The Mob Character Who Woke Up!-Chapter 55: House of Axiom (2)

Kaizen felt something inside him snap.

"HEY! I can hear you! I’m standing right here! And I’m not lost, I signed up for this dumpster fire of a class!"

"Oh, he speaks! And he has a temper! Excellent!"

Mortimer looked genuinely delighted and slammed the flask onto the table dramatically before standing up. He swayed dangerously, like a tower in an earthquake, but somehow managed to strike a dramatic pose.

"Welcome, Tiny Masochist! Welcome to Axiomancy! The only class where the homework makes you cry and the graduation rate is exactly zero!"

He spread his arms wide.

"Now, do you have any wine on you? Or perhaps a small beer? I find my flask is distressingly light."

Kaizen stared at the man. He stared at the drool stain on the S-Rank lapel and the wobbly stance. He turned one hundred and eighty degrees on his heel.

"Nope. I am done with this. I am done with all of this. Goodbye."

He started walking toward the door with determination.

"NO! PLEASE!"

Mr. Finch lunged desperately and didn’t just grab Kaizen but tackled his leg and dragged himself across the floor, clinging to Kaizen’s ankle like a desperate barnacle.

"Don’t go! Please don’t go! If you leave, the Dean will turn this shack into a parking lot! I’ll have to go back to working at the magical DMV! Have mercy!"

"Let go! This isn’t a class and he’s not fit to be a professor!"

"Think about it! Look past the alcohol! Look past the slurring! He is an S-Ranker! An actual S-Ranker!!!!"

Kaizen paused and stopped trying to shake off the assistant.

"Think about the possibilities! If you stay here, you are the only student. You don’t have to share his attention with five hundred other kids! You get one hundred percent of an S-Rank Mage’s knowledge! He is legally required to teach you! It’s private tutoring from a God!"

Kaizen blinked and looked at the drunk man swaying by the table who was looking at him with a goofy smile and blowing a kiss.

Private tutoring from an S-Ranker.

In the game, S-Rank NPCs were completely inaccessible. You couldn’t just talk to them. You had to grind reputation for months just to get a simple greeting. But here, in this timeline, he was the sole heir to this man’s knowledge. Exclusive access. No competition. It was a cheat code. It was the ultimate exploit.

Kaizen turned back around.

"You make a compelling argument, Mr. Finch."

He looked at Professor Mortimer, who was currently trying to balance his flask on his forehead.

"Professor, a question. To test our compatibility."

"Yes, Tiny One? Proceed! Ask me of the cosmos! Ask me of the curvature of mana!"

The flask fell off his head and hit the floor.

"What is twelve plus twelve?"

Mortimer scoffed and looked genuinely offended.

"You insult me with such trivialities! The answer is obvious! It is one hundred and twenty-two! Twelve plus twelve is one hundred and twenty-two! Pure logic!"

He struck a pose of intellectual superiority.

Silence filled the room.

Kaizen stared. Finch stared with his mouth hanging open. Kaizen turned around slowly, walked to the furthest corner of the shack, squatted down facing the wall, wrapped his arms around his knees, and started to cry.

"This is ass. I hate this academy. I hate my life."

"Professor! You’re making him cry! It’s twenty-four! The answer is twenty-four!"

"Nonsense! You’re just thinking in Base-Ten! In Flamingo’s mana theory, if you append the variables..."

"THERE IS NO FLAMINGO’S MANA THEORY IN BASIC ADDITION!"

Mortimer paused and looked at his flask, then at Finch, then at the crying boy in the corner.

"Ah. I may have made an error."

He walked over to Kaizen and patted his head.

"There, there, Tiny One. I was merely testing your emotional fortitude. You passed! Welcome to Axiomancy!"

Kaizen looked up with red eyes.

"I hate you."

"Excellent! That’s the spirit!"

Mortimer beamed down at him with that same goofy, drunken smile.

...

Mr. Finch had somehow convinced Kaizen to stay in this dilapidated shack, but it wasn’t because of the awkward assistant’s convincing power or his desperate barnacle impression on Kaizen’s leg.

