A Veteran Teaches Very Well

part 2

As a result, the air in the auditorium felt so heavy that I could hardly breathe.

“Newly appointed professors, please come up to the stage in order.”

As the host’s words fell, those sitting in the same row as me stood up. I instinctively rose and followed behind them.

“That handsome guy, isn’t he really young?”

“Early twenties? Even if you’re generous, he looks like he’s in his mid-twenties, and he’s already a professor? He can’t be someone who just rolled around in the field.”

“Ha ha, a professor in his twenties at Florian of all places… He seems like a capable guy, doesn’t he?”

I wish they would keep such comments from reaching my ears.

Though they were compliments about me, I hadn’t achieved anything on my own. At most, I had just customized my character a bit.

The excessive expectations felt like a weight pressing down on my shoulders, and it was quite burdensome.

“Let the first person called step forward.”

The one who spoke was a small girl.

She barely seemed to surpass 140 cm in height, and her long pink hair reached down to her feet. Her pure white eyes looked somewhat mystical, and the solid-colored dress she wore gave off an impression of elegance rather than simplicity.

Her tone was surprisingly natural for a child, but those receiving her words accepted it as a matter of course.

The president of Florian Academy, Ryu Jeong-ah.

Her true identity was that of a witch who had lived for 150 years.

The president handed out the appointment letters one by one, each accompanied by a brief compliment.

Finally, my name was called.

“Cha Eun-woo.”

It was a name that always made me feel embarrassed.

Cha Eun-woo, my name is Cha Eun-woo…

My face burned, but I managed to maintain a poker face as I approached the president.

“Yes.”

Standing in front of him, I could clearly see it.

Others were impressive, but this person was on a different level.

The overwhelming presence radiating from him left me dazed. It was no wonder he was chosen as one of the strongest characters in the world until the very end.

“Young is good. I’m looking forward to what you will achieve.”

Hearing such words from a kid who was at least two heads shorter than me felt strange.

“I will work hard.”

“Good. You will create a wonderful life as much as you can. Life is short and passes quickly.”

Perhaps because it was said by a witch who had lived for 150 years, it sounded remarkably credible.

I received the appointment letter like everyone else. The contents written inside were nothing but ordinary phrases.

As the professors who received their letters returned to their seats, the schedule moved forward swiftly.

“With this, we conclude all events.”

Finally, the incomprehensible inauguration ceremony came to an end.

The professors who stood up began to gather in small groups with those they knew. A professor who seemed to be from the same department invited me to join them.

“I’m sorry, but I have a really urgent schedule. I’ll head out early.”

It seemed my early departure didn’t sit well with them, as I could hear whispers behind me.

There was no other choice.

You need to know something to bond. If I went along with them, my shortcomings would be exposed, and the situation would surely spiral out of control.

Wondering if someone would stop me, I hurriedly left the auditorium.

* * *

A few days ago, I was hit by a truck.

To be precise, a crazy truck came barreling into the bus stop where I was standing.

It was a situation that was hard to believe, but okay, I could accept that. After all, there could be a lunatic driving under the influence in broad daylight.

But the place I woke up after dying was inside the game Florian Rhapsody.

And I had become my customized character, Cha Eun-woo.

This was something that was utterly incomprehensible within the realm of common sense.

“Why on earth did this happen…?”

Professor Cha Eun-woo of Florian Academy.

At first, I couldn’t accept it at all, but a few days were enough to change a person’s perception.

In the end, I had no choice but to compromise with reality and acknowledge that I had become Cha Eun-woo.

I stood in my office, looking into the mirror and muttering.

“I am quite handsome, aren’t I?”

If I let my imagination run wild for a moment, it wasn’t all bad.

A handsome face, a respectable job as a professor, and a social status that I could never have dreamed of as my original self.

The only problem was that this world was destined for destruction soon.

In the original game story, the player was supposed to prevent the destruction, but unfortunately, there was no player in this world.

Am I not the player?

I was confident in moving the mouse and keyboard in front of a computer, but going out with a sword to fight monsters was an entirely different matter.

What good does it do to know all the strategies? How could an ordinary person who had spent their whole life in a room take down monsters?

Moreover, my character was a trash build with only garbage talents. It was clear that I had messed up from the very beginning.

If I had known it would turn out like this, I would have invested in good talents, but what good is regret now?

Couldn’t someone play as the player for me? I could share all the strategies.

The moment that thought crossed my mind, a lightning bolt of an idea flashed through my head.

A player to take my place? Thinking about it, there were plenty.

“Playable characters! They’re all students, and I’m the professor!”

