The Slave (Grad Student) Who Dreams of Becoming a Professor
"Wow, this is amazing. A professor whose nametag displays Slave Merchant instead of Chair Professor!"
The moment she laid eyes on me, Teaching Assistant Cersi Paniya dropped the stack of books she was holding and blurted out something utterly unhinged.
"A declaration of intent to walk your own path, unlike the other Chair Professors who are famous for being lunatics! Incredible... I think I've come to admire you."
Cersi spoke to me with the dead-eyed look of someone running on fumes. Even when I stepped closer while she tidied the desk, her gaze remained a touch higher than mine. She was staggeringly tall.
"Chair Professor Wicker Phedia... is it? I only got word of your appointment three hours ago, so I'm a bit of a mess. I'll have this cleared out for you right away. Heh."
"Half-orc, are you?"
"Quarter, actually. My grandmother served in the Holy Kingdom's knight orders, but her unit was defeated and she was taken captive. She tried to invoke her 'Kuh—kill me now,' but it failed."
"A common enough story."
"Oh, but it didn't end the common way! My grandfather fell in love with her, bought her freedom, and the two of them fled together. From then on it was apparently trials of racial discrimination and this and that—a pure-love epic all the way."
"And me, meanwhile, just the sort of teaching assistant you can find anywhere, hm? A spare part to be swapped out the moment I back the wrong horse!"
Cersi let out a laugh that dissolved into a cough.
"Who would've thought the Chair Professor I'd spent five years serving would drop dead of hypertension out of nowhere? I should have stopped feeding him donuts! And for all I knew, I'd be stuck guarding this fallen-down dormitory for the next five years after that."
"No time for research, no chance to present a single paper. Still, I figured if I just endured this much, they'd have to give me an assistant professorship, you know? And what did I get in return? An eviction notice without so much as a piece of candy. But it's fine! The world is so full of kindness that I'm stuffed to bursting!"
In other words, she was a typical grad-school teaching assistant who'd long since abandoned her sanity somewhere along the way. Being around her was making me dizzy too.
I rummaged through the belongings Cersi had been sorting. Papers and documents rose in towering stacks.
And not just one or two. Every topic imaginable was in there—research on anything and everything. Made sense, I supposed, for someone attached to the Earth House, which specialized primarily in Utilization arts.
Research on the rules of dungeon mazes. A study on stabilizing random enchantment combinations. A study on traits arising from crossbreeding between races.
Now this was rather interesting. Unless it was a paid analytical piece, this was the kind of content that wouldn't even appear on the wiki.
"Where's the orientation being held?"
"They told me to handle it myself. 'A new Chair Professor is arriving, so clear his room first.' Well, anywhere's got to be better than the academy, right? I mean, would the Demon King down in hell even have a professorship to offer?"
"Why throw in the towel when you've come this far? I might, just possibly, be in a position to offer you a professorship."
At my words, Cersi gave a hollow little snort.
"Another ten years from scratch, you mean? Ahaha, I'm sure you're a wonderful person, Professor, but I've been burned by one too many Chair Professors. Every last one of them was a complete lunatic. Even the Principal threw his hands up on my behalf."
"Fair enough."
"Hope is what wears people down."
"Ten years might be beyond you, but could you manage one hour?"
"...Pardon?"
I handed Cersi the pointer stick.
"I need information on the entrance examinations starting the day after tomorrow. Begin lecturing me. Now."
"...Yes, sir."
Cersi's ruined face split into a defeated smile.
"The general track's entrance examination has three rounds in total. Dormitory selection comes after the final interview. If you want to bring in the students you desire, that final interview is what matters most."
Cersi walked me through it, scrawling on the whiteboard as she went. Her lecture was packed with the hard-won field tactics the other Chair Professors employed, and genuinely useful.
"The third round usually leaves about a hundred passers. The problem is the rule that all of them choose their dormitories simultaneously."
"Twenty slots per dormitory in the general track. So even passing the third round means one in five walks away with nothing."
"If more than twenty students apply, the choice reverts to the Chair Professor. That's when, in the final one-on-one interview, each Chair Professor drops hints to the students. You—apply to mine. You—don't bother, I was never taking you anyway."
"Charming. So a student who gets no hint from Water, Fire, or Wind either scrapes into the Earth House or gives up and goes home."
"Exactly. And word's gotten out over the last two years, so more and more simply head home. Earth House's second and third years are under-enrolled as it is, and plenty of students dropped out midway too."
Only one third-year remains, and nobody even knows where she is, Cersi added.
"So the place is effectively abandoned—no real curriculum, no professor to look after them. I imagine their graduation exams come in at the lowest tier."
