WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 82

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“The lecture reviews… have turned into a complete mess, you mean.”

I murmured the words blankly. At that unbelievable news, I rubbed my face for a moment. With my hand covering my eyes, all I could see was darkness.

“Yes. There’s no room for excuses. It’s very clear.”

Her voice came from across the desk. I pulled myself together and looked at her. Hwaryeong sat opposite me, wearing a slightly troubled smile.

She took a stack of papers out from under the desk and held it out to me. The stack left her hand and drifted over until it stopped in front of me, guided by her magical power.

“If you look through them yourself, you’ll probably understand what the problem was.”

“I see.”

I quietly looked down at the stack of papers. A faint bitter smile slipped out. Honestly, I had not expected to hear anything like this. I had only come here because one thought had led to another.

During the week it took to return to the tower, I encountered quite a few magical beasts. No, “quite a few” was not enough. Magical beasts had poured down like raindrops. So I ran away a lot too.

But unlike before, the efficiency of the hunt had improved quite a bit. Cassian had gotten stronger. Maybe because she was trying to adjust to magical power, whenever she saw a magical beast, she stepped forward to fight it. Then she cut it down.

In the process, magical beast corpses piled up like a mountain. There were enough to fill the turtle’s stomach completely, and then enough to fill my spatial pouch on top of that. I had come to the city to sort all of it out.

And then she had presented this to me.

I glanced at Hwaryeong. She noticed my gaze and smiled softly. The smile on her face was far more natural than when I had first met her.

Still, there were parts that remained awkward. Her eyes showed it most clearly. Even now, she could not quite erase the coldness in them. Like right now.

Even so, I could tell she had grown more practiced. Just as the name tag pinned to her chest had changed again. I studied the gold name tag for a moment.

Grade 3 assistant manager, Hwaryeong

“Come to think of it, you’ve been promoted again. If you’d told me in advance, I would have congratulated you.”

At that, Hwaryeong covered her mouth and laughed. It was only the two of us in the room. Cassian and Mira had left everything to me and gone out to look around the city.

Now that I thought about it, this was Mira’s first time visiting Stalactite City. Ever since she entered the puppet body, she had always stayed by my side. Since I had not had the slightest intention of coming to the city, she had never had a reason to come either. No wonder she had looked a little excited.

“What kind of happy news is that, enough for me to inform you, Evron-ssi? Depending on how you look at it, I earned this promotion by selling you.”

She said it lightly. I almost coughed. I held it back and forced a smile. Right. Ever since the auction house incident, she had become my dedicated contact. Just like today.

I fiddled with Hwaryeong’s medal in my hand. This was what had called her here. Grade 3 assistant manager. When I saw her last time, she had been a Grade 2 employee. She had gone up two ranks in two years. That was no ordinary promotion speed.

“That’s all due to your own ability, Hwaryeong-ssi. We’ve become a relationship that benefits both of us, so isn’t that enough?”

“Hehe, thank you for saying that, even if it’s only words.”

She said it with a smile. I laughed aloud, answering her smile with one of my own. We continued chatting about personal matters for a little while, but then something occurred to me. So I asked her.

“But why were you still a trainee all that time? With your ability, Hwaryeong-ssi, you could have risen higher whenever you wanted.”

At my question, Hwaryeong brought a hand to her cheek. Then she let out a small sigh.

“Because it hasn’t been that long since I joined the company. I’m only in my sixth year now. When I first met you, Evron-ssi, I was still living right at the bottom.”

She looked at me. There was deep satisfaction in her gaze. It made sense. Her very first achievement had been me. I had pulled her a little higher. I engraved that fact in my heart.

“It’s difficult for people from great families to join the company in the first place. They can only barely be admitted like this after reaching the fourth floor. That’s also a company tradition. I suppose it’s their way of avoiding complete subordination to the great families. Other organizations are more or less the same.”

I remembered asking Hongryeong before whether he would be joining the company. Hwaryeong, Miryeong, and the other members of his family were there, after all. He had simply shaken his head and smiled at me.

He had said he could not enter yet, so he planned to create a new organization instead. Had he told me to say something if I was interested? Of course, that smile had sent a chill down my spine, so I had waved him off. The memories of the entrance exam were still vivid.

Was that why he had said he would create a new organization? I had not known. It was also the kind of thing someone outside a great family would not know. I nodded slightly. So even the insides of organizations were not united as one.

That made sense. Wherever people, and mages, gathered, schemes were bound to bloom. Huge organizations like those would be especially prone to it. Right. The Blade Association had just been the strange one. This was normal.

