The Regressor stared at Azzy and me with cold eyes. After deploying every ounce of my verbal dexterity, I finally managed to persuade her. Though she hadn't let her guard down, she seemed to have decided to observe for the time being, sheathing her sword.
Breathing an inward sigh of relief, I was suddenly struck by a question.
"By the way, Trainee Shei."
"What."
"What brings you here? Don't tell me you were tailing us."
"Tailing you? I was just looking for you and happened to follow you here!"
With Chun-aeng once again floating above her head, the Regressor crossed her arms and tilted her head slightly.
"Tyrkanzyaka was curious. About that class you mentioned. She wanted to know when and where it would be."
"Huh? That was a real thing?"
You're the one who said you'd do it!
The Regressor glared at me as if I were an idiot. I flinched and could only nod.
"Ah, alright. I just have to prepare, right?"
"You'd better prepare well. I'll be looking forward to it."
Turning her back to me, the Regressor added one last thing.
"Of course, I'll be attending as well."
Me, a guy who scraped by in the back alleys, giving a class? I didn't have the kind of knowledge needed to teach anyone.
I might be one of the more educated people here, but my academic career consisted of graduating from an elementary citizen school and dropping out of a secondary military school.
The fact that I even made it to a secondary military school meant I'd received a higher level of education than your average level 1 citizen. But that was only because I'd read the mind of the student ranked second in the entire school. If it weren't for my perfectly legal mind-reading-based cheating, my education would have ended with citizen school.
You might ask why I read the mind of the second-best student. Because I was the best.
It wasn't that I'd earned first place with my own abilities. It was only possible thanks to the power of every student in the exam hall who showed me their thoughts. All you test-takers, lend me your knowledge!
To all the students whose ranks were pushed down by one because of me, I send my thanks and my apologies.
Thinking back on it brings up old memories. Thanks to my excessively high grades, the wardens praised me as a genius who would bring glory to the Military State, but I bombed the practical exams so spectacularly that the Advanced Military Academy was out of the question. So I dropped out, basically running away. And now look at me.
Like many people who've aged poorly, I found myself muttering as I recalled my student days.
"Maybe that was the golden age of my life."
Those days when I could get by on mind-reading alone. How I miss them.
Chewing on old memories I thought had long lost their flavor, I found they still had some taste. The only problem was that I couldn't remember a single thing I was supposed to teach.
As I unconsciously fiddled with my pocket, an idea suddenly struck me, and I clapped my hands together.
"Ah! I've got just the thing!"
This would work. I smiled to myself.
The first through third floors of Tantalus were prison cells. A normal prison might evoke a stuffy atmosphere born from oppressive order, but Tantalus, a prison with only inmates and no overseer, subtly deviated from the archetype.
Mainly in that the stone walls were crumbling and the iron bars were bent every which way.
It seemed the iron bars and stone walls were no obstacle to the prisoners held here. The stone walls were smashed, the steel doors were flattened like thin sheets of dough, and the iron bars meant to confine the prisoners were twisted like taffy. A spear made from three braided bars was embedded in one wall, while one cell had been neatly cut out and lay on the ground. So bars could be twisted and entire rooms could be carved out.
Crazy.
It seemed that to the prisoners here, the prison was nothing more than a toy.
How chilling. How did the ordinary laborers survive in a place teeming with monsters like this?
Ah! They couldn't, so they all died!
Having solved the mystery, I ascended the stairs with a much lighter heart.
The fourth floor and above was the laborers' domain. It was also where I, with nowhere else to stay, was currently living. The doors couldn't be locked but could be opened and closed freely, and it had the bare minimum of amenities like a cafeteria and a laundry room.
I headed for the worker training room at the end of the 4th-floor hallway.
"Good morning!"
My 'trainees' were waiting for me there.
A vampire's coffin, radiating an ominous aura, had pushed aside the desks and chairs and was floating in the air. The Regressor was sitting with her arms crossed and legs askew like a delinquent, glaring at me. Azzy was lying on her stomach in a corner of the room. She just looked like she was here to hang out.
I stood at the podium, the center of everyone's attention. Though it was a humble classroom with only one person, one corpse, and one dog, I couldn't help but feel a strange tension standing up front.
Before I began to speak, I took a deep breath to calm my nerves.
It's fine. I've done this plenty of times. Just think of it as selling snake oil to a sucker. Nice and easy.
It wasn't much different, really.
"Alright. First, let's go over the objective of this class. Based on my observations over the past two days, it's clear that you, with your inhuman powers, lack common sense. If I were to send you out into society as you are, you wouldn't be able to blend in with people and would inevitably be ostracized. And if that happens, you'll just end up back here, won't you? So."
[A moment.]
A gloomy voice echoed from within the coffin. The vampire spoke in an annoyed tone.
[...You, who claims to have come to teach. What is the meaning of that attire?]
"Huh? What's wrong with my clothes?"
A standard-issue Military State shirt and underwear-integrated shorts. It was a casual outfit, but this was pretty common.
However, it seemed even this level of casualness was unsatisfactory for the thousand-year-old fossil of a vampire.
