Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 107: On the topic of compensation

Chapter 107: On the topic of compensation

"Where do we begin, huh?" Theo took a look at Celeste, only for his eyes to then gravitate over to the headmaster’s back.

By now, judging by the changing tone of his voice, the man was about to finish with his speeches. And so, before he would move on and leave, Theo approached from behind only to then stand down and patiently wait.

"That’s why, I would ask you all to lodge your compensation claims with the auction house, so that the academy can deal with them in bulk rather than look through every application on its own."

Apparently, as an event involving politics that reached beyond the academy, it was the headmaster’s responsibility to make everyone square, given it was his duty to keep them all safe to begin with.

Just like he claimed, however, accepting compensation claims from the hundreds or so people that were in the audience would take a lot of time and effort. Neither of which the academy had the staff to deal with.

Which is why, rather than dealing with the consequences of this attack on a singular basis, the headmaster asked everyone to just lodge their complaints with the auction house directly, opting to just deal with the sum of all the compensations rather than with each application for it one by one.

"What are you creeping behind me for?" As soon as he was done speaking out to the crowd ahead, the headmaster turned and locked his perfectly green eyes on Theo’s face, staring straight in his face with all three of his eyes.

Instead of answering, Theo took a step ahead... and then another, stopping only when he was right in the headmaster’s three-eyed face.

"I went along with your story, but that doesn’t mean I did it for free."

Ultimately, while Theo stood to benefit a lot from the headmaster’s protection... it was his lack of it that led to this attack. And between all the bullshit about sharing his power with Theo to keep him safe and then taking all the credit for it...

For all the benefits that Theo gained through this solution, it was merely a natural resolution to how everything played out.

In other words, he was going to gain all of those regardless if he went along with the headmaster’s story or not, regardless if he left the last surviving attacker in the headmaster’s care or not.

And while Theo didn’t mind making those concessions, he wasn’t naive enough to do those favors for free!

"What do you want?" the headmaster asked, cutting the needless chatter short and striking right for the core of the conversation Theo implied.

"The main library," Theo whispered back without even a hint of hesitation, only focused on making his voice too small for the audience nearby to hear. "It’s a pain in the ass to hide what I’m studying, so I want free rein in it without anyone to spy on me."

There were several reasons why Theo could only study a small part of the knowledge hidden in that huge building.

With teachers, students and the academy staff all around, he couldn’t really unleash his nanites and spend a whole day having them absorb every last written word in the academy’s biggest storage of books, scrolls and scripts!

No, the only way for him to scour the library in an effective way, was to do it without anyone watching, by putting his nanites into the most efficient rather than the most covert work-mode.

"Library, huh?" the headmaster muttered in response, equally as aware of the keen ears of the nearby crowd as Theo. "That’s doable. I might lend you a key so that you could visit outside of the opening hours. But to have a completely free rein..." the man shook his head. "I can only buy you one night without the staff, after that you will have to learn with their casual supervision. That, and I will hold you responsible for all the books in the collection while you are spending the nights there."

Theo took a moment to process all the conditions the man laid out.

"Two days," Theo then attempted to counter the offer. "Two days without the supervision and we are good. Don’t forget," he then threw a quick, barely noticeable glance over to where the headmaster left the crystal with the frozen attacker, "you pushed this situation on me, so it’s only right for me to push my luck a bit."

The headmaster squinted his eyes.

Then, slowly, he lowered his head in a nod.

"Two days, then," he accepted, turning away only to then look back right away. "I will get you the key in a day or two. Once you receive the package, the count of the nights will begin."

Sparing no further words, the headmaster fluttered his robe to the back before dropping down from the stage and then climbing up the audience part of the hall, only to then disappear behind the hall’s main entrance.

With the headmaster now gone, bit by bit the crowd started to leave too, each of them more eager than the other to exaggerate the dangers they faced and thus obtain the greatest possible compensation.

Now that they were to deal with the auction hall rather than the academy directly, pushing their luck suddenly became possible, allowing them to turn this traumatic experience into the one thing they’ve all liked the most - profit.

A moment later, only a few men remained in the hall and just a little bit later, only Theo’s group was left behind.

"What was that?" Moving up from the side, Celeste locked her hands behind her back and leaned in as if to peek into Theo’s lowered head.

"Just one of the preparatory steps for moving on," Theo replied absent-mindedly before shaking his head and then locking his eyes on the very same passage that everyone else used to return to the main part of the auction hall. "And seeing how the auction doesn’t show any signs of restarting..."

Theo shook his head one more time before giving the wet splash on the stage’s planks a longing look only to then turn his eyes away and start climbing up the stairs up the audience seats.

Before, the main chamber of the auction hall appeared to be perfectly empty, just busy enough to warrant its size while empty enough not to make it a drag to go through it.

Now, however, with the influx of over a hundred traders from the cancelled bulk-auction swarming the place, it became quite the headache to even enter it, not to speak about reaching any part of the building in particular.

It was in the very middle of this flood of people, each and every last one of them eager to talk to a local manager to discuss their compensation, that Theo spotted the one clerk that happily left his group to fend for themselves earlier. The very same girl that approached hoping for Theo to be some kind of a big fish for her to honey trap, only to then quickly retreat as soon as he revealed interest and behavior that didn’t align with her idea of a potential catch.

Normally, as one of the high-ranking clerks of the place, she would be swarmed by the traders seeing her as just another avenue to milk the auction house dry.

As it turned out, however, even in the current, extremely busy moment, most of the men struggled to just openly approach a beauty like her, leaving her like this lone rock upon which the waves of the customers continued to crash.

Which made her just the perfect target for Theo who had no plans on wasting time, waiting in the queue to any of the other clerks.

"You there!" he called out, only for the crowd that stood in his way to almost instantly part away, creating a path for him to walk comfortably through before he could as much as blink.

’What the...’

Taken aback, Theo looked around only to notice the fearful stares of the traders that just competed with him back in the bulk-auction, now keeping their lips sealed about what happened in the hall yet still showing him the fear-induced respect.

It was a detail that the female clerk from before also happened to notice, turning strangely nervous as Theo shrugged his shoulders and dragged his group ahead, aiming straight for where she stood.

"Excuse me..." the woman attempted to find a way out of the situation, knowing not the details but perfectly capable of sensing the coming trouble.

"I will not," Theo countered right away, appearing before the woman before she could escape. "I’m here to claim my compensation for the lackluster defenses of this place allowing an attack aimed at yours-truly during the auction!"

While the headmaster put great effort to seal everyone’s lips about the details of what happened, there was no way to fully hide the fact that an attack actually happened. And given this informational dissonance, Theo pressed ahead before the girl could even recover.

"I’m in a magnanimous mood today so, rather than draining your purse with my compensation request, I will be satisfied as long as I leave here with what I came here to buy," Theo explained in a weirdly calm, respectful manner only to then show a bright smile as he locked his arms behind his back.

"That’s why, as long as two batches of low, mid and high-grade materia prima each will get delivered to my mansion before the end of today, I will consider this sorry affair to be over."