Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 111: The dungeon below

Chapter 111: The dungeon below

"So I guess now’s the time for me to ask you to repay the favor, isn’t it?"

Theo’s eyebrows moved up his face as he heard Celeste drop the bomb on him.

By no means did he expect this turn, a simple request to share what was supposed to be just common knowledge to backfire like that!

But...

’You cornered me well,’ he thought, staring at the woman in silence before finally yielding with the shake of his head.

Right after she helped him out with the problem that lived rent-free in his head for a while already, how could he refuse her a favor? The only way to do so would be for Celeste herself to request something unreasonable!

’Was I an introvert all along?’ Theo thought to himself while stopping the shaking of his head and locking his tired eyes on Celeste’s face. "What is the favor that you want?"

The corners of Celeste’s lips moved up in a quite adorable, if not a-dork-able way, somehow making the moment a bit less tense than it was just a moment ago.

"You invited me out for coffee, so I’m going to invite you over for a drink. But for now," she shook her head a little before pinning her eyes on his face while changing her expression to that of a stern teacher that just caught one of his students lacking, "you need to go and get some rest. Don’t forget, being a teacher is still just a job. You won’t be of much use to your disciples if you are too tired to string two separate thoughts together!"

With this message on her lips, Celeste took the last sip of her coffee before carefully placing the delicate cup back on the table and then standing up.

"Anyway, I still have my lessons to prepare for and you need to go get some sleep. So, take your time and rest well, because I have no plans to let you sleep tonight!"

Theo’s eyebrows moved up, his face suddenly all weirded out.

"The hell...?"

Before he could even comment on Celeste’s words, she just... giggled and left him at the table, unable to leave before one of the servers would approach for Theo to settle the bill.

For a moment, Theo stared in the direction Celeste left in, her words suddenly making him appreciate the way in which her robe would press against her curves whenever she made a step.

’No, that was her teasing me,’ he then thought as he realized it was his exhaustion making his thoughts turn weird. ’I guess she’s tired of playing miss perfect all the time and just wants someone she could comfortably get drunk with?’

Shaking his head, Theo sat back in his seat before slowly finishing his own cup and then locking his eyes on the nearby garden.

’Is it just me, or are those flowers exceptionally beautiful today?’

//\\ //\\ //\\ //\\ //\\

Deep down below the surface of the academy, the dungeons filled up with the screams of the wicked.

This was where the dark truth about the outside world was hidden, truth that would only be revealed to the selected few who had the prospects of ever reaching the strength necessary to witness it themselves.

For most, this part of the world simply didn’t exist. They could go their entire life never realizing there were forces at play wishing for humanity’s doom, for the restoration of the monster empire, for spreading the ancient plagues...

And the academy, just like quite a lot of other seemingly innocent institutions within the empire, was one of the fronts upon which this hidden war was fought.

Deep underground, hidden far away from prying eyes and ears, the torture specialists would bring pain and doom upon those who would happily spread what they were feeling right this moment to the whole wide world if given even the sliver of a chance.

In one of those cells, a fresh addition to the headmaster’s collection currently sat and waited, surrounded by nothing but the screams of the condemned, people who reached the level that made them effectively immortal, only for the world’s guard to turn their immortality from a blessing to a curse.

In this one cell in particular, however, one wouldn’t witness the magically reinforced bars, several meter-thick magi-concrete, or any of the other fancy inventions designed to render mages, cultivators, and wielders of arcane of any kind and form as powerless as an average mortal would be in a maximum-security dungeon.

After all, its new resident was barely a fourth-stage magical assassin, someone with skills only good enough to play the role of a background character during the mission.

A man that the headmaster most recently caught, happily forcing his way through the situation to get his hands on an unexpected lead.

The very first lead in several years that could turn into proper knowledge about the group so keen on slaughtering all of the world’s guards, despite having no apparent designs on introducing death and chaos to the world once its defenders would be all gone.

This man was one of a kind, not important at all himself, while potentially holding a great deal of importance if there was any valuable knowledge to be extracted from him. And yet...

Even as half of a day passed since his capture, he had yet to be approached by anyone, be it a guard, an investigator designed to extract information from him by any means possible, or even the academy’s headmaster himself.

