Chapter 559. Grock’s Underpants Glowed Like a Sunrise, and I Promised Nobody Would Laugh

Chapter 559: 559. Grock’s Underpants Glowed Like a Sunrise, and I Promised Nobody Would Laugh

When they rounded the corner of the barn, breathless and bracing for a confrontation with a furious dwarf, they found Grock standing motionless in front of his clothesline.

The scene was surreal. Every single item of laundry—every linen shirt, every pair of wool trousers, and a truly enormous, intimidating set of dwarven undergarments—was emitting a soft, pulsing golden glow.

They hung there in the morning air, luminous and divine. Grock was staring directly at the center of the line, where his largest pair of underpants hung at eye level.

They gleamed with a soft, private radiance, like a small and very intimate sunrise captured in cotton.

The dwarf didn’t move. He didn’t yell.

He simply stood there, his face turning a shade of red that rivaled the glowing fabric.

Slowly, painfully, slowly, he turned his head toward William. His beard twitched with suppressed rage.

"Instructor William." The voice was low, dangerous, and vibrating with the threat of impending violence.

William straightened his spine, adopting his most diplomatic posture. "Yes, Master Grock?"

Grock’s eyes flickered to Ellie, then back to William. "We will discuss this later."

Grock’s voice was terrifyingly level. It wasn’t the roar of a man who had lost control; it was the quiet, pressurized stillness of a boiler about to explode.

That unnatural calm was infinitely worse than any shouting match. It carried the promise of a reckoning, one that would likely involve a very large hammer and several weeks of disciplinary paperwork.

Behind William, Ellie had completely collapsed inward. She had pressed both hands against her face, her forehead nearly touching her knees.

At first, William thought she was hyperventilating from terror, but as he listened, he realized the sound coming from her was different. Her shoulders were shaking violently, producing a wet, hiccuping noise.

She was laughing and crying simultaneously, a messy, helpless sound that seemed to bubble up from somewhere impossibly deep in her chest.

William felt a strange, bittersweet ache in his own chest as he watched her. Since the night of the glass, since the terror of her power nearly consuming her, he hadn’t heard her make a sound like that.

For months, her laughter had been defensive, a brittle shield thrown up to protect herself from the fear of what she was.

But this? This was raw, and this was genuine.

She was laughing at the absurdity of it, at the sheer, ridiculous chaos of her own existence. She was laughing because her power was terrifying, yes, but also because it was, in this moment, utterly absurd.

"I am going to pretend that I did not see this," a new voice announced.

Catherine appeared at the edge of the courtyard, looking uncharacteristically disheveled. There was a stray piece of straw caught in her silver hair, and she clutched a leather-bound book under one arm as if it were a shield.

She had clearly come to investigate why half the academy staff had abandoned their posts to stare at a clothesline in bewildered fascination.

She stopped short, taking in the tableau. Her gaze swept over the luminous, golden undergarments swaying gently in the breeze like holy relics.

Her eyes moved to Grock, who looked like he was contemplating murder. Then she looked at William, who was standing with the weary posture of a man awaiting execution.

Finally, her eyes landed on Ellie, who was still doubled over, making those strange, sobbing laughing noises.

Catherine stood silent for three long seconds.

"I am going to pretend that I did not see this," she repeated, her voice carrying an edge of profound resignation. "I am going to walk back to my quarters, I am going to pour a very large glass of fortified wine, and I am going to convince myself that the sun has simply decided to manifest physically on Grock’s laundry."

"That is probably wise," William said, offering her a grim nod of solidarity.

Catherine’s eyes flickered toward the glowing trousers one last time, a spark of mischief breaking through her dignified composure.

"However," she added, "I will also be telling this story at dinner for the rest of my life."

"And I expect to be given excellent wine while I recount the details."

"That," William replied, watching Grock begin to slowly reach for a very heavy-looking wrench on his belt, "is probably also wise."

Grock remained motionless, a statue of dwarven fury. His knuckles were white where they gripped the belt at his waist, and the air around him seemed to vibrate with the sheer force of his suppressed rage.

