Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 60: Back to the ordinary everyday?

Chapter 60: Back to the ordinary everyday?

"Fuck!"

Theo held his curse on the inside for as long as he could... No, for as long as it was necessary.

He held it through the final moments of the trial, he held it as he waited for the crowd to leave the tribune’s tower before doing the same himself, and then continued to hold it in for all the time it took him to return to his room and then shut the doors behind him.

"Fuck!"

Once again, Theo threw out a fat, juicy curse before dropping himself down to his bed, caring not to take off his uncomfortable, official robe.

For a moment or two, he just lay there, relaxing, trying to get his mind out of the mess he somehow ended up throwing himself into. Yet, the more he thought about it, the less he applied emotions and more of his brain to the matter, the less of a problem this whole solution appeared to be.

’Even if I got myself two disciples now, even if they are not going to fire me, what’s there to stop me from resigning?’

This simple question rang in Theo’s mind strong enough to send a current through his body that snapped him awake, forcing him to stand up rather than just wasting time lying on the bed.

Conveniently, he decided to ignore the obvious answer of the headmaster having all the power and means necessary to stop him from leaving. The question of how his current body’s actual family would react to those news didn’t bother him either, given how he had no designs of sticking to the name and thus blood connections he had right now.

"So, in the end, all that this trial led to was a quick cash and then some trouble that will take me what," Theo took a moment to consider his situation, "a few more days to solve than I originally intended to stay in this place?"

Even with how his reputation was now going to change, given his central role in the trial that was sure to make the rounds through all the gossiping circles of the academy. After all, with how the headmaster planned to use it as a justification for the reforms that had quite a lot of opposition in place, there was no way he would institute a gag-order on all those who took part in it.

And even then, given the sheer number of spectators that took seats on the tribune, there was no practical way to effectively stop all of them from sharing the news! And with how gossips worked, as long as just a single witness of the event were to talk about it, sooner or later it would become public news anyway – and all the efforts to stop the spread of the news would only accelerate the process even further.

’In the end, it’s not as bad as it first appeared to be so,’ Theo thought, unknowingly releasing a long sigh of relief as he finally faced his situation for what it was rather than for what it appeared to be.

Sure, he would have to change his plans quite a bit. Sure, he would have to actively seek to terminate his employment at the academy rather than passively waiting to get fired. Sure, he would now have to deal with some students that he neither wanted nor cared about...

All of those, however, were but roadblocks on Theo’s path to freedom.

’And in all honesty,’ he thought, breathing another sigh as he finally left the side of his very own bed before moving to the central point of his room and then sitting down directly on the floor, ’I wouldn’t say no to a few more days to sort everything that I can still do in this place.’

With his mind now calming down, Theo breathed out all the air from his lungs that he had the strength to expel before holding himself for quite some time from taking a fresh breath in. Only when his lungs felt as if they were set on fire by some demonic magic did he dare to open his airways again, filling his body with a fresh source of the life-sustaining oxygen.

Right as the wave of physical, biological relief spread throughout his body, Theo switched his focus from the strictly physical to the immaterial as he checked the state of what he considered nothing more than a passion-project of his – his cultivation. A state that he immediately confronted with the prompt that his Hive hurriedly repainted right before his eyes.

<Third step: Networking (Meridian Opening/Meridian Cleansing/Core Formation)

- Continue absorbing more energy and nanites into your structure <Completed>

- Use your existing strength to establish a set of overcondensed points marked on the provided diagram <Completed>

- Create a central hub for energy/nanites in the location highlighted on the diagram

- Overflow the reinforced energy-logistic to establish a proper flow

>

It’s been quite a while since Theo last cultivated.

Or rather, after he gave it a moment of thought, quite a lot of things had happened since the last time he trained his inner strength, giving him the illusion of a lot of time passing.

Either way, however, Theo no longer felt the natural connection to the logic of what those cultivation steps were all about, forcing him to slowly revisit all of the earlier steps in a mock-boot of his entire cultivation. It was only after roughly half an hour of steadily repeating every step he took when he first tried to cultivate that Theo managed to regain the same flow, the same state of mind that allowed him to properly understand what the next hurdle was... and what it actually was all about.

