Altruism—compliment or an insult? Sure, helping your neighbor is the right thing to do—but what if that neighbor stabs you in the back at the first opportunity? Trying to help a fellow student turned Vadim Voronin from a promising applicant into a persona non grata, forcing him to flee Russia. And attempts to prevent the murder of Japanese princesses only led to suspicions that he was behind those very murders, threatening trouble on an intergovernmental scale.
Raging golems, artificial elementals, a “iron maiden,” envious seniors, hired killers, the salvation of Earth… But he only wanted to get a higher education.