Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 87: Manor’s future?

Chapter 87: Manor’s future?

Originally, prompted by those weird, unorthodox feelings, Theo felt like he should stay with his disciples.

What kind of a teacher would he be if he let them to their own devices in an unknown place, locked in the very middle of a military-focused mansion? Or, what was even more important, what kind of a person would leave someone who just lost all their cultivation and then miraculously regained it while improving its quality by leaps and bounds to just sleep on their own in the eye of a massive formation they could only guess the purpose of?

By all means, by all factors and angles, Theo should’ve stayed back, at least until his disciples woke up, at least until he could ensure the supposed benefits of this courtyard weren’t actually a demerit to them in their current state.

All of that went along Theo’s logic, Theo’s line of thinking, and Theo’s common sense. And all of those concerns died off when confronted by a single line from Celeste’s lips.

"They are all adults, and they have considerable cultivation base... even if freshly gained one," she spoke, carefully picking her words.

She knew.

’Heck, I would have to be really naive to believe she might’ve missed it,’ Theo thought, recalling the ease with which he managed to spot the woman first and then the admiration as he saw her persist with her observation even as the whole event stretched into nearly a full day-night cycle. ’But since there’s no way she’s failed to spot anything, then those words...?’

Just like Theo thought, Celeste’s words contained a sharp reminder that she was in the know. Which, as strange as it might be, made Theo more grateful than he felt worried about dealing with someone as strong and sharp-witted as her.

After all, later consequences aside, her knowing about Tesh’s and Luke’s specific circumstances only added to the weight of the point she made about the two of them—finally finding enough leverage to convince Theo to leave the two of them alone as he followed Celeste outside, to the manor’s inner courtyard.

"..."

As it turned out, not even getting stuck together in a huge, open area while the formation continued to absorb more and more mana could be considered to be a perfect place to have a short, simple conversation with someone. In other words, by dragging him around like that, Celeste bought herself the opportunity to talk with Theo a bit more. And yet, now that they’ve left Theo’s two students behind and found themselves all alone in the inner courtyard with no one else around to bother them...

Now that the situation changed even if only by a tiny margin, Celeste suddenly found herself at a loss on how to begin the conversation anew. And so, strapped for options, Celeste gulped her saliva down and decided on the topic she could use to start a somewhat casual talk.

"So?" she asked, "now that you actually own this place, what are your plans for it?" she asked, looking around as if to take in a current picture of Theo’s realm, perfectly eager to see what state it would be in a few months, a few years from now.

Would it remain the same, with the lord’s mansion accumulating most of the region’s wealth as it did before? Or maybe it would become a new hub of commerce spreading its influence over the entire region and then even further than that?

Or maybe Theo wasn’t interested in any of those, and it was only a matter of time before he would sell the manor and his title off, using the proceeds to do whatever it was that Theo, according to his official backstory, wanted to do with all the money he was hoarding.

Honestly, Celeste couldn’t help but feel curious about how this place would change in the coming times. But with that said, while curious about the future, Celeste knew better than to make any far-reaching projections—a single slip, a single mistake, a single mishap, and Theo’s inheritance would get reduced to nothing more than a mound of burned-out stones soaked in the blood of its brave defenders.

Theo, however, wasn’t bothered by the prospects of the future in the slightest. Or rather, while all those problems and dangers lurking in the unknown of the future surely took a prime spot in his mind, he refused to allow those future issues to attend to the important dealings of today. And one of the most important bits of what he could do pretty much right away...

"Honestly, this might be a good place to teach those two all the rest of the things they can learn from someone like me," Theo finally gathered his thoughts enough to give Celeste a somewhat empty answer. "There is enough room for them to rest here, enough training halls for them to grow stronger. And with just a little bit of a loving touch, this formation," Theo stomped on the ground to point out the formation they were, quite literally, standing on top of right now, "it could become something truly marvelous rather than the joke it is right now."

Sure, the formation did gather mana by speeding up its circulation on the formation’s perimeter and then using the mana’s speed to inject it into the formation’s core where the last set of its marks ensured the gathered mana couldn’t leave.

In more ways than one, it was a genius design, something genius by the mere factor of being relatively simple and thus extremely easy to replicate by anyone with enough skill and enough resolve.

But still, in Theo’s eyes, this whole thing was just one big mess.

’A formation?’ Theo nearly chuckled out loud. ’This here is like a children’s drawing when compared to the masterpiece I used back at the sect’s outlands,’ he thought, grinning at the mere idea of comparing the two. ’But...’ his eyes then lingered on the formation for a little bit, ’that doesn’t mean this thing here won’t have any use in the future!’