterpiece wearing her name like a cheap mask) had sent massive shockwaves through the academic world.
“Have you seen the paper Professor Gracy submitted this time?”
“Of course I read it! I stayed up all night digging through my library for the first time in years. My god, Elune might actually be a derivative of Rune! What a revolutionary idea and hypothesis!”
“Right? My heart swelled like I was hearing the old heroes’ legends again when I was a kid!”
“If this hypothesis is proven, the Thousand Wings Award is basically hers, isn’t it?”
“Obviously! No one can refute it!”
The Thousand Wings Award was basically this world’s version of the Nobel Prize in archaeology. Since the height of information technology here was carrier pigeons and mounted messengers, it didn’t have quite the same global impact as a Nobel, but it was undeniably the highest honor in the field.
“Motherless bastards.”
The more I thought about it, the more unfair it felt. It was so unfair that tears poured out like a faucet had been turned on full blast. The bitch who stole my thesis was now a Nobel candidate because of it? Meanwhile, the emergency thesis I’d thrown together for my degree had earned comments like “Well, this is… something” from the examiners.
You see this shit? Look at how these motherfuckers talk. “Heavy advisor influence”? Of course it looks similar, you dumbasses! It’s because that thieving bitch wrote it using the scraps I left behind after she stole the real thing! Creativity my ass. The paper you all creamed your pants over is my creativity. Who the hell are you calling unoriginal?
Anyway, these academic keyboard warriors were experts at pissing people off with just a few lines. To make a pure-blooded Korean like Kang Bukho, a man from the Mother-Insulting Tribe, foam at the mouth with a single A4 sheet? Yeah, educated bastards really are on another level.
“Motherless… This beer tastes like absolute shit!”
Given the situation, it wasn’t surprising that I’d passed out from shock for two straight days, then woken up and immediately dragged my ass here to drink without even eating.
“Hehe. Life is dogshit. Being a good person doesn’t mean jack shit.”
“…Hey, don’t be so pessimistic. It’s normal for foreign scholars to only get a Bronze Master’s with their thesis.”
“You wanna keep pissing me off?”
Honestly, I’d expected at least a Silver Master’s at first. Some people might wonder why I was throwing such a tantrum over dropping from Silver to Bronze. But as I said, everyone in this world is a tier-whore. Even among master’s degrees, Bronze and Silver were treated completely differently.
Only one rank difference, you say? Then a college graduate and a high school graduate are basically the same too. A Diamond-tier high schooler and a Challenger pro gamer are only one rank apart. In simple terms, it takes two years just to go from Bronze Master’s to Silver. Is escaping Bronze supposed to take two years in a game? Honestly, they probably only gave me the master’s degree after looking at my brilliant credentials and thinking, “Fine, just take this and fuck off.”
“Ha. Maybe I should just go die.”
Cursing the world, I poured the urine-colored beer that tasted like it was brewed from malnourished millet down my throat.
I couldn’t even tell anyone I’d been plagiarized. That bitch Yerna had been a name in academia for fifty years. I was supposed to accuse someone who’d spent twice my entire life in the archaeology world of stealing my thesis? A former slave with no degree or achievements? And it wasn’t even some random paper. My thesis was a legendary masterpiece that made even the greatest scholars twist and moan in ecstasy. It was absolutely not something a twenty-something lab slave could have written.
If I claimed it was mine, the academic world would just say some foreign bastard didn’t know his place and blacklist me. In the end, the only person I could comfortably complain to was the purple bird’s-nest-haired girl sitting in front of me.
“You were just mentally calling my hair trash, weren’t you?”
“Busted.”
Dana, sharp as ever, clicked her tongue and rested her chin on her hand.
“See? All straight-haired bastards deserve to die.”
“Oh, I agree with that one. I’ll shave my head if you’ll just beat up one straight-haired elf for me.”
“Wow. You really are in bad shape.”
Dana looked at me with pity and refilled my glass. It was just more of the tasteless booze, but I guess it counted as her version of kindness.
“Dana, for a grad student you’re actually pretty smart and decent…!”
“Before I smack you in the head with this beer mug, shut up. …Tsk. It’s on me today, so order some grilled chicken or something.”
Her tone was gruff. But to me, the fact that she believed me at all was enough to bring tears to my eyes. What if our positions were reversed? Suppose I’d gotten my doctorate with this paper. If Dana, a Silver Master’s holder, came to me saying, “Professor Yerna stole the thesis I was going to use for my doctorate!” would I have believed her?
Probably not easily. I’d have thought she was talking nonsense. Yerna’s acting had been that good. Even I never imagined she would run off with my thesis.
“Thanks for believing me. If it wasn’t for you, Dana, I probably would’ve hanged myself already.”
“…That’s exactly why I believe you. Plus, it’s true that you wouldn’t pick a fight you can’t win with Professor Yerna after throwing away the thesis you worked so hard on.”
“Ughhh. I love you, Lady Dana.”
“Stop screwing around, you bastard.”
Dana snorted and flicked another pea at me.
