“Young hero. Wake up.”

Young hero? Where does this suddenly familiar way of talking come from?

I had been deep asleep.

The long winter vacation had started.

The money in my account kept changing the unit it was counted in.

It was a sum I couldn’t have dreamed of in my past life.

The time to move to the big table was close.

I had been preparing from every angle.

But my age had me by the ankle.

The label of minor was a large restriction.

I had fallen asleep thinking about this and that.

And then, in the dream, a voice.

“Is that you, old man?”

I thought of the old man who called me the first time.

“My name is Chris Barnsdale.”

What? Chris Barnsdale?

What foreign-made old man is this?

My eyes snapped open.

Where is this now?

A blond middle-aged gentleman in red Chinese robes was looking at me steadily.

Scholarly type.

The particular stubbornness I had seen in professors came off his face.

The round black eyeglass frames were striking.

Even after dying and joining the ranks of immortals, it seemed the detail items were still available.

The place was a handsome Chinese pavilion with the eaves curving up sharply.

The floor area was no joke.

But something felt empty.

The ground was bare earth, and the trees and flowers around the pavilion were planted here and there in patches.

The lot was wide and the look of it was desolate.

By anyone’s eye it was an unfinished house, far short of what it needed, left half-built for lack of money.

“Where… is this?”

“My house.”

His way of talking was truly refined.

“Your house?”

“I’m short of points, so my level is low and the house is still humble.”

“…”

What fresh nonsense is this?

What are points and what is a level?

“I called you here, young hero, in the hope of mutual aid.”

Mutual aid?

A thought flashed through my head.

“I-is this about tutoring?”

There was a set of circumstances that pointed right at it.

Divine Lord Cheollyong, who had taught me severely a few months before, came to mind.

It was much too similar to that situation.

“Young hero. Have you received tutoring from anybody other than me?”

The Western gentleman used an outstandingly musty way of talking.

A young hero, of all things!

“I’m asking because I’ve been dragged here out of nowhere. What is it you do?”

My instincts had gotten very quick.

A man has to be good at improvising if he wants to succeed.

This foreign old man, Chris Barnsdale, looked somehow innocent.

“I am a linguist.”

“Yes? A linguist?”

“In my lifetime I used the languages of twenty-one countries as though they were my mother tongue. Beyond those, the languages I can handle come to some fifty.”

“T-twenty-one countries?”

Is that possible?

It meant he knew every language in general use on the planet.

Right now English alone was more than I could handle.

My head had opened up, but language isn’t a study you complete overnight.

My appetite came up sharply.

“I know your language ability is lacking. I will help you.”

“Yes…”

An immortal who had come knowing something.

I was slightly cowed.

“The foundation of human relations is language. Language is another word for culture. If you do not understand that, you cannot undertake anything great.”

He said he was a linguist, and he certainly talks well.

I nodded along.

“To acquire a language, particular know-how is required.”

Sitting in the pavilion without so much as offering me a cup of tea, Chris Barnsdale unspooled his lecture.

He looks like he hasn’t got the money to boil a cup of tea either.

I lent him my ear and listened closely.

The one time I had taken tutoring from gods, the scale was different from any human’s.

Take it and it’s pure profit, no question.

“After choosing a language, you must begin acquiring it through material that concerns you. The brain moves when it is stimulated by curiosity. And you must cast the spell on yourself that language is a definite instrument of communication. Approaching it academically is a fool’s business. The base of language begins from the open posture that this is communication between you and me. At the same time you must listen a great deal and be able to call up any number of images.”

However bored this foreign gentleman has been, the words come out of him without a pause.

He has invaded another man’s dream and is in the middle of a full address.

A yawn tried to come up inside the dream.

It had much the same flavor as the principal’s assembly talk.

“When you learn languages you must also know how to mix them appropriately. You must never hold fear. And it is important to find a suitable language teacher and learn from him. Otherwise you fall into bad habits and become a second-rater.”

Why is he talking like this?

It was like looking at an old village schoolmaster.

And with that the opening lecture ended.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes. I understand. But Chris, I have a question.”

“Speak.”

Chris Barnsdale, satisfied with his own lecture, put a pleased expression on all by himself.

“So?”

What I left out was and what exactly are you getting at?

For a linguist that was more than enough to understand.

We’re both busy, and there’s no need for a long introduction with the main point left out.

I still remember the honey taste of the illegal tutoring I took that one time.

This kind of dictionary study is absolutely not necessary.

Not textbook study methods — I wanted illegal tutoring: fast, exact, essential.

“You didn’t come here just to hand down what you’ve been saying, did you?”

“…W-well, that is.”

Chris Barnsdale, flustered.

This gentleman is a beginner.

If he had been through a regression once he wouldn’t be this flustered.

One look and the household was full of holes.

Pretending to take the tutoring, I read the situation around me.

There seemed to be no need for me to be cowed.

Old man Chris had laid his whole hand of cards face up in front of me from the start.

I’m short of points was a card he should not have shown.

He seems to be new at trading.

The house is humble because his level is low, which means precisely…

That I am the strong party.

“Aren’t you a god?”

“I am.”

Somehow this is a god with no confidence in him at all.

“Then why are you so short of points?”

I touched his pride, lightly.

“…I did nothing but research while I was alive, so there was little opportunity to build up good deeds. If I had at least had money I could have made donations, but…”

It was a shame.

You study, and then you ought to be giving some of it away, and it doesn’t look like he did that either.

“How did you become a god?”

I began the interrogation for real.

Like a hard-nosed loan officer at a third-tier lender, I folded my arms.

“I simply researched language diligently, and when I died the reaper informed me I had become a god. Special appointment for language, or something of the sort…”

Oho, special appointment for language, was it?

He isn’t a man with bad luck.

