Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 93: Breaking the ice

Chapter 93: Breaking the ice

"It’s nice to see you again, master!"

Tesh’s cheerful, sublimely excited voice prompted Theo to slightly squint his eyes.

A warm feeling spread low in his stomach at the sight of the girl’s beaming face.

’Weird.’

Theo scoffed before giving his head a slight shake and dropping his hands on his hips, somewhat mirroring Celeste’s pose.

"So?" he asked, turning his eyes from Tesh to Lukas and back with his eyebrows raised with expectations. "How did the sales go?"

It’s been quite some time since Theo gave the two of them the order to sell out all of Julius’ movables. Nearly four days, in fact, between all the cultivation, resting that followed, and then the day Theo spent trying to figure out the mansion’s formation.

Obviously, those two were quite busy for most of that time, either by redoing their cultivation with Theo, resting after it, or then spending the day with Celeste, who was unaware of the order.

By all means, Theo’s question couldn’t be more unfair.

Which only made it all the more entertaining to see Tesh and Lukas’ reactions to it.

"The sales..." Tesh was the first to speak, uttering only two words before turning her eyes off to the side while her cheeks were covered in a faint, pink blush.

"I mean, we were kinda..." Lukas attempted to come up with an excuse, only to realize how stupid it was halfway through.

Theo would have to be stupid not to know they were busy when he watched over them most of the last few days himself! And since their master was clearly aware of the unfairness of his question...

Theo’s lips involuntarily curved up as his disciples suddenly lost their footing and scrambled to answer while Celeste simply looked at the three of them with confusion on her face.

"Actually, that’s fine," not a moment later, Theo waved his hand to dismiss the whole topic, "what I want the two of you to do now isn’t just to go around and waste time trying to pawn off whatever expensive stuff Julius stashed away. Instead, Lukas," Theo turned to the kid, "I want you to go and split the staff into three parts. Half is to remain and take care of the manor as usual. You will then take half of the rest and get them to do the selling for us."

Theo smiled while raising his hand with his forefinger up.

"And be sure to remind them the money from those sales will go into their wages, while I will be sure to look over all the numbers later," Theo said before turning his eyes over to Tesh, "you will take all the others and have them go do some shopping at the common market. I will give you the list of what I need bought once they are all ready to go."

"What about me, then, teacher Theo?" Sensing the opportunity, Celeste stepped up with a playful smile on her lips.

Theo raised his right eyebrow in response.

"Who am I to give you any orders, teacher Celeste?"

The woman froze for the shortest of moments, as if somehow holding back an unexpected twitch.

"Actually, speaking of the authority and all of that," she looked down to her feet while slightly raising her left, only to start tapping the front of her shoe against the courtyard’s cobblestone. "Doesn’t it feel kinda... uncomfortable to keep calling each other teacher this, teacher that?" Celeste asked while adorably rolling her head off to the side. "It doesn’t really roll off the tongue all that well, does it?"

Celeste glanced up, her whole vibe suddenly all meek, uncertain.

"I can’t really see how it’s connected to authority, but sure?" Theo, unsure how exactly to react, tensed his face up a little. Then, before a single thought could pass to stop this habitual reaction, he raised his arm, "I don’t have any drinks on me to break the ice over, so let’s just do with this," he spoke as he reached out with his hand, adding, "Theo," when it froze, extended out for a shake.

Celeste looked down to Theo’s extended arm, visibly startled, before reluctantly offering her hand out, as if unsure what she was supposed to do.

Noticing his mistake, Theo twisted his hand at its wrist, scouring his mind for a desperate second before accepting just the fingers of Celeste’s hand upon his palm and then gently raising it up while leaning down.

"Celeste," mirroring Theo’s earlier manner, Celeste spoke right as Theo’s lips gently brushed against the joints of her fingers, only for her whole arm and then the rest of her body to shiver a little.

For a moment, the two of them found themselves in this weird bubble of a weirdly intimate greeting, a bubble that burst the very next moment when Tesh suddenly coughed.

Broken free from the charm of the second, Theo looked over only to see Tesh clasping her right fist against the palm of her left hand while leaning down just deep enough and squeezing her shoulders in just the specific way to give Theo a direct, unobstructed look all the way down the narrow cleavage of her robes, her clasped hands now serving as a frame to the two mounds she, knowingly or not, flashed.

"We will be going then, master!" Tesh called out while shaking her whole arms... and letting the recoil of that shake follow all the way to her chest, pushing her considerable charms into an attractive bounce.

"Yeah, good luck. I will be with you two shortly," Theo replied, easily forcing his eyes to stay on the girl’s face rather than the assets she used to divert his attention away from his fellow teacher. "Once you two are done, we are going for a short trip," he then announced as he turned his eyes over to a seemingly random spot on the wall that just happened to be in the direction of the central point of the academy town.

’Going to the library right now, while a logical next step, would create the same issue as using Julius’ books to learn about higher levels of cultivation,’ Theo thought, recalling one of the many ideas he had while bored to death over the constant attempts to refine the blueprint for the formation. ’It would be too narrow-minded for me to assume I already know the best ways to grow stronger, more adept at handling this world. Meaning,’ Theo smiled to his own thoughts before looking down at his two disciples, eagerly awaiting for him to speak more about the foreshadowed trip.

"We will be going to the academy’s central market," Theo revealed while feeling the first tingles of excitement move up his spine.

"Central market?" This time, Celeste managed to triumph over both of Theo’s students when it came to responding to his sudden announcement. "Didn’t you try to sell away all of your tokens, though? There’s only an extreme few things you could buy there with normal money," she pointed out in protest, worried Theo missed such a crucial part.

Theo, however, merely widened his smile.

’If my perspective is too narrow, it is an utmost priority for me to expand it, rather than doubling down on the only path I’m aware of right now!’

"Don’t worry about it," Theo then winked back at Celeste while putting his hands behind his back, assuming a grand pose of one unparalleled under the heavens. "We are going on a trip. But I never claimed it’s going to be a shopping one!"