This could definitely work. My Cha Eun-woo may be a talentless failure, but the students of Florian were different.

Depending on how they acted, they could die in an instant or survive until the end to become allies of the player.

Fortunately, I knew the best choices they should make.

Moreover, my position as a professor was the perfect condition to enforce that.

“Alright. This is it.”

With this, I had set my direction. I would gather a bunch of playable characters.

Let’s assemble the most talented characters to form a party. A so-called Galactico legion, or perhaps the Avengers. Just imagining it made my heart swell with excitement.

“Let’s see. Who should I take first?”

The name that first came to my mind.

Park Seo-hu, the top of his class.

The strongest playable character, recognized by all users and creators of Florian Rhapsody. The lowest difficulty. In the early stages, his specs and late-game potential all contended for the top spot.

Park Seo-hu was, quite literally, a character for beginners. Yet, the problem was that it was so ridiculously difficult that most players gave up.

The talent for swordsmanship that Park Seo-hu possessed was the most overpowered ability in the game, and his rapid growth rate, strength, stamina, and a potential ability of 99 were nothing short of extraordinary.

His personality was kind and overflowing with a sense of justice, like a protagonist from a shonen manga, making him easy to handle.

However, there was an element of uncertainty in taking Park Seo-hu as my disciple.

“What if I mess him up for no reason?”

True to his character, who had received all the best elements in the game, the opportunities he could gain were also special.

During his active years, he ranked fourth in the hero rankings, and the academy’s top professor, Jo Seong-woong, was Park Seo-hu’s mentor.

Born into an ordinary family, Park Seo-hu had never trained in swordsmanship before entering the academy.

Yet, he had such incredible talent that he entered as the top student, and after learning from Jo Seong-woong, he became like a tiger with wings.

Thanks to that, I could hardly dream of taking the top spot while playing any character other than Park Seo-hu.

In the early stages, it was all about strategy and control, but how could I defeat that monster?

Let’s give up on targeting Park Seo-hu. No matter which character I played, the probability of Park Seo-hu surviving until the very end was over 70%.

Naturally, he would do more than his share.

He was someone who could handle things on his own, so I should just leave it to Jo Seong-woong.

Besides, there was no way I could teach better than Jo Seong-woong, having never even held a sword.

“The ones who can handle things on their own in the early stages are fine. Let’s see… with no connections and poor grades, if I leave him alone, he’ll die in the picks, but if I keep him alive until the late game, he’ll be a king…”

I hummed to myself, jotting down my thoughts on paper one by one.

Memories of the time I wrote strategy guides came flooding back. Based on that recollection, I gradually filled the blank sheet.

Before long, the paper was filled with dense writing.

With this, I had considered the kids, and now it was time to think about myself.

Being a professor wouldn’t be easy at all.

This is the best educational facility in South Korea. It wasn’t a place where an unprepared amateur could act as a professor.

Come to think of it, how did I become a professor?

With talent like garbage and all my stats at 10, I couldn’t have retired as a hero.

The president and Professor Jo Seong-woong had main stats in the high 90s, and even excluding the outliers, everyone had been someone noteworthy during their active years. At the very least, their main stats would be in the high 80s.

If I wasn’t a retired hero, the likelihood of me being a so-called theoretical type who published papers and became a professor was high.

“Theoretical types are troublesome.”

Most students attending the academy aim to become heroes.

Generally, theoretical professors are those who lack practical skills and shift their career paths toward research.

Among heroes—especially the younger ones—the belief that strength is everything was strong.

While seasoned heroes understood the importance of scholars’ research, students were likely to dismiss them simply because they were theoretical professors.

Conversely, if I were a student, I would have dismissed the theoretical professors as well.

Why would future S-rank and A-rank heroes take seriously the words of individuals who barely reached D-rank?

It was only natural to hear one ear and let it out the other.

There was only one way to change that perception.

“I need to be recognized for my necessity.”

What I possessed was information about future events and solutions to them.

I had to use those to gain recognition from the students.

Moreover, if I could also improve my own skills in the process, that would be the icing on the cake.

Using the talent I chose, my mentor.

───────────────

▼ Mentor

: Teaching others is the best way to study. You grow while helping others grow.

───────────────

“Looks like there’s a way to make this useful.”

In a game, even a professor would have limited influence over students, but reality was different.

Isn’t it said that the presence of a good teacher can change a life?

Depending on how I approached it, it could become a jackpot ability, or I might not even break even.

Knock, knock.

The sound of a knock pulled me from my thoughts.

