I Need the True Ending to Graduate - Chapter 31

‘But how…?’

Karl Evenhart had been dismissed from his professorship, so he wouldn’t even have a lab at the Academy anymore; his mansion was in foreclosure, and his title had been sold off at a cheap price.

And since he had lost his entire fortune, of course debt collectors would be after him. Even if I tried to contact him, there was no way he would calmly send back a reply.

‘Ah, shit. What do I do?’

Frustrated with no way to reach him, I cursed under my breath and roughly rubbed my face. Then, for the first time in a long while, a quest appeared before my eyes.

[Quest: Clean Lucia’s room and find her theses. (0/5)]

I blinked blankly at the system window.

‘In this serious situation, it’s telling me to clean the room and find theses? Does it look like I’m in the mood for cleaning right now?’

My initial reaction of disbelief didn’t last long. I changed my mind.

The game system had always helped me progress.

When I needed a research proposal, it had told me I could find it by searching the room. When I wasn’t familiar with the geography of the Academy, it had guided me with navigation.

It was thanks to quests that I was able to meet Evan Bell and obtain money.

And if I remembered correctly, Karl Evenhart had plagiarized a total of five theses. The number of theses I had to find was also five.

If I compared the theses in Lucia’s room with the ones he had plagiarized…

‘I can confirm it for sure.’

Whether that lunatic had really taken my thesis and passed it off as his own.

I ground my teeth and walked toward the messy desk with a gaze burning with murderous intent.

After I had been possessed, I had only cleaned the desk once, and since then, left it untouched.

There were too many papers piled up for me to even think of touching them. Going through each one, checking, sorting, and filing them was tedious.

But now was the time to clean.

Among those mountains of paper, my theses were bound to be there.

“Karl Evenhart, you fucking bastard.”

I spat the curse out short and sharp, then, without even taking off my coat, began cleaning the desk.

Though I had thought the papers were piled like a mountain, it turned out to be far more than I imagined.

No matter how much I cleared away, they kept piling up like endless snow, white and black sheets covering my desk.

And yet, it didn’t feel that hard. My rage toward Karl Evenhart had numbed both my reason and my senses.

‘If I ever get my hands on you, you’re dead.’

I glared as if ready to kill my parents’ murderer, focusing with unprecedented intensity as I sat at the desk and sorted the papers.

As time passed, the desk and the area around it gradually grew cleaner.

The papers that had been scattered all over were now neatly organized according to systematic categories.

But the theses Lucia had written, the ones I truly needed, had yet to be found.

‘It’s almost all cleaned, but…’

The system wouldn’t lie to me, and yet I still hadn’t found even a hint of the theses.

Even when I finally finished sorting everything, I still hadn’t found them.

‘Where the hell are they?’

To put the organized documents away, I opened the drawer at the bottom of the bookshelf, one I hadn’t touched since coming here.

There, I found several stacks of papers, crumpled miserably, hiding in the dark.

“Ha. So there were papers in here too?”

With a sigh, I reached in and pulled out the crushed bundles.

They had been left crumpled for so long that they had curled into strange shapes, making it impossible to read the contents.

Some were wrinkled like aluminum foil, so I had no choice but to carefully unfold them one by one.

I knew Lucia wasn’t particularly skilled at organizing, but she had never been the type to carelessly store important documents.

The mountains of paper I had just sorted were numerous, but they were all neat and square, without much trace of creases.

Only the ones hidden in the drawer were in such bad condition.

Just as I realized this, suddenly the title written on one of the papers caught my eye.

『Defensive Magic in the History of the Calypse Empire』

[Quest: Clean Lucia’s room and find her theses. (1/5)]

As I read the title, the system window popped up announcing quest progress.

In that instant, my blood ran cold, and I quickly unfolded the rest of the papers from the drawer, reading their titles.

『A Strategic Study of Barrier Magic』, 『An Argument on the Effectiveness of Large-Scale Barriers』…

There were five in total. The moment I confirmed the title of the last one, the quest count updated.