“So? What are you going to do now?”
We’d torn apart a chicken that was maybe one step above chick-level and filled our stomachs when Dana, tilting her glass, asked the question.
“Even with a Bronze Master’s you can stay at the university. If you’ve got nothing better to do, just stick around the archaeology department. Since you’ve already started, you might as well get your doctorate. It’d be a waste otherwise.”
“You’ve already got the professor mindset, you bastard?”
How vicious could one person be? Telling your colleague who just got demoted after having his thesis stolen to keep being a slave? Dana shut her mouth for a moment, then let out a small laugh.
“I can’t be the only one suffering, can I? If you leave, all your work comes to me.”
“They’ll just hire someone new.”
“Where are they going to find someone as competent as you?”
“Don’t pretend to compliment me while trying to tie me down.”
“Ah, caught me. Look at this quick-witted bastard.”
“Yep~ There are plenty of people who can do it without me~ The lab won’t collapse~.”
“Yep~ The lab will collapse if you leave~ So don’t go~.”
We cackled at each other and clinked our glasses together with a loud clack.
“So what are you really going to do?”
“Hmm.”
“If you’re staying, help me with my thesis. I’ve built up some decent results too, so I was thinking of aiming for my doctorate. I’ll put your name on it too. Sounds good, right?”
“My big sister is dripping with regret again.”
This was the first time in my life I’d ever been so aggressively recruited by the opposite sex. I should’ve been excited, but after three years of hell together she felt more like a battle buddy than a woman. It was a strange feeling. It’s not that Dana was ugly. But damn it, we’d spent five days straight either staring at letters on a desk or running from monsters in ruins while screaming like idiots. There was no room for sexual desire to develop in that environment. The three great human desires go sleep > food > sex. If your dick still reacts while you’re on the verge of death from exhaustion, you need to go to the hospital. Your brain has been conquered by your dick!!
“Actually, I’ve already decided on my career path.”
I set my glass down and told her the plan I’d had from the beginning.
“I’m going to become an adventurer. I’m heading to Sardigas in the western region.”
“…What?! An adventurer?!”
Dana looked as shocked as a student teacher who’d just heard one of her male students say he was going to Ewha Women’s University.
“Are you insane?! Why an adventurer all of a sudden?!”
I understood why she was so dumbfounded. In this world, archaeology held roughly the same position as aerospace engineering back on Earth. It was promising, practical, and made good money. That was because this world had a history of great ancient civilizations declining due to war or disaster. Like in old online games, items with names like “primitive ancient” were actually more technologically advanced than modern ones. This wasn’t fucking Diablo.
“Hey, calm down and think again! Like you said, suppose you become an adventurer. Do you really think you’ll just find artifacts in ruins and rise through the ranks?!”
“Well, not exactly…”
Anyway, there was an unimaginable gap between the fallen “ancient civilizations” and the modern era. The “artifacts” Dana mentioned were a perfect example. To exaggerate a little, even if a time machine were invented five hundred years from now and you went to the past, a primitive stone spear thrown by a caveman named Ooga Booga could still shoot down a spaceship.
Anyone with half a brain could probably figure out by now why the archaeology world was so respected here. The field deciphers the languages of ancient civilizations, uncovers their history, and recovers artifacts and out-of-place objects. In other words, archaeology in this world was basically the space industry. Especially since the byproducts of research could be used to strengthen technology and military power. Nations actually kept a close eye on it and provided sponsorship.
Yet a friend with skills on par with current professors in that very field had suddenly announced he was quitting to go do business in the countryside. If I didn’t stop him, I wouldn’t be a friend.
“Working in the field gets results faster. If you apply, the academic world even gives you a field archaeologist license.”
“No, even so…”
Field archaeologist referred to so-called “hands-on” archaeologists. Generally, professional archaeologists were divided into three types. Government contract workers who did their own research and got dispatched when the state discovered ruins. Independent researchers who hired people to explore ruins or remote areas and studied the results they brought back. And the ones who smashed monster heads like absolute machos and explored ruins themselves—the field exploration type.
The macho-ism-corrupted me had set my future goal on becoming a field exploration archaeologist, commonly called a “field worker.”
“That and this are in completely different orders. Those people are adventurers who later earned archaeology degrees. You clearly have the temperament of a scholar! No matter how badly you messed up your degree, suddenly becoming a…”
Dana stopped mid-sentence, then suddenly looked like she’d realized something. Her eyes widened.
“Wait… Don’t tell me. The reason you submitted your thesis this year without preparing for another year… was because you wanted to become an adventurer?!”
“Yep.”
“…Wow. I knew you were crazy, but I didn’t know it was this bad.”
Dana collapsed back into her seat like her soul had left her body.
Exactly. I hadn’t thrown away my thesis because my mentality had shattered. I had simply rushed to get my degree—even if it was only at an undergraduate level—so I could become a proper archaeologist as quickly as possible. The reason I had stayed at this university from the very beginning was to become an insanely overpowered intellectual adventurer!