“…That’s why anti-memetic magic is different from memory magic by such a wide margin,” the professor read from the book in her hand. It was a platinum-blonde woman called Isabel. Her lectures were mostly easy to follow but spectacularly boring.

Especially the anti-memetics class, which Alec had no memory of ever choosing. But it showed up on his timetable, and he had a yearly course credit to fulfill. Fortunately, he had just the right tools to deal with this problem.

Alec’s hands moved completely independently from one another. While his left was slightly clumsily noting down the lecture, his right hand and eyes were focused on a textbook, occasionally taking notes. Every now and then, the mana brain would ask him to check the blackboard, and Alec’s eyes would oblige.

With practically two brains, he could focus on two things at the same time. The mid-term exams were nearing. The week after the next, around this time, he would be taking his first exams in this world.

With his relatively high mind stat and the mana brain, he had already gone through the necessary topics for the exam once without using any focus potions —Which had become much less effective after he got the mana brain—. A few more times, and he would be on his way to get great grades. He could imagine the faces people would make once they saw his scores.

‘Getting surpassed by an amnesiac. Truly soul-breaking,’ Alec thought to himself. However, as both his brains were focused on studying, he couldn’t pick up on the cues the professor had been sending him, which led her to suddenly stop speaking. When she did, Alec’s mana brain warned him about the situation. Unfortunately, it was too late.

“Mr. Greenwood?” Professor Isabel called out. There seemed to be an underlying hostility under her voice, which made Alec wary. He tried to remember if he had ever offended her but realized he hadn’t even seen her outside the lectures. “I’m sure you have something exciting you are dealing with there. But would you mind coming here and solving this question if you are good enough to not care about this lecture?”

‘Oh god…’ Alec thought to himself. Both he and the mana brain were completely dumbstruck. They eventually realized the situation and poked each other to wake themselves up. ‘This is a cliché among clichés! Every single book I wrote had this exact scene in it. And it never gets old!’ He reminisced. Alec felt touched, enough to make him smile gently. There was no way he was letting the chance of enacting such a scene go.

“Of course ma'am,” he said with a bright voice, which seemed to surprise the Professor positively, as she released her folded arms and stepped away from the blackboard. Alec got up and walked up confidently. Feeling the gazes on his back, Alec picked up a chalk and took a look at the question.

‘Huh… It’s this thing,’ Alec thought to himself. There were two incomplete magic circles on the blackboard. Fortunately, he had enough knowledge about both.

“The left one is a first circle spell called Anti-Memetic Shroud,” Alec started explaining. His voice was clear, and there wasn’t a hint of hesitation in it. The speeches he gave in his previous life helped him out. He knew how to make his voice heard, even in the most stressful situations. “It is a simple, brute force form of anti-memetic spell that disconnects the information flow one-sidedly between two objects or beings. The catch is that the caster has to be of much higher level than the target.”

Previously, Professor Andrew had used this spell on Alec to disappear on him. At the time, Alec had thought it to be teleportation magic. But there was no such thing as teleportation magic in the records.

“And the right one is…” Alec muttered. “This one is also a first-grade spell, and it’s called Confuse. It has the ability to inflict some amount of confusion on the opponent, assuming that it gets through their mental defenses.”

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“Great. Now fill in the blank parts of the circles and tell us how these two are different,” Professor Isabel demanded. She was about to bite her fingernail before she barely stopped herself.

As per her order, Alec filled in the incomplete parts of the magic circles with the help of his mana brain. He then dusted off his hands before placing the chalk aside and turned toward The Professor.

“The difference between anti-memetic magic and memory magic is the side they have effects on,” Alec started explaining in his own words. Although Professor Isabel had just explained the topic and he remembered the explanation word by word, he still chose to go with his own description. “There are two participants in knowledge. One is the one that knows —and memory magic deals with that—and the other is the one that is known. When a mage casts memory magic, they are meddling with other people’s minds. However, when someone casts anti-memetic magic, they are dealing with the knowledge itself.”

“Huh…” Professor Isabel exclaimed. She touched her chin for a moment and nodded along. “That’s a good explanation, Mr. Greenwood,” she unwillingly said. Her angry frown had been replaced by a neutral expression. “What do you think about their strong and weak sides?”

“Hmm…” Alec hummed for a second. He hadn’t particularly paid attention to anti-memetic magic before, so his takes on the topic were undeveloped. “Anti-memetic magic is harder to notice, has a wider range of use, but is more indirect. Memory magic is the exact opposite. It is easy to notice, can only be used against a couple of people at the same time at most, and has a very forceful style.”

“Excellent. You can go back to your… thing,” Professor Isabel muttered defeatedly. She didn’t seem like she would hold much of a grudge, which made Alec breathe a sigh of relief. He would be lying if he said that he wasn’t scared of angering The Professor to the point of getting marked by her. Who knows? There were a lot of teachers who fell to the dark side because of an embarrassing situation in the web novels he read before.

When Alec sat back down, he noticed the reaction of the class to be mostly indifferent. Although there were some who were impressed by his knowledge, that was it. No one was whispering how shameful it was for The Professor to do something like that, nor were they talking about how Alec had shown her what he was made of.

As he settled onto his seat once more, the small smile on Alec’s face disappeared. Instead, it was replaced with a grim expression.

‘On the other hand,’ he thought. ‘She didn’t get angry at me because of the questions, but was already angry at me because of something else.’

So far, Alec hadn’t heard of Professor Isabel being a hard-ass. The woman was famously a relaxed person, giving a lot of leeway to students most of the time. There was no reason for her to get angry at Alec for such a simple thing. Unless obviously, there was another underlying problem.

As the lecture ended, Alec gathered his stuff and went to the cafeteria to meet up with Evan and the others. They had previously agreed to meet up for lunch at the cafeteria every day. Which Alec thought of as a good chance to learn more about Professor Isabel.

Alec greeted the trio who had already started eating and plopped himself down into a chair next to them.

“Something interesting happened today,” Alec said. He chewed and swallowed the food in his mouth before explaining the situation.

“That’s interesting,” Thomas said. “I took that class last year. She doesn’t do stuff like that.”

“Yes, that was also what I heard,” Alec answered. “But here we are… Any news about her lately?” he asked Evan.

“Hm… I think she has gotten a new assistant. But that is hardly something rare. I think this is the fifth one,” Evan answered calmly. “Maybe she had a problem with one of them and tried taking it out on you?”

“I don’t know…” Alexei chimed in. “Thomas says that he hasn’t even seen her get angry before. It’s not like she hasn’t had personal problems before, right? I think she has a special grudge against Alec.”

All three turned their heads to look at Alec at the same time.

“What? I didn’t do anything,” Alec said. He then sighed and finished his meal quickly. “Who wants to hang out?”

“Sorry,” Evan said. “The exams are close, and I’m interested in the second-place reward.”

“Reward?” Alec asked with a raised brow. He hadn’t heard of a reward for the exams before.

“You don’t know?” Evan asked. “The first three places for each grade get rewarded. They give the second place a mana eye circle.”

“Like the one Iris has?” Alec asked. Evan nodded in answer. “That’s interesting… What do they give to the first place?”

“That has a funny answer,” Evan said. “Most of the time, students do their best to avoid becoming the first. Because the only thing they give is access to the library’s second floor. Apparently, most students can’t even begin to understand what is written in the books there. So most find it useless.”

“Access to the library’s second floor…” Alec muttered. He then smiled and asked.

“Who wants to hang out? At the library of course…”