A low-tier university in Seoul.
In front of the particularly rundown and shabby lecture hall door, Park Ha-jun glanced at his watch.
[13:59:55]
Tick-tock.
At exactly 2 p.m., Park Ha-jun opened the door and strode inside. Click-clack. Only the sound of his shoes echoed through the lecture hall.
"...Class will now begin."
Standing at the podium, Park Ha-jun scanned the room.
There were just four students.
Even they paid him no attention. They were all fiddling with their smartphones.
It was a daunting sight for a thirty-year-old second-year professor.
But Park Ha-jun pressed on with his introduction, unperturbed.
"I'm Park Ha-jun, and I'll be handling Topology this semester."
Class began amid silence.
"While classical Euclidean geometry focuses on measurable quantities like length, angles, and area, topology centers on the fundamental properties of shapes that remain unchanged even if they're stretched or bent."
One student let out a long, drawn-out yawn.
Of course it was boring.
This was an era where Awakeners could summon roaring flames or hurl ice spikes into the air with a mere gesture.
No one had passion left for these dusty pure sciences anymore.
Swallowing a bitter smile, Park Ha-jun pulled out the coffee and donuts he'd brought along.
"This coffee cup and this donut are the same shape, topologically speaking. Why do you think that is?"
Only then, as the sweet aroma and coffee scent filled the air, did the students finally show some interest.
"It's all because of the number of holes..."
Connectivity, holes, paths.
The essential traits that don't change even when an object is deformed just right.
After explaining examples of the concept,
"Haha... Everyone must be tired after lunch, right? Grab some coffee and relax while you listen."
He passed out the coffee and donuts to the students.
The students set down their smartphones.
Park Ha-jun watched the scene with pleasure, then noticed a raised hand.
It wasn't a familiar face. A first-timer in this third-year class. Probably from another department. With that in mind, Park Ha-jun asked,
"Do you have a question?"
"Yes! After graduating from this department, where do people usually find jobs?"
"...Jobs."
Park Ha-jun had once sat in that very seat, asking much the same question.
His mentor's response back then had been a rather pie-in-the-sky, "Isn't romance enough?"
And yet, those words had tickled a corner of his heart.
Park Ha-jun wanted to give the same answer. His passion and love for geometry rivaled his mentor's.
But the times had changed.
In the early days of the Awakening phenomenon, there had been fervent attempts to fuse pure fields like mathematics and science with mana.
But most of those efforts proved meaningless in the face of the unknown power called mana.
Pure academia had been overtaken by brain-type Awakeners.
Once a Fields Medalist couldn't solve a math problem, but an Awakener cracked it in one go—his grad school peers had all dropped out after that.
If even those who'd invested nearly a decade quit, undergrads didn't stand a chance.
So Park Ha-jun delivered a more realistic version of what his mentor had said.
"Well... there's only romance at the end of this path. If you want a practical answer, people are still trying to link it with magic. The pay isn't great, though."
It was a dismal thing for a professor to say.
But he couldn't ruin these bright young futures just to feed his own desires.
"So please think it over seriously during the remaining add-drop period and decide whether to keep attending."
Park Ha-jun pressed the remote.
The projector screen descended.
"That said, for those who stay, I'll do my utmost to make this class an unforgettable experience."
He activated the projector.
The screen displayed a PPT. The shapes drawn on it resembled magic circles—geometric figures tangled in extreme complexity.
"Oh, and I didn't say it'd be unforgettable in a good way."
The students laughed.
Seizing the momentum, Park Ha-jun lectured with all his effort.
"Alright, let's continue..."
He wanted to leave them with at least a slightly positive memory of this time, this field.
The thrill of uncovering secrets hidden in complex structures.
He wanted to convey to them that it was more wondrous than any magic.
After delivering the lecture with such passion, Park Ha-jun added a playful closing remark.
"Ah, and it's today, isn't it?"
Every full moon, humanity awakened in droves.
In Korea alone, roughly two thousand people.
The odds for any one person were slim, but still enough to get your hopes up.
"If any of you awaken, I hope you get a high rank."
