Nothing to Report Today

Over the next few days, Kraft felt as if he had returned to the life of a student he once loved most.

Every morning, as the slightly salty mist drifted by and the academy Clock Tower in the distance struck six, he would sluggishly crawl out of bed.

He would take his double-edged sword into the inn's backyard for some morning exercises unsuitable for idle onlookers, just to maintain his physical fitness. Although his future career path was far removed from cracking skulls, maintaining a good level of health was necessary—at the very least, it could prevent sudden death.

After working up a light sweat, about half an hour would have passed. This was the time to head to the counter on the first floor of the inn to order a piece of grilled fish, accompanied by bread, to finish his breakfast for the day.

As a young man with a high level of physical activity, Kraft usually had to consume a double portion to fill himself up. This hearty appetite was something the soul from another world usually only experienced when eating at a buffet.

After finishing breakfast, he needed to return to his room to change into the academy's black robe, use the hem to cover his sword, pin the lecturer's badge to his left collar, and then check the lesson plans he had organized the night before, tucking them into a book before heading to the academy to teach his students.

At times like this, he would always miss the convenience of PowerPoint. The soul from another world was born in an era of rapid electronic development; when he was young, he could still see large blackboards covered in chalk writing, but as he grew slightly older, they were replaced by electronic whiteboards, and by the time he reached university, only PowerPoint remained.

Including himself, most people had long since lost the ability to write on a vertical surface. He hadn't expected that he would now have to hold a piece of chalk and write on a painted wooden board.

It was fortunate that someone who had practiced swordsmanship since childhood had good arm strength; otherwise, the task of drawing diagrams and explaining them on the blackboard every day would have been nearly impossible.

Even so, after a long morning lecture, he would feel a dull ache on the outside of his elbow joint. That was a common symptom for the teachers in his other world, especially the mathematics teachers who loved to write proofs on the blackboard; they would fill several boards in a single class.

Thinking about it now, it was likely lateral epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow. With long-term strain on the elbow joint, if he didn't pay attention, inheriting that tradition would only be a matter of time.

Unlike other lecturers at the academy who didn't do much hands-on work, Kraft could not adapt to explanations without diagrams. Amidst the rustling of falling chalk dust, accompanied by coughing and sneezing, one anatomical drawing after another was reproduced by him on the painted board.

To mark the diagnostic points, he had to smash and sharpen the chalk before class to write in thin, clear characters.

A part of the soul from another world was tireless in this; he had rediscovered his sense of purpose here.

With the changing of the times, he had lost the modern medicine that occupied half of his textbooks, and his methods were limited to little more than manual reduction and physical examinations; anesthesia, hemostasis, and asepsis required for surgery were completely out of the question.

The complex biochemical mechanisms he had once spent entire nights memorizing were like a joke here, and he was like a phone with no battery—even with a thousand skills, without the support of modern society, he could only be used as a paperweight.

Instead, it was the students at the Medical School who encouraged him.

The lessons Kraft meticulously prepared were extremely well-received by the students. The packed classroom was filled with black-robed figures who had come specifically to hear his lectures, some of whom even had badges pinned to their collars.

By the second day, someone had taken the initiative to bring a few new painted boards, hoping that Kraft would switch to a new one once he filled it up, rather than erasing and rewriting, to give students who couldn't make it a chance to learn.

It was a somewhat short student who, along with his friend, carried the painted board to the classroom and made the request in a rather embarrassed tone.

This was the first time Kraft intuitively realized the value of everything he was doing, feeling that he might truly have a chance to push the medical profession forward within the shackles of this era.

He gladly accepted the request and announced to the entire class that if they had any questions or suggestions, they could bring them up at any time.

Just like that, Kraft gained an extra Q&A session after his classes. The students quickly grew close to this knowledgeable and easygoing lecturer.

Through close contact, Kraft discovered that not many of them were close to his own age; more were two or three years older than him, or even nearly thirty, and most were unmarried.

The majority came from small merchant or scholar families, with a few from declining small urban noble families, and none were the eldest sons.

At the academy, limited by the current level of medical care, the Medical School could be classified as one of those less-favored choices. Those with better conditions tended to choose theology or law as their path, with literature and history as a secondary choice.

In this day and age, there was no such thing as graduation rates or employment rates. Let alone trying to scrape by at the end of the term, whether there was even a final exam was a question in itself.

The courses were also characterized by their casual nature; there was only a final examination for the bachelor's degree, and if you didn't pass, you kept studying until you did. Many students who weren't particularly gifted might spend most of their youth at the academy.

Given that the gender ratio in all current schools was hard to describe, the fact that the word "bachelor" was associated with being a single man was indeed not without reason; sweet campus romances didn't exist even in dreams.

