As I continued walking lost in thought, I soon found myself at the cafeteria.
Hailga, Vigdis, and Liolikin had arrived earlier and saved seats, so after Reysir and I picked up our food, we joined them at their table.
“Hailga, do you happen to know anything about Professor Skadi?”
It was obvious from the tone that this question wasn’t coming from me but from Reysir.
Although he said he couldn’t help with Skadi’s problem, he obviously hadn’t lost interest entirely.
The moment he sat down, he asked that, which meant confirming whether my worries were true took priority for him.
Hailga is quite active socially, so she’s the type who picks up a lot of information here and there.
That made me want to ask her about Skadi as well.
But since Hailga disliked my possessed self, asking her for help felt quite awkward.
‘But Reysir brought it up first like this?’
Thanks to him, the situation became easier… or so I thought.
At that time, I truly believed that.
“Yes, she’s very famous. Not in a good way.”
“Not in a good way?”
Reysir raised his eyebrows at the words from his childhood friend and demanded an explanation.
Hailga looked puzzled at his reaction but answered promptly.
“Haven’t you heard that professor is a criminal?”
“A criminal?! How can someone like that be working as a professor at the Academy?”
“She’s serving a sentence of teaching students at the Academy as a form of punishment.”
Reysir looked at me with wide eyes, surprised.
He was probably trying to confirm if I already knew that Skadi was a criminal.
I calmly nodded to clear up his doubts.
At that, Reysir’s expression turned troubled.
“But why ask such a sudden question?”
“Karvald is taking her class, and last semester, she accused him of harassing her.”
The atmosphere started to turn strange.
Reysir deliberately corrected “professor” by dropping the honorific “-nim.”
His facial muscles showed not just reluctance but displeasure.
Hailga took his reaction as perfectly natural and expressed her own bafflement toward the absent Skadi.
“Why would she cause trouble over something that happened in the past, completely unrelated to Reysir?”
“Exactly, why? That professor has no right to do that.”
Despite hearing that Skadi seemed to be the victim of workplace harassment, Reysir simply replied he didn’t know anything about it.
I guessed that in his mind, Skadi’s image was fixed as “a shameless criminal who bullies students over petty disputes.”
‘By modern standards, school violence is indeed a crime… but this is a fantasy novel world, and since I’m possessed by that very school bully, it’s not my place to bring it up.’
I had no choice but to stay silent.
“Hailga, do you know what crime that professor committed?”
“Nothing exact is known. But if it were a minor crime, she’d have served a short time or been released on bail. Since she’s working at the Academy indefinitely, many say it must be a serious offense.”
“……”
“And her subject is Dagger Arts, which makes you think of assassins, right? Although daggers aren’t just for assassins and are often used for self-defense or as a secondary weapon. But rumor has it that she often appears or disappears without a trace…”
Apparently, it wasn’t common knowledge that Skadi was the heir of the Assassin Guild leader.
That wasn’t written in the family registry either.
Surely House Austri, one of the four great Dukedoms, must know such a thing.
‘Maybe they hid it because it wasn’t necessary for me to know?’
“Rumors always get twisted into something more sensational, so you can’t take them at face value. Still, I find it unsettling.”
“Yeah… We should check it out for sure.”
Reysir, the protagonist of Nas-e, isn’t someone who gets swayed by rumors, but he’s not the type to dismiss everything he hears either.
He waits to judge until he verifies the truth firsthand.
So when Reysir said he would investigate, it wasn’t an empty promise. He really planned to do it.
‘Luckily, he has a way to check Skadi’s previous job!’
His ability, [Truth-Reading Eye], lets him steal others’ stats and skills.
As if confirming my thought was correct, Reysir began fiddling with his eyepatch.
‘People may have guessed Skadi’s original job was an assassin but are probably underestimating her skills. That’s why someone started bullying her.’
Skadi is in her early thirties, relatively young.
She must have been even younger when she first became a professor, and her tone is rather casual.
No wonder some unqualified people take her lightly.
An assassin who was captured easily because of so many mistakes and loose ends.