What is it? I wondered if it was one of my fellow professors.

“Come in.”

As soon as I gave my permission, the door opened.

It was the senior professor who had suggested a gathering during the professor’s inauguration ceremony.

“Professor Cha, how have you been?”

“I couldn’t sleep well because I was so nervous.”

“The youngest professor, Florian, being so humble.”

Am I really the youngest professor here? That thought only adds to the pressure.

“Well, I was just lucky.”

“Yeah, you must have been lucky. A professor whose thesis records can’t even be found. If it’s a paper that doesn’t exist in the records, it’s either so well-written that it became a state secret or so poorly written that it was discarded. Our Professor Cha is the former, right?”

It was a heavy statement, laced with sharpness.

A question probing what I had achieved to become a professor, whether it was through merit or a parachute.

Of course, I had no rebuttal if it was true.

What thesis? I just set the game parameters to become a professor; I had never written anything like a thesis in my life.

“Well, that’s something we’ll find out in time. I’d like to hear the main point soon.”

“You’re quite impatient. I came because I wanted to introduce someone. Yea-eun, come in.”

I already had a lot on my mind, and now they were trying to pull some trick. Honestly, it was annoying.

It took just a few seconds for those thoughts to fade away.

“Nice to meet you, Professor! I’m Lee Yea-eun.”

Lee Yea-eun.

She was a supporting character in the game, and at this point in the story, she was a graduate.

Though not a playable character, I remembered her entire story since she was a named character in the game.

I could roughly guess what she was here for.

If things went as I hoped, this could be an incredible opportunity.

Chapter 2. The Laboratory

Florian Rhapsody was a single-player game, but it was a strange game that recommended party play over solo play.

The party members were, of course, all NPCs.

Typically, party recruitment focused on NPCs that could be used as playable characters.

The reason was their overwhelmingly superior potential compared to other NPCs.

In the early game, there were plenty of NPCs with better performance than playable characters, but from the mid-game onward, the performance of the playable characters became truly overwhelming.

I had considered switching from other NPCs in the early game to playable characters in the mid-game, but without building up affection and loyalty in advance, the party could easily fall apart, making that impossible.

Among them, Yea-eun was one of the few exceptions.

As a graduate, she had early-game stats that were incomparable to academy students and a potential that stood strong even against playable characters, along with achievements she would accomplish in the late game.

Yea-eun was an NPC that I absolutely had to recruit if possible.

“Yea-eun just graduated from the academy. She’s aiming for a doctorate.”

As the senior professor introduced her, Yea-eun shyly nodded her head.

Her green pigtails swayed along with that movement.

“It’s not a common case, is it?”

“Right. Isn’t our Professor Cha also one of those cases?”

“Well, I…”

How would I know what kind of journey Cha Eun-woo went through to become a professor? So I mumbled.

The senior professor didn’t seem particularly interested, either, as he didn’t press further. Perhaps he was certain I wouldn’t answer anyway.

“So, are you aiming to become a professor, Ye-eun?”

Ye-eun? I felt embarrassed even saying it.

It was an awkward expression that didn’t quite roll off the tongue, but after all, she was a professor. So I tried to adopt a somewhat condescending tone.

“No, I just want to earn a degree.”

“Is there no special reason?”

“Y-yes…”

A slightly awkward response. Lee Ye-eun was lying right now.

I had seen her entire story within the game.

To join most guilds, a diploma from the academy was required.

Some top-tier guilds even demanded a bachelor’s degree, but that was about it.

A bachelor’s degree was the realm of ultra-elite awakened individuals, but a doctorate belonged to the geniuses engrossed in theoretical research. Most of the degrees held by retired heroes were not earned through formal education but were given as honorary professorships.

Only two places required a doctorate as a condition.

One was, of course, the professorship, and the other was a place not well-known to the general public: the National Intelligence Service.

The National Intelligence Service sought individuals who were well-rounded in both martial and literary skills.

Because of this, the National Assembly proposed a bill to conceal the personal information of doctors, fearing the possibility of agents being followed. I wondered if the reason I wasn’t suspected of my identity was also due to the benefits of this bill.

To get to the point, Lee Ye-eun’s goal was to become an agent of the National Intelligence Service.

I could roughly guess why she had come to see me.

“Do you want some advice? On what Ye-eun should do.”

If Ye-eun answered “yes” here, it would be quite awkward for her.

Again, I didn’t even know how I became a professor. What do I know about the process of earning a doctorate?

Fortunately, Ye-eun hadn’t come to hear such trivial stories.

