[The Inspector Brought Along a Teaching Assistant]
Inside the rattling carriage, I looked out the window before casually speaking to Hans.
“Are you still sulking?”
“Is that how a teaching assistant should speak to an inspector?”
“I said we should make up. I’m sorry for teasing you.”
“If an apology were enough to settle everything, why would laws exist?”
He really was petty!
When I pouted, the corners of Hans’s eyes curved ever so slightly.
He was definitely smiling.
“Petty little man.”
“......”
“Narrow-eyed characters hide their true colors.”
“......”
“Cross-dressing woman.”
CLICK—
Hans’s hand went to his sword.
At the sight, I immediately shut my mouth.
Just as he seemed to have calmed down a little and I was about to speak again.
“Haa. Fine. Let us both stop acting like children.”
Hans spoke first.
“So that means we’ve made up, right?”
“Why do you seem to be growing more childish? I think you were more composed in the past.”
“Will you say that I’m mentally youthful?”
“You are so youthful that you could enroll in the academy.”
The academy’s admission age was under fifteen.
In other words, he was saying my mental world was as youthful as a middle schooler’s.
“You’ll embarrass me if you compliment me like that.”
“Are you actually insane?”
Hans stared blankly at me for a while.
“Hoo. Enough. I will ask one last time. Are you truly certain you do not need a disguise?”
“Yeah. It’s fine. How many people even know me?”
“I agree with the opinion that Lord Lewis lacks thoroughness.”
Yet Hans did not withdraw his suspicious gaze, as though that could not possibly be all there was to it.
In response, I puffed out my chest and answered.
“A real man doesn’t bother with disguises.”
“Did you not refuse a professor’s position because you were afraid someone would recognize you?”
“A real man doesn’t remember trivial things like that.”
“That is not being a real man. It is simply being an idiot.”
Hans pressed his fingers to his temples as though he had a headache.
“If you refuse to disguise yourself, Her Majesty will likely object as well. Perhaps you knew that and—”
“Hey now. No conspiracy theories. I just changed my mind.”
It was true. I had no proof, though.
I kept avoiding Hans’s gaze for a while.
The carriage, which had been moving smoothly, came to a stop.
Outside the window, enormous buildings stood in rows.
It looked like the magic school in Harry Potter.
“Welcome to Gloria Academy, Inspector.”
When I stepped out of the carriage, staff members were there to greet us.
“The Chancellor is waiting for you.”
They bowed deeply toward Hans.
As though accustomed to the treatment, Hans gave a small nod and entered the vast building first.
I stayed close behind him and asked in a low voice.
“I don’t really need to follow you, do I?”
I had heard that Gloria Academy was an independent institution under the Ministry of the Interior.
Even though there was a separate Ministry of Education that managed academies.
Naturally, the Chancellor’s rank was equivalent to—or perhaps slightly lower than—that of the Minister of Education.
And a mere teaching assistant was supposed to accompany the head of Special Division 4 when he met such a dignitary as an inspector?
Why?
That was the question in my mind, but Hans cut it off sharply.
“You will understand once you meet him. Follow me for now.”
“Just like the shadowy Special Affairs Bureau. Stop keeping everything to yourself and explain it to me.”
“Because you made things so complicated—!”
Hans began to snap, but held back his breath and quickened his pace instead.
Of course, announcing I would not disguise myself had been sudden.
To be specific, I had brought it up three hours before arriving at the academy.
‘But is that really something to get so angry over?’
I really did not get it.
Perhaps Hans sensed the look in my eyes, because his hand slid onto his sword.
‘Come to think of it, I think I’m the one in the wrong.’
So I simply kept my mouth shut and obediently trailed after Hans to the Chancellor’s office.
“Chancellor, I have brought the Inspector.”
“Come in.”
Once the Chancellor granted permission, the staff opened the door and stepped aside.
They probably did not want to intrude on a meeting between their superior and an inspector.
I, too, hoped someone would say, ‘How dare a mere teaching assistant try to insert himself among such important people!’
But no one stopped me.
Well, they did not even know I had come to become a teaching assistant.
They probably thought I was an attendant of some sort.
And so, in the end, I followed Hans into the Chancellor’s office.
“Welcome. I received word from the Imperial Household Ministry that—”
The Chancellor, who had been waiting, lost his words when he saw Hans.
Look at those trembling eyes.
They were like a little boat cast into a storm.
“Hey. Just how infamous are you for the Chancellor to react like that?”
“It’s not because of me......”
Hans replied through clenched teeth that it was not because of him.
But there was no way it was not because of Hans.
Special Division 4 of the Special Affairs Bureau handled inspections and enforcement against nobles.
Whenever some of them resisted too fiercely, the division made sure they would never open their mouths again.
