It seems the rule of 'go to grad school or get dragged to the army' applies even in a fantasy world. With a trembling hand, I picked up the envelope stamped with the imperial eagle's seal.
[Special Summons for Mage Service] "Fuck."
A curse escaped my lips before I knew it.
[Recipient: Isaac Upperhills] [Enlistment Date: Year 374, March 15th] [Place of Service: Ice Fang Mountains, 3rd Mage Defense Battalion] 'Isaac Upperhills'...
My name was written in neat block letters on the enlistment notice. As you can see, my name is Isaac Upperhills. I might look like an ordinary citizen of the Empire you could find anywhere, but there are two unusual things about me.
One is that this body is a mage... ... And the other is that it's only been a year since I became the owner of this body. Before that, I was a physics graduate student in the Republic of Korea.
My last memory before ending up in this body was reading a strange paper titled 'A Magical Interpretation of the Unified Field Theory'. After I dozed off like that... I had become a mage in another world.
I was bewildered at first, but I managed to adapt one way or another. So, using my background as a mage, I settled down in a corner of the countryside and lived by taking advantage of the villagers. That's not to say I was scamming them.
I just received food, clothing, and shelter in exchange for making some small adjustments to the structures of their windmills and furnaces. But this all too brief time of peace has come to an end.
"Damn it."
Looking at the enlistment notice in my hand, I started to hate the original owner of this body. The original owner of this body, Isaac, was an unemployed youth who had graduated from the Imperial Academy of Magic and was pondering his next move.
And the law in this world is to forcibly push unemployed mages to the northern demonic beast front. If you don't want to enlist, you have to voluntarily become a slave... no, a graduate student. I don't want that.
"Enlisting now of all times... even after becoming a mage, I still have to enlist!"
Come to think of it, the reason I decided to go to graduate school before this all happened was also because of the army. I liked physics, and I hated the army. It was a simple decision.
But what about now?
"Should I just bite the bullet and become a combat mage?"
Rotting away as a graduate student once in my previous life is enough. It was a shame to be stuck in the army, but if I went as a combat mage, couldn't I have it easy, like a military doctor in my past life? I asked the former mercenary, Hans, about this plan.
Gulp, gulp.
Hans, whom I met at the tavern, listened to my plan and downed his beer without a word.
Gulp, gulp. Thud!
Having finally emptied his glass of beer, Hans's mouth opened.
"Absolutely not."
"... Why?"
"The northern front is no child's play."
"Wouldn't it be different if I go as a combat mage?"
"It might be, but..."
"Then I should enlist after all...!"
"Instead, you'll probably see hundreds of corpses before you're discharged."
"..."
"..."
Canceled.
Enlistment is canceled. Hearing my decision, Hans grinned.
"Good thinking, Mage sir."
"Damn it. Graduate school..."
"Well... you'll struggle a bit, but if you endure the process, won't you become a great mage?"
Hans chuckled and ordered another beer. A great mage, my ass. I've seen plenty of people kick the bucket while researching things like superconductors and fluid mechanics trying to become great figures.
My goal is to live a long and healthy life, doing moderately what I want to do, just being ordinary.
"So I'm going to go to the most obscure graduate school."
"And in about ten years, the place you enter will probably become the world's greatest school of thought."
"... Why do you keep saying such troublesome things?"
"Mage sir. Do you remember the day there was a big earthquake in the village?"
"I remember."
Was it about a month after I ended up in this body? I went to help because they said the blacksmith's shop had collapsed due to the earthquake. Hans stared intently at my face and said.
"While working as a mercenary, I've seen so much magic I'm sick of it, but I've never once seen a guy use magic like you do."
"... All I did was repair the building with telekinesis."
"I'm telling you, it was the first time in my life I'd seen 'molten iron' flowing out of that forge, not 'lumps of iron'."
"Well, that's natural since I increased the thermal efficiency."
"The fact that you do it so naturally is what's amazing, man."
"..."
It seems I can't get through to Hans. ... Still, I could agree that graduate school was better than the army. A few days later, I parked a wagon in the middle of the square and gathered the villagers.
From the village chief to the blacksmith and the tavern owner, all the faces I had become indebted to were gathered. I declared before them.
"I'm going to graduate school!"
I shouted at the top of my lungs. Now it was time for tearful and moving farewells. Everyone would surely feel sad sending off the only mage to have appeared in this backwater village.
Maybe they would even hold me back, telling me not to go.
"Finally!"
"Mage sir is going off to make a name for himself!"
"Upperhills! Upperhills!"
Huh?
"Sir! You must succeed when you go to the capital!"
"Go and snag yourself a noble lady!"
What is this. After barely managing to calm the villagers down, I asked them.
"No. I lived diligently here in my own way, shouldn't you at least shed a few tears as I leave?"
"Hmm..."
The village chief slowly continued.
"It's probably because there are no more problems in this small village for Mage sir to solve."
As if in response to the chief's words, the little kid Josh spoke up.
"We can read official documents well now!" ...
Well, of course. Because I taught these villagers letters and simple arithmetic. Right after, the hunter Johan said.
"We don't have to worry about furs anymore, either." ...
That's a given, too. He said he couldn't use a bow after injuring his shoulder, so I personally made him a crossbow. The blacksmith Sandor's mouth opened.
"It's the same for the forge, no problems there." ...
Of course.
Thanks to my improvements on the windmill, Sandor no longer needs to work the bellows himself. The village chief chuckled and said to me.
"So they say."
"..."
"There are no problems left in this hick town. So don't worry and go, sir."
Hoo.
A sigh escaped me for a moment. I had learned firsthand over the past year just how stubborn this village chief was. I hated being spoken to with honorifics by an old man, so I told him to speak casually to me all year, but he never did.
