Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 77: Blank Canvas

Chapter 77: Blank Canvas

’I know I shouldn’t, but...’

Celeste moved through the inner ring of the academy’s outlands, a place where rarely anyone would bother to visit.

Celeste wasn’t any different, only showing up in a place as such as she followed the trail left by the two students.

’Was I as naive as the two of them, I wonder?’

Looking back into her academia years, Celeste sighed, easily tracking Theo’s disciples despite all the effort they put into hiding their tracks.

Their abilities were simply at different levels.

Still, while she was easily capable of following the two... She couldn’t really be sure whether doing so was that much of a good idea.

Or rather...

’What the hell are you doing, you stupid girl?!’

Screaming out in her mind, Celeste could only watch as her body followed its curiosity, leaving her actual will in the backseat.

And so, her body followed the trail, all the way to where she could spot the first signs of a clearing forming just a little bit further ahead.

Given the nature of her presence, she couldn’t really waltz in, could she?

With that in mind, rather than heading straight for the entrance, Celeste covered herself in three layers of hiding spells, each working in a different way. Then and only then did she approach, and not the entrance, but a point a little back from it, so as to not make herself a clear target against the backdrop of the sky.

Celeste stopped before bending her knees down as she lowered her eye level to where the grasses grew slightly thinner, allowing a glance or two every now and then through the tall grass and into the clearing in question.

’I know that I shouldn’t assume you are going to do something bad, but...’

Celeste bit down on her lip.

This was no longer something as small as one’s reputation, rumors, or even social standing.

No.

This was the future of two academy students that hung in the balance, all within Theo’s authority to put to waste or change for the better.

Academy policy of letting the students be left to their own devices be damned!

In a scenario as such, Celeste simply couldn’t take any chances, regardless of how unjust it was for Theo.

And so, Celeste peeked out, only to quickly spot Theo and his two disciples now in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by some weird trenches, all three of them deeply focused on some sort of outdoors cultivation.

Yet, as a second passed, Celeste noticed another detail, one that only further pressed her need for some answers.

Because the cultivation of Theo’s students, rather than slowly swelling up as it should during meditation... it continued to steadily decrease.

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

’This is really annoying...’

Keeping his opinion to himself, Theo shook his head a little before focusing back on the task.

By now, he had undone the most problematic part in the two before him. What was left, however, was the gruelling work of slowly dismantling the entire structure.

It was such an insanely time-consuming task, Theo considered taking a shortcut and leaving their structures as they were, given how they were nowhere near as bad as the parts Theo removed first.

A thought he would then give up, resisting the desire to abandon the proper path for his students to follow.

’That’s the least I owe them,’ he thought, taking a deep breath between the sessions before turning his eyes the other direction and focusing on the other of the two.

And so, bit by bit, the process continued, with every scrapped piece of Tesh and Lukas’ cultivation thrown into the formation, only for the formation to absorb and process it, storing it for later.

Whenever a bit of their cultivation would get amputated, the kids would twitch and bite down on their teeth.

’I feel like some sort of a sadistic dentist,’ he thought, doing his best to optimize the flow of his mana to make the cultivation removal as painless and clean as possible.

"Ah!"

Tesh suddenly moaned, her body momentarily tensing in pain, only for the girl to relax as she reminded herself of Theo’s warning.

As counter-intuitive as it sounded, the process was a lot milder if one allowed it to happen rather than if bracing oneself for the wave of pain.

With Theo making the second cut to fully remove a long connecting channel of Tesh’s cultivation, she twitched again, squirming under the steady touch of his palm, only to grit her teeth and keep herself relaxed through the process.

’Brave girl,’ Theo resisted the desire to pat Tesh on her head and opted to move his attention back to Lukas.

It was an extremely slow process... but with progress Theo could clearly see. And that alone was enough to help him push through the long hours of constant deep focus.

Yet, as Theo reached roughly two-thirds of the job, he had no other choice but to start pondering,

’It’s been hours already,’ he thought, staring at the clearing’s entrance where Celeste, as if luck just wouldn’t have it, stood just a few feet outside of the outer ring of the rune!

From that precise distance, she could clearly see into the formation, her view obstructed by nothing more than a few blades of grass.

And yet, hours passed. And Celeste neither approached nor did she grow bored and just continued to stare from the distance, likely assured Theo couldn’t spot her with his back to the clearing’s entrance.

Naive thought.

Still, daring not to stop the process in the middle to stretch the unpleasant experience any further than it had to last, Theo poured all his focus back to the task, undoing one knot after the other, one connecting channel after the other and on and on, never ceasing the trimming.

It wouldn’t be until the sun started to slowly set in the sky that Theo finally breathed out, the last strand of old cultivation, last hint of what once was, was no more.

After several long hours of painstaking operation, Theo finally succeeded, turning all of the cultivation of his disciples into just an extremely condensed yet perfectly tame mana within his formation.

"Haaa..." Tesh breathed out a long sigh only to reach out her hands to the front and then stare at her fingernails for a while. "I almost forgot how it feels to be but a mortal," she muttered as she brought her hands together before stretching her arms out to the sky, only to sum it all up with a long, lazy yawn.

In a way, this new Tesh lacked the same energy that her old self flaunted left and right.

Lukas didn’t show much change outright, but judging by his uneasy step as he stood up to stretch his legs, he wasn’t at his best either.

And it would be hard to expect either of them to keep their physical abilities after parting with the greatest element of their strength!

"What do we do now, master?"

Gritting his teeth, Lukas looked up and locked his stare on Theo, deep tension all there for Theo to see in the kid’s eyes.

’He’s worried whether they will be able to regain their cultivation, isn’t he?’ he thought, smiling lightly at the thought.

But there wasn’t really any reason for Theo to stall, now that his disciples became blank slates for him to paint upon.

"Now, just allow my energy to guide you and that should be enough," Theo waved his hand as he spoke, "once you familiarize yourself with the sensation, you will be able to invoke it yourself."

With a snap of Theo’s fingers, his mana rushed into the two young bodies, cutting straight to their core before turning dormant.

At the same time, the flows within the formation slightly changed, opening a small channel that effectively changed the void of the formation a little bit away, causing all the mana in the formation to start leaking into the formation’s former void.

Or, in simpler terms, the energy of the formation started to pour into where the three of them sat and meditated, filling in their bodies with a logically impossible amount of energy.

"Let’s see how far you two will go," Theo muttered before leaning in and winking at each of his disciples individually, turning his head to each as he smiled for an encouragement, "all the best!"