Chapter 202 – Ancient Missing Link (1)
“Professor Gracie… Sir, are you talking?”
Dana frowned and used Yerna as an honorific.
In his rigid academia, it was maddening to speak out against the professor who was his mentor. Even if we weren’t working in the same lab now, that girl had more time and experience than Dana.
But is it because he noticed his love for me and decided to give birth to my child?
Dana, unlike her Carmine college days, had a genuine loathing for Yerna. That must have been the name she reluctantly gave to her. Dana became serious, forgetting that she had been selling her side just before.
Of course, my eyebrows twitched after a while when the name of the Mr. Palryun came up.
“Professor Gracie transferred to our university after his contract with Carmine University expired. Did you not know?”
When our reaction was unusual, the dean’s grandmother gave an additional explanation.
Here she knew that Yerna was there. It is a different world where universities and educated people are not common like Korea in the 21st century. How could there be dozens of universities in each country?
Of course, Roadbrick University, located in a trading city with active logistics movement, was a top-notch university in Germania. Enough to hire Yerna as her professor.
The reason I purposely came here to research papers was because I thought there would be no papers left out at Roadbrick University.
‘But I’m still going to meet that bitch.’
Me and Dana thought it would be premature to slap her Yerna during her business trip. Because before our voices got a lot louder in academia, slandering her wasn’t a very good answer.
A gentleman’s revenge can’t be said to take 10 years, but isn’t it not like my thesis will come back just because I’m going to decapitate Yerna right now?
Conversely, he could have been accused of murdering Yerna in order to steal her thesis. If we are considered as the world’s motherfuckers who murdered the Cheon Ik-jang winner, a different world version of the Nobel Prize, we’ll be screwed. Even if he won, he did not win.
“I knew. I didn’t have the intention to visit you on purpose.”
“… Did you?”
When Dana replied coldly, the dean’s grandmother also noticed that the atmosphere was going well.
Lab rooms where the relationship between professors and graduate students are messed up are as prevalent as middle-aged couples who are bored! It’s not fucking weird if Dana hates Yerna, so if this old woman has a clue, she’ll change the course of the conversation.
‘In the first place, how does this grandmother know Dana’s career?’
Yes, that bitch couldn’t have boasted about her self and her slave.
We have officially left a record of entry into this university. Dana signed up as a Doctor of Archeology, and I signed up as the escort, a slippery adventurer. In other words, all the roadbrick guys could know about us was our identities and names.
But you call me all over the place and recite your past career?
All I could say was that I knew Dana’s name and identity beforehand.
Besides, I don’t know why, but within a few hours of visiting the university, the dean received news or called. This was the sound that something had happened to Yerna.
‘I guess she didn’t investigate Dana as her target.’
Because she is Yerna, she was looking into her old career of those years. She must have remembered ‘Dana Verbeia Master’ while working as a researcher in the laboratory of Carmine University.
Anyway, the dean’s grandmother apologized when Dana’s eyes became serious.
“I apologize for investigating Dr. Verbeia’s identity. I must have made a mistake in my impatience. Professor Yerna has already been missing for nearly a month…”
“… I understand. You can.”
Dana answered roughly. Of course, she didn’t apologize because the dean’s grandmother was really sorry, but she did at least pretend to step down. If she was a member of society, she also had to be able to compromise.
And since we paid more attention to the dean’s grandmother than anything else, we didn’t criticize the rudeness.
“Did Professor Gracie say that he is missing?”
Dana asked as if to yield to the dean’s words to divert her attention. The dean’s grandmother changed her expression as if to tell her the sad news.
“Yes. I don’t know why, but she hasn’t been showing up to the lab since a month ago. There is no sign of her entering or leaving her home. So, we wondered how we could ask people we were related to for news, and then we learned about Dr. Berbeia.”
“Aren’t you on a business trip for research or research?”
As if asking if it was her misunderstanding, Dana twisted her head.
Of course, the dean of a top-notch university wouldn’t move with speculation, so Dana’s question was just a reaction to ask for more discussion.
“Our university believes that Professor Grasier did not set out on his own without a word. This is because we promised full research funding when we signed a contract with Professor Gracie. It is unlikely that he cut off the news voluntarily.”
The dean’s grandmother, who speaks as if she doesn’t understand.
If that was true, it must have been a strange thing. The year of Yerna was a year of research without being able to find other nobles or sponsors for over several decades, so it was hard to get research funds.
If you flew without saying anything, there must be a reason for that. It would not have been that he ninjad the thesis with the intention of causing another victim like me. I had to assume that someone was chasing me.
‘There’s a reason I’m guessing.’
I recalled Tabula’s order carefully hidden in Sargadis’ house.
──The current top priority pursuit designator. Archaeologist Jerna Gracie.
An ominous order written in red letters on black paper.
Fran and Dana already knew about the contents.
“I am very worried about the news that he is missing, but I have not heard from him either.”
Dana worked hard to manage her expression so as not to be noticed. I, the escort, was standing on the sofa, so Dana was the only one who tried to peer into the dean’s grandmother.
