The Magic Academy's Physicist-Chapter 127: What Are You Doing, Sis? (7)

Vermel hadn’t seen the sun for days.

I’m gonna die.

Because he couldn’t synthesize vitamin D, his bones felt limp. This was why it was important to get some light.

Sure there may be a fluorescent lamp, but it didn’t solve the fundamental problem. Being in an elf’s body, this place felt harsh to Vermel.

It was a space of about 66 m2 at most.

Not only was it not that wide, but the whole place was blocked off with metal bars. It looked like the shelters in those nuclear apocalypse movies he had watched as a child.

Living in such an eerie place for days drove a person insane. Even if it wasn’t quite claustrophobia, he could feel his quality of life decreasing in real time. Rubbing his sunken eyes, Vermel opened the can.

Why am I the only one filming an apocalypse movie in a fantasy RPG?

It was a clear genre shift. But now, he just accepted it.

Of course, being stuck in a place like this was better than dying. There was an old saying: better a live coward than a dead hero1.

Vermel ate the P-rations2 that he had personally invented here at the Empire and went over the schedule.

It’s already the latter half of the First Act.

There were three parts to <Darkest Academia>.

The First Act was Tilette Academy.

The Second Act was Iliad Academy.

The Third Act was the Showdown with the Demon King.

There was something like the Beastkin Academy as a DLC... but that story was a hundred years from now so it didn’t matter right this moment.

If the player felt like their life was being threatened, then that meant there weren’t many days left at Tilette Academy. Even Vermel himself had to drop out after a semester. Though he was able to hide out in the basement of the Cultural Center courtesy of the chairman, of course.

Any other veteran player would’ve chosen to leave for elf country at this point. The reason why Vermel was staying here instead was purely because of one girl.

“Aether....”

He couldn’t watch a fellow countryman be Corrupted.

Although she did flip out at times.... And also seemed to live rigidly based on contracts and such....

To Vermel who had been fighting alone for over twenty years, she was a welcome presence like rain in drought.

And so he stayed with the determination that he wouldn’t let her fall into the hands of the Demon Army.

He knew he was being stupidly sentimental. There wasn’t much he could do by staying here like this.

If only this had been ‘easy’ mode where the enemy AI turned retarded, he could’ve tried something, but at the highest level of difficulty with its unpredictable patterns, it was better to think that there was nothing he could do.

“It would’ve been good if I at least had a contracted Elemental.......”

Vermel smacked his lips regretfully.

Were the heavens just hating on him? And it was around then that he sensed an unknown killing intent.

“......!”

Something freakish was coming this way.

He didn’t have to think long. Those heels echoing in the far hallway belonged to Rosemary.

Because of the game knowledge he had, Vermel had expected this much. Rather, he had been wondering why she hadn’t come yet.

Vermel hid in the cabinet that he had prepared beforehand. Like this room, the cabinet was made of iron so Rosemary’s Scope couldn’t detect it. It was also built inside so it couldn’t be distinguished from the wall. It was going to be difficult to spot with the naked eye.

One problem, however–

It’s so cramped....

Since it wasn’t originally meant to fit a person, he couldn’t move his arms freely.

Bang, bang, bang.

Crash─!!

Vermel calmed his trembling heart.

If he was discovered here, then it would be game over. He had to stay alert and be dead silent. That was the only way he could survive right now.

“...... Found you.”

His heart nearly stopped.

Having ripped off the door with one hand, Rosemary looked around inside the room. She seemed ready to kill any living thing in her sight.

“... Huh. There’s no one here”

Giggling like a child, Rosemary spun the violin string round and round.

“Is there really no one here? If there isn’t, I might get a bit upset.... I waited five hours out there.”

Rosemary sniffled in pretense and wiped at her eyes.

“The pretty Lady is crying. You still won’t come out?”

Rosemary’s monologue went on for over five minutes. Oh, how she talked.

If that had been an ordinary girl, all he would’ve thought was how cute her chattering was. But that was a monster, and the estimated difficulty of this game was ‘extreme’. That meant that the enemy could display unpredictable patterns at any time.

Such as now.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

It seemed like she would give up and leave but then suddenly began to cut out the wall with her staff.

Rosemary swung the violin string like some crazy bitch. The iron walls chipped away like they were being planed. It seemed this was what she considered as playing.

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The walls became heated where they were sliced up cleanly like a paper cut with scissors. Vermel watched the scene from inside the cabinet with his breath held. Soon after, Rosemary chopped at the place where he was.

The wire-like string whipped in and out between the cabinets repeatedly. He wanted to scream but bit down on his lip and held back.