It had been eight years since the Awakening phenomenon began. With about a hundred chances under their belts, everyone held out hope.
The students buzzed excitedly, cracking jokes like, "If I awaken as S-rank, I'm dropping out right away."
"See you next week."
Park Ha-jun chuckled and left the lecture hall.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
That evening.
Back home, Park Ha-jun made do with a bowl of ramen.
A professor in the Mathematics Department—a relic of a bygone era.
He covered budget cuts out of pocket just to keep the department afloat.
It had been a year already, but he had no room to feel the hardship.
"I wonder how many will stick around next week."
With the department in dire straits, he didn't even have the luxury to dwell on it.
On the verge of closure, these desperate days felt precious instead.
"Sigh, whatever. Time to finish that paper from yesterday."
Letting out a sigh, Park Ha-jun opened his smartphone.
[Considerations on the Homology Groups of Calabi-Yau Manifolds and Their Correlation with Quantum Field Theory]
A paper with an obscure title.
But Park Ha-jun soon forgot his worries, reading on with keen interest.
His focus didn't waver for over two hours.
It wasn't superhuman concentration so much as escapism.
When reality got tough, Park Ha-jun escaped into geometry papers. Even his old mentor shook his head at the habit.
Since it was the paper he'd been reading the day before, the last page came quickly.
"Hah..."
Closing his phone brought the buried worries rushing back. Just four students in Topology.
In the end, he cracked open a beer and plopped down on the balcony.
The full moon bathed the world in soft light. That moonlight would change people's fates—and the world's.
Through the mysterious phenomenon of Awakening.
"...I wonder what kind of freak Awakener will show up this time."
Maybe even a brain-type who could unravel cosmic secrets.
Park Ha-jun felt no sense of inferiority or deprivation about it.
He actually enjoyed conversing with them. They came up with novel solutions that established scholars never dreamed of.
But brain-type Awakeners didn't enjoy talking with him.
They lacked affection for it.
They dismissed their unprofitable traits and neglected development.
That's why Park Ha-jun didn't welcome the phenomenon itself.
"If things stay like this..."
Extinction. The fate decreed for geometry.
The Mathematics Department—geometry itself—would be completely phased out.
"Sigh... I don't know anymore."
Muttering to himself, he took a big gulp of beer.
At that moment.
[You have awakened.]
"Pffft!"
He spat out his beer.
"...What?"
A system message. The unmistakable Awakening phenomenon.
The event he'd never even considered had come for him.
"Should I be happy about this?"
People had expectations for Awakening.
Transcendent power, money, fame.
Park Ha-jun wasn't much different.
Money. If one Awakening could lift him from this poverty, let him run the department smoothly...
"How great it would be if I could make the Mathematics Department, geometry, prosper."
But.
"...I don't want to become a Hunter."
Hunters. Awakeners who hunted monsters.
It was dangerous. You couldn't survive long without full commitment.
"If I became a Hunter, I wouldn't have time to even think about geometry."
He wanted money for smooth department operations and geometry's prosperity, but that would require abandoning geometry.
"What kind of sense does that make?"
If it were a production-type trait where he could work behind the scenes while keeping his professor job, maybe.
"Hunter? Eh."
Having sorted his thoughts, Park Ha-jun reached for the [Confirm] button to dismiss the status window.
But despite himself, he felt anticipation.
What if a trait compatible with his professor job appeared?
Or.
"A trait that lets me make a fortune safely while keeping my job..."
It could happen.
With the usual human hopefulness, he tapped [Confirm].
"...?"
A word leaped out that Park Ha-jun couldn't possibly ignore.
[Status]
Trait: Magic Scroll Maker
Rank: F
Skills: Magic Scroll Creation, Geometric Interpretation
[...More]
It wasn't the production-type trait or the lame F-rank that grabbed his attention.
Geometric Interpretation.
More precisely, the word "geometry."
Seeing it emblazoned in the status window hit him extra hard.
You always get more excited when an otaku-trigger word pops up in an unexpected place.
Forgetting all about closing the window, Park Ha-jun checked the skill description.