“I’ve known Professor Grassier for quite some time, but it’s not like him to be away for dozens of days without any contact. Could there have been some circumstances?”
“Yes. I called the two of them to ask if they knew anything about the situation.”
“Even if you say so. I didn’t have a close enough relationship with the professor to exchange personal contact, and even when I last met, I was busy writing my doctoral dissertation. The professor was also busy preparing for the transfer.”
Dana answered politely. She didn’t even have to put on a gura, and she didn’t even stumble on an answer because she didn’t really know why.
“I came today for work at the research institute in academia, so I didn’t even know that Professor Gracie was missing until the dean told me about it.”
“… Okay. You’ve only caused me trouble.”
The dean’s grandmother couldn’t have known whether Dana’s words were true or not, but at least she must have known that she wouldn’t get the answer she wanted from Dana.
She showed signs of dislike, but if she didn’t notice, that person must have never noticed in her life. Such a person would not have been able to win the position of dean of a top university.
“Thank you for being busy. Please go back.”
“Yes. Thank you for your hospitality.”
Dana greeted the dean politely.
Greetings are important. Dana came out because she was a doctorate level, but originally, she wasn’t supposed to be a person like the dean who would ask questions through the change of time.
Behaving rudely here would have caused bad gossip in the academic world. Taking out one’s personal resentment on a loved one is reprehensible in any group.
─It’s all over the place.
We came out into the hallway and didn’t say a word on our way back to the library.
It wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to say or because the atmosphere was bubbly. It was because when we came back to the library, we sat with our backs to the wall and sat in a place where we could see someone approaching and chatting in writing.
-The whereabouts are unknown. Could it be because of that?
Dana, sitting next to me, wrote a note on her notebook. I also picked up a pen.
—I think it’s certain that they’re being chased. The question is, why are you being chased?
-Is your husband stupid? Anything other than that thesis you can guess?
Dana writes letters while stepping on my foot very lightly.
In short, that was correct.
The time I found Tabula’s order was less than a month after my thesis was ninjaed. In the meantime, Yerna wouldn’t have dragged a crazy aggro on Tabula’s group.
The probability that what had been attracting aggro since before in Yerna now exploded has also converged to 0%.
‘If I had been threatened from long ago, I would have been attacked by the Tabulas while I was exploring the ruins with that bitch.’
However, there were no guys who tried to kill Yerna on the tour from Carmina University.
In other words, I agreed that Yerna’s disappearance was caused by something that had happened recently.
It was also a fucking fact that the biggest event of all that had happened recently was winning the Nobel Prize in a different world in academia for a thesis that I had dug into.
Even to me, this seemed like a logical conclusion at first glance.
‘But there’s a problem here too.’
I let out a small sigh.
-At first, I thought I would too. But when I thought about it, I couldn’t understand it.
─?
-Think about it. If it was because of the thesis that received a thousand wings, that division was born? Then why don’t we have any approach? Isn’t it efficient to catch us and dig up our location like that dean’s grandmother?
Cheonikjang.
That other world version of the downgrade Nobel Prize was a prize that Yerna and the couple had obtained from me for a dissertation about ninjas. As much as it caused a sensation in the academic world, Yerna’s new image spread everywhere.
Dana licked her lips and wrote down her words in neat letters.
─Fuck, that’s right. It is known that the thesis was written by Yerna at Carmine University in Britannia, so they should have come to us who were affiliated there.
─And then you wouldn’t have come and said nice things. From what I’ve heard, you probably haven’t been able to find Yerna for at least a month. She could have turned some of the kills on us, but she didn’t.
I don’t know what Tabula’s black organization is.
The problem is that if the thesis is the cause, isn’t it common for the researchers at the Archeology Department of Carmine University to “Help write the thesis” As well.
Doesn’t this make it seem like he’s not interested in anything other than Yerna?
——As you said, I don’t know what it would be like as a group, but I could see a religious color from that bastard and his upper head. I thought it was something like the following because it was a paper that gave a fuck to their doctrine.
─Uh. But that reason is not the feeling that the blasphemers will shut up and annihilate them.
If that were the case, now that the content of the thesis has spread as quickly as it spreads throughout the academic world, there would have been people who were killing and wandering around saying that the archeology world = paganism.
─No matter what group they do, they are doing their activities for a solid reason. So we are not targeted. Maybe they came to the conclusion that killing Yerna would be enough?
When I was so short, Dana stopped taking quick notes.
Then I wrote a small note at the end of the paper.
-What will you do if you find Yerna?
Ah, didn’t we mention this topic the other day when we talked about it?
Is it because the scope and goals of my life are randomly increasing and widening? At that time, there was no room to talk about Yerna while explaining. It was also a bit off topic.
Dana waited for my answer. I wrote honestly.
─There is nothing to forgive.
She’s got a reason, and no matter what kind of nutjobs in the world are walking around,.
That I will never forgive her.
That day, Dana and I checked out the library at Lord Brick College until the sun went down.
However, there was not a single paper on the true use of rune stones.
Not even one.
