Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 70: Assaulted?!

Chapter 70: Assaulted?!

"You looked like you were about to keel over just a few moments ago and now you look like you are all fine?"

Celeste didn’t mince her words, opting to approach the subject directly.

And so, she squinted her eyes before locking her arms over her chest, all the while giving Theo a stern stare aimed to foretell the consequences he would suffer if he dared to try avoiding the question.

"How?"

Celeste reached out with her hand, her fingers gently landing atop Theo’s chest while her eyes drilled holes in his face.

"How?"

Celeste’s eyes shone with the light of several emotions. From intense curiosity that bordered the realm of passion, through some sort of a respect, all the way to suspicion and doubt.

All of that encompassed in but a single word.

How?

How did Theo do it?

How did he go from sickly weak to perfectly fine, just slightly sweaty?

How did he do it?!

In the end, all that was left in Celeste’s eyes was just the intensity of her desire to figure it out, to make things make sense.

"Excuse me?"

Taking a step back, Theo squinted his eyes as Celeste’s fingers slid down and then away from his chest as he backed off.

"Oh, don’t give me that ’I don’t know what you are talking about,’ please," ignoring the bewildered stares of the few students present in the library, Celeste pressed on, raising her hand just in time to place it down on Theo’s chest...

Rather than acting all gentle and flirty, however, she instantly clawed her fingers, grabbing a proper hold on Theo’s robe and thus robbing him of his ability to retreat.

"How?!"

Clutching at Theo’s robe, Celeste brought herself even closer, nearly shoving her face against Theo’s.

"What did you do? How did you do it?" she snapped, shooting one question after the other, all on a single breath, only for her voice to then slightly break, "just why... Why are you like that?"

Adding her second hand to Theo’s chest, her grasp tightening as she brought her head down, leaving Theo to stare at an elegant, blonde bun she would tie her hair in whenever conducting lessons not to let her otherwise long locks get in the way of her teaching.

"I’m not really sure what to say..." Aware of all the stares and less than happy to add even more fuel to the gossip mills that already brimmed with thousands of alternate versions of his trial, its reasons, his true background, Theo had no other choice but to play fool.

’Whenever skimming through the past age’s literature, I found this kind of dull behavior to be quite dumb and all, but now that I’m in a situation like this...!’

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Theo getting flustered when having Celeste jump all over him like that.

She was one of the youngest teachers to reach the level of the academy’s star, speaking more than anything to the strength of her talents and the diligent nature of her work. While not an otherworldly beauty derived not from the possibilities of nature but the crystallization of human desires back in the two centuries of the AI craze, she had perfectly solid, natural... homey looks.

By all means, rather than shocking the world around her with what nature blessed her with, she was the type of a woman that could make men go crazy over a single, affectionate smile, a calming hug or a soothing pat on the back, all of that in the package that usually would make for an outgoing, high-energy character.

And now, she desperately clutched at Theo’s robe, her eyes filled with intense passion as she sought answers in a way that made it seem as if she was willing to bite at him and not let him go until he satisfied her curiosities!

"Teacher Celeste!" Seeing how more casual, clueless approach yielded no effects, Theo switched over to a stern tone, "this is unbecoming of you!"

Firmly pushing down on the woman’s shoulders, Theo finally managed to take a step to the back, only to then find her hands still clutched to his chest, pushing the two of them into a tug-of-war of sorts.

"I know!" Celeste shook her head up and down, openly admitting this wasn’t all spur-of-the-moment thing, but something she was aware of all the facets of.

The weirded-out stares of the students that were bound to start a new wave of gossip included as nothing more but a small price to pay for whatever her goal could be.

"I know!" Celeste cried out again, "but if I don’t get you to answer now, you are only going to..." her voice suddenly weakening as her fingers relaxed only for her hands to then slip down and away as her arms fell down by her sides, all the while the passionate look from before vanished, replaced with an empty, stunned stare.

"Wait, what was I even..."

Celeste slowly brought her hands up to her face, her wide-open eyes peeking from between her fingers as she dropped her sights to the floor. Then, skittishly like some sort of a small animal, she peeked up from between her fingers, stealing a defenseless glance up Theo’s slightly flustered face.

"..."

...

...

Theo just stood there, his face helpless, his mind at a total loss.

’What am I supposed to do in a moment like that...?’

"I guess I could’ve been so hot because of the herbal tea I’ve drunk before...?"

Theo gambled it all on a stupid story based on nothing more but the already outdated lore that his trial proved to be nothing more but a cover story.

While it was his actual passion, in this world he was no alchemist but a noble bastard of a powerful clan! The whole shtick with alchemy was but part of the crafted lore for his persona.

And yet...

Even with the fresh rumors already making circles around the academy, only to be joined with several fresh and spicy ones after today, everyone’s perception of Theo had yet to properly change.

And so, even if this one detail about his backstory soon would no longer make any sense, wouldn’t they all consider it perfectly natural for him to be somewhat weird if he drank some sort of a special concoction?

"I mean, I guess that’s why I might’ve appeared sick, only to then miraculously recover?" Desperate to salvage whatever was there to save in an encounter like this, Theo desperately dug the lore of his excuse a bit deeper, adding in the details he deemed just right to properly root his story in reality and properly flesh it out. "In fact, I was never sick to begin with, so it’s not like I randomly cured some sort of a sickness by standing around and doing nothing... I guess?"

Theo held his breath.

By now, he threw out the bait. But he had yet to see whether or not both the fish, Celeste herself, and all the krill, in this case all the students who saw the whole situation go down, would take on the bait!

A question he could only find an answer to by pinning his eyes nowhere else but to Celeste’s face, only to watch to his mild amusement how her normally pale cheeks suddenly started to turn into an intense hue of crimson.