[Quest: Clean Lucia’s room and find her theses. (5/5)]

I had found Lucia’s theses.

‘Now the only thing left is…’

I naturally turned my head toward the round table. On the table was the school newspaper I had brought back from the library last time.

And there it was written exactly which theses Karl Evenhart had plagiarized.

I sprang up from my seat and snatched up the newspaper.

The moment I unfolded it, that dog Karl Evenhart’s face was plastered in huge print.

I wanted to spit on it in disgust, but now wasn’t the time.

I urgently skimmed through the article, searching for the part listing the titles of the theses he had plagiarized.

Before long, I found exactly what I was looking for.

Right away, I compared the contents written in the newspaper with the titles of the theses I had found in Lucia’s room.

“A Strategic Study of Barrier Magic.”

『A Strategic Study of Barrier Magic』

“Defensive Magic in the History of the Calypse Empire.”

『Defensive Magic in the History of the Calypse Empire』

“An Argument on the Effectiveness of Large-Scale Barriers.”

『An Argument on the Effectiveness of Large-Scale Barriers』

…They were exactly the same, not a single letter different.

No matter how similar or overlapping the content of research might be, there was no way the titles could be perfectly identical like this.

In the end, Karl Evenhart had plagiarized Lucia’s theses.

He had stolen the work of the very student he taught and presented it as if it were his own.

“Ha… ha…!”

The situation was so absurd and ridiculous that I couldn’t even curse. All the insults stuck in my throat came out as hollow laughter instead.

It hadn’t been my research, but Lucia’s. Still, right now I was Lucia.

‘Fuck. Of all things, you plagiarize my research?’

When that bastard was dismissed from his professorship for plagiarism, I already thought it was pathetic, but this was beyond absurd.

“Is this even a romance simulation game anymore?” I muttered into the air with no one to hear.

Maybe I was just too angry, too worked up, but no matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t see this as a romance simulation game.

I hadn’t been interested in the game in the first place, I had just pre-registered on a whim, and now here I was being told to romance capture targets while trapped in a dogshit situation where the protagonist’s advisor stole her thesis.

[To see the True Ending, you must raise the affection of all capture targets to 100%.]

[How to raise a capture target’s affection: Have sex with that character.]

As if reading my mind, a guidance window popped up, unasked for and unneeded.

It felt like it was reminding me of my purpose to keep me from quitting and running away.

Seeing that message made my insides twist. Rage welled up inside me.

I pointed at the window and shouted furiously, “No, fuck. My thesis just got ripped off, and you think I’m going to sit around and date? At this rate, I’ll die of rage before I even get to romance anyone!”

Whether it was scared or just wary of me, this time, no window appeared.

When it had shown up, it had scraped my nerves raw, but now that it didn’t, I felt like I had taken out my anger on the wrong thing, and a pointless sense of guilt came over me.

‘Yeah. I shouldn’t be yelling at the game itself…’

I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. I needed to calm down, think rationally, and judge clearly.

“Whew…. Whew…”

This wasn’t my thesis. It was one Lucia had written.

It wasn’t my research that had been stolen. Everything of mine was still intact.

I was only angry because what I had learned of Lucia’s past was so fucking ridiculous…

‘But… didn’t that bastard get an award for presenting the plagiarized theses at a conference?’

The moment I closed my eyes, another fucked up thought came to mind.

I snapped my eyes open and picked up the newspaper I had tossed aside. I checked again to see if it was written there.

And sure enough, two of the theses had received awards at a conference. The words were printed clearly.

“Ha. Hahaha… hahah…”

I didn’t even have the energy to curse. A hollow laugh just spilled out.

All my effort to separate myself from Lucia and stay calm was shattered in an instant by a fact so enraging it could give me an ulcer.

For a graduate student, this setting was unbearably cruel, enough to destroy my sanity and my spirit in real time.