Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 63: What it takes to teach

Chapter 63: What it takes to teach

’I saw him!’

Thinking back, Tesh couldn’t help but recall her new master’s sight when she accidentally interrupted his cultivation.

Not even now, after so boldly embarrassing herself, could she stop her recollection of the air that hung low in Theo’s room.

By no means did he exhibit the marks of someone reaching great heights.

When it came to the raw sense of power her master gave off, he could only amount to a certain level.

This sense of a relatively low realm of cultivation didn’t stop him from changing how the very mana in the air behaved.

And, in all honesty...

’If only I could reach that level!’

Despite all that happened, all the trouble from before that, she just couldn’t help but desire the overwhelming depth of the strength her master used against her.

Back when he pinned her against the wall before throwing her out.

And if Tesh didn’t have enough on her head, her body would twitch at even the slightest memory of her master’s domineering attitude from back then!

"Master!" Tesh called out, only to slam her forehead against the floor. "We beg of you!"

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

"Fine."

Rather than wasting time on needlessly arguing or testing his disciples’ resolve, Theo decided to follow the line of least resistance.

Despite appearing as mere kids in his eyes, those two were pretty much adults, especially in a world too harsh to give humans as much as eighteen years to learn self-responsibility.

And if they made their choice, who was Theo to deny them?

Then again.

"It’s going to take me around a week to prepare everything. Until then, just go and sell all that I’ve earned from that stupid trial," Theo waved his head before turning around and moving to bring the bucket from his presentation before back to its rightful spot within the alchemy stand.

"You don’t need to bid for the best possible prices, just a reasonable estimate will do," Theo detailed his order out a little bit more before turning back to his disciples as he stalled long enough to address the elephant in the room. "And for you two to even have a shot at doing so, there’s a ton of materials you need to prepare and a ton of research that’s on my shoulders."

Theo shrugged his shoulders.

"Rushing this process would mean doing you two a disservice. And I wouldn’t want to disappoint two kids that so earnestly requested my tutelage, would I?"

Theo added a smile at the end, ending the whole topic before any of his two students could delve any deeper into it while making it quite obvious they were done here.

"In that case," Luke was the first to react, standing up from his knee-deep kowtow only to bow down to the level of his chest, "we will be taking our leave. As I understand," he raised his eyes right as Theo passed over a thin booklet.

"The records of the trial-issued transfers. You will be able to use them to navigate the treacherous waters of the court’s administration," he advised. "Good luck, kids."

"Yes, master!"

As if they already found some time to practice it beforehand, both Tesh and Lukas jumped up a bit before enthusiastically calling Theo back as they offered their respects before turning round and leaving his room, readily embarking on their very first mission.

’This feels kinda weird,’ Theo thought, watching how Tesh and Lukas hurried out of his room, eager to satisfy his requests, ’to have people follow my orders with such... devotion.’

For a moment, Theo stared after the two, watching them leave the room and then close the doors behind them, before ultimately shaking his head and releasing a heavy breath.

With the same breath, he allowed his body to relax, the tension in his shoulders to vanish and his chest to slacken, giving up on the perfected image of perfectly straight posture he presented to the world ever since Celeste came to first pick him up.

Despite all the strength that Theo cultivated over the past few days, relaxing like that made him feel as if a huge, no, a massive burden dropped free from his shoulders, finally allowing him to take a proper breath and calm down.

’It feels like dressing down to just my underwear after coming back home from a long shift at work,’ Theo thought, recalling the experiences he went through back when scouring the lives-library back in his original body.

Yet, no matter how much he wanted to relax, no matter how much he deserved to take a rest after the strains of the whole, busy day... Theo moved over to his small bookshelf instead, opting to pull out some cheap writing utensils and several scrolls of empty papyrus.

’I will have the time to rest once there are no more obligations for me to take care of,’ he thought, sitting back in his seat as he allowed himself just one more breath of rest, before grabbing a long, colorful feather and then dipping its sharpened end into the small, square-bottom flask of the thick, dark-violet ink.

’Now, where do I go from here?’ Theo thought, the sharp end of his feather hanging above the empty scroll, his mind processing through all sorts of different information and angles at the same time while his hand remained so perfectly motionless, a drop of ink that condensed over the feather’s sharp end somehow refused to drip down to the scroll.

That’s how still Theo got as he sank into his own thoughts, trying to not only reverse-engineer the full concept of cultivation he himself followed, but then alter it for use of his students that, by all means, lacked the blessing of the nanites or the hive.

He couldn’t do it in the most straightforward way of just guiding their cultivation either, not unless he wanted to put a hard limit to how much they would ever be able to grow.

No.

If he wanted for his teachings to make sense, he had to figure out how to overcome several complications and limitations, starting with something as simple as the guiding force that would allow his students, in their soon-to-be-powerless state, to establish proper structure for the basis of their cultivation.

Without nanites, they had nothing but their minds to rely on, minds they already had to keep focused on the schematic of their internal system they were supposed to follow.

"I guess that’s why their cultivation looks the way it does," Theo muttered as he finally realized the true nature of this world’s cultivation.

Just like with the path Theo was trying to open for his students, other inventors of magical systems likely faced the same issue - how to allow others to replicate their own success, often granted by some kind of special quirk or ability? How to circumvent the need for that special element and turn one’s technique from something only they themselves could dabble in, to an art all could participate in, train in and, with time, bring to even greater heights?

After what Theo saw inside both of his students, though, the answer couldn’t be more simple.

"I guess another trip to the library is in order," Theo thought, only to then shake his head and lean over the paper, his feather-bearing hand freezing once again as he started to draft plans in his head.

After all, while scouring the materials inside of the academy’s library would allow Theo to find the answers to the problems he noticed on the path his students were soon to follow... it was up to him to first find out what techniques could best possibly help him out to overcome the issues ahead!

And for that, rather than rushing to the library, Theo decided to take his time planning every step of the way so that he could, in a bid to draw as little attention as possible, learn about everything he wanted to learn all in one go!"