“Mm, as expected, pork cutlet tastes best for Tuesday lunch.”
Life as the chief researcher of the Imperial Strategic Magic Headquarters settled down faster than I had expected.
After the last railgun self-destruct-and-fainting incident.
Major General Varman had officially certified me as a terrifying genius who would even risk his life for research.
Thanks to that, no one dared knock on my laboratory door carelessly.
It was absurd, but hey, if it worked, it worked.
I decided not to worry about it.
Of the ten unsolved imperial problems the major general had brought me, I picked exactly one, modified it moderately, and tossed it back to him.
‘I can just let the other nine sit for about six months, using data collection as an excuse.’
My past life as a seasoned graduate student hadn’t gone anywhere.
The art of push and pull, giving the major general just enough hope and just enough despair at the same time.
Thanks to that, my work-life balance was perfect.
In the morning, I leisurely read arcane texts; in the afternoon, I explored the cafeteria menu; and in the evening, I left work early and drank cold beer.
Then I finished the day by flopping onto a soft bed and sleeping soundly.
Not bad, right?
Where else could there be a better workplace?
But as they say, fortune and misfortune are intertwined in life.
When happiness reaches its peak, misfortune has a way of knocking without warning.
“Sir Rihan! You truly are remarkable!”
Bang!
Major General Varman burst through the door with a crash, his face twice as flushed as usual.
In his hand was a document stamped with an ornate crest.
“What is it? I’m in the middle of an important numerical analysis right now…”
“There is someone who wishes to meet you. No, rather, someone who wishes to learn directly under you!”
At that moment, the teacup in my hand trembled.
Wishes to learn?
Was he saying a junior… no, a graduate student was coming under me?
“What kind of nonsense is that out of nowhere…”
I looked at the major general with the most dumbfounded expression I could muster.
“Um, Major General. I have no talent for teaching anyone. My research methods are, well… about communicating with mana’s mood, so they can’t be passed on.”
“Don’t be like that and hear me out! It is Lady Ivelin of House Estal.”
“…………”
‘Estal?’
For an instant, a strange sense of déjà vu brushed through my brain.
Ivelin von Estal.
The name lingering in my mouth was far too familiar.
Wait a second.
I felt like I was about to remember.
……No way, seriously?
‘Isn’t this a character from the romance fantasy novel I was reading in my past life and never finished?’
A chill ran down my spine.
In the novel, Ivelin had overwhelming talent.
But her personality was so damn awful that she tormented the protagonist—the female lead—and ended up destroyed. She was that genius villainess, wasn’t she?
‘It’s a coincidence, right? They just have the same name, right?’
It had to be.
No, more than that, a more fundamental question came crashing in.
Why was the precious daughter of that rich and powerful ducal house trying to crawl into this gloomy research institute?
Aren’t you people filthy rich?
What are you doing, carelessly becoming a civil servant!
Is this what they call an upper-class pastime in romance fantasy or something?
I absolutely hated getting involved with big shots.
Especially if they were characters destined to end up near the guillotine later!
“If she is a duke’s daughter, wouldn’t she usually go to the Imperial Academy? There are plenty of capable professors there, and the facilities are good, so why would she insist on coming to a gloomy research institute like this…”
“Lady Ivelin is called the greatest genius in the empire when it comes to magic. She has already surpassed the Academy’s level. And that young lady saw the flame storm magic circle you modified and was utterly entranced! She said, ‘For the flow of mana to form such a perfect current!’”
Ah, I’m screwed.
You said it would be kept confidential, you bastard.
“How did the young lady see my magic circle?”
“House Estal provides thirty percent of the Magic Headquarters’ budget… In any case, the pressure from above is no joke. Accept the young lady as your dedicated trainee researcher.”
This sly old snake.
He’d finally done it.
But.
‘I can’t give up my happy life that easily.’
They say even a worm will squirm if you step on it.
I got up from the sofa and waved my hands violently in refusal.
“No! Absolutely not! My laboratory is a sacred personal space. Working with someone attached to me doesn’t suit my nature!”
At that, Major General Varman quietly approached and placed a hand on my shoulder.
His gaze instantly sank coldly.
“Sir Rihan. This is not a request, but a recommendation from the imperial palace and the ducal house. If the young lady returns disappointed… not only will your head fly, but mine will also go sightseeing near the guillotine with it. You said the sofa in the chief researcher’s office was quite comfortable, didn’t you? Would you like to exchange that sofa for a pile of straw in prison?”
‘……No, this is a threat.’
It was nothing less than an extremely low-grade political threat.
I thought of my academic advisor in my past life.
That man had also shoved me into death traps like this every time he secured funding.
In the end, even a worm values its own life.
“Haah… Understood. I’ll accept.”
I just had to show her what hellish graduate school life was like.
I’d make her leave of her own accord.
***
One day later.
The laboratory door opened, and a faint scent of roses seeped in first.
The first thing that caught my eye was pink hair so vivid it was almost dazzling.
A woman dressed in luxurious mage robes befitting the daughter of a ducal house entered with elegant steps.
She slowly looked around the laboratory once, then frowned when she saw my notebooks shoved in a corner and the half-eaten bags of snacks.
Then she stared coldly at me, who had my feet propped up on the desk, as if looking at a bug.
“……Are you that Rihan?”
The moment she opened her mouth, the fragments of memories scattered in my head assembled into a single cover.