[Geometric Interpretation: Grants vision to interpret magic circuits geometrically.]
"Interpret magic circuits geometrically? What does that even mean?"
Pure math scholars don't neglect applied fields.
Especially something called "interpretation"!
Park Ha-jun's eyes were already spinning.
"Magic circuits? Wonder if that's a search term."
His fingers flew across the screen.
Eight years since the Awakening phenomenon.
Awakener info wasn't restricted anymore.
Magic Scroll Maker wasn't ultra-rare either, so plenty of magic circuit images turned up online.
"Ah, so the drawings on magic scrolls are the magic circuits."
The first image he zoomed in on was titled "0-circle Neutral Magic Bullet."
A circuit etched on a sheet of parchment.
A massive circle like one drawn with a compass, filled with two-dimensional shapes and graphs inside.
"Hmm..."
Park Ha-jun peered at the image with interest. What geometric interpretation was there?
He had the "Geometric Interpretation" skill, but he couldn't grasp the secrets of a magic circuit just from looking.
Still, Park Ha-jun was an excellent mathematician. Observation and analysis were second nature, the type to tenaciously dissect even unsolvable problems for flaws.
He dissected the circuit image.
Linking it to the geometric knowledge neatly organized in his mind.
"It looks messy at first glance... but there's something subtly ingenious about it."
He couldn't explain why, but he sensed beauty in the arrangement.
Intrigued even more, Park Ha-jun examined every detail, including the individual shapes.
"But these shapes are all sloppy. Curvatures, angles, lengths—total free-for-all. The graphs too."
Of course, he had no idea if this judgment held up from a magic circuit perspective.
He was just interpreting it geometrically.
"Hah... This is maddening. They drew it like this?"
As a mathematician, how could he overlook such ridiculous errors?
"...I can't stand it. Did they draw it this way just to mess with me?"
Of course not, but...
To quench his thirst, Park Ha-jun resolved to draw a corrected circuit himself.
"I wonder if a scroll with a geometrically perfect circuit would be different?"
With that, he decided to activate the [Magic Scroll Creation] skill too.
As soon as he formed the intent, a system message appeared.
[Quest Complete: 'First Skill Use']
[Reward: Lowest Parchment, Basic Magic Quill]
[Lowest Parchment]
Max implementable Circle: 0
Mana limit tolerance: 30%
[Basic Magic Quill]
Drawing precision: 1
Suddenly, parchment and a quill appeared at his feet.
"What the heck is all this?"
Whatever, the fine print didn't matter.
Basically, draw the circuit on this parchment with the quill, right?
Park Ha-jun grabbed the parchment and quill and headed to his workshop.
The status window now listed magic spells he could craft into scrolls.
[0-circle: Neutral Magic Bullet]
"So I can only craft this one spell into a scroll?"
To activate 1-circle magic, pay 3,000,000G.
To craft scrolls for the next tier of magic, he had to pay up.
"Doesn't matter. The circuit I'm drawing is for Neutral Magic Bullet anyway."
Without a second thought, he started crafting the Neutral Magic Bullet scroll.
[Draw the circuit shown below.]
The system displayed the circuit—the exact one from the internet image, riddled with geometric errors.
It even marked the order for drawing shapes and strokes.
"Gotta follow the order? Makes sense... otherwise, crafters wouldn't share circuit images online."
In truth, scrolls didn't activate just from copying the circuit right.
Take the round mana clump called a "magic bullet": you had to shape it to clump mana into a sphere (the large circle).
Design the internals to hold the shape (arrangement of shapes inside the circle).
And infuse the necessary mana into the circuit while paving smooth paths for flow (graphs and stroke order).
Ignore the order, and the scroll could overload and fail to activate.
"...Still, I can't just copy this as-is."
It'd result in a geometrically error-ridden circuit.
Park Ha-jun skimmed the system's suggested order a couple of times.
First to grasp the big-picture principle, then to memorize the flow.
"...I don't get the principle, but as long as I follow the order?"
A smirk tugged at his lips as he gripped the quill.
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