Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 41: Pushing through (Collapse - Part 3)

Chapter 41: Pushing through (Collapse - Part 3)

’Doesn’t really look like much,’ Theo thought as he pushed inside the building, fully expecting to see an entire crowd of people, all lying in wait to spring up a trap and bury him under a mountain of written accusations.

That, at the very least, was the one scenario Theo managed to imagine that could make things slightly problematic.

By not giving him any reason to retaliate with outright abuse of the process and blocking him from responding to any of his alleged crimes by simply dropping more on his head than he could humanly address, the academy could put Theo on the spot.

A spot he could still get out from in more ways than just one, but a spot that would force Theo to make some heavy, long-reaching choices.

The reality, however, turned out to be so simple, so... ordinary, it was outright disappointing.

The insides of the tower’s ground floor consisted of bare walls, a humble reception counter, and a huge, spiral staircase rising up to the higher floors.

Normally, the reception would be the place to go... if there was someone manning the desk to offer any sort of reason to approach the place to begin with.

’They cannot be that clumsy,’ Theo thought, taken aback once again... this time, however, by the lack of preparation the accusers made against him.

A surprise that only lasted for the short moment he needed to figure out the source of this dissonance.

In his own eyes, Theo was a proper member of society, someone with special ability and memories of a post-modern world, capable of nearly maxing out the third step of his own cultivation method within a single day, even though by all means, it was likely to be an equivalent of the fourth, fifth, or maybe even sixth cultivation stage of the routines practiced by the locals.

All in all, while Theo wouldn’t aspire to the ranks of the academy elites, in his own personal opinion about himself, he was someone others had to be taking somewhat seriously.

But in the eyes of literally everyone in the academy?

’How could I expect proper treatment, if I’m nothing more but a noble reject, the biggest trash of a teacher in this entire institution?’ he thought, the corner of his lips twitching as Theo held back a smirk. ’For them, I’m a proper stepping stone. Someone with nothing beyond the name of the family that threw me out to flaunt.’

With this change of perspective, everything clicked.

No one called in the person responsible for manning the reception of the tribunal tower because dealing with Theo simply wasn’t worth the cost of that person’s wage.

There weren’t groups of academy lawyers struggling to carry all the papers they were about to throw in Theo’s face, because a single torn page would be enough, in the opinion of Theo’s accusers, to scare him witless.

’And if that’s the case...’

Theo took a breath, only now realizing that the moment he spent analyzing the situation was just long enough for Celeste to catch up to him.

"I know you won’t like it, but now we are going to wait," she announced, only for Theo to step towards the spiral of a staircase right as the last word left the woman’s mouth. "Wait, where do you think you are going?!"

Instantly, Celeste panicked.

"We weren’t invited upstairs yet!"

Caring not for courtesy and what his accusers expected him to do right now, Theo redid some of his plans as he moved up to the first floor.

Contrary to the ground one, the staircase was actually walled off here, with but one set of doors connecting the spiral to everything else that this floor housed.

’Is this some sort of an office area?’ Theo thought, struggling to imagine an internal design of the floor that would warrant just one, central door connecting the floor’s insides to the staircase located straight in its middle.

Initially hesitant, Theo quickly raised his head up, following the faint echo of the voices coming from above.

An echo that this floor was severely lacking, implying there was absolutely nothing happening here.

The next, third, floor appeared to be the same, although this time it came with two doors positioned on the opposite walls.

By the time Theo reached the fourth and last floor, the echo of the voices grew strong enough to confirm his suspicion — whoever was in the tower, was at its very top floor. And by the sound of an ongoing conversation, they weren’t alone.

The fourth floor also came with three doors, with only the wall pressed directly against the back of the staircase lacking one, leaving Theo stumped as to which one to pick.

’The voices... Is it just me or do they come from behind all of those doors at the same time?’

A few stairs below, Celeste was huffing a little after rushing after Theo, now finally reaching him only to reach out and grab him by the back of his teacher’s cloak.

"Have you lost your mind?!" she hissed, daring not to raise her voice in fear, as indicated by the worried glances she threw towards the doors, that her presence would be noticed by the people within the floor’s room. "Or are you just that keen to set everyone against you right off the bat?!"

Celeste’s voice trembled a little as she struggled to contain her momentary emotions.

For a moment, Theo graced her with a silent glance, looking at her like he would at some naive student trying to preach the superiority of a planet-centric model of the local system over a star-centric one...

Only for Theo to then shake his head, chuckle once, and then step ahead, allowing Celeste to just tear the piece of his teacher’s robe off its back as he stormed ahead and decisively pushed the doors open.

And behind those doors...

Theo found several answers.

First, it didn’t matter which door he would pick, for they all led into the same open hall without a single division in sight save for the walls that separated the hall itself from the staircase.

Secondly, this tower was neither deserted nor as spartan as the ground floor would suggest, with a small crowd of teachers and academy staff, all wearing insignia of quasi and full-stars, currently socializing on a carpeted floor while skillfully dodging the many servers with drinks and avoiding the tables heaving under the weight of all the luxurious foods stacked on them.

’This looks more like a palace than a hall of law,’ Theo thought, perfectly aware of all the stares his sudden entrance attracted.

He then waited for a second...

And everyone’s attention shifted.

’Now.’

With a single command of his mind, Theo’s cultivation stirred for but a second, only to then nigh-instantly return to its forcefully suppressed, dormant state.

After glancing at Celeste’s flustered and outright panicked face when she dashed into the hall in her failed attempt to stop Theo from intruding, everyone’s attention quickly returned to the man of the night.

With all of that attention centered right on himself, Theo put on an arrogant look on his face — one befitting a young master from a powerful noble family — before shooting his first shot.

"You’ve brought me here for a reason, so how about you lot stop wasting my time and get this farce done and over with?"