Oh, speaking of which, Kraft suddenly remembered that he had no romantic experience himself, so he was completely unqualified to sympathize with them.

After finishing his teaching, everyone would happily go to the tavern next to the academy to have lunch, which was still the classic grilled fish, accompanied by some lettuce, onions, and beans.

Professor Calman was right; this tavern was extremely popular among the students. The only drawback was that students from other colleges were also present, so everyone couldn't talk freely about academic issues that might cause misunderstandings.

After lunch, Kraft would go to the professor's room for a nap. Lecturers didn't have dedicated offices at the academy, but Lucius was happy to temporarily open the professor's quarters to him, while also having Kraft perform a simple check-up on him there every day.

The result was, naturally, nothing abnormal. After being away from the Black Fluid and related items, Lucius's interest in conducting experiments seemed to have diminished, and he no longer mentioned the Black Fluid frequently—he wasn't sure if it was just his imagination.

After his nap, Kraft would begin his daily copying work.

The main content consisted of that professional knowledge which was currently completely useless. After some consideration, Kraft still decided to record everything he had learned onto paper and seal it away.

Even if he wouldn't live to see that day, he could donate it to a university or some other institution with the capacity to preserve it, waiting quietly for the level of technology to develop enough to make use of it.

He could write many copies; surely some would be preserved in history. By then, the development of medicine in this world would be able to avoid many detours and spare many lives.

To this end, he diverted a portion of the money his grandfather had set aside for him to purchase property, paying out of his own pocket for better quality paper and ink.

Kraft abandoned his favorite cursive and Gothic scripts, discarded all embellishments and ligatures, and began to copy it word by word in the most rigid, clear font.

This was not an easy task. Although he could clearly recall every textbook he had ever studied, the localization of the translation made his progress worryingly slow.

The purpose of this work was to convey information as accurately as possible to people many years in the future; he could not use contemporary, ambiguous vocabulary, he could not allow for too many transliterations, and he was required to coin terms based on local vocabulary and affixes.

Every technical term had to be explained the first time it appeared, but the explanations contained other technical terms, which in turn dragged out even more concepts and references. For someone with an upgraded brain that never forgot, this was a form of immense torture.

However, Kraft's proficiency in the Norse Language was not high, and he had to ask Lucius to borrow professional dictionaries from the School of Literature and History to self-study word-formation rules and eliminate spelling redundancies.

Then he discovered that this dictionary, which had been borrowed through much effort and claimed to be the most comprehensive, contained contradictory errors itself.

Combining all these factors, Kraft's progress was less than one-tenth of what he had expected when he first started writing, and to this day, he was still stuck in the first few chapters of his freshman-year Systematic Anatomy and Regional Anatomy.

This was only because his lesson preparation overlapped with his copying content, saving him a lot of time; otherwise, he would probably still be flipping through the dictionary.

Thinking about the hundreds of millions of words in books waiting for him to translate and illustrate word by word, this sense of collapse successfully defeated the man whom even the Anomalous Phenomenon hadn't managed to kill.

As the two o'clock bell rang, Kraft climbed up from the table, took out paper and pen, and began today's transcription.

The manuscript filled with handwriting lay spread out nearby to let the ink dry, sunlight spilled through the window onto the paper-covered table, the shadow of the ink bottle stretched as time passed, and the occasional sound of students talking drifted in from outside.

He was immersed in his own world, as if the transition had never occurred, his soul—wholly devoted to his studies—sitting in the lecture hall that afternoon, his freshly written notes before him, ready to smudge into a blur at the slightest accidental touch.

Writing gave him a sense of self-forgetfulness, and it was only when the light grew dim that he jolted awake from this state, the Clock Tower having already completed its sixth chime of the afternoon.

Kraft stood up to pack his things, stacking the day's work neatly, then returned to the inn alone with his books tucked under his arm, enjoying a solitary meal of cod chowder and bread before retreating to his room to light a candle.

He spread out a sheet of low-quality, brittle paper, the kind used for unimportant daily records, pressed from coarse fibers that would snap with a crisp crack like dried seaweed if left for too long.

But it was perfect for this. He needed to draft the lesson plan for tomorrow's class before exhaustion set in, sketching out the diagrams he would need on the fragile paper.

After the final bell of the night, to ensure he would have the energy for tomorrow, Kraft blew out the candle, bringing his repetitive yet fulfilling day to an end.

This was good enough. Kraft lay in bed, feeling a long-lost sense of peace in the darkness. He was content to spend his life this way, rising from lecturer to professor, and if possible, becoming renowned far and wide, leaving books for future generations.

As for the Black Fluid or any Anomalous Phenomenon, it would be best never to touch them again. Once Professor Calman returned, he would warn him to stay far away from that stuff; wouldn't it be better if he just helped him compile his books instead?