Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 105: We are not some otherworldly heroes

Chapter 105: We are not some otherworldly heroes

Headmaster, currently in the form of a robed, mage-like goblin, smiled and pushed into the room.

By all means, this was Theo’s moment.

A moment in which he stood up to the evil, revealing his abilities to a greater extent than before, holding back an attack and wiping the floor with the attackers who were all supposed to each be able to easily handle him, not to speak about all of them attacking him at once.

And that’s precisely what he did, killing them all in a way that neither his victims nor the witnesses to the situation could understand or were familiar with.

An event not unlike a caveman witnessing an execution by a shooting squad or a technician dying to some magical trick.

And yet, with nothing but just the one survivor left whose fear made him stand back rather than join the last, suicide attack... The headmaster swooped in and locked the survivor in a huge crystal of room-temperature ice, instantly turning everyone’s attention to himself, leaving Theo with only one question that continued to rub him the wrong way.

’Do they all see him as just one of the forms he turns into, or do they all witness those changes and just pretend everything is as all should be?’

By the short time it took the headmaster to move from the auction hall’s doorway to the foot of the stage, he had already turned from a tiny goblin and into a space clown, then into a black puppy dressed in human clothes, a majestic dragon bearing a huge crown atop its head and then... into just a perfectly random hobo, one that came with the stinging stench of half-processed drinks mixing fragrances with the stink of the piss rotting in his clothes.

What the headmaster did was, by all means, a heist of the attention he didn’t earn. And yet, Theo couldn’t care less.

"Seeing how you are here, I’m just going to leave the clean-up to you," Theo said as soon as the headmaster stood just a few feet away from him, well within the range of Theo’s calm voice.

"Yeah, yeah," the headmaster, now a heavenly jade beauty, waved his hand dismissively, his eyes zeroed in on the remaining attacker. "Feel free to be on your way now," he added while casually floating up to the stage and only stopping once his face nearly slammed into the crystal of his own making.

"Now, what do we have here...?"

The smile on the headmaster’s face was intense enough Theo could perceive even as his once beautiful, long-haired head turned into the snout of a war-hog with the steel plates of battle armor strapped to its sides.

"What’s with the smile?" Theo asked while patting his robes down to dust them off. "You are making it look like you did all the heavy lifting here."

Even though losing the heat of this situation and pushing it on the headmaster was just the thing Theo could enjoy right now, the man’s smirk... It somehow just rubbed Theo the wrong way.

’It’s as if watching someone swoop in for the kill I worked hard for,’ he thought, his teeth gnashing against each other as he observed the headmaster’s profile, staring at the man’s changing form like some sort of a jealous ex-girlfriend unable to bear the sight of her ex going along with another woman.

"Because that’s exactly what happened," the headmaster countered, finally paying Theo any attention as if he only appeared on the man’s radar after annoying him for long enough. "All you did was defend yourself while it was I that made this whole situation possible in the first place."

Theo squinted his eyes, taking a moment to process the man’s words and then cross-check it with his own common sense, a process that took an unusually long time given just how unnatural the headmaster’s message turned out to be.

"Wait, what did you just say?" Theo asked, struggling to decide whether he misheard or maybe misunderstood what the man just said.

"I mean exactly what I said," the headmaster snapped back, not even bothering to turn his head to look back at Theo, throwing his comments back at him while still staring at the attacker frozen in his own spell. "How else, do you think, they’ve managed to infiltrate the academy when not even the king of this country itself could do so without my approval?"

Even now, after the man affirmed his earlier statement and then gave a direct example of his involvement, Theo struggled to believe what he just heard.

It just... didn’t make any sense!

’Wasn’t he kind of my ally back during the trial at the tribune’s tower?’ he thought, gulping his spit down, too stunned by the revelation to as much as twitch. ’And even if not as much of an ally, then... why would he openly admit to plotting against me, despite showing no hint of hostility?’

There was another element Theo had to take into account.

The spell that froze the surviving assailant?

He only learned of its existence the moment it came into effect.

He didn’t see the man appear before the cast, didn’t feel any fluctuations of mana as it was activated nor did his body or nanites react in any way or form that would give Theo hopes of holding back the attack if the headmaster’s spell was aimed at him.