If he got a special bonus, he did live his life fiercely, that much is true.

“You haven’t been dead long, have you?”

I asked after his employment record as a god, the way a lender asks for a certificate of employment before extending credit.

“About five years.”

“That’s a shame. Even living as a god, it looks like you need plenty of points, the way you need money.”

“…”

I gave off the nuance that the loan might not be approved.

I think I would do well as a third-tier loan shark if I made a career of it.

Chris shut his mouth.

He only looked at the far sky.

He seems to have understood it only after dying.

He was regretting that while he studied, he earned exactly enough to eat.

First, note it. To build good-deed points you need donations. Dig at something hard enough and you can get a special bonus.

I put my back into gathering information.

I learned that gods might be even easier than humans.

With the bait I threw, I dug out one secret after another.

There was a lot to learn today.

Chris here is innocent, but with other gods there was no telling how they would come out.

You know it if you look at Divine Lord Cheollyong.

He just shouted GO! and pushed me straight through.

“That language acquisition know-how you just gave me is all over the internet. You’re not a con man, are you?”

I moved on to checking whether the collateral was sound.

“What are you saying! There is no linguist greater than I am!”

He flew into a temper.

That scholars and professors are innocent is a story the whole world knows.

Among the professors I met at university there were plenty who knew nothing of how the world works.

What would they know, dealing only with students who had barely been out in the world.

My mouth watered.

Instinct told me the time had come to start reeling for real.

“Give it to me.”

My tone was confident.

“Give you what?”

“This is your first time tutoring, isn’t it?”

I didn’t hesitate to lead the witness either.

“…That is so.”

“You did register this officially, didn’t you? You didn’t summon me illegally to earn points, did you?”

I worked over a god with a credit rating on the floor and no collateral.

To beat better terms out of him, I put the squeeze on a god(?).

“…”

Chris Barnsdale, startled into blinking and nothing else.

This gentleman is in the middle of secret illegal tutoring too.

The difference from Divine Lord Cheollyong is that he came to it voluntarily, which is the key.

What on earth are points? Do I have any?

I was curious about what points I had earned myself.

“You know earning points isn’t easy, don’t you?”

“Of course. Karma points, earned by performing good deeds, are precious.”

Oho! Karma points!

Several thoughts came up.

When I was hit by the car and died, the old man praised me very highly for saving the child.

And what I’ve done lately…

The neighborhood cleanup project!

I removed every gangster in the city and brought peace to the school and the town.

The credit for bringing wrongful deaths to light won’t be small either.

That had certainly piled up as karma points.

“You shouldn’t be eating something that precious for free~.”

“I have no such intention!”

“Then what was that just now?”

“I-I merely handed down the basic theory first. Clear up the misunderstanding.”

Being clumsily good gets you into trouble like that.

“You want mutual aid, don’t you? Correct? Professor?”

At the word professor, color came into Chris Barnsdale’s face.

He looked to have plenty of attachment to the world left in him.

As if a professor’s title mattered.

He is certainly dead, but it seems he never quite made the ranks of the gods.

“How much were you going to take?”

“Fifty percent…”

“You do know taking that without my permission is enormously illegal, don’t you?”

“O-of course. That is why I invited you here courteously, young hero, is it not.”

Oh yes!

I poked at it and hit the jackpot.

Karma points, whose use I didn’t know and whose quantity I couldn’t confirm.

I could learn twenty-one languages, so handing it all over would be fine.

But I wanted to keep some.

I didn’t know the exact method of exchange, but I could guess that karma points were the substitute for an illegal tutoring fee.

“Let’s trade at twenty percent. Hand over everything.”

I beat him down hard enough to make a loan shark weep.

“That will not do! It is far too little! I build the main hall, lay marble on the floor, and that is the end of it. A garden needs trees and flowers, does it not!”

Whoa… a main hall and a garden?

Twenty percent of the points I’ve built up seems to do an enormous amount of work.

My stomach started to ache a little.

My karma points, which I can’t see.

It looks like I’m about to pave another man’s yard and build his house.

“Should I call somebody else?”

“D-do you know the method of calling?”

Huh? The old man is playing hard to get?

“Come on, don’t be like that. We’re both pros here. You know who I am~. I’m that gentleman’s descendant~.”

“…Nnngh.”

At the words that gentleman’s descendant, old man Chris let out a groan.

I poked at random and hit it.

The old man who reincarnated me the first time was certainly a great personage.

When he told me to wreck the neighbors’ kids and mean it, I knew he was in a different class.

“This is a connection too, so I’ll shoot a little higher. Twenty-five percent! Kyah, I’m just giving it away today! What generosity! Don’t you think so? Grateful, aren’t you?”

I have come to understand how a loan shark feels when he shaves a little less off the advance interest.

I think I could get addicted to this flavor.

“G-grateful! I am truly grateful!!!”

I’m the grateful one.

This is exactly the flavor of mutual aid(?) that trade is done for.

It doesn’t look like anyone would trade with Chris there if I didn’t.

I learned a large lesson: do not stay that simple even after death.

“But why are the buildings all Chinese style? There are medieval castles, and plenty of Korean tile-roofed houses.”

I got curious.

Why a foreign immortal had chosen Chinese-style architecture.

“That is…”

“Why?”

Chris’s face went red and he put on an embarrassed expression.

“Made in china is… unbeatable value for money.”

“V-value for money?”

“Yes. The quality is what it is, but for beginner gods like us with no points there’s nothing to match it. It’s cheap and it looks the part. Heh heh heh.”

“Ah…”

My mouth shut, along with a groan.

There was nothing more to say.

The world of the gods was no different from the world of humans.

Made in china…

Here or there, it was a precious(?) article the poor could not do without.

(End of Chapter 33)