Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 71: The hell was all that about?

Chapter 71: The hell was all that about?

"I-is that so?"

Faced with the embarrassment of all that she did in the heat of the moment, Celeste shriveled down on herself, as if instinctively trying to make herself into the smallest target possible.

This instinctive drive, originally designed to prevent physical injury, did nothing to stop the mental burn, the embarrassment of doing all that she did and knowing how the news about it was going to make rounds far and wide across the academy grounds.

Still, while Celeste blushed in silent embarrassment, Theo could only scratch the side of his head, not sure how to react.

’Did she buy it? Or is she just pretending?’

In the end, though, it didn’t really matter. The only thing that actually did was breaking the current stalemate and moving on so that they could hopefully find a way to redirect everyone’s focus somewhere else.

Hopefully, a meteor would shoot across the sky, attracting everyone to the windows and then causing doom upon them all as they would try to predict what kind of divine sign it could be.

Hopefully, but also more realistically, someone would slip, kick their feet comically in the air, and then do a flip before falling down straight on their face, making up for a dynamic show that would draw everyone’s attention away.

Realistically though, with everyone frozen as they were, both trying not to get noticed themselves and too scared to interrupt anything to move, no such saving grace would come to help the two of them save face.

Yet, with Celeste’s embarrassment only growing more and more intense on her face and Theo’s fluster still making it too hard for him to figure this weird situation out, it was ultimately the former that made the first move.

"I... s-see..." Celeste muttered, repeating her words from before but in a much smaller voice than before. She then chuckled nervously, turning her eyes away and to the side, as opposed to pinning them down to the floor.

An expression that an expert could easily read through...

Just that, Theo was no expert on the topic. And even if he could leave it to the hive to discern all the likely meanings of this small expression... What were the chances that the physiognomy of this world’s people was exactly the same as the physiognomy of the people from back on Earth? And if those two weren’t the same, how could their reactions be hardwired to the same societal standards that all on Earth unknowingly learned?

Even if those were the same, though, Theo simply didn’t feel like relying on his hive more than he already did. In a way, whenever he followed the hive’s instructions, he was robbing his very own self of an agenda. And what kind of a life would it mean if he only ever took the mathematically most optimal route?

How could it be called life if there was no emotion, no recklessness in it?

Making good choices lost most of its charm when good options were the only ones available. And it was the greatest charm of the poor choices one made that allowed one to learn from their mistakes.

All of that, blindly following and relying on the hive would remove, turning Theo into a mindless, emotionless efficiency machine.

Which is exactly why he refused to ask the hive to read the meaning of Celeste’s jumpy eyes, giving her enough time to gather her wits and look up to his face... only to then escape with her eyes again.

"I apologize for the misunderstanding, then," Celeste muttered softly, her voice just loud enough for those listening to properly catch her words before watching her turn on her heel and nervously walk towards the exit. Still, she did so in a manner that made it quite damn obvious she wanted to do nothing else but jump into a desperate dash, limiting herself to a slow walk merely not to make an even bigger scene than she already did.

’Okay...’ Theo sighed, watching how the girl reached the library’s exit and then, without looking back even once, left the place, pushing everyone’s attention straight to his face.

And so, even without the hive’s help, Theo could see what was the most reasonable next move for him.

"The hell was all of that about?" he muttered at the same volume as Celeste before, making it seem as if he was talking to himself while actually providing a narrative to all the students that would soon jump on the opportunity to spread rumors about this meeting.

Still, with his task in the library now done, there was absolutely no reason for Theo to remain there, especially not when he was already in the center of everyone’s attention.

In fact, it was this kind of attention that would render him unable to proceed with the usual, given how this number of intense stares would be bound to notice something weird in his unnatural stillness stretched over a long period of time.

And so, after waiting merely a few minutes since Celeste left, Theo turned and left the library too, happily enjoying the few moments of peace of the outside, the few moments before the rumors would start to circulate, leaving him only as popular as he was before them.

This momentary peace is also exactly what Theo needed to finally sort all of the new knowledge out in his brain, properly marking all the interesting spots with mental hyperlinks, turning them from autonomous bits of knowledge into a part of the greater, parsed mesh that made up his current common sense.

Sorting all those thoughts and knowledge out took Theo just as much time as he needed to move over from the library, through the open outside of the academy’s compound, to his next goal—a formation shop.

It was a branch of one of the bigger factions in the entire academy, combining both several factions of the magic studies, several groups of engineers, and then a huge number of cultivators.

Formations, or rather, everything that could be taken under the general umbrella of the term, were simply too good for anyone to pass on them, leading to most of the existing factions investing in the field. This, in turn, made it one of the more egalitarian societies within the academy and led to the establishment of the formation shop—where all, regardless of faction, group, or allegiance, could trade in their formation or buy whatever kind they were in need of.

Which made it just the perfect place for Theo to get his hands on the most important element of the plan he was starting to hatch for reformation of his disciple’s cultivation.