Don't Feed the Professor! - Chapter 24

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

I waited in front of the fire hydrant for a long time, but nothing happened.
Russell shook his head.
“Let’s go.”
…….
We walked back down the corridor, searching for the next marked door handle.
I hesitated before speaking.
“Hey, Russell, remember what the Student Council President said earlier? It’s forbidden to injure another student without special permission.”
“Right.”
“That permission… could you get it from a professor?”
“Yeah. Most of them like sticking their noses in student affairs. If you play it right, it works out for both sides.”
“So, um… this person Kay…”
I saw Russell clench his teeth at the mention of Kay’s name.
“He stole my Favor. In other words… he took my assigned professor away from me.”
The picture was becoming clearer.
So the rule prohibits injuring other students, but the misdeeds of a student favored by faculty are overlooked.
Of course, I had many other questions. What exactly was a “Tribute”? How far did “Favor” actually permit?
What happened if an unfavored student broke the rules?
“This way.”
Russell broke through my thoughts and opened another metal door. Just like in the previous room, he crouched in front of the fire hydrant and repeated his knocking.
“Wait, what are you—”
I fell silent not because of the faint knocking sound I heard from the other side of the fire hydrant.
Crack.
Without the slightest hesitation, Russell tore out his own right eye.
This time I couldn’t suppress my gag reflex. But Russell didn’t seem to care at all. He didn’t even appear to feel any pain.
With a dull click, he opened the fire hydrant with his blood-soaked hand, and inside lay an altar similar to the one I’d seen in the Central Library.
“An eyeball… you have to offer an eyeball just to open a door?”
I asked, my voice fracturing. Russell answered matter-of-factly.
“Inflation.”
Ah.
“Either way, it’s no loss to me. I can’t use it in this condition anyway.”
Russell held up the damaged tissue to show me.
“Could you put that away, please…”
I wasn’t a doctor, but in this state, the optic nerve couldn’t possibly be intact.
Then it suddenly occurred to me that I’d put band-aids in my bag this morning. Of course, I had no intention of giving them to Russell.
Regardless of the item’s worth, I didn’t trust this man.
Yet it did occur to me that Russell might also possess something to treat his wounds.
He would know full well what could happen in here.
Perhaps he was already using something to dull the pain?
That would explain how he could walk and speak so calmly in this condition, crawling into the fire hydrant.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you coming in?”
I exhaled slowly.
After checking behind me, I knelt in front of the fire hydrant. Once I pushed aside the white fire hose, I could see another space beyond.
I carefully poked my head inside the fire hydrant. This time, too, it was a corridor. But something was different.
It was certainly the same paneled walls and carpeted floor, but instead of stretching straight on both sides, the corridor opened before me.
It was the entrance to the Maze.
“Ah, I like the Maze.”
Russell murmured.
“You’ve done it before?”
“A long time ago. I think the last time was about five years back…”
“Five years?!”
That meant he’d enrolled at least ten times or more. But before I could ask further, Russell cut me off.
“Anyway, going back to what I was saying—”
“…Oh, you mentioned your professor was stolen from you?”
“My professor and I were, shall we say, quite close. He knows everything about me. By now, all that information has probably passed to Kay. He’s quite capable, that one.”
Close? Hadn’t those two people earlier called Russell’s professor a tortoise or something similar?
It was confusing, but this didn’t seem like the time to press the issue.
“So… your goal is to get revenge on Kay?”
“Revenge?”
Russell laughed. His jaw hadn’t escaped the assault either, and his smile was grotesquely twisted.
“He’ll try to kill me the moment we meet. Probably you too.”
“Then…”
“Strike before he does. That’s when I’ll need your cooperation. He’ll definitely underestimate you.”
I gazed toward the entrance to the Maze. For some reason, an odd sense of déjà vu washed over me.
“This is the starting point, basically. Do you see the Starting Line on the floor?”
‘The Starting Line?’
Following Russell’s direction, I saw something long and flat like a platform at the entrance to the Maze.
“The moment you cross it, you’ve started. Your Clear Time gets reflected in your grade.”
This really is like a game.
Russell shaded his eye with his hand and peered between the narrow paneled walls.
“Looks like it’s empty right now.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s quiet.”
I listened carefully. Indeed, aside from the two of us, I heard no signs of anyone.
Did that mean no one had entered yet?
“Since my vision is limited, I’d appreciate it if you’d take the lead.”
Russell tried to push me forward as if it were obvious.
“What about you?”
“I’ll watch our backs. I know more about the people here.”
I stood for a moment, surveying my surroundings. The corridors stretching long on both sides, and the white paneled Maze yawning open before me.
It was only now that I noticed something dissonant about this place, something I hadn’t thought of while wandering the corridor earlier.
The angles of the walls and corners seemed subtly skewed—they didn’t look quite perpendicular.
The memory of the Underground Research Facility from that first day had me gripped by a thread of panic.
But thinking calmly about it now, all the corridors I’d traversed had been extraordinarily long, yet each one was new.
I traced through the corridors in my mind, connecting them one by one.
I’d been running in only one direction, and each corner had turned right.
If the corridor didn’t stretch on infinitely, then that meant…
“Hey, what are you doing?”
Russell urged me on.
“Wait. I need to think about something.”
“What’s there to think about? You won’t know unless you experience it firsthand.”
I ignored the sound of him tsking and continued thinking.
It was only a hypothesis, but what if all the corridors I’d passed through connected to each other?
What if I hadn’t been wandering through an endless corridor, but rather circling around, say, an octagonal structure?
Then the fire hydrant I’d just passed would be a door leading into the interior of that octagon.
And it was likely there wasn’t just one entrance into the Maze.
It seemed unlikely that anyone slower to grasp the situation than me, stumbling through corridors and wasting time, would be in this underground facility.
Yet the Maze was empty?
There were only two possibilities. Either Russell was lying… or entering the Maze carried some kind of Penalty.
I looked down at the platform beneath my feet.
Suspicious. But I couldn’t just stand here forever either.
I hesitated, then pulled out Amelie’s phone. There was a message from Maro.
[You can just hang up on the professor like that? How mean~]
…….
[Don’t put wavy marks on your texts]
Ding.
[Why~~?]
[It annoys me]
Ding.
[When you feel that way, you’re supposed to say you’re sick of it~~~]
“I’m genuinely sick of this…”
“You seem very relaxed.”
It was Russell who’d muttered that. The instant I was about to ask what he meant, my back was shoved forward.
“…?!”
Russell was trying to push me forcibly into the Maze. I desperately reached back and grabbed his shoulders.
When I hung on with all my strength, Russell seemed startled. I seized the moment and quickly pulled out the Baby Food Encyclopedia.
‘Got it…!’
I crouched low, pressed it against Russell’s waist, and pressed the button. Sparks flew with a crackling sound.
And yet.
“Well, so you’re armed too?”
Looking at Russell’s half-destroyed face mocking me as if nothing had happened, I was aghast.
No, wait. There’s nothing strange about it, is there? Someone who could do that to their own eye without even flinching wouldn’t be affected by a simple Stun Gun.
But if he couldn’t feel pain, why had he been so flustered when Kay attacked him?
What had changed?
What was different?

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————