Don't Feed the Professor! - Chapter 29

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“Professor, would you mind taking me as far as the Sky Tower?”
I pointed toward it and asked.
To be honest, I wasn’t particularly hungry for credits anymore. But I didn’t want to run into another student and create an awkward situation for no reason.
More than anything, I wanted to get out of this place fast.
“Hmm… well, there’s no reason I can’t. But you sure you’re all right?”
Mallo looked down at me with narrowed eyes and asked. What did he mean, was I all right? Was he about to demand some kind of compensation?
This time what—a fingernail? A front tooth? An eyeball? But Mallo’s answer was completely unexpected.
“It’s no fun. If the game’s too easy.”
At this innocent remark, I found myself repeating Russell’s words verbatim.
“Professor, does this feel like a game to you right now? Really?”
Mallo looked down at me with a serious expression, but the corners of his mouth had been twitching with suppressed laughter the whole time.
Like an adult humoring a small child who speaks too well.
“I figured, since you kept going on about Cheating and all that, you wanted to win without cutting corners.”
“Professor, listen to me.”
I spoke to him earnestly, as if making a pledge.
“I’m the kind of person who wants to coast through life more than anyone. I’m not in a position to be picky about cutting corners or anything like that, and I don’t want to be!”
“Ah, is that so?”
Mallo’s eyes narrowed to slits. His serpentine blue-gray irises swept over me like a snake’s tongue. Though I was probably imagining it, I could have sworn I heard a hissing sound.
“You should have said so from the start.”
And then music began to play.
* * *
[Dang Do Choigo has invited ’48’ to a private conversation.]
[’48’ has entered the chat room.]
[48: Oh my, what’s going on?(*´▽`*) Did you reach out to me first?(੭˙ ˘ ˙)੭⸜( ˙ ˘ ˙)⸝♡]
[Dang Do Choigo: Where are you right now?]
[48: Why? Are you gonna get me a peach or something?]
[Dang Do Choigo: It’s Course Registration day at Gwangryu University. Just wanted to check how you’re doing.]
[48: Huh, what what?!(＞⌓＜) You actually remembered that?! Aww, you’re so sweet!(♡ヮ♡)]
[Dang Do Choigo: ㅋㅋSo]
[Dang Do Choigo: How’s it going?]
[48: Teehee๑❤‿❤๑ Of course it’s going great!]
[48: Thanks for worrying about me!]
[Dang Do Choigo: What’s the event this time? Another survival game?]
[48: ㅎㅎ That’s…]
[48: Classified, you could say?ﾍ(=￣∇￣)ﾉ Sorry, sorry! You understand, right?]
[Dang Do Choigo: ㅋㅋㅋ..]
Tap.
“She’s always pulling some stunt or other…….”
Momo giggled and closed the chat window. She rummaged through the inner pocket of her Leather Jacket and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, placing one between her lips.
Cigarettes were fairly precious goods back at the Stronghold, but considering the ordeal she’d gone through to get here, one stick seemed like fair compensation.
“Phew…….”
She’d thought it was just an ordinary maze at first, but then the ground suddenly crumbled beneath her feet, and deranged Corrupted Students came charging at her with foam at their mouths.
The biggest problem was that she couldn’t discern any pattern at all, unlike before.
And to make matters worse, she’d even encountered a staff member. She should have realized something was off when she noticed no students hanging around that area.
It was a blessing that her expensive Gas Mask had kept her cognition from being warped. Thanks to that, she’d been able to escape according to Protocol.
The real problem came afterward—that girl.
“Tsk, I think I might have grabbed this wrong…….”
It wasn’t a mistake. The Phone Strap dangling from the pocket of the tracksuit definitely belonged to Amelie.
She’d been thinking of teasing the small girl with her wary eyes a little, but she never imagined she’d turn out to be the new Amelie.
Judging by how she maintained her sanity even while standing so close to a staff member, she was clearly no ordinary person.
She might have been an agent planted by some organization, or at the very least a Skilled Player who was hiding her true identity.
“So what the hell is this brat…….”
Momo muttered to herself and glared at the chat window.
She’d always had a suspicion that the hotline’s ’48’ was something fishy.
In the first place, what good could possibly come from revealing your own role in a chat room full of strangers?