"If they can pass even that, they should count themselves lucky. If they can't, they've thrown away three years of their lives. Ah, but that still makes them better off than me—I wasted ten!"
"I hear the graduation exams are administered by the Goddess herself. Is that correct?"
"Yes. There are five exam grades, from Medias at the bottom up to Opticulum at the very top. Each student sits whatever exam matches their level at the time of graduation."
"So evaluation is fair."
"As long as this world exists, it will be."
Fair enough—this world itself existed by the Goddess's power, so the statement held true.
"That covers the general students. What about the sponsored ones?"
"I'd say about three per dormitory, per incoming class? As you know, general-track students pay no tuition whatsoever. In exchange, the sponsors behind the recommended students pay sums you wouldn't believe."
Donation admission, in a word. The academy was a small chessboard where the political power games of every nation on the continent converged.
As an inviolable neutral zone, it was the perfect stage for posturing. The more a nation donated, the better its odds of recruiting the mightiest weapon of all—a Hero—for its own soil.
For that reason, the heirs of every nation gathered here, and over time it had become an exchange none of them could afford to sit out.
"And this year it's the Empire's Second Imperial Princess's turn."
"Gah. Are you serious? From that Empire... one wrong move and we'll have blood in the wind."
Cersi hadn't been phoning in her assistant work, at least—she grasped the situation immediately.
"My mandate is to graduate the entire incoming class—Second Imperial Princess included—with Opticulum scores."
"Whaaaaat?!"
Cersi's jaw hung open. It was a spectacularly stupid-looking face.
"Even Fire and Water, with their stellar academic records, usually only produce three or four Opticulum graduates per class...? And this is the Earth House we're talking about? Professor, do you know what our dormitory's nickname is?"
"The Graveyard of the Academy, isn't it?"
"Not exactly an honor, no. Heehee."
"Then here's your question period. What would be the easiest way to take that Graveyard of the Academy and have every student in the class graduate with the top score?"
At my question, Cersi rolled her eyes and sank into deep thought.
"Um... the finest faculty money can buy? Should we brainwash the students?"
"I'll give you exactly one more chance to answer. Why do you think I asked about the entrance examinations?"
"The entrance exams..."
Cersi puffed out her cheeks and rolled the air around this way and that—then, with a look of revelation, it went pop.
"We simply admit only the students who'll score top marks from the very start!"
"Correct."
I opened the wiki and reeled off the list of entries I'd already combed through and bookmarked in advance.
Sixteen in all. Every one of them was an individual's page—and every one of them an applicant waiting outside the gates at this very moment.
I picked up her papers again and skimmed through them.
Even a casual cross-check against my own knowledge and the wiki held up nicely.
This world's 'common knowledge' was riddled with errors. There was no internet here, travel was slow, and collective intelligence struggled to pool—so information stayed fragmented.
And yet the accuracy of Cersi's papers was remarkably high. The fruit of meticulous investigation and razor-clear thinking. And she had just demonstrated that thinking right in front of me.
I judged her worth keeping.
"Cersi, as a reward for the correct answer, I'll grant you the right to one choice."
"A right... to choose?"
"There's a good position open. Would you care to work yourself to the bone under a Slave Merchant?"
At my words, Cersi froze for a moment.
"Er... do you mean you, Professor? The Slave Merchant, that is? Then—I'd like to apply! I know you'd never do anything illegal, and whatever the work is, it has to beat what I have now. Just give me the job and I'll do anything...!"
"Done."
I held real power now.
My actual position was full professor, but thanks to the contract I'd struck with the Principal, I could exercise a Chair Professor's authority to its fullest anywhere inside the academy.
How I abused it was nobody's business but mine, no?
I drew out my seal and stamped it firmly onto Cersi's research thesis.
"This thesis passes review, and the degree of Doctor is hereby conferred. Effective immediately, I appoint you my Assistant Professor. You will provide me with high-grade intelligence on a standing basis, and you will organize and run the second-year dormitory lecture curriculum."
"...I'm sorry? What did you just..."
"Look at your nametag."
Cersi slowly lifted her head.
✦ Assistant Professor Cersi Paniya ✦
Golden letters shimmered over the front of her nametag, etching themselves anew.
"...Ah."
Cersi shuddered from head to toe, then collapsed face-first onto the floor with a thud.
"Th-thank youuu. Nngh. Professor... my Master..."
"Don't call me that. Do it once more and I'll strip the title back off you. Understood?"
"Hck! I—I'm sorryyy...!"
I shook my head as I looked down at Cersi, still sprawled on the floor and gasping for breath.
"Save the swooning and go draw up a plan."
"Yes sir. What, um, what sort of plan?"
I got to the heart of it.
"A plan to bring the new students I want into the Earth House."