#3. The Ordeal

Why is the world so unfair?

That guy openly snoring away in the back row gets off scot-free, but I, who merely dozed for a moment…

“What’s your name?”

I’m currently teetering on the brink of being written into a death note.

“Uh, well…”

“I’ll ask again. What is your name?”

Professor Meriel of the Faculty of Magic. Her crimson eyes are fixed on me.

“…Rain Ortiz.”

“Hmm? Rain?”

The professor’s eyes widened slightly. A reaction of surprise.

As if…

She’d heard my name mentioned somewhere else.

This isn’t good.

I just hope she doesn’t start paying special attention to me.

Please, just think of me as student number one-of-many.

“So, it’s you…”

Ah.

“Professor Rachel has told me a lot about you. Says you’re quite bright?”

Aah.

“Shall we see how adept you are with calculation formulas?”

The professor handed me a piece of chalk.

A nod of her head indicated I was to solve it.

Once again, I was dragged out to the front.

“Am I supposed to solve this?”

“Yes, well… Haha, that’s right. It’s what we’ve been learning recently, so do try and solve it.”

Something feels off.

I looked at the calculation formula scrawled on the blackboard. Something composed of complex characters.

…I don’t get it. I haven’t been to class; there’s no way I’d know what we learned.

If I’d at least glanced at the textbook, I could at least feign an attempt.

No, to begin with, it seems far more difficult than usual.

Did we learn some new concept?

It’s a general education course, why is she making me do something like this?

Here’s the problem.

Is it better for the student caught dozing to solve it, or to fail?

“Why, can’t you solve it?”

No matter how I look at it, the former is better.

Once again, I resorted to the power of artificial intelligence.

Damn it, felt like it hasn’t even been two hours since I decided to stop using it.

‘Solve that equation for me.’

[Commencing Calculation.]

Truthfully, I was hoping to avoid using this thing now. It wasn’t just a few times the results were bad.

Still, better this than getting on the professor’s bad side, I figured.

[Calculation Complete.]

I transcribed the disgustingly long solution the system spat out, word for word.

“—Therefore, there is no solution.”

But the professor’s expression wasn’t exactly pleasant.

The other students were beginning to murmur amongst themselves, for some reason.

What is it?

What did I do this time?

‘What problem did you just solve?’

[‘Erdon’s Theorem,’ one of the Four Great Conundrums of Magical Theory.]

My mind went blank for a moment.

What is Erdon’s Theorem?

…A conundrum?

I desperately looked towards the professor.

“…Class is dismissed for today. No homework. Mr. Rein? I’d like to have a word with you.”

Son of a b*tch.

*

Meriell Gardner, Professor of Magical Theory, was perpetually second place.

Always second place, ever since her academy days.

She aimed for the youngest professorship, but that too was a failure.

The research she attempted afterwards fell into a slump, with no progress made.

Could there be a cause for this phenomenon?

Meriell pondered. What made me like this?

The answer came instantly.

Rachel Artae! The woman who always looked down at me from above.

The person she despised the most.

“She went into Magical Engineering?”

When she heard that Rachel had become a professor of Magical Engineering, she was truly flabbergasted.

Of course, she had a tendency to obsess over Magical Engineering even back in the academy…

Even so, really? Is she a complete lunatic?

“…”

She thought it didn’t matter. Magical Engineering has clear limitations, after all.

Now all that’s left is for me to become number one.

Meriell devoted herself to her research once more.

Then, amidst it all.

“A new circuit…?”

Another whisper of Rachel’s success reached her ears.

Her chest tightened.

Perhaps anger, perhaps a heavy sadness.

What was this? Some mental failing?

…Just simple inferiority?

“Damn it!”

It was inferiority, alright. She’d become aware of it herself.

One small mercy was that the academy had deemed this breakthrough Rachel’s ‘limit.’

Lately, she’d been researching a particularly thorny problem. A glimmer of a lead had appeared, and she’d been obsessively pursuing it.

Just a little further.

A little further.

Just one piece. Only one piece was needed. Then everything would fall into place.

If I can solve this, I can surpass Rachel.

…What is this missing piece?

There, she stalled again.

Meriel halted.

Unable to proceed.

“Professor Meriel, I’ve recently…”

But then.

“This is truly revolutionary.”

You again.

“Haha, once again, technomancy overtakes magic.”

Again…

“I trust you’ll offer your congratulations.”

…

Meriel stormed out of the room.

And prepared her lecture.

A lecture on the unsolvable problem.

“This problem will remain an unsolvable conundrum in magical studies forever.”

A lecture hastily prepared, without a second thought. It was ‘abandonment.’

Perhaps all the students sensed it. The shoddiness of the lecture, Professor Meriel’s wavering voice.

Then, her gaze fell upon a particular student.

‘…Asleep?’

In my lecture?

In truth, Professor Meriel wasn’t the sort to care about such things.

Sleep if you want; your grades are your own responsibility.

Only today felt different.