Something about it being the law of the Empire or what have you... Who could stop a man that stubborn. And so, my farewell party for the capital came to an end.
It was the third day of riding the carriage towards the capital.
Rattle, rattle.
The luggage loaded in the back of the carriage shook. There were no particular problems on the journey to the capital. The weather was clear.
So clear I could see all the way to the edge of the horizon far beyond the carriage window. .. Actually, there was one very small problem. The unpaved roads of this world were terribly rough for a physicist's delicate stomach to endure.
So...
"Ugh!"
Gweeeeeek.
I vomited out the carriage window.
Pat, pat.
The former mercenary Hans patted my back. Having finally stopped vomiting, I drank the water Hans handed me.
Gulp, gulp.
"... You're a real handful, sir."
"Tell me about it, Hans. It's a huge relief I didn't refuse when you offered to come with me to the capital."
"Can't you fix motion sickness with magic?"
"I think I could do something by carefully controlling my vestibular system with telekinesis... but if I fail, I'll be instantly crippled, so it's scary."
"Vestibular system...?"
Hans tilted his head in confusion. Should I explain or not. No, if I were to explain, where should I even start?
That there's lymph fluid and otoliths inside the vestibular system in the ear, and they detect things like tilting? If I explain it like that, wouldn't he just wonder what lymph fluid is, or how little stones in the ear can detect tilting? 'To be honest, I don't really know much beyond that...'
My major was particle physics, not medicine, so I don't know much about it. It's because I neglected things outside of physics, following the maxim that 'All science is either physics or stamp collecting'. The irony is that Rutherford, the man who said it, ended up receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, not Physics.
He must have really liked stamp collecting. I should have liked it a bit more... I regret it.
"Damn it, why did I have to major in useless physics...!"
While I was stewing in my thoughts like that, the carriage came to an abrupt halt.
"What's going on?"
Hans asked the driver.
"Uh... on the road ahead... uh... Mage sir, you should see for yourself."
"What?"
At the driver's words, I turned my head and looked at the road ahead. And I felt my stomach churn for a reason entirely different from motion sickness. Far in the distance, in the middle of the road, stood a monster with disgusting green skin.
An orc.
A man-eating demi-human I had only ever read about in books since coming to this world. The creature was rummaging through the corpses in a wrecked merchant caravan's carriage. ... Those corpses must have had families and friends when they were alive.
In an instant, my head grew cold. The driver asked.
"Should we turn back before it notices us?"
"No." In my past life and in my current one, I never had a talent for 'saving' people.
Medicine wasn't my major, after all. But when it came to 'killing' someone, that was a different story.
'Brain surgery' had to be precise, but 'skull-shattering' didn't necessarily have to be.
I took out a steel ball from my pocket. Hans glanced at me from the corner of his eye.
"You're going to do it yourself?"
"Yes."
I placed the steel ball on my palm and closed my eyes. In that moment, the colors and sounds of the world faded into the distance, and the endings of my nerve cells connected to the 'mana field' that filled the world.
As if dipping my foot into a calm lake, all the mana flows around me began to be read by me as minute vibrations. Immediately after, my consciousness spread out, riding the mana field.
Like a sonar wave, my projected consciousness reached the orc's body, reflected off it, and returned, informing me of things like 'bone density, muscle tension, and the most vulnerable curvature of its skull'. With that, the preparations were complete. I began to gather mana and wrap it around the steel ball like a thin film.
I imbue it with magic. First. p = m * v Momentum. The mana grasped the steel ball's mass and finished preparing to grant it velocity.
Second.
R = (v2 *sin(20))/g Parabolic motion. Considering the velocity, I locked in the optimal firing angle, and the mana field vibrated minutely, correcting the trajectory.
Third.
The most important. L = w Conservation of angular momentum. I bestowed 'rotation' upon the mana field wrapped around the steel ball.
Just like a bullet maintaining its trajectory by rotating along the rifling of a gun barrel. The mana transformed into a minute spiral vortex and began to control the steel ball's moment of inertia. With this, all calculations were finished.
The steel ball on my palm was ready to become a cannonball. Immediately after, an amount of mana from my body equal to the energy required for the magic's composition vanished along the mana field. Magic composition complete.
Fire. Shwiiiiik!
There was no loud noise. The steel ball that left my hand raced as if gliding along a pre-constructed 'rail' of mana. And then, about one second later.
Kwadedeuk~! Kwaaaang!
With my eyes still tightly shut, I asked Hans.
"Is it over?"
"... Yeah. The orc's head vanished without a trace."
"Then with this, it's over—" —Kuuuuuung!
"..."
"Wha... what was that sound just now?"
"Don't be scared. It's the sound of the headless orc's body falling."
I peeked my eyes open.
"..."
"..."
"..."
The driver was staring at me with eyes mixed with shock and fear.
"What. Why."
"... It's nothing, sir."
Hans patted the driver's shoulder and said.
"Mage sir's magic is a bit unusual, isn't it?"
"Yes... I've never seen anything like it."
"What this fellow does is a little different from the magic we know. It feels like it just goes 'bang' all of a sudden without any warning signs."
Hans turned his head towards me.
"Maybe the army would have been a better fit for you, sir?"
"Huh? So suddenly?"
"Look at the state of that orc."
At Hans's words, my gaze turned to the orc's corpse.
Gush, gush.
The orc's body was shooting up a fountain of blood towards where its head used to be.
"On the front lines, they'd love a mage like you."
"Uuup...!"
"... What's this all of a sudden?"
Gweeeeeek.
I couldn't hold it in and started retching.
"... I take back what I said about you being fine in the army."
Gweeeeeek.
"A graduate student is a better fit for you."