Then he felt heat bloom on his left arm. Something hot dripped down the length of it.

Seriously, this fucking game.......

Bang!

At the staff that whizzed past his right eye, Vermel turned to stone. If it had been a bit lower, it would’ve taken out his ear.

“Wow, don’t fuck with me, seriously.”

Vermel scoffed at Rosemary’s grumbling. Shouldn’t he be saying that?

“He really isn’t here? Where the hell did the elf bastard go?”

She didn’t seem like she was going to give up even after hacking away for twenty minutes. Rosemary smoked another stick of mana grass and then summoned something that looked like a camera. She then restored the wrecked areas to their original state and started setting up the cameras in the room’s blind spots.

This, too, was a pattern that had rarely shown up in the game.

The installation took another three hours. When he roughly calculated the time, it seemed to be about 4 a.m.

“Haaaahm.”

Vermel couldn’t fall asleep until Rosemary put away her staff while yawning. No, he couldn’t sleep even after she cleaned up the room and left.

If I go outside from now on, I’m going to be caught right away.

He didn’t know exactly what kind of camera it was, but it was an item set up by the formidable Rosemary. It definitely wasn’t going to be easy.

Clunk.

How much time had passed?

Being in the basement, he lost track of time. He didn’t know if it was currently morning, evening, dawn, or the middle of the night. When was it? Judging from the noise outside, it seemed to be lunch time.

As he nodded off in the cabinet that he was half-voluntarily, half-forcefully trapped in, someone unlocked the door and came in.

“......!”

It was a welcome face.

The girl looked around and pulled her staff from subspace, then proceeded to smash the cameras placed in the blind spots one by one.

“You can come out now.”

The girl spoke after the sound of lenses breaking occurred six times. Vermel kicked the cabinet door open and tumbled forward, drenched in cold sweat.

Things had still been manageable somehow during the Black Death, but–

Now that he was being properly targeted by the Beasts, it was hell. At this rate, even having multiple lives wasn’t going to be enough. Vermel looked at Aether as he panted.

“... How did you know to come here?”

“Rosemary was dozing off the whole class. I asked her what she was doing up late and she said she studied. It was such a ridiculous excuse so I naturally realized it was because of you.”

He was awed by her sharp perception.

“... Thanks. I would’ve died if it wasn’t for you.”

“You can save it. I don’t have time right now.”

“Don’t have time?”

“It’s lunch time right now. I had the other kids occupy Rosemary and sneaked out. She won’t be able to use Scope at the moment so I have to get back quickly before she suspects.”

Aether casually said bye and left. Vermel’s gaze could only stupidly follow that path.

“You knew this?”

There was no response.

All this time, he dealt with the future using game knowledge.

The first few years were good. Whenever he had predicted the future and saw the amazed faces of his childhood friends, he had felt like a prophet.

But as time passed–

The more the Beasts began getting involved in the story–

The world went in a completely different direction than he knew. Even just now, he got into this mess because he couldn’t predict Rosemary installing those sureveillance cameras.

But that girl was different.

No, that transmigrator was different.

Despite not having any knowledge of this world, she was responding fluidly to the Beasts’ movements. Of course her being a Golden-Eyed played a part as well.

That friend was a genius–not just in physics, her major, but she was also naturally talented in reading other people.

─ I never thought of you as a nice person.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t trust others easily...?

Vermel mulled over the conversation he had with Aether yesterday.

He prepared for a predetermined future thinking that reality would be like the game, and when that prediction missed the mark, he would panic and fail to do anything.

On the other hand, Aether realized from the beginning that this world was real and even if prediction differed from reality, she quickly adjusted her strategy and adapted to whatever situation.

Vermel finally realized that he had never really thought properly until now.

I was trying to get by with just the knowledge.

He couldn’t beat this with that kind of mindset. With his current mentality, the Happy Ending was something far away.

Then he had to change it.

Aether will definitely go to Professor Cai-Lussac next. She said she’s going to miniaturize Flare, so it’d make sense to ask him for help.

He was going to build something new based on the existing knowledge instead of just using it.

This was probably the first ‘thought’ he had ever had since coming to this world.

1. Raw is '개똥밭에 굴러도 이승이 낫다' which means even if you roll around in a field of shit, this world is better (than dying) so no matter how hard life is, it's still better to be alive2. Not an official military ration. May just be a letter chosen since it's phonetically far from the rest to show that it's fantasy/fictional just as the K in K-rations was chosen to distinguish itself from the other A, B, C-rations