“Student, what’s your name?”

“…Rain Ortiz, Professor.”

Rain Ortiz.

A name she’d heard before.

The one Professor Rachel droned on and on about…

“Supposed to be so clever, are you?”

A petty jab escaped her.

Just a sliver of self-esteem, a teacherly impulse she shouldn’t indulge.

A difficult calculation introduced alongside the conundrum.

She’d told him to solve it.

“Am I supposed to solve this?”

But it was the conundrum, the real puzzle, that Rain Ortiz chose to tackle.

“No, uh… Haha, yes, of course. You did learn it this time, so do try your best to solve it.”

Anything was fine. You won’t be able to solve it anyway.

“······?”

But he did solve it.

Rain Ortiz, solved the problem.

He cracked it.

“Therefore, there is no solution.”

Mariel ended the lecture immediately. She had no other choice.

This, this was…

Unthinkable.

“Student, I need to see you.”

Mariel’s office was quite the mess. She wasn’t one for tidying; papers and books lay scattered, and dust motes danced in the light. Probably, if you looked closely at the floor, you’d spot strands of her dark hair.

That’s why even teaching assistants are rarely allowed into the office.

Today was different. Despite the office being even more disorganized than usual, she let Rain in.

Pulling out a small chalkboard, she immediately wrote out another problem.

“Solve this.”

“Pardon?”

“This problem, solve it.”

This, too, was a conundrum.

‘Ferchío’s Hypothesis.’ The most intractable problem, the one claiming all mana movement follows predictable rules.

Naturally, Mariel herself hadn’t been able to crack it.

“Well, I, that is…”

“Can’t solve it, can you?”

“······I will solve it.”

Mariel chewed on her fingernails as she watched Rain. *Click, click*, her inscrutable anxiety building.

Rain merely stared at the problem.

Then, he began to fill the chalkboard with equations. Mariel watched the sight with growing horror.

“It’s solved.”

In a single day.

Two conundrums had been solved.

“······How did you solve it?”

“Pardon?”

“The problems you solved, student, are all notoriously difficult. Ones that geniuses have put their heads together on for ages, yet couldn’t crack. How could a student, barely twenty years old….”

“Well….”

Lein scratched his head, offering another sheepish grin.

“I just solved them.”

Meriel was dumbfounded.

“Ha ha….”

Geniuses, all of them?

Nonsense.

A true genius is what you’d call *this*.

Meriel looked again at the solutions scrawled on the board.

The size of the writing was just right, as if he knew from the beginning how much space he’d need. Too perfect to be a coincidence.

This was mental calculation.

He solved it in his head, then transcribed the answer to fit the chalkboard.

Meriel staggered, then collapsed heavily into a chair.

“Lein… Lein Ortiz, was it? Certainly.”

Her mind was reeling, her sense of reality blurring.

Even so.

“I have a proposal to make.”

There was something she needed to say.

“Have you ever considered transferring to the Faculty of Magic?”

*

Truthfully, he hadn’t wanted to solve them.

Even if he just tasked an AI to do it with a click, the ensuing aftermath wouldn’t be simple.

But after consulting the System:

[It appears more significant events will unfold if you do *not* solve them.]

That was the response.

So he solved them, and now *this*.

“Have you ever considered transferring to the Faculty of Magic?”

That’s what he gets.

“Huh?”

“I asked if you’ve considered transferring to the Faculty of Magic.”

“……”

What he aimed for was, without a doubt, ordinariness.

How did things end up like this?

What went wrong?

Was it asking the Goddess for ChatGPT?

But he was wronged too.

ChatGPT wasn’t *that* capable back then.

Who would have known that an AI, ridiculed and toyed with by humans on Earth, would become so proficient in *this* world?

······Still, something’s off.

No matter how I slice it, solving that conundrum is just impossible.

There has to be another secret──.

“Perhaps you require time to consider?”

Ah, right, I’ve got another problem at hand.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Then give me your answer.”

“I won’t transfer.”

“······Why?”

Professor Meriel tilted her head, clearly uncomprehending.

“There is no field with a more promising future than the Department of Magic. ‘Mana is inexhaustible,’ a famous saying, isn’t it?”

“······.”

“Are the procedures perhaps daunting? Leave it to me. I’ll handle it quietly, without a fuss.”

“That’s not it.”

I swallowed the sigh that threatened to escape.

“I want to live an ordinary life.”

“······Pardon?”

“It was an accident that I solved the problem, but I prefer things normal.”

I said it plainly. I couldn’t think of a better answer.

“······Student Rein.”

But it seemed that wasn’t the case for the Professor.

“Conundra aren’t something one solves ‘by accident’.”

Professor Meriel rose from her chair. And then she approaches me.

“Please, reconsider. A talent like you shouldn’t rot in Magical Engineering of all things…”

*Bang.*

It was then that the laboratory door was violently flung open.

“What are you doing here? Professor Meriel.”

It was Professor Rachel.