The Crime of Doing Too Well

The professor's trickery was thorough.

When I tracked the shell game's coin by ear, she stripped away sound. When I tracked it by the wood grain, she stole my sight. On top of that, she used Haste to pull off the entire sequence in the blink of an eye without anyone even asking her to!

It was terrifyingly deft craftsmanship, entirely befitting the world's greatest chivalrous thief.

Frankly, I felt like I was hitting a brick wall.

"Just to let you know, I intend to pass down the technique even if you fail to guess correctly."

"Really?"

"The trick you demonstrated earlier was entertaining in several respects, Freshman Orknodi."

"What about the coin?"

"If you fail to guess right, there is naturally no reason to hand it over."

"Hmph."

"Acting pitiful will get you nowhere. I once snatched a toy straight from the hands of a three-year-old child."

Professor, your entire identity as a chivalrous thief is in serious ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠jeopardy right now.

Not that I was in any position to worry about someone else's moral standing.

She even matched the wood grain, the spiteful thing.

The larger cups nested over the originals carried identical patterns. That alone stoked my suspicions.

Was this really a larger cup placed over the original, or had she used Transfiguration directly on the existing one?

I draped a thin film of mana over my eyes like a pair of tinted contact lenses. Instantly, the mana composing all matter in the world sprang into vivid detail.

"You know how to use the Search Eye?"

"It's a basic skill, of course."

The Search Eye.

Also known as the Gyeonmun-an.

It was a technique that layered mana over one's vision to detect magical energy.

"A clumsy method of circulation that degrades your eyesight if maintained for too long, I see."

I offered no reply to the professor's remark. More accurately, I could not afford to spare the breath.

Just as she said, the technique carried a harsh penalty. It was simply the consequence of a low proficiency rank.

A hardcore veteran might know every skill under the sun, but there was always a world of difference between abilities one used constantly and those left on the back burner. The Search Eye fell squarely into the latter category.

Mana traps? Mana-infused creatures?

What did any of that matter when a two-hundred-and-thirty-centimeter mountain of barbarian muscle could obliterate them all with a single serious punch? Having spent an eternity playing that kind of build, I possessed little interest in cowardly gameplay relying on ocular trickery.

Granted, I did occasionally break out the Prognosis Eye—the Yeji-an—which tracked microscopic muscle contractions to predict an opponent's next move a fraction of a second ahead. But if my mastery of the Prognosis Eye was rated at one hundred, my proficiency with the Search Eye would struggle to crack ten. Even that meager amount was mostly theoretical textbook knowledge.

Still, this is plenty.

All three cups had indeed undergone Transfiguration. As expected of an instructor teaching Developing an Eye, she had laid a trap specifically tailored to test perception. Perhaps she viewed this as an extension of the previous lecture.

However, relying on this method alone would never reveal the true cup.

Transfiguration isn't the only thing at work here.

An ingenious mana-shielding barrier coated the surfaces. The shielding wrapped each cup in a film as whisper-thin as lamination, entirely blocking me from reading the internal patterns beneath. In other words, the grain currently visible on the exterior was not the genuine wood pattern, but a counterfeit illusion conjured through magic.

Cup one's pattern remained precisely in cup one's spot, suggesting that cups two and three were the ones swapped—which would lead any ordinary mark to assume the undisturbed cup one held the coin. But that was precisely the trap.

The fact that she had faithfully reproduced the exact grain pattern I had memorized felt like an open sneer, mocking me from a vantage point far above my head.

Ugh. I refuse to lose this.

Refusing to lose was one thing, but as the volume of contradictory data piled up, my brain began to scramble. My poor head was heading straight for an overload!

"Huh?"

Right then, a strange incongruity caught the corner of my vision.

At that exact moment, three seconds ticked by.

I immediately deactivated the Search Eye. Three seconds was the absolute threshold to preserve one's visual acuity without permanent damage, and I cut off the flow right at the limit.

A faint smile tugged at the professor's lips.

"You found something, didn't you?"

"I found something, sure. The mark indicating 'three challenges' ended up on the opposite side of the table."

Not only had this woman executed an absurd number of complex procedures in a single breath, but she had also rotated the entire desk a full one hundred and eighty degrees. Just how much leisure did she have on her hands?!

Bitter though it was to admit, Professor Bronze was terrifyingly strong. Her movement speed operated on a tier so vast that I could not even measure where its ceiling lay.

"And will that allow you to locate the cup hiding the coin?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Oh dear. Did you fail to see through the 'pattern'?"

Was that a taunt, or was it a clue? It was impossible to tell. I promptly scrubbed her cryptic words from my mind; dwelling on them would only cloud my thoughts.

One must never treat unconfirmed information as an anchor for judgment. Deduction had to rest entirely on data personally collected and verified. Never rely on the records of others, nor on plausible-sounding rhetoric. Cutting through the noise solely with one's own power—that was the only truth I recognized.

Let's break this down.

If the disguised wood grain on the cups matched their original surfaces, the coin would be inside cup one. However, the presence of the mana-shielding film introduced an element of absolute uncertainty: the possibility that the grain on the transformed cups was a fake surface woven instantaneously by her Haste atop the barrier.

In that scenario, every deduction based on visual grain was a lie and a distraction. Meaning cup one became the furthest from the correct answer.