Or it made sure their mouths would not close until the desired words came out.
How terrifying.
“It has been a long time, Chancellor Glenwick. I expected you to be promoted to Minister of Education, yet you became the Chancellor of the academy.”
“C-Cough. Forgive my rudeness. I never imagined Count Lionel himself would come.”
“It would have been a greater problem if you had known in advance.”
Lionel was Hans’s family name.
It was not a hereditary title, and it came with no fief.
Still, no one could look down on Hans.
If they did, their entire family would get a rich taste of inspection.
“Ah, look at me. As one gets older, one forgets even the obvious things. Please, let us sit.”
The Chancellor offered us seats and sat first.
I followed Hans and plopped down on the soft sofa.
“......”
“......”
Hans and the Chancellor stared at me.
“Um...... Am I not allowed to sit?”
“No. I was merely thinking it was fortunate that you chose not to pose as an attendant.”
“Hoho.”
Hans shook his head as though I were beyond help.
The Chancellor merely gave a hollow laugh.
“He has come to apply for a teaching assistant position. We will explain the particulars shortly, so you need not concern yourself with him for now.”
“No, this person is surely—”
“You need not concern yourself.”
After Hans reassured him again, the Chancellor reluctantly nodded.
Well, an outsider would make him uncomfortable.
It would be troublesome if a conversation between the Chancellor and the Inspector leaked to someone outside.
I turned my gaze away altogether, making it clear I would close my ears.
Then I picked up refreshments from the table and looked intently at the Message Window floating in the air.
[Chapter 1. Gloria Academy]
[M. Academy Tour]
M stood for Main Quest.
In other words, it meant that the Main Quest for Chapter 1 had begun.
The problem was that not a single detail of the quest was displayed.
Was it a bug?
As I wondered that.
[MP is required to view the Main Quest details.]
[Spend 1 MP to view the details?]
[Current MP: 0]
What was this damned Teruna up to?!
It said I would receive MP by clearing Main Quests!
But now it was saying I needed MP just to learn what the Main Quest was about!
Was this some pyramid scheme?! This was driving me insane!
A sinister feeling ran down my spine: perhaps I would never gather 1,000 MP no matter how hard I worked for the rest of my life.
‘Did I...... get played?’
No. No.
It was too soon to despair.
I was not a player with tens of thousands of hours logged, but I had still been a paying player who enjoyed the original game, Arcana Spirit.
I searched my memories for the original game’s first Main Quest.
[M. Academy Tour] was a tutorial quest that had you explore the academy, the setting of Chapter 1.
‘The areas assigned to each race, the lecture halls, the research buildings...... What else was there?’
I pulled an academy map from my pocket and marked everything I could remember.
Then the characters I would encounter in the Main Quest came to mind.
‘Will I be able to meet them?’
It was still midwinter.
The academy had not opened yet.
Construction was complete, and all the personnel—staff and professors alike—were in place, but not all the students had arrived.
That meant I did not know whether I would be able to meet the basic characters given out through the Main Quest.
No, I could not even know if the basic characters were on the admission list in the first place.
‘I’ll have to check later.’
Once they enrolled at the academy, I would be able to find them somehow.
But what if they did not enroll at all?
In the original work, some characters had enrolled in the academy for revenge or survival.
What would happen to those characters?
‘This is giving me a headache.’
Once I started thinking about the Main Quest and the characters, I naturally realized that the story itself was also a problem.
Arcana Spirit was a collectible RPG game.
As was often the case with games of that genre, its progression was ordinary.
Each chapter merely had a mid-boss and a boss, with the story advancing now and then.
But history itself had changed.
Of course the entire story would be different.
‘Damn it! Teruna hid the details for this reason! So I can’t stand not looking at them!’
Should I just call its bluff?
‘Yeah. It’s the first quest, so even if I call its bluff, nothing terrible should—’
As I thought that, perhaps because it was listening, a Message Window appeared.
[1,000 MP is required to view the future in which the quest is not performed.]
[Spend 1,000 MP to view the details?]
[Current MP: 0]
1,000 MP?
That was enough for me to return to Earth!
Did that mean something worthy of spending that much MP to learn would happen?!
‘No. No, it might just be a bluff—’
As I thought that, the Message Window turned blood-red, like a scene from a horror movie.
What a chilling warning!
What kind of god was this?!
I swallowed a startled breath, and the Chancellor flinched at the sound before turning his head.
“Is something the matter......?”
“Ahaha. No, not at all.”
I gave an awkward laugh and picked up a cookie.
“It was so delicious that I got carried away eating.”
“......”
“I’ll stay quiet, so please continue your work.”
With that, I put the cookie in my mouth and shrank into the corner of the sofa.