Chapter 219: Pandology A+
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 219: Pandology A+
“You’ve definitely improved a lot, thanks to those crash courses you took at the Magic Tower.”
“Hehe….”
While I was back home recovering from the fatigue of working my ass off in that godforsaken Murim region—where they don't even have proper electricity—it seemed my youngest sister, who had sneakily gone to study abroad at the Magic Tower, had leveled up.
It felt pretty damn unfair. While I was busy shaking my hips and working myself to the bone, she was living the high life learning magic.
“Teacher, what about me?”
“W-well… you just need a bit more e-effort….”
Teacher Yvette answered without being able to look me in the eye, likely because I usually spent our sessions messing with her—squeezing her butt, touching her chest, and generally harassing her.
“Do I have no talent?”
“I-I think you’re average… but, well… among men… I think you’re the b-best….”
Maybe it was because she was a runner-up mage from the Magic Tower’s education department, but since she had only ever seen the most gifted aspiring mages, she seemed to treat me as just ‘average’ in that context.
In other words, I was a genius by normal standards, but among geniuses, I was just mediocre—a very insulting sentiment.
“No, look closely. This fire! Doesn’t it look yellow? Huh? It’s yellow!”
“E-even if you say that… red doesn’t just become yellow….”
This gloomy, socially awkward, introverted spell-slinger clearly lacked an understanding of how the world worked. This was exactly why mages were hopeless.
People who used their bodies generally had basic social skills installed; they’d at least force out something nice to hear. But these types were so rigid—it’s either this or that—that it was a wonder they could even secure research grants.
“I’m telling you, it’s yellow! Are you colorblind?! Look properly! Look! Don’t look away!”
“Oppa! Stop bullying Teacher Yvette!”
The brat chimed in.
“The adults are talking, so why are you butting in?! Be quiet!”
“You’re a kid too, Oppa! You’re the same height as me!”
The brat poked me right where it hurt.
Lately, she had been hitting a sudden growth spurt, growing faster than the kids in my class. It was beyond frustrating that we were now at eye level.
“If I… had learned at the Magic Tower too… I could have raised the temperature… all the way to blue….”
“Pfft…!”
Yvette let out a snicker. Unlike me, who was dumbfounded, Gracia giggled along.
“Teacher Yvette…?”
“O-oh, no…! I-it’s just…! No matter how you look at it, becoming a 3rd Class mage in such a short time is impossible….”
“Grasha did it!”
“Gracia is a genius who even made the Dean marvel….”
I hated how Teacher Yvette answered while tapping her index fingers together and avoiding my gaze, so I lunged at her.
“Kyaak?!”
She collapsed under my perfect Spear, and I brought my hands to her sides.
“Don’t talk back to me, you mere spell-slinger!”
“D-don’t… stop… hihit?! Hit?! Hihihihit…! S-stop it..! Hehehehe! Hehe?! Hik?!”
I mercilessly tickled the sides of the stupid spell-slinger who hadn't allocated any stat points into stamina or strength.
“Oppa! I told you to stop bullying Teacher Yvette!”
“Hehehit…! I-I’m sorry..! I was wroooong…!”
I grabbed Yvette’s hips as she tried to crawl away and continued to tickle her sides relentlessly.
“Hyat?! I-I’m…! I-I’m really t-ticklish there…! Ugh…! S-stooop…! Hahahaha, hat, hahahaha, stop iiiiit…!”
Seeing Yvette whimpering in distress, I had no choice but to forgive her. She was someone who came all the way to my house for private tutoring; if I bullied her any further, it might seriously damage my reputation.
“Make sure I can become a 3rd Class mage soon!”
“E-effort… hehe… hee… haa… haa… if you put in… m-more effort… you can do it soon… haa… haa… haa….”
Drenched in sweat, Yvette curled up on the floor before losing all strength and sprawling out. She was surprisingly cute for an older woman, so I gave her butt a little smack before letting go.
Then, noticing the brat staring blankly at us, I called her name.
“Grasha, what are you staring at?”
“....”
The kid didn't answer.
“Gracia Cal Degrain?”
“Huh? Oh? D-did you call me?!”
“I think you have a fever. Your face is all red.”
Seeing her face flushed as she waved her hands around aimlessly, I reached out to check her temperature.
“Ugh… I-I don’t! It’s just because I’m embarrassed by how you’re bullying the teacher, Oppa!”
The brat pushed me back so hard that I fell right on top of Yvette’s backside.
“O-Oppa, are you okay…?”
Gracia’s eyes went wide as if she were startled, and she took on a frightened expression. At times like this, I had to comfort her properly as an older brother.
“Grasha hit me…!”
“W-who hit you?! I just pushed you!”
“I’m gonna tell Mom~!”
“Oppa!!!”
The brat shrieked. Seeing that her frightened expression from a moment ago had completely vanished, it seemed I had comforted her well.
Managing a sister who was barely any younger than me was exhausting work.
***
“So… the standard for a 3rd Class mage is usually being able to raise the temperature until the flame turns blue, but….”
Having recovered from my tickle attack, Yvette insisted we actually start the lesson and began a boring lecture on theory.
“I know, I know. It’s not just about the amount of mana or whether you can use complex formulas; it’s about the minimum threshold of control.”
“Mhm… Yong-hwan… your magic power… is at a m-monster level… but you lack delicate adjustment… and sense…. If you work hard… you can reach 3rd Class… in no time…!”