By all means, it was an attack he wouldn’t be able to stop, even if he were to turn back time and know about it coming in advance.

In other words, if such was the headmaster’s desire, he could easily kill Theo off!

But if that was the case, then why was Theo still breathing?

And what’s with the man openly admitting to his designs on Theo’s life?

’Is this some sort of a brag?’ Theo thought as he gulped his saliva again, too shocked to move from where he froze on the spot. ’Is he telling me this because there’s nothing I can do if he actually wanted to see me die?’

It was one thing to realize that before the headmaster’s degree of power, Theo’s entire life was perfectly meaningless, as Theo did back in the tribune’s tower.

But to watch the man use means he couldn’t even sense coming, all the while they affected someone Theo was about to interact with?

That kind of experience was way too close for Theo’s comfort to just gloss it over!

"Yeah, yeah," the headmaster rolled his eyes after peeking at Theo with just the corners of his eyes. "It sounds bad, I know," he explained in a small voice as he took a step towards the crystal despite already being face-to-face with it... Only for the latter to just start melting away, as if unable to exist in the presence of someone as powerful as the headmaster.

This process continued until the man chipped away most of the room-temperature ice of his own creation, leaving behind just a tall yet narrow pillar of this see-through material with the surviving attacker locked perfectly in the middle of it.

"This attack wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t allow it to happen. But I didn’t let them pass through the academy defenses just for a prank either," finally, the headmaster decided to explain his words, after all, rather than leaving Theo to believe he was suddenly out for his blood.

"First," the headmaster continued as he now reached out with his hand and placed its palm down on the remaining crystal, infusing it with some sort of power only for the crystal to rise up and start levitating just an inch or two above the stage’s floor, "first, it served as a good lesson for you," the headmaster revealed as he finally turned to properly look back at Theo.

"A reminder that right now, you are like a child locked away in the castle, unaware of the dangers roaming outside, especially to the people of our kind."

Right in this very moment, Theo realized that while he was too shocked to move... nothing else in the world did, save for the headmaster and the crystal under his control.

A quick look to the side made him realize that his disciples, Celeste and the rest of the guests still present within the hall were now literally frozen in place, not even their eyeballs moving.

All a fact that became obvious the moment the headmaster so openly spoke out about his plans and the context only he himself and Theo could understand.

"You crave freedom beyond the limits of the academy. And trust me," the headmaster shook his head, "I understand it. After all, eighty years back, I wasn’t any different than you are now," the man added while his face took on a dreamy look, his lips curving into a small smirk as if to show just how amusing his memories of the time back then were. "In a way, this attack is just a small reminder, a small lesson," the headmaster concluded, only to then stop right in front of Theo’s face.

His morphing stopped, the weird aura surrounding the man ceasing to exist at the same time.

All the mystery suddenly dropped, replaced with nothing more but hard, brutal truth.

A truth that, this time, took the form of a severely deformed, hairless face of someone appearing to be a victim of either some nasty flames somehow getting attached to the side of their face in the past... or a victim of an acid attack.

"You might feel like living in this world is easy with the advantage of whatever kind of knowledge you have. And sure, with your knowledge, you are likely to excel in this world. But what I want you never to forget is," the headmaster, now but a deformed, old man, clutched at Theo’s shoulders with his hands, the sharp ends of his nails now painfully digging into Theo’s skin.

"In this world, we are not the otherworldly heroes. We are the cancerous cells that go against the very nature of this place. And there’s no fighting against this place’s immune system. If you want to survive...?"

The headmaster shook his head, only to then take a step back and snap his fingers, restarting the morphing process that masked his grave and ugly injury.

"If you want to survive, then you better learn how to hide well and learn it quick."

With those words on his lips, the headmaster then turned to the man frozen in the crystal, staring at him for a while. He then shook his head and looked around, at all the other people frozen by yet another spell that Theo didn’t even notice the activation of.

"I’m not saying this to scare you, but your choices now is to realn how to hide well, or" the headmaster turned his head over his shoulder as he looked into Theo’s face for the second time, locking eyes with the man to reveal just how serious he was in this moment, "or you will end up in a crystal like that next, turning into a cannary for the inquisition about to sign how they tell you to sign for the rest of your miserable, terror and torture filled days."