’A central hub, hmm?’ he thought while gently pushing his energy from one artificial meridian to the next, already working on the last step of the Hive’s procedure before even completing the one before it.

After a quick consultation with the Hive-provided diagram, Theo was ready to continue. And that’s exactly where keeping a hold over the flow of his power came into use.

Splitting the task of manipulating his force between the Hive-controlled nanites and his own will, Theo directed the energy from his meridians down to the very pit of his stomach, forming it first into something like a condensate of the immaterial, soon bringing it up to the point where the mix of spiritual energy and the nanites could no longer ignore its own physicality.

With this barrier breached, Theo then pushed his internal fuel mix to reinforce the established core over and over again, watching with satisfaction as it grew while splitting just a whisk of his attention to start absorbing the world’s power again to refill the energy he used on creating his core.

All in one moment, Theo had to keep a hold of his core, keep reinforcing it and then absorb the energy from the world. Each and every one of those steps was easy if not outright straightforward even for the greatest dunce. Yet, when tasked with handling all three of them at once, even Theo – despite the support of the Hive – had no other choice but to dedicate his full attention to the task.

Time passed.

Be it seconds, minutes or hours, Theo couldn’t tell, too focused on the changes to his internal state to pay any mind to the real world.

Changes that were finally starting to take the proper shape that Theo envisioned with the help of the Hive-provided diagram.

’Just a little bit more,’ he thought as the core in the pit of his stomach reached the size of Theo’s own tightened fist while maintaining a perfectly spherical and thus most optimal shape. Reaching the end of his current step, however, rather than keeping his core as perfectly smooth as possible, as soon as it reached a proper size, Theo changed the course a tiny little bit.

A spherical core came with the benefit of a shape that allowed the greatest volume for the smallest footprint in a three-dimensional space.

Now that it reached a sufficient size, however, Theo started to disturb its surface, creating a myriad of microscopic protrusions all over its surface, as if he wanted to create a scaled-down version of an extremely spiky ball.

It was all for the sake of reaching the second level of efficiency – maximizing the surface area of his core, and thus the area through which it could react with the flow of energy coursing through Theo’s structure.

’To think maths and geometry would prove so damn useful in something as far removed from science as anything could ever be,’ Theo thought, this short moment of good humor nearly costing him his focus right as he reached the limit.

Sadly, that limit was Theo’s own potential, the amount of nanite and energy he could keep pouring into the newly established core of his structure, even though as written by the laws of math and geometry themselves, there was no physical limit to just how infinitely grainy, textured the surface of his core could potentially be!

’Well,’ Theo thought, right as the last whisker of his inner fuel dried out in the process of reinforcing the core, ’It’s the same as with deciding on how complex I wanted my structure to be,’ he thought, breathing out... only to then let his body collapse down to the floor, his sweaty back striking the cold floor with a loud plask. ’In the end, infinity only works as a theoretical concept, not a practical application, huh?’

Even though there were even greater lengths Theo could push his core to in the future, for now, he decided to just be happy with what he got.

There was no rush for him to advance, not when everyone either took him for a powerless fraud with the headmaster’s backing or a powerful politician willing to bear the shame of his infamy while hiding strength capable of openly challenging the headmaster himself!

With no middle ground between those two extremes, Theo had absolutely no need to worry about retaliation coming from any of Julius’ friends – after all, anyone with enough power to still have the guts to challenge him would be able to squash him like a bug either way – whether Theo pushed for the advance to the fourth step of his cultivation as soon as possible or not!

"Haaaa...."

Having his inner thoughts sorted out allowed Theo to breathe out a sigh of a true, proper relief, something experienced only by those who just completed a day’s worth of a good, honest work.

Yet, right as he allowed his body and mind to relax, he heard the sound he last wanted to hear.

A noise that his mind automatically blocked while he cultivated, daring not to disturb his focus.

"Master! I heard something from your room, so it is clear you are not asleep! Please, I beg of you..." a momentary pause ensued, only for the sound of someone’s fist knocking against Theo’s doors to then resume with even greater strength and hastier pace, "even if you never wanted to take us in as disciples, we still need to talk it through! So please, could you let us in?!"