Chapter 46: The Professor’s Trap and the Unwilling Disciple

“A Professor’s Unexpected Request”

“…That concludes today’s lecture.”

Professor Londa Margret’s class, which had felt unbearably long, was finally over.

‘What the hell was that…?’

Sion looked up at her from his seat with an exhausted expression.

Not only had she bombarded him with questions throughout the entire class, but no matter what he answered, she always responded with praise.

The stares from his classmates were piercing.

Even the densest students must have sensed that something was off between Sion and Professor Londa Margret.

“Oh, and… Sion, please come to my office after class.”

“…Huh?”

“No further questions? Then that’s all.”

Click, clack.

With her usual confident strides, she exited the lecture hall.

Sion glanced around and noticed that nearly half the class was now staring at him.

The sheer pressure was suffocating.

Thud.

Someone placed a hand on his shoulder.

“…Patrick?”

“Sion, you… you’re definitely in deep trouble. Stay strong.”

Pat, pat.

Patrick patted his shoulder sympathetically.

If he had teased him, it wouldn’t have been as bad. But seeing Patrick actually comforting him only made Sion feel worse.

If even Patrick thought this was serious, then it really was serious.

“Hahaha! Do not worry, Sion!”

“…Gae Bolg.”

With his usual dramatic flair, Gae Bolg raised his index finger as he laughed.

Did he have some kind of plan?

“Next semester, we’ll be able to choose our own courses! You just have to avoid Professor Londa Margret’s classes then!”

“…And until then?”

“If you can’t escape it, embrace it! That is one of the great proverbs of the Rodenburg Kingdom!”

“…”

Sion silently shook his head.

These guys were useless.

Instead of making him feel better, he just felt even more drained.

Meanwhile, whispers from the back of the classroom began creeping into his ears.

“That’s him, right? The one who dumped water on the professor…?”

“Shh! Keep it down! He might splash us too.”

“She kept grilling him with questions today… That’s gonna last the whole semester.”

“He’ll probably drop out before then. Can a commoner even afford to stay here that long?”

“…But why does she keep praising him every time she asks a question?”

“What do you think? She’s mocking him!”

“Oh… that makes sense.”

“Having good magic skills isn’t everything. He should work on his personality, too.”

The murmuring spread.

Ever since his duel with Estroza, these whispers had died down, but now they were back in full force.

‘God, this is annoying.’

Sion frowned and looked around.

Like magic, the whispers stopped immediately.

…Just like cockroaches scattering when you turn on the lights.

It was an incredibly unpleasant feeling.

BANG!

The lecture hall doors suddenly swung open.

“Sion? How much longer do I need to wait?”

“…I’m coming now.”

The one who had entered was none other than Professor Londa Margret.

Sion sighed, gathered his belongings, and reluctantly headed for the front door.

‘Please… let this be nothing serious.’

The Professor’s Office

“This place is a bit messy, but come in.”

“…Excuse me.”

Creak.

As he stepped inside, he realized it was just the two of them.

Just like last time.

If someone else had been here, it would’ve made things a little less awkward.

“So, Professor… Why did you call me here?”

He cautiously studied her expression.

‘What does she want from me?’

It didn’t make sense for her to still be angry about last week.

They had already settled that issue during their unexpected meeting at the lake.

And she had been the one to apologize first.

So then… what was this about?

“Do you remember how I helped you advance your Circle the last time you were here?”

“…Yes, I remember.”

His gaze drifted toward the magic circle carved into the floor.

It was here that he had meditated to reach the 2nd Circle.

…Though the process had come with some unexpected mishaps.

“This time, I need your help.”

“…You need my help?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, it’s something even a first-year student can assist with.”

“…”

Sion scanned the room.

His eyes landed on a small, cramped desk—probably used by a graduate student.

‘Wait a second… She wouldn’t… No, right?’

She had no graduate students under her.

And now, she had summoned him to her office.

Bringing up how she had helped him before, as if setting up an argument.

His instincts—sharpened by his past life as a grad student—screamed at him.

This was it.

She was about to recruit him as her graduate student.

