Chapter 3
“……No matter how hard the research gets, I’m not doing hallucinogens. Don’t worry.”
Only then did Isabella seem to believe me, looking sulky.
“But still, you lasted so long in the lab, and now this is so sudden……”
“I’ve finally come to my senses.”
“Even if you quit like this, you’ll have nothing to show for it! Adel, just in case, go back now and beg for forgiveness! Please?”
“…….”
“You never know—maybe they’ll at least put your name on the paper.”
“Yeah, my ‘name’ will be on it.”
I let out a sigh as I packed my bag.
It was true that looking at all the data and experimental records I’d gathered over the years, I did feel a pang of regret.
“……But it’s not worth sacrificing my pride and my future over.”
“Ugh, you’re impossible. Anyway, if you leave, the professor is going to lose it for a while. Actually, he’s already been a nightmare.”
At that, I felt a belated pang of guilt toward my remaining colleagues.
“Really? Has the professor said anything to you guys?”
“Nothing much, just the usual gossip behind your back? He kept muttering your name over and over—seems like he’s seriously thinking about getting revenge……”
It looked like he was finally going to memorize the name he’d never bothered to learn before.
“Let him.”
I shut my bag firmly and asked Isabella.
“By the way, are you going to be okay? Are you going to keep researching here?”
“I haven’t been here nearly as long as you have…… I can still manage for now.”
“Alright, then I’ll wish you luck.”
I gave a refreshing smile—it had been a while.
“If you ever want to escape, contact me. As a senior who ran away first, I can at least give you some advice.”
……Well, I said all that grandly, but the reality was that I was practically unemployed.
Apocalypse or not, the first thing I needed was a new source of income.
‘I do have a few business ideas I’d sketched out while being ground down under the professor.’
For now, I’d stay at home and figure out what to do with them.
And so, when I arrived home by train, my parents greeted me with shocked faces.
“What brings you here?”
Seeing me show up without any notice, my parents looked taken aback.
“……Is that person here?”
I asked about someone’s well-being right off the bat.
A subtle emotion flickered across my parents’ faces.
“Ah, you mean Adrian? He’s probably out drinking with his friends somewhere. He didn’t say he was coming home.”
My mother smiled awkwardly and glossed over it.
Meanwhile, my father’s gaze was fixed on the luggage in my hand. My trunk looked fairly heavy.
“But, what’s all this? Did you get some kind of reward leave from the Magic Tower, sweetie? Did you finish your research?”
His voice carried an unmistakable hint of expectation.
Honestly, considering my personality up until now, quitting research on my own would have been completely unimaginable.
My mother poked my father in the side and said to me,
“You must be tired from the trip. Come in and have dinner with us first, Adel.”
My childhood home, which I hadn’t visited in a long time, still looked cozy on the surface.
But now, that warmth felt a little uncomfortable.
Now that my past life’s memories had returned, I thought I could finally understand how I’d been treated in this house.
Still, this was still my home, and these people were still my parents.
“Yeah, I’m back. Mom, Dad.”
“……Actually, it’s not a vacation. I’ve decided to quit my research.”
Over a simple dinner, I finally broke the news.
My mother’s expression stiffened instantly. My father dropped his fork beside him.
“You quit? What do you mean, daughter?”
I answered calmly.
“It was too hard. It was so hard that I suddenly just wanted to throw it all away.”
My parents’ faces darkened noticeably—shock, bewilderment, and beneath it all, barely concealed anxiety.
They’d probably assumed I’d just come home for a short break. Realizing otherwise seemed to have hit them hard.
“So, what I’m saying is, I’ll be staying here for a while. I just want to rest and sort out my thoughts.”
“Wait, so you’ve completely left the Magic Tower? For real?”
“Yes, I left yesterday.”
My parents’ expressions grew even stiffer upon hearing that.
I’d expected them to be surprised or disappointed that I’d quit the Tower, but something about their reaction felt off.
Is our family…… in trouble?
I’d been sending home plenty of money every month, hadn’t I?
“I’ll head to my room first. I’m already tired.”
I wasn’t in the right state of mind to dig into the reasons right now.
Since dinner was already over, I stood up immediately. First, I needed time to clear my head.
“Alright, go ahead.”
Leaving my parents with troubled expressions, I went into my room.
“……Hmm, it’s just the same.”
Even though my room had been empty for over five years, nothing had changed.
The neatly made bedding, the dusty bookshelves, the notes and documents stacked up inside them.
Still, it was certainly cozier than the chicken-coop-like dormitory at the Tower.
I set my luggage down in a corner and flopped onto the bed. Then I began calmly organizing my plans for the future in my head.
‘Hmm, first, I’ve eliminated the most dangerous plot point.’
Now that I’d withdrawn from the research, its progress would slow down considerably.
I tapped my fingers on the bed, thinking.
‘The problem is Heon, the original story’s protagonist.’
One day, he was suddenly swept up in the apocalypse, but miraculously opened his eyes again—retaining his past life’s memories.
Using those memories, he investigates the cause of the apocalypse and eventually confronts me, the final boss.
But right now, it’s still the very beginning of the story.
Whether before or after his regression, he clearly has no idea that I’m the one behind the apocalypse.
So for now, I should be safe.
Before the protagonist stabs me, I need to completely redesign my life.
‘From now on, I’ll live differently!’
I’ll wear makeup, cut my hair, and be reborn as a fabulous woman~.
Humming cheerfully, I started scribbling in my research notebook:
[To Do]
- Achieve success quickly
- Get rich
- Enjoy everything life has to offer
★ Never, ever live like a slave again
In both my past life and this one, I’d wasted my life buried in the lab like a slave.
I’d only ever been exploited running errands for the professor, and ended up without even a single line of my name on a paper.
‘No wonder I ended up doing something insane like causing the apocalypse after being squeezed dry like that.’
To block off the bad ending from the start, I’d never become anyone’s slave again. I’m the master of my own life!
I began pulling out the notebooks I’d packed in my trunk one by one. Just because I’d decided to quit on the spot didn’t mean I’d come without a plan.
‘I had quite a few useful business ideas among the things I’d researched.’
I mean, isn’t that what everyone does when they’re isekai’d into a fantasy world?
Back when I was a second-year Magic Tower student, I’d written a paper in a feverish all-nighter.
An idea that no one had paid any attention to, but that I’d always believed would be useful someday……
“Found it.”
After a moment, a faded notebook slid into my hand.
Looking at the densely written formulas and model designs inside, a smile spread across my face.
This was a surefire success.
I’d set it aside temporarily due to people around me saying it wasn’t realistic enough, but if I revised and supplemented it using the theories I’d researched so far……
Just imagining it painted a rosy picture of the future. But that was that, and—
“Yaaaawn.”
Before that, I needed to catch up on some sleep.
An emergency was declared in Professor Great Everan’s lab.
“Damn it. Why now of all times?”
Great Everan gritted his teeth and paced around anxiously.
The research on ‘The Flow of Mana and Spacetime Distortion’ was one of the most highly anticipated projects within the Magic Tower.
The Tower Master had high hopes for it, saying that once the principles were uncovered, it would open new horizons in magical tool development.
Adel had been brought on as a researcher precisely because of that background.
Thanks to her, who had consistently shown interest and conducted research in this field since her academy days, the once-formless theory had gradually begun to take shape over five years.
As a result, they had recently succeeded in an experiment that observed minute distortions in spacetime using mana.
