Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 83: Breaking bad?

Chapter 83: Breaking bad?

"Oh, it’s like that..." Theo stared with great focus at the whisk of flame dancing on the palm of his hand.

After a short lecture and then a bit of coaching, Theo finally managed to get used to this new feeling, new idea, new way of putting his mana to use.

"That’s right, now," Celeste’s stare grew slightly more intense, "keep it going."

The theory behind Celeste’s magic wasn’t all that complicated.

Just like one would use structure, a form of cultivation in their bodies, they could also establish them beyond one’s body.

In a certain way, the process looked quite similar to laying down formations, simply with some kind of runic language replacing the nodes and lines.

And the key to using this kind of magic was to memorize a set of the basic building blocks that, when combined, would create just the phenomena one desired.

Obviously, there was a hard limit to this.

There were only a few spell blocks one could properly remember, limiting the range of different spells they could construct.

A limitation that quite frankly didn’t apply to Theo at all, with his hive always on the ready to grant him immense advantage with everything that had anything to do with computing.

But...

"As for the blocks, there’s only like what, seven? Eight of them?" Celeste turned back to the former topic, the strain of holding Theo’s two students up in the air not enough to produce a single drop of sweat on her face. "There could be some more outside of the general circulation, but outside of that?" she shrugged her shoulders. "It’s not like one can remember all of them anyway, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?"

Theo’s eyebrow moved up at such a blatant, open, and perfectly casual remark that would stir the hair on the back of anyone with some god-damn basic common sense.

’HOW IS THAT ALRIGHT?!’

Theo, on the inside, nearly exploded on the spot.

’Just because you couldn’t remember them all, there’s no point trying to figure out all sorts of other ways to use those?!’

With only eight spell blocks, there was an extremely finite number of spells one could construct. And this kind of a limitation simply didn’t sit well with Theo.

"Hmm..." with a seed of a plan sprouting in his mind, Theo lowered his eyes and hummed slightly while pinning his eyes down to the ground, merely following Celeste’s guidance rather than leading the way himself.

He didn’t know the way to his new, formerly Julius’s, mansion on the outskirts of the academy! And by all means, there was no sign either of his disciples had gotten anywhere near to selling it off already.

"And you say those seven, eight tomes would all be accessible now? Like, in the library?"

With yet another, third by now, reason to visit the place again, Theo couldn’t help but start getting impatient.

"Huh? No, there should be only three in the academy right now," Celeste made a slightly weird face, as if taken aback by Theo’s lack of common sense again. "But those are the official copies. If you want to collect all of the spell blocks, you just need to go around and find the right people to learn those from," Celeste shrugged her shoulders with disregard.

For a moment, Theo turned silent, weighing his options.

"Honestly, I think I will check the official copies first, then," he muttered, only to raise his eyes up to his two disciples hanging in the air.

One of which, by now, appeared to only pretend to be asleep.

"But that’s after we put the kids to rest," Theo reminded, more himself than Celeste, while stretching his arms out behind and ignoring some stares of passersby strangely agitated by the look of the four of them.

"On that note," Celeste spoke up, not giving her audience even a glance, "are you seriously going to sell that mansion?" she asked as they entered a vast park and started to cross it, aiming for a plot of land just behind the hill on the park’s opposite end.

"What good is a mansion like that?" Theo shrugged. "It’s too far for convenience, too big to maintain myself, too expensive to offer any rationale justifying the upkeep."

The young man shook his head with a small smile of disregard, a smile of someone who wisely stepped over the trap a naive newbie would happily put his balls in, lured by the prospect of living rich.

But almost as soon as Theo turned silent, the idea started to pester him, as if his inner self revolted against his random thought in the moment. And for an idea to pester him like that...

’Why does it feel like the very next thing I will look into?’

Julian’s mansion was too costly for Theo to ever bother maintaining it. But that was only the case for as long as he perceived it as an expense rather than an asset.

A vast, nearly privately ruled plot of land within the strictly regulated academy grounds. A massive mansion that could hide a lot of secrets. More than enough room and peace to cultivate his own garden of herbs.

Something deep in Theo’s soul stirred up.

There were oh-so-many reasons for him to rush through everything and sprint to the library.

But the small little alchemist at the bottom of his heart just couldn’t contain its excitement at growing some specific herbs and... breaking bad.

"You know what, now that I gave the idea a moment to sink in, maybe selling that mansion off isn’t all that good of an idea..." Theo rubbed his chin with his hand, his eyes locked down on the ground as they slowly reached the other end of the park through quite the scenic route. "I might’ve been... a bit too eager to get rid of all that Julius left me and turn it into something I could more easily use. A piece of land and estate like that..."

Right as Theo started to consider the possibility of keeping the house, the two of them stepped out from beyond the hill, allowing them to look directly at the building in question.

A building that was, by all means, currently occupied.