A situation that wouldn’t change until the very top dog of the entire underground organization finally made their way down to the secret dungeon only to then put a simple, wooden tool on the other side of the cell’s bars and then just... stare at the prisoner in silence until the man couldn’t take it any longer.

"What the fuck do you want?"

Free from any kinds of bounds or gags and with only the walls and then the metal bars stopping him from escaping, Tusk, the captured low-rank assassin, snapped.

"Nothing much?" Nate replied with a surprised voice, as if he didn’t expect the prisoner to react to his presence in any way or form. "I paid for the tickets to the zoo so isn’t it right for me to get my money’s worth and stare all I can?"

"Zoo?" Tusk, baffled, asked. "What zoo?!" His emotions rose quickly.

"This zoo," Nate replied with the most oblivious look a human face could produce while spreading his arms and then moving them around, as if to point at the entire structure surrounding them. "What, don’t you agree with my wording?" he smiled while leaning his small, youthful head to the side. "Isn’t a zoo a place where dangerous animals are kept behind bars for people to admire for an appropriate price?"

Nate then looked around, as if double-checking whether or not he was in the right spot. Then, as his eyes landed on Tusk, his face calmed down while a small smile returned to his lips.

"I see a cage, I see a wild animal," he stated before shrugging his shoulders. "See? I was right. This place is just a slightly extraordinary zoo!"

Faced with such logic, Tusk had no idea how he was supposed to respond. He wasn’t even sure if he was supposed to feel insulted, provoked, made fun of...

While everything that this surprisingly youthful person said made perfect sense on its own, adding context was enough to make it all but a useless ramble.

"This isn’t a damned zoo!"

Unable to decide on how to feel in this confusing situation, Tusk defaulted to his most basic emotion — anger.

"This is a prison! And the only part that makes me confused is why would they ever allow a child like you inside!"

Nate opened his eyes wide, as if scared by Tusk’s sudden advance to the edge of the cell and the following clash between the man’s body and the metal bars as he grabbed onto them, acting as if he wanted to reach Nate’s throat and rip it open, only stopped by the metal structure in his way.

"I paid for the tickets, though!" Nate then protested, only to stand up, smile, shake his head a bit, and then turn away and walk off, leaving Tusk perfectly baffled by the encounter.

"What the fuck was that?" Tusk whispered as he retreated back to the furthermost corner of his cell from where he could keep watch over every other corner of his prison, not to let any nasty surprises catch him off guard.

//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\

Not so far away from Tusk’s cell, Nate stopped and wiped the thick beads of sweat from his forehead.

’Using both of those techniques at the same time really takes a heavy toll on my soul,’ he thought, taking a moment to flush his soul with mana to restore the damage from pushing his limits.

"How did it go?" The academy headmaster looked up to the man with a reverence that seemed extremely weird, given his scarred, no longer morphing face and the contrast in which it stood to Nate’s youthful, teenager’s face.

"As expected," Nate replied, raising his hand up and materializing a small crystal in its palm before passing it over to his trusty disciple. "I’ve got everything there was to salvage from his mind. There wasn’t much, but what else could we expect from someone too stupid to realize I was scanning his brain all along," Nate commented while shaking his head in disbelief.

"Is it all done, then?" Nate’s disciple asked, crossing his arms over his wide chest with a look of urgency mixing with disapproval.

"Yes, it is," Nate rolled his eyes only to then put down his stool by the corridor’s wall and take a seat. "Don’t look at me like that," he then added, rolling his eyes at his disciple’s overzealousness. "I made sure the kid didn’t feel a thing," he added...

Only for his body to go completely limp, as if something severed the strings solely responsible for keeping him upright.

"And then you leave just like that," the academy headmaster shook his head before sighing out and approaching the kid’s body, only to lift the sleeping kid up into his arms and then start the long march back to the dungeon’s hidden entrance.

To a degree, the academy’s principal couldn’t blame his long-deceased master.

Possessing young students would always put a great strain on their bodies for all the reasons that made such possession possible in the first place. What’s more, the longer the possession lasted, the greater the damage would be, with often mere seconds deciding whether the damage would turn permanent or not.

That’s why it only made sense for his master to leave as soon as the job was done, information extracted, and the prisoner stuck in a singular moment in time stretched in his perception into infinity.

It only made sense, and yet...

"Sometimes, I really wish you would take the time to say proper goodbyes, you know?"