“I’d like to hear that, but there’s something I want to ask you, Professor.”

“What is it?”

Ye-eun hesitated, as if reluctant to speak.

It was the senior professor who broke the silence.

“Yeeun was originally supposed to come to our lab. But you know how life is, things don’t always go as planned. Isn’t that just the nature of lab life? Haha.”

To put it bluntly, it could be interpreted as ‘I abandoned her.’

In the game, if you recruited Lee Yeeun as a companion, you could hear various stories from her.

Lee Yeeun’s advisor was a very vile person. He was a well-known professor in Florian, making the competition to enter his lab fierce, and he demanded money and gifts from students as a condition.

He went even further with Yeeun, demanding s*xual favors. When she refused, she was marked by her former advisor and expelled.

Yeeun had no choice but to seek out another advisor. Eventually, she connected with a senior professor.

Unfortunately, this person was also a puppet of her former advisor.

So, with malicious intent, they isolated Yeeun by expelling her just as other labs were recruiting new students. It goes without saying that he was a madman.

Unaware of these facts, Yeeun looked at the senior professor with trust.

“That’s really unfortunate.”

“So, I was wondering if Professor Cha could take her in. It would definitely be beneficial for him as well. Yeeun, she’s a genius, a genius.”

Of course, I knew that well. A player’s assistant wasn’t something just anyone could be.

Yeeun graduated as the second in her class.

A major rookie that every guild would covet. Yet, driven by her singular desire to join the National Intelligence Service, she chose the thorny path of pursuing a PhD.

In other words, the goal of her former advisor was this.

To take a talent that would be welcomed with open arms in any guild or lab and shove her into the research lab of a new professor with nothing, blocking her path.

After a few years of rotting away like that, Yeeun’s value would be buried deep.

It was childish, but an effective way to ruin someone’s life.

Yeeun looked up at me with bright, eager eyes. She resembled a puppy begging to be taken along.

“Yeeun, do you want to join my lab?”

“Yes! I really want to! I have to become a doctor. I did well in the academy, and I received a lot of praise from the professors… Oh, and I can make coffee really well!”

Oblivious to everything, Yeeun desperately tried to sell herself.

Objectively speaking, this was not an opportunity. It was a trap to avoid.

However, there was a variable that the senior professor overlooked: that the new professor was me.

“Then, how about you make me a cup of coffee? I had a bucket list item about drinking coffee made by a teaching assistant.”

“Really? Wait! I’ll make it right now!”

“Take your time. You might hurt yourself.”

Yeeun’s expression brightened significantly. She hurried outside to fetch the coffee pot.

The senior professor watching chuckled heartily.

“It seems Professor Cha has lost his chance at being a gentleman.”

—

It was a mocking remark about deceiving a child with a bright future into the lab.

It was ridiculous that the person who led to this was saying such things.

“Isn’t that the same for both of us?”

“It seems you misunderstood my words. Please relax your expression. I liked Professor Cha. It’s better to be straightforward than to pretend to be righteous. What’s wrong with pursuing one’s own interests?”

Did I appear to be of the same kind as him?

I could have hidden my true feelings and pretended to be friendly, but this man didn’t seem to have any value for me to exploit.

“If you’re done with your business, please leave. I have a lot to do.”

“You seem to be more greedy than I thought. Just eating and then slinking away. You’ll regret it later.”

“Speak plainly. Someone might misunderstand if they hear you.”

As I drew a firm line, the senior professor’s face crumpled.

“…Let’s meet again later.”

The senior professor exited, leaving behind a line worthy of a third-rate villain. As if they had made a promise, Lee Ye-eun returned.

“I’m back. From today, you might not be able to drink anything but my coffee.”

Lee Ye-eun proudly set down the coffee cup, chest puffed out. Let’s see how well she brewed it.

As I took a sip, my brow instinctively furrowed.

Where had the coffee aroma gone? My mouth was filled with sweetness.

“Make it again.”

“Eh! Why?”

Is she asking because she doesn’t know? How am I supposed to drink this?

“What kind of coffee is this? It’s sugar water.”

“If it’s sweet, it’s delicious.”

“How much sugar did you put in?”

“Five spoons of sugar! That’s just the right amount.”

This is insane.

No wonder there were granules to chew on. It wasn’t that she hadn’t stirred it properly; it was that she hadn’t dissolved it enough.

This was a liquid that could no longer be called coffee. If I had to name it, wouldn’t “sugar water” be appropriate?

“Ye-eun, you need to learn how to make coffee first.”

“Ugh, that’s too much. You don’t have to say it like that.”