She spilled her client information without hesitation and now is under protection and surveillance inside the safe Academy.
It’s no surprise they misjudge her like that.
But Reysir will see right away that Skadi is a major powerhouse.
Her skill list is packed with assassination-related skills, most rated S rank or higher.
Her stats displayed are also very high.
‘Was it a mistake to bring up Skadi to Reysir…?’
Even before he checked her skill list, worry was already visible in Reysir’s expression as he looked at me.
Not just Reysir.
Vigdis, Liolikin, and even Hailga—who said she disliked Karvald—had similar looks.
‘They probably think I’ve been marked by a dangerous criminal!’
I couldn’t help but worry too.
If Reysir later meets Skadi in the Demonic Realm and instead of joining forces to defeat the Dungeon Boss, they end up fighting each other…
Reysir won’t accept Skadi as an ally, and since they’d be hostile, Skadi would die.
Likely much sooner than in the original story.
And Reysir would suffer a great loss, missing out on vital survival techniques Skadi could teach him.
‘Why, why did it turn out this way…? Normally, a possessed character messes up the original story just by existing, but it shouldn’t be this distorted…’
Being in someone else’s novel world, I really have no idea what’s coming next.
I never imagined it would go this way.
If any readers predicted this, just comment “I knew it.” and take over this body for me.
Since things have gotten this tangled.
If Skadi isn’t actually being bullied by her fellow professors, it becomes extremely difficult.
I won’t be able to prove she’s no longer dangerous, nor that she has a valid reason to be angry with Karvald.
Fortunately, I have one way to get information about the professors.
In other words, there’s a professor I’m on good terms with.
“If you don’t know who that is, it means you haven’t read carefully—go back to Chapter 22 and start over.”
Currently, ordinary students aren’t allowed to enter the research building until after the exams to prevent test question leaks.
But luckily, the Dagger Arts class was on Wednesday, and the Aether Attribute Enhancement class right after on Thursday.
So I didn’t have to wait until after the midterms to talk to Professor Radvisin.
“Professor. I know you’re busy preparing for exams, but if you could spare just a moment—”
***
As soon as the class ended, I hurriedly approached Professor Radvisin and started speaking.
He looked puzzled and worried, probably because I seemed urgent.
“What is it, Karvald? Is there a problem with the sky-blue Aether?”
“It’s not about Aether, but I want to ask about another professor.”
“Oh, another professor? I hope this isn’t about wanting to take someone else as your advisor.”
“That’s absolutely, definitely not the case.”
I had no intention of becoming a research student, so I denied it firmly, looking serious.
Professor Radvisin looked quite pleased by my reaction.
Even though not choosing someone else as an advisor doesn’t mean I’d become his research student.
“Hahaha, well then… I’ll answer as best I can with what I know. Go ahead and ask.”
I wanted to ask everything I knew about Professor Skadi, but that would be a huge burden.
Since each student’s Aether Attribute is different, the Attribute Enhancement training is partly customized.
The grading standards must be varied too, so balancing it fairly isn’t easy.
Not wanting to waste too much of the professor’s time, I decided to ask only the main point quickly.
“Why does Professor Skadi deliberately reveal she is a criminal during the first lecture?”
“Half the semester’s already passed, and you’re only curious now?”
“At that time, she said she was forced to work as a professor. But as time went on, it became clear she found great fulfillment teaching someone. That contradiction puzzled me.”
“Karvald, you have a scholar’s talent! Most would’ve ignored that, but you question and dig deeper.”
Today, too, Professor Radvisin lavished praise, trying to lure me into becoming a research student.
As usual, I let my guard down, and the old professor’s sharp words caught me off guard.
“In that vein, I must ask—why do you suddenly ask this now, right before midterms? Even though you know how busy I am?”
“……”
“This isn’t just simple curiosity, is it?”
Skadi disliked me, and upon hearing she’s a criminal, everyone worried about my safety.
So this time, I planned only to gather the necessary info without revealing my own situation.
I didn’t want to trouble a professor who’s already been helping me a lot.
‘But to be questioned so directly right away…’
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