When he finally spoke, his voice wasn’t a shout; it was a low, grinding rumble that felt like tectonic plates shifting deep underground.

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear," Grock said, his eyes narrowing into slits of molten steel as he scanned the gathering crowd. "If anyone so much as snickers, if I hear so much as a suppressed giggle, I will personally ensure that your next three months of forge assignments involve nothing but coal hauling and ash scrubbing."

"Do I make myself understood?"

The silence that followed was absolute.

It was a heavy, suffocating thing. Nobody laughed.

In that moment, the students and staff alike understood that Grock wasn’t bluffing; he was a man who had been pushed past the point of reason, and a dwarf with a grudge was more dangerous than a wyvern in heat.

It was, without question, one of the most difficult feats of self-control any of them had ever performed.

By the time the sun began its slow descent toward the horizon that evening, Ellie had achieved something that felt like a miracle.

In the deepening shadows of the Dead Field, where the grass still lay crushed in that strange, geometric ring, a small victory took shape.

Ellie stood alone in the center of the wasteland, her breathing steady, her shoulders relaxed. A single, marble-sized bead of light materialized above her palm.

It didn’t flicker; it didn’t shiver or threaten to detonate. It simply existed—steady, warm, and utterly obedient.

She held it there for ten whole seconds. Ten seconds of perfect, unadulterated control.

She stared at the tiny ember with wide, disbelieving eyes. When she finally looked up at William, the expression on her face hit him like a physical blow.

The fear that had defined her features for months had vanished, replaced by something raw and unguarded: genuine, childlike wonder.

Her eyes were bright with the shock of her own capability, and the vulnerability in that moment made something catch painfully in William’s throat.

"I did that," she whispered, her voice barely audible above the evening breeze.

"You did," William replied, his own voice thick with pride.

"It didn’t explode."

"No, Ellie... It didn’t explode."

A small, triumphant smile touched her lips. Slowly, experimentally, she closed her fingers around the tiny spark.

For a heartbeat, the light burned through the skin of her palm, casting a crimson glow through her knuckles like a living coal trapped beneath the surface.

Over the next few days, the chaos gave way to a fragile, precious rhythm. The training became less about survival and more about mastery.

Ellie learned to summon a medium-scale healing pulse on command, a soft, soothing green wash that could knit flesh without tearing it, and she could fire controlled beams of light in short, precise bursts.

The Dead Field itself began to bear the scars of her progress; the ring of crushed grass had transformed into a scorched circle, with a smaller, deeper crater of blackened earth at its center.

Catherine had wisely abandoned her folding chair, opting instead to stand behind the thick trunk of an ancient oak tree, observing from a position of tactical retreat.

The progress was real. It was undeniable.

William wanted to savor it, to believe in this new normalcy, but he refused to let himself be complacent. He knew better than anyone that in this world, hope was often the bait for a trap.

He wanted to be proud of her without tempting fate.

But fate, as it turned out, had been watching. It had been patient, waiting for the moment when their guard was lowered, when the fear had faded enough to let them believe they were safe.

It happened on a Thursday. The afternoon was deceptively ordinary; the sky was a pale, harmless blue, and the air carried nothing but the sweet smell of hay and sun-warmed stone.

Ellie began her warm-up with her usual brightness, her spirits clearly lifted by her recent successes.

She was mid-story, animatedly describing an incident involving Kaela and a disastrous attempt at making fish pie; one hand lifted expressively in front of her. A small, cheerful glow was already forming over her palm, dancing in time with her words.

Then, in the space between two syllables, the world shifted.

Her face didn’t just change; it froze. The light animation drained from her features as if someone had pulled a plug.

Her jaw tightened, her pupils dilated until her eyes were almost entirely black, and the cheerful glow in her hand suddenly turned sickly and jagged.

She stopped talking mid-sentence. The silence that rushed in was wrong; it was too heavy, too sudden.

"Wait," she said, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper.

Her free hand flew to her chest, clutching at the fabric of her tunic as if she could physically hold something back. "William... something is wrong."

"Something is really... really wrong."