I quietly looked down at the stack of papers in front of me. Lecture reviews. This was something I had not expected. I looked at Hwaryeong. She was simply smiling at me. The smile at her lips looked more natural than before.

“Then I’ll take a look.”

I took a short, deep breath. Then I turned over the first page of the stack she had given me. And I squeezed my eyes shut. I had no choice. The very first page contained something extremely shocking.

Total score: 2.1 / 5

Mm. I immediately understood why she had shown this to me. It meant our lecture had drawn that much dissatisfaction. Why? Where?

I thought back to the last lecture. It had been perfect. Of course it had. It was a lecture I had wrung my brain dry to create. Then why did the score look like this? I turned to the next page. Several comments were written there.

- I went because they said they would give out treasure, but no one received any treasure except during the first lecture. Even the people who passed didn’t receive any clear reward. Compared to other lectures, aside from the fact that it was cheap, I couldn’t find much reason to take it. 1 point.

- Should I call him the tower’s administrator? I don’t like that Evron bastard. He seems way too obsessed with points. 1 point.

- The lecture and tower design are inefficient. There are quite a few elements scattered around that interfere with training. 1 point.

- The tower’s open hours are too limited. 1 point.

- Too many things require points. 1 point.

- …. 1 point.

…

Below that, the parade of 1-point reviews continued. They had clearly been arranged from lowest score upward. It was packed full of spiteful comments.

I stopped reading and crossed my arms for a moment. I glanced at Hwaryeong. At some point, she had the same stack of papers in front of her. It looked as though she was following along as I read. She stopped reading and looked at me.

“Is there no way to tell who wrote these?”

At that, Hwaryeong smiled with her eyes, as if amused.

“No. Collecting reviews is only possible when perfect anonymity can be guaranteed. We protect their identities thoroughly. Since we give points to people who leave reviews, everyone participates quite diligently too.”

I sighed. The second one. I had really wanted to know who that bastard was, so that was a shame. Well, if anonymity was not guaranteed, who would write something like this? If they wrote the wrong thing, they would obviously be beaten to death.

“Then it can’t be helped.”

I turned the pages again and continued checking the contents. With every word I read, I began to feel worse. Insults toward me appeared at a fairly high rate.

Mm. The internal damage was severe.

I had never imagined my reputation would be this bad. A terrible sense of betrayal soaked my chest. They smiled and laughed in front of me while calling me Administrator-nim, Evron-nim, assistant instructor-nim, and so on, only to write this much slander about me behind my back?

As expected, people could not be trusted. Mages least of all. That was an old belief of mine. Look at the swordsmen. I thought of the many swordsmen I had faced over the past two months. They were truly open and pure.

It was the same here. Their writing style already gave the swordsmen away. Some even revealed their own names.

- My name is Goro, and the lecture was fun. Especially because there were a lot of fights.

Like this. My eyes shone slightly as I read it. A review from Goro. I had even met him again in Canyon City. See? Like this, Goro was proudly revealing himself and praising me...

-...But he takes too many points. That Evron bastard. So I was annoyed and gave it 2 points.

2 points. Seeing that, I closed my eyes for a moment. Mm. The sword-users were the same. As expected, people could not be trusted. At that piercing sense of betrayal, the tree inside my chest trembled too.

But as I read through the reviews one by one, I began to understand why they were slandering me. Points. That was the problem. Now that I thought about it, over the past five years, I had run rather wild trying to earn points. By simple calculation alone, I had extracted several hundred thousand points.

They must have roughly calculated how much I had earned too. Then they were probably shocked by the amount. There were even reviews like that among them. Bastards who bombed the score simply because they were jealous. That was how aggressively I had tried to gather points.

I gave a bitter smile. Then I closed my eyes slightly. Should I reflect on my attitude? I thought about it carefully.

Then my eyes snapped open. Was that wrong?

No. Points belonged to the person who earned them.

If it had been the old me, I would have seen their opinions and wondered whether I should lower the points. But not now. To the newly transformed me, they were nothing more than point vending machines.

The part I needed to reflect on was not that I had been obsessed with wringing points out of them.

Whether it was Arcana General Trading Company, the Abyss Secret Association, or some other small or mid-sized organization, each of them occupied a certain field. People did not question the prices they set. They simply used the system.

In the tower, I held the same sort of position. I had merely taken a small fee as the middleman. Had those points been expensive? No.

