<871 – The Possibility of the Adversary (6)>
Professor Mahabharata had a lot on his plate at the Gift Academy.
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① Weekly Event Management
– Danger Assessment: Pre-evaluation and analysis of the danger level in the weekly event hosted by Principal Omoshiroi.
– Minimizing Damage: Establishing and supervising preventive measures to minimize damage during the weekly event, conducting emergency lectures to inform students.
– Post-Event Cleanup: Handling and recovery after the event, removing any dangerous elements beyond the students’ capabilities.
② Points Management
– Students: Managing fluctuations in points across daily life, grades, and achievements.
– Instructors and Professors: Managing fluctuations in points related to education, research, administration, safety, and achievements.
– Surveillance Head Supervisor: Assigning point-calculation instructors, establishing and amending point rules, analyzing the point system of each church, and writing translation references.
③ Facility Management
– Maintenance and Repairs: Overseeing all maintenance work of facilities within the academy.
– New Construction and Expansion: Overseeing the construction of new facilities and renovations of existing ones.
– Closure and Demolition: Managing the closure and destruction of unnecessary or high-risk facilities.
④ External Communication Management
– Parents: Notifying parents about grades, permanent losses, casualties, etc., and mediating any complaints or opinions from them.
– External Agencies: Sourcing teaching materials, appointing temporary instructors, renting personnel, establishing a regional cooperative response headquarters for the weekly event fallout, and overseeing the elections.
⑤ Confidential Maintenance and Disposal
– Confidential Information Management: Checking confidential materials, and initiating emergency responses in case of irregularities.
– Confidential Disposal: Discreetly discarding troublesome incidents to avoid attracting the attention of middle-realm magicians or the principal.
⑥ Faculty Management
– Dissatisfaction Suppression: Suppressing faculty discontent, gauging their desires, and seeking solutions while becoming an emotional garbage can.
– Performance Review: Managing faculty research and teaching performance.
⑦ Campus General Management
– Campus Management: Catering to the principal’s diminishing interest in either the main campus on Gift Island or its branch campus in Goblin World.
– Special Dimension Training Supervision: Overseeing special training from other realms and managing the time ratio and training facilities designated as boring by the principal, preventing invasions by chaotic species and protecting students.
⑧ Principal Responsibilities
– Dissatisfaction Suppression: Entertaining the principal when bored, bringing distractions, and sharing fun stories.
– Danger Mitigation: Lowering the intensity of weekly events if signs of the principal going overboard appear, guiding events in a way that minimizes continent damage.
– Guardian Duties: Managing overall household chores and asset management.
⑨ Mentor
– Student Counseling: Managing problematic students and aiding general students’ adaptation.
– Leave Counseling: Counseling students who wish to take a leave or remain enrolled.
– Outing and Vacation Counseling: Deciding on permissions after counseling students wishing to go out or take vacations.
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Listening to the intimidatingly heavy load of work that Professor Mahabharata had been doing was enough to send chills down one’s spine.
If Oknodie was the superhuman of the student body, then it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say Mahabharata was the superhuman of the faculty with such a terrifying schedule!
He even teaches lectures when he finds a moment to spare.
“Now do you understand how much resentment I harbor towards the principal?”
“You must be completely drained!”
“The most frustrating part is this. It has to be by tomorrow. If I don’t hear a fun story by then, I’ll raise a hellish weekly event to alleviate my boredom! When the principal suddenly gets a wild hair and goes off on one of his tantrums, I have to drop everything and run!”
Tortured by the principal’s demand to forget his boredom, he found himself agonizing.
Mahabharata, who had shouldered a murderous schedule and tremendous responsibilities alone, seemed like the modern-day version of a slave. If one were to pick the greatest sage who contributed to the peace of the middle realm, Oknodie would certainly place Mahabharata at the top.
“Professor Mahabharata deserves better treatment than now!”
“Will you finally do the right thing?”
“Absolutely!”
“Will you stop treating me like an emotional garbage can?”
“You’re not an emotional garbage can!”
“Can you make me lunch as well?”
“Will you eat my lunch?”
“Puff. Sharing your lunch? Indeed, Oknodie’s second-year students are kinder and more compassionate than the common perception. I’ll shamelessly rely on you.”
Unable to endure excessive stress any longer, Professor Mahabharata exhibited extreme emotional fluctuations.
He would erupt into fiery anger towards the principal, fall into depression lamenting his circumstances, and express his sadness, sometimes throwing tantrums in shock.
He might not have regressed to infantile behavior only out of fine pride as a mentor.