It was because Kaizen had actually thought about this matter carefully and decided that despite the catastrophic math skills and permanent intoxication of his new professor, this was genuinely the best possible outcome for his survival.

Like Mr. Finch had so desperately pointed out while clinging to his ankle, there were over six thousand students packed into this academy like sardines, with two thousand enrolled for each year, and the number of excellent faculty members was criminally low compared to that massive student population.

This meant that each professor was forced to look after a thousand or more students every single day, which was absolutely insane when you actually thought about it.

Well, third year students were somewhat of an exception for every teacher since those advanced students were constantly out having practical real-life combat experiences and dungeon training missions rather than sitting in classrooms learning something new.

Students learned during their first two years, and they lived through their third year, assuming they survived that long.

So by that merciless logic, Kaizen with his pitiful F-minus rank talent was essentially nobody in the eyes of any other professor. Just a speck of dust. Especially since there were literal monsters like the Four Heavenly Kings and other main characters hogging all the attention in every single class stream.

So this pathetic excuse for a department was genuinely his best bet for survival. He could potentially extract knowledge directly from the professor during his rare sober moments, or if that completely failed, then Mr. Finch could probably help him since the assistant seemed to possess at least some level of basic intelligence.

That was already a good thing after all, considering the alternatives.

’This is the way. I can get all the focused attention of an S-Ranker. I am betting everything on gaslighting this guy into teaching me all the vector manipulation I want to learn.’

’And besides, I am thinking about just getting the specific spells I want to use with the pan. Anything additional is well, free bonus content.’

Kaizen rubbed his chin in profound thought like a philosopher contemplating the meaning of existence. Both Mr. Finch and the Professor were huddled together at the other end of the room like conspiring villains, squinting their eyes suspiciously at the boy’s contemplative antics.

"I told you so, Finch, there’s something genuinely wrong with his brain! Look at him over there, he’s thinking! Actually thinking in this House of Axiom!"

The Professor was getting visibly disturbed from watching the boy because how could anyone think when there was absolutely nothing to think about in this empty department. Mr. Finch sighed deeply beside him.

"Professor, he’s your first student in a very long time. And he specifically chose you over fire-breathing dragons and ice-wielding elves. So please make sure you make his time worthwhile and don’t ruin his future."

Mr. Finch could only hope desperately in his heart that the Professor would at least stay sober enough to teach this kid at least one proper lesson a day. This kid had chosen this stream knowing full well about its infamous reputation, and if they couldn’t make it worthwhile, then this boy’s entire future was in serious jeopardy.

"Hey there, little soldier? What’s your current rank by the way?"

The Professor asked suddenly with a serious tone, as he too had apparently fallen into deep thought about something. Mr. Finch straightened his back immediately, feeling genuine hope that the Professor was finally coming to his senses and asking the right questions about his new student.

Seeing that the air in the room had suddenly become cold and calculating instead of drunk and goofy, Kaizen broke out of his internal reverie and looked at the drunkard goofy professor. But all of that previous goofiness was completely gone and had been replaced with the genuine aura of an S-Ranker.

’Could it be? Is he actually gonna get serious now?’

An S-Ranker focusing solely on him and his development. Kaizen’s heart began to beat wildly with excitement. He looked directly at the Professor with a genuine smile spreading across his face and announced proudly.

"F minus!"

"..."

"..."

Silence.

Heavy blanketing silence descended on the room like a funeral shroud. Both the Professor and Mr. Finch looked at each other with expressions that slowly morphed from serious contemplation to absolute disbelief. Kaizen held his breath and readied himself mentally to receive profound wisdom so he could rank up quickly.

But what he received wasn’t wisdom at all.

"Prfff~~"

It was mockery.

Both the Professor and Mr. Finch began to laugh out loud simultaneously, doubling over and clutching their stomachs as tears streamed from their eyes. The Professor was wheezing and slapping the table repeatedly while Mr. Finch had to steady himself against the wall to avoid collapsing.

Their laughter echoed through the small wooden shack like the sound of Kaizen’s dignity being shredded into tiny pieces.