‘Come to think of it, my old professor started recruiting me in my first year too…’

Back then, it had begun when he submitted a high-quality midterm project.

Slowly but surely, his professor had guided him into the nightmare known as graduate school.

Not this time.

Not again.

The moment Professor Londa Margret opened her mouth—

Sion preemptively struck first.

“You want me to help with paperwork? I’m sorry, but I absolutely refuse to be a graduate student—”

“…What?”

Blink. Blink.

Both of them froze.

‘…Wait.’

Sion’s gaze finally settled on something.

The enormous piles of paperwork stacked precariously on her desk.

“…Graduate student? What are you talking about?”

“Uh… Well…”

A heavy silence fell over the room.

‘Oh. Oh no.’

Sion finally understood his mistake.

She had not been trying to recruit him.

She had literally just been asking for help with paperwork.

And here he was, rejecting a non-existent offer before she even said anything.

This was like refusing a confession before the other person even had a chance to think about confessing.

‘What do I do? Should I apologize? Do I kneel? Should I run?’

Heat rushed to his face as his brain scrambled for a way to salvage the situation.

Then—

“Pfft.”

“…Huh?”

“Pffft… Haha… Aha… I-I’m sorry.”

She was laughing.

Professor Londa Margret, the woman who always carried herself with cold, refined dignity.

The same professor who had never once smiled at a student.

She was actually laughing.

Tears welled in her eyes as she tried to hold back her laughter.

“Sion… That was just too cute.”

“C-Cute?”

“Yes. First of all, first-year students can’t become graduate students. So—pfft—what were you so afraid of?”

She laughed so hard that she had to wipe the corner of her eye with her finger.

This wasn’t a polite chuckle.

It was genuine amusement.

And Sion—

Couldn’t believe what was happening.

“Well, since you’re still a freshman, it makes sense that you wouldn’t know much about graduate students. I’m sorry for laughing too much.”

“Huh? No, it’s… it’s fine.”

“Could I ask you for a favor? I don’t have many students around me whom I can rely on for this kind of work.”

Ronda Margret said this while looking at the documents.

Not many students she could ask for help…

I recalled hearing that she didn’t have any graduate students under her supervision.

‘Well, professors do have a ton of work to handle.’

I knew this all too well from my own grueling experience as a graduate student.

They had to prepare lectures, deliver them, conduct personal research, write papers, and at the same time, attend various departmental events and academic conferences.

Since receiving research funding required tangible results, simply lecturing wasn’t enough.

That’s why graduate students had to help with a professor’s workload.

‘Should I… lend a hand?’

I felt a little guilty for misunderstanding her earlier.

Besides, I had processed countless documents back in grad school—it wouldn’t be difficult at all.

“If it’s something I can help with… I’ll do it.”

“It looks like there’s quite a bit, but I’ll take a look at them one by one.”

“Hoo…”

“No, this is actually a small amount.”

“…Excuse me?”

“May I go through them one by one?”

“Oh, of course.”

Rustle.

Sion’s hands moved swiftly.

‘The method for handling a mountain of documents is simpler than one might think.’

First, Sion started flipping through the documents at a pace of one per second, neatly stacking them in an organized manner.

He took one massive pile of papers and broke it down into smaller stacks.

This was the first step of document classification.

“…What exactly are you doing?”

“I’m sorting the documents by department.”

“Starting from the left: Student Affairs Office, Financial Office, Human Resources, Magic Faculty Administration, and the Elemental Magic Department’s Administrative Office.”

“…And you’re determining all of that in just one second?”

“Yes. By looking at the greeting at the top of the document and the approval stamp at the bottom, I can tell.”

Sion responded without even glancing away from the papers.

When faced with a mountain of documents, classification was the highest priority.

What he focused on were the deadlines and the names of the departments responsible for approval.

‘To process work efficiently, unnecessary back-and-forth movements must be eliminated.’

For example, let’s say there were three documents requiring approval from the administration office.

Would it be more efficient to carry them one by one, making three separate trips?

Or to carry all three at once, making a single trip?

The key principle of efficiency was to avoid repeating the same task multiple times.