Or perhaps he felt a sense of shame from being treated like a child by Oknodie, a genuinely youthful individual.
Oknodie found it amusingly fascinating.
‘Heheh. I’ve never seen Professor Mahabharata burst with stress and run away before. I guess it’s a new event, how intriguing!’
When a clone does things the original hasn’t, it reassures them of their existence as an independent entity, helping them reaffirm their identity.
For Oknodie, this was precisely that moment.
“Professor! What did you want to do while having fun?”
“I want to cut all ties and go take a dive, regardless of whether the academy turns to shambles.”
“Ahaha. That’s the standard!”
“Is that so? I see… So what I desire most while going for a dive is actually to do nothing rather than something, given that I’m always splitting seconds, accelerating time, and dividing my consciousness to overexert myself.”
“Eh? But that makes me bored while accompanying you!”
“Heh, are you already conscious of the principal’s influence for an evildoer? It’s still too early for a second-year student of Oknodie to burden me with such headaches. Please save that for after you graduate.”
Professor Mahabharata adjusted her sunglasses and hat, reveling in the breeze tousling her hair.
Even just closing her eyes and enjoying the wind made her look blissful, and Oknodie learned a significant lesson from her.
Surely, the world has more ways to enjoy than just Oknodie’s way.
Some may rejoice in the warmth of foods they had eaten before, and others may feel happy with familiar flavors.
Let alone, who wouldn’t enjoy the wind? What reason would one have to not find joy in that?
‘Oknodie’s self is so vast that her way of thinking must be what’s right all along.’
It was a delight and simple happiness that was inherently known to the Doppelganger Queen.
Recalling a fact long forgotten renewed her sentiment for the journey towards the taboo city as well.
“What delightful things have you experienced as the Guardian of Dragons?”
“I feel pleased when I manage to have a student who could have perished safely finish a weekly event because of my hard work.”
“… I see! But that’s enjoyable as a professor, not as a Guardian of Dragons, right?”
“That’s true. As a Guardian of Dragons…”
“Yup!”
“Joyful things…”
“What are they?”
“…”
“…”
“Surprisingly, nothing comes to mind.”
Mahabharata’s expression was full of despondency.
“Really? Not even one?”
“Thanks to that person’s splendid temperament, I’ve never had an opportunity to eat sweet potatoes and feel suffocated anywhere, but that isn’t a fun memory either.”
“Wouldn’t it be delightful as the threats to the world diminish one by one?”
“Capturing great evils and making them cultivate the talent for the next play for ruining mine. That was the principal’s motto, so the more peaceful the world became, the more evil entities started to gather at the principal’s residence.”
“But…?”
“Who was managing those evil entities?”
“Ah.”
“Before the academy, it was hell. It was fortunate that it became an academy. Of course, ever since then, it has been a continuous saga of almost overwork.”
If one day Professor Mahabharata unexpectedly lost his mind and started demolishing the academy, one might feel justified in acknowledging him after rolling around like that for a millennium.
Oknodie thought that the professor had truly suffered a lot.
“However… this city. It’s brimming with ominous energy to the degree of recalling the pre-academy era.”
As Professor Mahabharata sensed the ominous energy before the taboo city, a faint smile crept onto his face.
There was no paradise where one ran away; it was a bitter smile born of insight on new burdens piling up.
“Six barriers with specifications like those installed in the Academy’s Great Prison. Five barriers with specifications like those at the Numbers Magic Tool Storage. What on earth is going on here?”
Oknodie replicated a portion of the memories and intelligence of the target she had duplicated as a Doppelganger Queen.
What if there was some sensitive information to disclose?
There’s a foolproof method Oknodie often employed in such situations.
“It’s the Foundation’s Legacy!”
“The Wahyhiemhai Foundation’s confined taboo. Indeed, this place is a secret base of the foundation.”
What expression must the director, who had never wronged a true daughter but then got unjustly burdened with a sin upon a Doppelganger, wear in the netherworld?
Oknodie, feeling a bit guilty, audaciously thought that if they had lived decently, they wouldn’t need an excuse like this, and that it was their wrongdoing for living badly.
Boom!
Yet in this city.
It seemed like the timing for a visit was just right.
The power of Man’s Representative threw the city’s defense system into confusion, leading to the disappearance of lights in various locations, tremendous explosions, facility destruction, and a release of taboos.
“My short vacation is over.”
Professor Mahabharata pulled out a small brown wand that fit comfortably in one hand, sporting a sorrowful face.