“She really looks exactly the same.”
Pink hair and cold blue eyes.
That haughty attitude treating the other person like dust beneath her feet.
There was no doubt.
She was the villainess destined for ruin, with not even a 0.1 percent deviation from the novel’s description.
****
She looked me up and down from head to toe.
Perhaps she had sensed my meager mana level, because the corner of her lips twisted into a sneer.
“I had some expectations, but seeing you in person is disappointing. Your mana response is only slightly better than an ordinary person’s.”
She turned her head and muttered to herself in a very quiet voice.
“It seems Father was deceived by a fraud after all. There’s no way someone who looks this incompetent created such a magic circle.”
“…………”
A fraud?
Incompetent?
I stared at Ivelin.
‘Wow, she’s disgustingly pretty, though.’
As expected of a villainess in a romance fantasy, she was disgustingly pretty.
I could tell at a glance how she had grown up.
She must have grown up hearing that she was a genius until her ears bled.
She certainly had a lovely appearance, but right now, in my eyes, her face overlapped with that detestable reviewer from my past life who had treated my paper like fiction and rejected it.
“Excuse me, Lady Duke’s Daughter.”
I rose from my chair and twisted my lips.
An uninvited guest who had come to ruin my work-life balance dared to insult my specialized knowledge?
Someone who didn’t even know the “p” in physics?
“Whether it’s fraud or not, I’ll judge later after seeing the paper… no, the magic report you write. Oh, and for your information, under me, wasting time with things like chants won’t fly.”
It wasn’t as if I could get angry at a duke’s daughter.
My eyes narrowed.
It seemed the time had come to properly show her what otherworld graduate student hell was like.
***
Inside the practical research lab.
“Wow… The magic efficiency is really, really terrible. Energy is just leaking out like water poured into a bottomless jar.”
If I couldn’t get angry, I could at least be sarcastic.
At my mockery, Ivelin’s eyebrows trembled.
Her pride apparently wounded, she slammed the desk and refuted me point by point.
“My fireball just now had a mana conversion rate of thirty percent. That is an efficiency that ranks among the best in the entire empire!”
“This is one of the best efficiencies in the empire? Goodness, the empire must be on the verge of collapse.”
“Rihan. Are you insulting the empire right now? Or are you insulting House Estal?”
“Oh my, how frightening. That’s not what I meant.”
What was I supposed to do when the efficiency really was terrible?
In my eyes, a seventy percent loss was no different from a sin.
“Would you like me to explain physically what that fireball just now was like? You used ten units of mana and only managed to produce three units of output. Where did the other seven go, you ask? They flew far off into empty air as disordered heat and noise.”
Ivelin’s eyes turned cold.
She looked ready to burn me to death with magic at any moment.
“Words certainly come easily to you. Then would you show me yourself? If you cannot prove it, I will accuse you of fraud and ensure you never appear before my eyes again.”
The chilling warning contained in “never appear again.”
But if I backed down here, I would spend the rest of my life taking care of the princess.
“Watch closely. This is what real efficiency is.”
First, I needed to knock her arrogance down at the first meeting.
I needed to firmly establish who the professor was and who the graduate student was.
I drew up seventy percent of my mana at once.
It was an amount as tiny as a rat’s tail, but its concentration was raised all the way to the critical point.
In my head, the simulation I had repeated tens of thousands of times was already complete.
First, I compressed the air above my palm to an extreme degree.
At the same time, I accelerated the kinetic energy of the molecules to the limit.
And the most important core.
To prevent energy from leaking outward, I created a momentary vacuum around it and insulated it.
Fwoosh—!
The flame that began at my fingertips was not an ordinary red.
The flame spun at ultra-high speed and condensed, soon becoming a plasma form that emitted a blue light so intense it hurt the eyes.
The distinctive sharp crackling produced as the air ionized filled the laboratory.
Overwhelming heat.
A heat that seemed capable of burning even the surrounding oxygen brushed Ivelin’s cheek.
But that blue sphere was controlled with extreme precision, not wasting even a single speck of energy as it remained fixed at one point.
A few seconds later, when my mana ran out, the blue flame vanished like a mirage.
“Phew… This much is what you need before you can call it magic.”
I felt like I was about to collapse from consuming more mana than expected.
Gasping for breath, I looked at Ivelin.
“……….”
Ivelin stood frozen as if she had lost the ability to speak.
Her pupils shook violently, as if an earthquake had struck them.
It seemed the title of genius was not a lie, because she appeared to have perfectly grasped the wonder of the phenomenon I had just caused.
“What… was that just now? There was no chant, and the deployment speed of the magic circle made no sense. More than anything… the temperature of that blue light. How did you condense mana to a single point like that? The heat didn’t spread outward. Theoretically, it should be impossible…”
Her arrogant voice was nowhere to be found.
Ivelin looked back and forth between my palm and my face with an expression of disbelief, then asked as if she had seen the end of the world.
“You… what exactly are you? How did you do that?”
“You think you can just get it for free? I can’t tell you just like that.”
As I said that, I cheered inwardly.
‘Okay, looks like I succeeded for now?’
With this, I thought my enjoyable graduate school… no, research institute life would become a little more comfortable.
But looking at Ivelin’s eyes, they somehow resembled the eyes of the fellow researchers in my past life who used to torment me all night long.
Hm. I think I’m fucked.