Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 98: To ditch the guide

Chapter 98: To ditch the guide

The two girls, already hanging off Theo’s arms, suddenly tightened their hold over Theo’s innocent flesh, as if determined to either root him in place or have his arms get fully enveloped in their bosoms.

"That’s weird," feeling the pressure from both of his sides, Theo had no other choice but to go for the slightly more drastic response, "did we step into a whorehouse rather than a trading one?"

To so openly flaunt female beauty at a potential male customer in a bid to reel him into trading...?

’To think that I would look back to Celeste’s warning so soon,’ Theo thought, resisting the desire to roll his eyes.

Just like with most of the things, if the owners were flexing sex at the customers, they were likely doing it to cover up for the shortcomings that would otherwise push those very customers away.

There was always an option that it was merely a tactic to get the big spenders to their side rather than letting them work with their competition...

But if such a huge auction house resorted to that kind of tactics, what would stop its competition from doing the same? And once that kind of methods were to grow big and frequent enough, they would only start to bring adverse effects, with actual big merchants opting to trade elsewhere, too busy to waste their time on such crudely promoted carnal satisfaction services.

That’s how things would work in a normal world, at the very least. This place, however, was built in the middle of the academy’s central market rather than a normal city.

Sure, there were some teachers, professors, or graduates that were too busy doing business or procuring items for their projects to care for such blatant bait attempts. But once one looked past them, what were the streets of the central market filled with?

Young people of both genders, most of whom either had more money to spend than they knew what to do with or people with enough of a backing to be considered young misses and masters, even with the hefty tax the academy put on all the outside sources of financing.

Back to the reality, faced with such an open insult, the woman could only force a small smile on her lips. Judging from her reaction, she took Theo’s disregard of her charms to be a sign of his potentially deep pockets — or so Theo thought, judging the situation from the very perspective he developed.

"We are merely here to please those worthy of our attention," keeping her forced smile up, the woman replied, opting not to antagonize Theo by openly calling him out on the insult and partially agree with him instead by replying in a way that aligned with what he himself implied. "But let’s forget about all of that," she suggested next, straightening her pose and skillfully positioning herself so that her clothes would regain their elegance at the cost of exposure.

"Which wing would you like to visit, good sir?" the woman then asked, perfectly using the moment to regain her calm and composure. And quite noticeably, her body slightly shifted to the left, Theo’s right, already trying to suggest him which place to visit.

Unfortunately to her, Theo couldn’t care less about precious potions or ingredients.

He saw a fair share of rare stuff in his life, ranging from literal diamonds, through a core of a nuclear weaponry he crafted himself only to then turn it into a space firework, all the way to a theoretically possible matter that could only ever be crafted with the help of nanites and the global hive’s computing power.

In face of those things, whether a herb was slightly more precious than the other, it would still be all the same to Theo.

"What kind of tour starts with the middle?" Theo asked, happily pouring down the bucket of cold water on the clerk’s expectations as he raised his hand and pointed to his left, "we will start with the wholesale area," he announced and then, without stopping for even a second, "is there any sort of a procedure we should follow to get there?"

Even though Theo made it more and more challenging with every time he opened up his mouth, the half-naked girl somehow managed to keep her smile up, even though there was absolutely no warmth left in her eyes.

"No, good sir, there’s absolutely no procedure for it. All you need to do is to go inside, take a seat and then press the crystal mounted on the table’s seat whenever you want to raise the bid."

Rather than wasting even more of her precious time on a poor idiot who not only didn’t appreciate her charms, not only already had two girls eagerly pressing themselves against his arms, but even appeared not to have any real kind of money to his name, the half-naked clerk — with her smile still forcibly on — took this opportunity to bow down and excuse herself, vanishing out into the hall before Theo could waste even a second more of her time.

"That was... quite harsh of you, master," Tesh muttered, her voice too satisfied and happy to match her words.

"No, he did good," Celeste quickly replied before Theo would even have the chance to do so, "that’s exactly how you have to deal with those eager whores!" she exclaimed loud enough for anyone interested to hear. Then, after shaking her hands wrapped around Theo’s arm and thus rubbing his upper arm against her bust, she started to pull him towards the left wing of the building where the bulk-trading was supposedly taking place. "Most of the guys smart enough not to fall for their trading tricks end up with nothing but their clothes after those leeches are done with them!"

’Shit, now I’m really curious,’ Theo thought, his eyes flashing up a little, ’just what made her hate this place so damn much?’ he asked himself, unable to find the answer based on what little he knew about this world, this place in particular or Celeste herself. ’It’s hard to imagine she was talking about her own experiences with those girls, unless...’

Theo’s eyebrows moved up as he noticed a certain possibility.

’Unless...’