The price of using a mirror bug was only 50 points per month. Puppet modifications, added functions, and the rest were all things they had chosen for themselves. Yet they were still dissatisfied.

That was what I needed to reflect on. The fact that they were dissatisfied meant I had failed to provide service and satisfaction equal to the points they paid.

Earning points was good. But had I always done my best, even to earn a single point? At some point, had I started moving on inertia, merely providing service that met the standard?

That was where I needed to reflect. To gather more points, I needed to provide them with something more definite. Something that would satisfy them.

I moved on and checked the other reviews as well. The farther back I went, the higher the scores became. Judging by the contents, this one seemed to be Hongryeong’s, and this one seemed to be Jun’s. At the very end, there was even someone who had given 5 points.

- The bear puppet is cute. Very, very cute. It deserves 5 points.

Mm. I laughed a little. It was Cassian’s. She was the only one who had given a perfect score. In general, the swordsmen gave fairly generous scores like this. Except for that lump of muscle.

I read all the way to the end, then straightened the papers again. Total score: 2.1. It caught my eye at once.

“If the score is this bad, are there penalties too?”

At that, Hwaryeong nodded slightly.

“Yes, naturally. We base lecture pricing on course reviews like these. With a score like this, the price will drop. Since it was the first lecture, we accepted applications at a base price of 3,000 points, but if you were to run it again with the same content, we would lower it to around 2,000 points.”

2,000 points. That was very cheap. Hwaryeong continued.

“Good lectures usually go over 10,000 points. Popular lectures aimed at the third and fourth floors sometimes have application fees that easily exceed 50,000 points. If someone wants to buy a seat, who knows how many more points they’d have to pay?”

As she said that, Hwaryeong stroked the stack of papers in front of her.

“If evaluations like this continue, people will naturally hesitate to apply. In the end, only those interested in the low price will sign up for the lecture.”

I imagined the sight. A tower filled only with random nobodies. They would not fight or struggle desperately like before. They would simply take up a seat and continue training.

What would Professor Irian think if she saw that? She would probably find it extremely boring and throw a fit. She definitely would. I could clearly picture her getting irritated.

“Then there won’t be anyone buying seats either. Selling lecture seats is good for my performance, you see. I had high hopes for your lecture too, Evron-ssi. I didn’t expect it to turn out like this, though.”

She let out a small sigh as she said it. A regretful expression appeared on her face.

“I’ll think of a way.”

I said that with a slight nod. Only random nobodies coming. If that happened, it would hurt me badly too. Would people that careful with points really use my mirror bugs?

If mirror bugs did not become commonly used in my tower, I would lose the greatest driving force for my growth. I had to prevent that. Then what should I do? I needed to think about it for a while. I could not change those review scores, after all.

At my words, Hwaryeong recovered her smile. She had probably shown me the reviews as a warning. She used magical power to collect the stacks of papers on the desk. Then she looked at me and spoke.

“Then let’s end that discussion here and move on to the next matter. If you take out the items you brought, I’ll calculate their value for you.”

“Ah, here they are.”

I took out the spatial pouch and handed it to her. Everything except the parts I planned to use was inside. Since there was too much to pour out here, I handed her the spatial pouch whole.

She used magical power to feel through its contents and began calculating. The count was finished quickly.

I brought the mirror bug to the ring she held out and quietly checked the points. Quite a lot had come in. Of course, I had to split it with Cassian, so the amount that actually fell to me would be smaller.

After that, I chatted with her at a leisurely pace. We talked about things like rumors in the city and new lectures. We had been talking for quite a while when my mirror bug began ringing. It was a call from Mira. She was probably telling me it was time to meet up.

I briefly asked Hwaryeong for her understanding and rose from my seat. She stood up as well and saw me off. I bowed my head to her and opened the door.

“Then I’ll see you again at the next course registration.”

“Yes, until next time. This has been Hwaryeong, Grade 3 assistant manager of Arcana General Trading Company’s Fifth Division Customer Response Department.”

She bowed her head and gave that final farewell. Leaving her behind, I stepped through the door. The noise of the city reached my ears. Many people were coming and going along the streets.

To think the lecture had received such a terrible score. I had not expected that. My head felt a little complicated.

First, I had to meet up with Mira again. I checked the mirror bug and set out. For now, I pushed the matter of the lecture to one corner of my mind. Even if I worried about it now, no clear answer would come.

More importantly, since I had come to the city, there was somewhere else I wanted to stop by. There was something that still frustrated me no matter how much I thought about it, so I wanted to ask for advice.

From the city’s puppeteers.

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