Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 56: Julius’ Desperate Play

Chapter 56: Julius’ Desperate Play

The headmaster’s urging resulted in two teachers coming out to share their testimonies. Yet, while significant in its own right, it was the silence that followed Celeste’s confession that ended up taking the spotlight.

A silence that only made it clear how, besides the two that already spoke, not a single soul had anything good to say about Theo.

On the flip side, it also meant that none of all the gathered teachers had anything bad to say about Theo in particular... That, or all those who did simply opted out of speaking up when the headmaster so clearly made his favorites known.

’In a way, this whole matter is decided already. At most, no one dares to spell it out for everyone.’

At this point, Theo should be feeling relief.

Even as the silence stretched out to, once again, uncomfortable levels, by all means, this whole farce was as good as over. And yet...

’I was going to resolve it anyway, but now I’m going to be indebted to that... guy?’

Raising his eyes to the headmaster, Theo stared at the young kid for just long enough to see them transform into a grass-chewing goat.

"Is there anyone else that would like to speak up?" With the silence stretching beyond reasonable levels, the headmaster finally took the clue and spoke out. "If you hold anything against teacher Theo that wasn’t brought up yet, either speak now or remain silent for eternity!"

Once again, the headmaster turned silent, giving the room to anyone who dared to take the spotlight, to anyone who would be stupid enough to put themselves in opposition to how, by all means, the headmaster openly wanted the situation to go.

And in this scenario, it was Julius himself who decided to make the most out of this opportunity, likely judging that his situation was so bad, there was no further harm he could do to himself by speaking up.

"Is this really what all that fairness you spoke about is, honorable headmaster?!" Julius cried out as he raised his head and looked up while taking to the middle of the open space in the hall.

Julius locked his hands behind his back before sweeping through the audience with his eyes.

"By now, it’s obvious to everyone how you wish for this matter to turn out, sir," Julius addressed the headmaster again, this time in a much less formal and respectable tone. "That alone is preventing all those with brains from speaking up against your wishes. That alone is shielding that bastard from the responsibility for the crimes he committed!"

Julius threw his arm out, only to point it straight at Theo while his face filled up with quite the desperate amounts of self-righteousness. The man then squinted his eyes before tearing them away from the headmaster’s face as he focused on the crowd instead.

"This is how they get us! This is how he holds us all captive! By pressuring us all into silence while knowing full well nothing can stand against his strength, only to then later claim he’s merely the defender of this glorious academy rather than its hidden autocrat!"

Finally, Julius’ speech started to evoke some fires in the crowd as the teachers in the audience started to stir up a bit.

It was one thing to foolishly clash against the headmaster’s will for the sake of condemning someone they couldn’t care less about. But to stay silent as the very root laws and ideology of the academy were seemingly trampled with?

’That’s one hell of a nice way to reframe what this whole mess is around,’ Theo thought, genuinely impressed with just how easily Julius managed to twist the narrative.

Right now, this trial had turned from a bogus farce that lacked any sort of proper basis or evidence into a headmaster’s political play aimed to neuter yet another institution of the academy that was supposed to be free from his authority!

"It’s not about condemning that vile bastard or not anymore. Right now, this is the moment when we decide whether the academy and its teachers stand behind the values the headmaster once taught us all about, or if we are going to obediently lower our heads and just accept the new reality as soon as he changes his mind and reaches for absolute power instead!"

With every word that came out of his mouth, Julius grew more and more passionate, almost becoming an idol of the teachers’ resistance within the academy by the time he finished. A notion that soon proved to work, as the stir in the tribunes grew bigger and bigger, with some teachers starting to whisper between themselves while the braver ones started to rise up from their seats.

But that was also the point at which Theo couldn’t just sit back and listen to it any longer.

Because the headmaster turned this whole mess into a political one with his appearance, Theo’s guilt—something that had to be proven before—now twisted into something that Julius pushed as a default state of the matter. And in this kind of a setting, regardless of which side would prove triumphant over the political issue, he would end up as the guilty bastard anyway, with the only difference being whether he was a headmaster’s tool in a failed attempt to cut himself some more authority, or the greatest proof that even the most vile of scum could get away scot-free with their crimes as long as they followed the proper autocrat.

To remain in the position he was in, Theo would be willingly allowing his location to shift from the wing of a justice’s scale to a place between a rock and a hard place.

And so, the best way to change that was to force the narrative back on the right track!

"Since when was I deemed guilty of anything that you brought up?" Theo asked with a voice loud enough to gather everyone’s attention on himself now that they were all agitated anyway. "We just had two respected teachers speak up on how their impression of me doesn’t match the rumors, we just had you ignore the headmaster’s request for any sort of proof, and yet..."

Theo took a few steps ahead, only to then stop just a few meters shy of Julius, staring at him with a hint of cold amusement in his eyes.

"And yet, you somehow assume you can now turn this whole thing into a political play and have everyone condemn me by default?" Theo asked, shaking his head in disbelief before he even finished his question. "I thought I made it clear before," he quickly switched his expression to that of a cold, calculated anger, "but do I really need to choke the life out of you to remind everyone we’ve long since moved past those delusional accusations of yours?"

"You...!" Just the sight of Theo’s confident face was enough to tick Julius over the line, pushing him beyond the level at which he could still control himself.

With his rage and desperation taking reins, he turned on his heel and stepped forth, his cultivation stirring as he reached out to grab Theo by his collar...

"That’s enough."

Just like he stopped Theo before, the headmaster now snapped his hooves, freezing Julius on the spot, robbing him of his ability to move or exert his magical pressure anywhere beyond the limits of his body.

"From what I’ve learned while you were busy trying to agitate for an open riot, is how you have yet to bring forth a single solid proof of the crime you are accusing a fellow teacher of. That’s why, I think it’s best if I just let the supposed victim of this whole matter speak what really happened, don’t you think?"

With another snap, the doors to the top room in the tribunal’s tower snapped open, revealing the shocked student that used to hide behind them.

A student that Theo knew a lot better than he would wish to.

A student who had their right arm raised and her hand tightened into a fist, clearly on the verge of knocking on the doors right as she found them magically fly open.

"A-a..."

Her mouth agape, Tesh just stood as she was, frozen under the stares of nearly a hundred teachers and then twice as many staff and soldiers. By the time her eyes jumped over to the throne, her whole body stiffened up, making it clear she wasn’t going to free herself from the shackles of her shock anytime soon.

That’s, at the very least, how Theo expected things to go. But as if to exceed his expectations, Tesh then gritted her teeth and bit down on her lips before forcing herself to make a step forward.

And then another.

And then to fall down on one knee while striking the ground with her formerly raised fist in a perfect display of a respectable bow.

"Student Tesh reporting," the girl exclaimed, her voice only slightly trembling. "I’m here to give my account on the matter!"