Thanks to the elixirs my mom’s friends had showered me with (telling me to eat them alone without giving any to the brat), my sexual arts, and two world-class elixirs, my magic power was roughly on par with Yvette, a 7th Class mage.
However, mana was merely fuel. Magic control and the understanding and application of formulas were the engine and the drivetrain.
The simple summary was that no matter how much fuel you had, the engine and drivetrain couldn't use it properly. Even if you had a nuclear fusion reactor generating power, what was the point if you couldn't convert it into other forms of energy?
You might think, ‘With a metaphor like that, isn't the output insane?!’
Unfortunately, the martial art the dragon whelp taught me—the Solar Divine Art, which was heavily biased toward sexual intercourse—protected my body so well that I couldn't force an excessive output. Thus, the option of a glorious self-destruction to take my enemy with me upon defeat didn't even exist.
“I heard Grasha might become a 4th Class mage by the end of this year. What about me?”
“Yong-hwan… you’re a m-man, after all…. If you work a l-little harder this year…. You could reach 3rd Class….”
Our family was a line of swordsmen, yet a spell-casting anomaly had been born to crush her brother’s self-esteem.
“Oppa, you’re a total loser~!”
“You’re coming to the fitness center with me after this tutoring session.”
“I’m a mage, so I don’t do foolish things like sweating buckets!”
“Are you saying our mom, who’s a swordsman just like me, is foolish?”
“That’s not what I meant! Oppa, stop bringing Mom into everything!”
No matter how high and mighty the brat acted, I always won when I brought up Mom. As a Motherfucker Master, Mom was just a sow I could use whenever I wanted, but to the brat who didn't know that, I must have seemed like the ultimate unfilial son.
“Grandma is a swordsman too!”
“Ugh… I’m not even going to talk to you! Teacher Yvette! When do you think I can become a 5th Class mage?”
“5th Class…? Well… it varies for everyone… but someone like Gracia could probably reach it before graduating from elementary school….”
“I heard a mage called a genius in the colonies became 5th Class at their coming-of-age ceremony. How do I compare to them?”
“There… the age of adulthood is much later than ours…. And the grading standards are lower…. You shouldn't compare yourself to Gracia…. According to the runner-up of the Magitech Engineering Department, they’re roughly… at a similar level to me….”
My interest piqued when the colonies were mentioned. No, more than that.
“Teacher Yvette, you’re considered a genius?”
“N-no…! I-I’m just… a l-little… good… the r-real geniuses are other people….”
Seeing her deny being a genius made her actually seem talented for some reason.
“Teacher Yvette, aren't you currently a Magic Tower-certified 7th Class mage? Is being at the 5th Class level that impressive?”
“Since it’s a colony… it’s a place where it’s hard to learn magic properly, and the Goddess’s blessing is weak….”
“Then what class is that person now?”
“They’re 7th Class, but since it’s by colonial standards… they’d be classified as a 6th Class mage here….”
Things seemed complicated over there too.
“Still, they’re an amazing person. They came from a place called the Republic of Korea, where no Magic Tower is established….”
I heard a name I couldn't easily ignore.
“The Republic of Korea?”
“Mhm, well… you might not know it by the Governorate classification…. Let’s see…. It was the Manchuria-Korea region, I think…?”
“What? Manchuria?”
It had a strange name attached to it.
“Ugh… there was a map… j-just a moment….”
Teacher Yvette pulled a map of Earth out of subspace.
“This is the Manchuria region… and this… roughly where this line is drawn is the Korean Peninsula….”
As expected of spell-slingers, she was completely ignorant of anything outside her field; instead of the Tumen and Yalu Rivers, she had just drawn a line through some random spot.
The borders looked like something out of the Goryeo dynasty, but I held my tongue.
“And I believe this upper part is called Manchuria….”
“Why is it one single country?”
“I heard they merged them because the population was awkwardly high when they were creating the Governorate…. They said it was formed this way based on some research into geographical and historical characteristics…. Yes, it says ‘Republic of Korea’ here.”
There it was: a map of Korea that had achieved the ‘Man-Ban-Do’ dream.
More importantly.
“Why is… this place so fragmented?”
“I heard they split it up by region because it’s hard to manage if the population is too high…. They probably split it because it would be a headache if they united.”
I saw China, torn into six pieces—though not quite to the level of the Sixteen Kingdoms.
I didn't know which crazy bitch had drawn these lines, but to me, a major in Pandology, the Asian borders of colonial Earth were an A+.
Wait, hold on.
“Is there a Governorate for every one of these tiny fragments?”
The Southeast Asian region was strange.
As far as I knew, that area had a high population, but if China was split into six, it made no sense for Southeast Asia to be shredded like this.
Then again, this was a completely different world from the one I lived in, so maybe the population there was just insane.
Even so, some of the cuts were bizarre.
Looking closely, there were only three Governor-Generals' Offices for the Southeast Asian territories.
“The map is weird. What are these?”
“These? If you look at the dotted lines, they seem to be lines dividing the nations.”
I looked at China again.
The lines were distinctly different from the Southeast Asian nations. Looking closer, each border had a country name stamped on it.
“A+.”
“Huh?”
“Pandology A+.”
I didn't know who did it, but whoever turned Earth into this absolute clusterfuck was someone I wanted to invite to my graduate school.