“…Let’s start by handling the most urgent deadlines first. Since it’s the beginning of the semester, there aren’t too many urgent ones—thankfully.”

“……”

“Professor, don’t just stand there in a daze. Start handling the documents with the closest deadlines first.”

“Huh? Oh… okay.”

Sion picked out the documents that were due by the end of the week and handed them to her.

Professor Ronda Margret, still looking bewildered, started stamping the documents.

For a while, the only sounds in the professor’s office were the rustling of papers, the stamping of seals, and the occasional breath of the two individuals working.

Sion even brought out an academy map to calculate the most efficient delivery routes.

‘The Financial Office and Student Affairs Office can be grouped together since they’re in the same building. But for the department offices…’

Scratch, scratch.

Using a pen, Sion mapped out the most optimal routes.

And just as Professor Ronda Margret finished stamping all the documents…

Sion compiled a one-page document that listed all the paperwork that needed to be processed over the next month, sorted by priority and deadline.

“Professor, here, take this.”

“…Huh?”

“If you just follow this, there won’t be any issues. Oh, and I inserted sheets between sections to make sorting easier.”

He had torn some unused paper and inserted them like sticky notes between different sets of documents.

Since they were organized by date, it would be much easier to process later.

Sion glanced at the clock—it hadn’t even been an hour.

‘Has it been a while since I did document work? I really got into it.’

Looking at the neatly sorted stacks, a sense of satisfaction filled him.

Seeing such well-organized and practical documents brought a proud smile to his face.

‘…But why isn’t she saying anything?’

He hadn’t heard a word from Professor Ronda Margret.

Feeling curious, he turned to look at her.

She was staring at him intently.

…What?

“Sion, you’re incredibly skilled at handling documents.”

“…Excuse me?”

“Where on earth did you learn to do all this?”

“Uh… I didn’t really learn it anywhere. I just did some similar work before enrolling…”

Tap.

She took a step closer.

Her unblinking eyes locked onto Sion’s.

There was a strange glint in them.

“There’s no precedent for making a first-year student work like a graduate student, but…”

“…Right?”

“But there’s nothing wrong with hiring you for document work as a part-time job.”

“…A part-time job?”

A part-time job.

A simple work arrangement where you receive money in exchange for labor.

For Sion, who needed tuition money, it was an enticing offer.

‘If only the employer wasn’t a professor.’

An employer being a professor, the employee being a student, and the work involving document processing…

Wasn’t this just graduate school under a different name?

Sion instinctively took a step back.

Tap.

But he quickly found his back against a table.

He couldn’t move forward, nor could he escape backward.

Professor Ronda Margret stopped right in front of him.

“Sion, if you’re interested…”

“…Sorry…”

“Would you be willing to help with document work in my office? Of course, I’ll pay you—”

“I-I’m sorry!!”

Woosh! Swish!

Sion used Yulseobo to swiftly maneuver away.

He dodged past the looming pressure of Professor Ronda Margret.

Then, without hesitation, he sprinted out the door and bolted away.

“Hah… hah… She’s not following me, right?”

After running through the hallway and exiting the building entirely, Sion finally caught his breath and turned back.

Luckily, there was no sign of pursuit.

‘…That was close.’

He clutched his pounding chest.

He had just been doing paperwork as usual, but nearly got trapped into becoming a graduate student again.

…Just accepting payment and working?

‘I’m not falling for that!’

Sion shook his head.

“Come eat with me,” “I’ll treat you well,” “You’re good at studying”—all lies professors used to lure students into graduate school.

Not this time.

‘…Though, the money was tempting.’

Perhaps it was because he had just narrowly escaped, but he found himself regretting not asking about the pay rate.

Of course, he had no intention of becoming a graduate student, so he quickly shook off the thought.

“No point in dwelling on it! Time to get to class.”

His Monday afternoon class was with Professor Heriju.

Sion left the academy’s faculty office building and headed toward the colosseum for his lecture.

What he didn’t know at the time…

“…Sion.”

From inside her office, through the window, Professor Ronda Margret was watching him.