The real deal would have to be either two or three. Psychologically, that's the only conclusion one could arrive at.

At least, that was the case before the mark indicating the three challenges appeared on the opposite side.

That mark was not a forgery manufactured by the mana barrier.

Silence.

Haste.

Transfiguration.

Shielding.

It was physical evidence proving that atop those four actions, a fifth process—the physical rotation of the table—had been incorporated. It was a verifiable fact I could rely on.

The table had been spun one hundred and eighty degrees. Naturally, the positions of the cups had also flipped by one hundred and eighty degrees. Cup one might seem to be sitting in its original place, but in reality, it could have been slid over to position three, only to return to position one after the entire table spun around.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Whether she shuffled the cups first or spun the table first, there remained a strong probability that positions one and three had traded places. Which meant cup two was suddenly the closest to the correct answer.

Yet the mere existence of that mana barrier reduces all these logical assumptions to nothing more than possibilities.

That was the thorniest dilemma. A single layer of shielding, a film thinner than a fingernail, cast every truth and scrap of data about the cups into a bottomless labyrinth.

"Can I ask one question for a hint?"

"Ask."

"Could you peel off the mana barrier, please?"

The professor offered no answer.

"Professor?"

"What is it?"

"I asked a question."

"And I listened, didn't I?"

"..."

Did she think I was here for life counseling? A question was supposed to come with an actual answer!

Wait. Hold on a second.

Could the complete lack of a hint perversely serve as a hint in itself?

Judging purely by what I had observed so far, Professor Bronze possessed an intensely competitive streak. The moment I brought out a technique, she blocked it in the very next turn. In the final phase, she even turned my own methods against me, delivering a psychological counter: using a shell game to defeat a shell game.

Pay back what was received. Return the exact measure dealt.

Her personality adhered to the principle of lex talionis—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—straight out of the Code of Hammurabi!

"The answer is cup number one."

When she flipped the cup over, the coin rested quietly inside, exactly as predicted. The coin had been sitting beneath the cup that appeared the furthest from the correct answer.

"How did you deduce the coin was there?"

"When the mark noting the three challenges appeared on the opposite side, the physical location was inverted, but the sequence of the writing was not."

In short, if the text had been inscribed in the order of one, two, three, a table rotated one hundred and eighty degrees should have displayed that order in reverse: three, two, one. Yet the numerals manifesting across the table retained the identical sequence of one, two, three.

"There were no traces of a mana barrier woven over the table itself, which meant I wasn't seeing hallucinations or succumbing to an optical illusion. The assumption that the table had spun one hundred and eighty degrees was an intentionally orchestrated misdirection."

I looked straight at her.

"I couldn't identify the exact technique you used, but whenever the goal of a trick is disruption, the winning move is simply to act against the intended bait. That made it obvious your true motive was to make cup two appear closest to the correct answer. Naturally, cup two was eliminated as an option."

The professor countered smoothly.

"You had no way of knowing what lay beneath the shielding film. You had zero tangible evidence to substantiate such an inference."

"True, but I could read your behavioral tendencies."

"My tendencies?"

"A swordsman confident in his thrust will execute thrusts with disproportionate frequency. A high-ranking official eager to validate his superiority will seek out audiences that inflate his sense of influence."

The same logic applied to Professor Bronze.

"Throughout this wager, Professor, you demonstrated the principle of retributive retaliation at every single turn. I was certain that on your third response, you would mirror my own trick back at me in full."

"In academic circles, that is referred to as confirmation bias. It is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the inclination to selectively embrace only desired information while deliberately turning a blind eye to the rest. Were you not simply projecting an image you wished to see upon me, Freshman Orknodi?"

"Perhaps I was. But it worked, didn't it?"

Results were everything! Faced with the ultimate, unassailable excuse of total victory, the professor had no choice but to concede.

"Then how did you narrow it down between cups one and three?"

"Because the existence of the mana barrier made picking cup one feel overwhelmingly unsafe. I wagered that the greatest possibility lay within cup one, precisely because it appeared the most disadvantageous."

"Extraordinary. To possess a body so tender in years, yet wield the profound wisdom of Ilgak Chimbong—an insight one would expect only from a veteran general or a weathered master of martial arts."

"Huh??"

"One jagged corner topples the mountain peak. It refers to dismantling an overwhelming foe by turning their prominent tendencies against them."

Reading the flow of battle by exploiting an opponent's strengths, habits, and ingrained thought processes. It was a basic raiding tactic that any veteran hardcore player picked up naturally after grinding through countless playthroughs. I just had no idea it carried such an extravagant, high-sounding martial title!

"A promise is a promise. That commemorative coin is now yours."

Jackpot! I won the bet!

...So why did an ominous chill suddenly crawl down my spine, whispering that I had just made a terrible, colossal mistake?

"???"

What on earth was with this absurd downpour of experience points?

My sense of dread mounted with every passing second, mirroring the increasingly affectionate gleam blooming in the professor's eyes. Then, delivering the final, fatal blow, she spoke.

"Freshman Orknodi. Have you any interest in receiving private instruction under my tutelage? Quite apart from our regular curriculum, I find myself wishing to instruct you personally."

Now I understood.

I finally realized where this bottomless anxiety was coming from.

She was looking at me like an advisor about to drag an undergrad into graduate school!