Yet 48 kept insisting over and over that she was Amelie.
No one was even asking, but she acted as though she was waiting for some kind of reaction.
“Phew……, I’ll think about it later.”
Momo ground out her cigarette butt under her boot heel and pulled the Gas Mask over her face.
She’d had a rough time finding the entrance to the Sky Tower, but if she could just collect one more Credit, this miserable Course Registration would finally be over.
As she adjusted her grip on the Dagger, watching the Corrupted Students draped in Pixels, that was when—
‘……Music?’
With a crackle of synth-pop, the doors to the Sky Tower burst open with a bang.
[FLAMETHROWER ACQUIRED
――
!!]
Someone extraordinary had arrived.
A woman brandishing a Flamethrower as large as herself emerged, spraying flames as she began incinerating the deranged Corrupted Students.
“Is she—is she insane?!”
Momo yelped and ducked behind a pillar.
Fire roared up, turning the lobby into an inferno. A geometric Pixel inferno, at that.
The Corrupted Students burned, writhed across the floor, and slowly began decomposing into black Pixels.
Watching the new Amelie approach closer and closer, Momo’s eyes darted around for a place to hide when they landed on an elevator in the center of the lobby.
An elevator that just happens to appear in a place like this? Obvious. If she could just make it onto that, it would probably take her to where the final Credit was waiting.
She was about to make a break for it under cover of the chaos—
“Hey, you with the Gas Mask!”
The new Amelie was still spouting flames as she called out to Momo. Without thinking, Momo threw her hands up and turned around.
“Uh—yes?!”
Amelie pulled off her Sunglasses with one hand, shoving them into her tracksuit pocket as she spoke.
“You can’t take the elevator during a fire!”
“……Oh! Right!”
So damn charismatic. Bowled over by her sheer force of will, Momo backed away slowly, muttering to herself.
But was it her imagination? Every time one of the students dissolved, she swore she heard a faint dinging sound.
[MISSION COMPLETE!]
Watching Amelie strike a celebratory pose with her arms spread to the sky and the neon text materialize in the air, Momo thought to herself:
She’d definitely grabbed the wrong person.
* * *
“Let me go over this again. So out of eight Credits total, I’ve recovered six, you’ve got one, and we still don’t know where the last one is—is that right?”
“Yes, it looks like K and Russell recovered theirs according to what Amelie said, and I was acting separately from the other four.”
Momo, the Gas Mask wearer, replied with an overly deferential tone.
“……Just speak casually.”
“Oh, okay, I can do that! Or, I will from now on!”
“You change gears fast. You used to say I was dumb as a doornail.”
Unable to resist the quip, I let one slip out, and Momo immediately clasped her hands together and groveled.
“Haha, ha-haha, wanna smash your head in?”
Hmm, this kind of nerve must be what makes a true Skilled Player.
Momo led me to a nearby fire extinguisher. Though Course Registration was finished, we still had to walk back to the Large Lecture Hall.
What struck me as odd was that along the way back, I saw Corrupted Students collapsed in every corner—something I hadn’t noticed on the way in.
“Did you do all of that?”
I asked, pointing to the slash marks on the students’ necks, and Momo immediately shifted to a cheerful, eager tone.
“Yep, pretty clean work, right? Those guys don’t even know what got ’em.”
Even if she knew the full route, I’d figured the difficulty felt oddly low—turns out my path had been clear because of Mallo all along.
I glanced at Momo’s back as she walked ahead, then pulled out my phone.
[Professor, we’re all done.]
The message I’d sent a moment ago still hadn’t been answered.
〈You should have said so from the start.〉
I thought he was being cryptic, but Mallo had actually turned Course Registration into a real game.
Thanks to that, I was able to get the final Credit without even trying.
A moment ago, I’d lost myself in the atmosphere without realizing it, and when I came to my senses, Mallo was gone.
Given that he hasn’t even replied to my message……. Did something go wrong?
‘Wait, why am I worrying about this person—this professor?’
“Have you made up your mind?”
“Huh?”
Not understanding what she meant, I asked her to clarify, and Momo tapped the chest area of her Leather Jacket. That was where the Gold Coin was kept.
“About Course Registration, I mean. We don’t know where that last one went, but you pretty much got the lion’s share of them this time anyway.”

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