[Knowledge is like water. It must flow from a high place for those below to receive it. Therefore, one who is an educator must always possess the authority befitting that role. How can you expect anyone to be inclined to listen when you are dressed so ignobly?]
"This is absurd. Never in my life did I think I'd get a fashion critique from someone in a coffin."
[...This is.]
"Ah, I know, I know. It's like a wheelchair, right? I'm not going to give you too much grief over it."
Cough! Cough!
The Regressor, who had been listening quietly, her face turned beet red as she burst into a fit of violent coughing. It seemed the wheelchair comment made her lose it. It wasn't my intention, but it did fix her slouch, so I'll take it.
'...Wheelchair? He speaks nonsense again... But what is that? For some reason, it sounds unpleasant.'
Good. From now on, I'll make sure never to explain what a wheelchair is.
I gripped the podium firmly and shot a glare at the floating coffin.
"And Trainee Tyrkanzyaka, there's a reason I came dressed like this, you know? Don't doubt your instructor before the class has even begun."
[Very well. Show me. I pray your words are not merely an excuse to save face.]
"Try not to faint from shock."
Time to show this ancient vampire the marvels of modern technology. I stretched my left arm out to the side.
"Citizens of the Military State undergo a mandatory bio-registration at the age of eighteen, when their growth has ceased. Height, weight, body type, skeletal structure, even the thickness and length of their limbs. Everything is recorded and engraved onto the body."
I flicked my wrist. On my left wrist was an unnatural-looking hole. The groove, carved out of my skin, looked as if something was meant to be fitted into it.
"Because of this, the Military State possesses the most advanced personal identification system, and along with it, has created several inventions of great utility."
I took out the object Azzy and I had found in the control room. It was a small, dark blue orb, the perfect size to fit into the groove on my wrist.
By now, most of them had caught on. The Regressor, who already knew what this was, and the vampire, who had realized the hole in my body was out of place.
They had a rough idea of how this orb was used.
"The Military State's technology is the best in the world. This is the alchemic clothing technology of the State, which stands at the cutting edge of alchemy."
With those words, I inserted the dark blue orb into the hole in my wrist. With a click, it snapped perfectly into place.
In that instant, blue threads enveloped my entire body.
Thick, sturdy fibers traced the lines of my skeleton, forming a framework along my skin. Between them, fine blue threads crisscrossed in layers. A garment was instantly woven according to an alchemic pattern. The threads became cloth, and the cloth became fabric, layering up piece by piece.
Feeling like it was the right thing to do, I spun around on the spot. By the time I'd completed about three rotations, a warden's uniform that fit me perfectly had covered my entire body.
In a flash, I had the appearance of a seasoned warden. I saluted in the standard fashion and announced.
"This is a Clothing Packet."
The time it took for the crisp warden's uniform to envelop my body: a mere ten seconds. A revolutionary invention that transformed into clothes perfectly tailored to my body based on the information recorded in my bio-receptor.
Torn, dirty, it didn't matter. Just swap it out with a packet and wipe it clean.
The Clothing Packet, one of the Military State's Seven Major Inventions, and a contender for the most successful of them all.
I pinched the fabric at my shoulder and puffed out my chest with pride.
"With the invention of the Clothing Packet, the people of the Military State were liberated from the curse of laundry. It also dramatically reduced the cost of purchasing clothes. With just two or three Clothing Packets per person, you can just keep rotating them."
[Hoh.]
"Do you understand now, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka? Why I came in such a casual outfit. It was to demonstrate how to use the Clothing Packet. For that, it's best to wear only the standard-issue undergarments."
From the coffin, only a humming sound could be heard. But I could clearly hear the vampire's thoughts.
'Fascinating...! So much has changed while I was asleep!'
I knew she'd like it.
It's a misconception that older people have trouble with modern civilization. On the contrary, they are often more eager to embrace it and show a deep interest. Curiosity, after all, is the drive to explore what is not taken for granted.
The only problem is that, whether due to nostalgia or familiarity, they tend to revert to their old ways, saying things like, 'Still, the old ways had their own charm.'
The vampire's interest was now fixed on the bio-receptor and the Clothing Packet.
"A warden's uniform... Hmph."
The Regressor looked at my attire and scowled in displeasure. The vampire asked her.
[Child. Your wrist did not have such a thing, did it?]
"I don't make crap like that."
The Regressor answered curtly.
"That thing is for surveillance. It's a product of totalitarianism, created to monitor and manage every citizen of the Military State."
[Totalitarianism?]
"It means they watch every citizen, monitoring their every move. You need a bio-receptor to enter major roads or facilities. It's so they can immediately arrest anyone who goes down a road they're not supposed to."
[...And what is the problem with that?]
The Regressor, who had seen the future, might not understand, but that vampire was a true ancient. She's lived since a time when monarchies barely functioned. Do you think they had human rights back then? If they did, she wouldn't have died at that age and become a vampire.
Realizing this, the Regressor clicked her tongue and added.
"Besides, there's a much bigger problem with the bio-receptor than that."