Chapter 270: One Job

He had sensed the shift in her aura.

"Well done, boys," Roan murmured to himself, pushing off the railing. "You bought her a few minutes of peace."

He turned and walked toward the faculty wing, his long legs eating up the distance, his black eyes practically glowing with chaotic anticipation.

’The Archduke gave me one job,’ Roan plotted, his mind already weaving a web of academic destruction, blackmail, and curriculum overhauls. ’Keep her safe, and don’t let the snobs ruin her edge.’

Roan chuckled, the sound echoing ominously down the pristine marble hallway.

The Imperial Academy was designed to break the spirits of the young, to mold them into compliant, predictable political pawns for the Emperor. It was a factory of tradition and suffocating rules.

But the Academy had never faced a dual-assault from a Supreme Archmage operating a shadow-syndicate, and a six-year-old girl armed with an army of ghost-ducks and two fire-wielding bodyguards.

"Prepare yourselves, professors," Roan whispered to the empty air, adjusting his tie with lethal precision. "The Sovereign is in session. And we are going to rewrite the syllabus."

****

The Grand Atrium of the Imperial Academy of Magic and Governance was an architectural marvel designed to inspire awe, foster academic superiority, and visually oppress anyone who didn’t possess a trust fund.

The vaulted ceilings were enchanted to reflect the shifting constellations of the current astrological cycle.

The towering pillars were carved from solid, spiraling aquamarine crystal, and the tiered amphitheater seating was upholstered in plush, crimson velvet.

It was, objectively, a breathtaking monument to Imperial power.

Sitting in the highest, darkest, and the most obscure corner of the top tier, slumped forward with his face pressed flat against the polished oak desk, was Orion.

The twelve-year-old Supreme Prodigy of the East was currently experiencing a level of psychological suffering that he had previously believed reserved for the deepest layers of the demonic abyss.

’I am going to die here,’ Orion’s internal monologue groaned, his voice muffled by the wood of the desk. ’I am going to slowly perish from terminal boredom. My brain cells are actively committing suicide to escape the mediocrity of this room.’

He cracked open one eye, peering out from beneath his messy, raven-black bangs with their electric-blue tips.

He was surrounded.

Hundreds of freshly enrolled Summer Intake noble children were buzzing around the amphitheater.

They were wearing crisp and new Academy uniforms, shaking hands with each other, and exchanging calling cards. And, worst of all, they were bragging.

"My tutor says my Tier-3 Wind Core is the purest he has seen in a decade," a pompous, slick-haired boy two rows down was boasting loudly to a group of girls. "I can already levitate a textbook for more than five seconds. The professors are going to be absolutely astounded!"

Orion closed his eye, suppressing a violent urge to casually reverse the gravity in the boy’s immediate vicinity and send him floating permanently into the enchanted ceiling.

’Five seconds,’ Orion wept internally. ’He is bragging about hovering a book for five seconds. When I was eight, I accidentally sneezed and teleported half the Tower’s library into the middle of the Eastern Ocean. I am surrounded by amoebas.’

He was wearing the standard, suffocatingly tight crimson and gold uniform of an Academy student. The stiff collar was chafing his neck.

He wasn’t allowed to unbutton it, wasn’t allowed to sleep on the ceiling either. He was forced to sit in a chair, like a common, gravity-bound peasant, operating under a completely fabricated, and insulting fake identity.

According to his forged registration papers, he was "Orion Sterling," the sickly, magically mediocre nephew of an impoverished Eastern Baron.

It was a logistical masterpiece of a cover story, complete with forged medical records indicating he suffered from ’chronic magical fatigue’, the perfect excuse for why he would be sleeping through most of his classes.

But as Orion lay with his face on the desk, he still couldn’t entirely process the absurd chain of events that had dragged him out of the Aethelgard Tower and deposited him in this aristocratic sandbox.

****

The descent into madness had begun three days ago.

Orion had been enjoying a nap in the restricted archives when Elias, the Tower Master’s chronically stressed aide, had used a levitation rune to float up to the ceiling and violently poke Orion with a broom handle.

"The Master has sent an emergency directive!" Elias had shrieked, waving a glowing, magically sealed scroll. "You are being deployed to the Imperial Capital!"

Orion had peeled the heavy grimoire off his face, dropping down to the floor with a flawless, gravity-defying flip. He had taken the scroll, broken the seal, and read the contents.

He had immediately burst out laughing, assuming it was one of his Master’s legendary, elaborate pranks.

’Enroll in the Imperial Academy,’ the letter had read, penned in Roan’s elegant, sweeping handwriting. ’Adopt a low-profile alias. You are to monitor, protect, and report on a specific noble child in the Summer Intake. Do not reveal your true magical capacity. Do not set the Headmaster on fire. I shall be joining the faculty as a visiting lecturer. We depart at dawn.’

"Nice try, Elias," Orion had smirked, tossing the scroll back to the aide. "Tell the old man his illusions are getting sloppy. Me? Go to school? To babysit a noble? I’d rather scrub the cauldrons."

"It is not a prank, Orion!" a deep, exhausted voice had echoed from the doorway of the archive.

Orion had frozen.

Standing in the doorway was Ares Charte.

The Eldest Son of the Tower Master. A legendary, fearsome High Mage in his own right, who usually spent his days isolated in the upper sanctums, researching highly volatile dimensional rifts.

Ares had looked at Orion with an expression of soul-weary disbelief.

"The Master has completely lost his mind," Ares had muttered, rubbing his temples as if staving off a migraine. "He didn’t just summon you. He recalled all of us."

Orion’s golden eyes had widened in genuine shock.

The Supreme Archmage, Roan Charte, was not a conventional father.

He had adopted several highly gifted orphans over his two centuries of life, raising them within the Tower. But he didn’t raise them with bedtime stories and warm hugs.

He treated them like independent research projects. He threw advanced spellbooks at their heads, tasked them with surviving lethal magical labyrinths for training, and generally treated his ’sons’ more like a chaotic roster of elite disciples.

They were fiercely loyal to him, but they operated with their own independent autonomy.

For Roan to suddenly issue a total recall of his sons was unprecedented.

"He summoned Jin from the Southern borders," Ares had continued, his voice hollow. "and he summoned Melvin from the Deep Roads as well. He has instructed us to forge academic credentials and infiltrate the Imperial Academy across multiple graduating years. We are to act as his teaching assistants, upperclassmen, and prefects."

Orion’s jaw had dropped. "The entire Charte bloodline... is going to high school?"

"We are going to babysit," Ares corrected, a look of profound, aristocratic agony crossing his face. "The Master has apparently found an interesting, six-year-old noble girl in the Capital, and has decided that the entire might of the Eastern Tower must be mobilised to act as her escort."

Orion had stared at the Eldest Son.

The reality of the situation had finally crashed down upon him.

It didn’t make any sense.

Roan Charte hated the nobility. The entire Tower knew that.

Ever since a tragic, highly classified "incident" years ago, an incident the Elders refused to speak of, involving a woman who had been swallowed by the void, Roan had completely detached himself from the political world.

He despised the Imperial Court, drowned himself in magical research, anonymous charity work, and devising elaborate, torturous pranks to inflict upon the Elder’s Council.

For the Master to suddenly obsess over a little noble lady? To the point of mobilising his own sons and his prized apprentice?

It was statistically impossible.

But worst of all, it had completely ruined Orion’s week.

’I was supposed to get a junior,’ Orion mourned internally, his face still pressed against the hard oak desk in the Academy Atrium. ’The seismographs went off. There was a Supreme-tier explosion in the Capital. The Master went to investigate. I was absolutely positive he was going to drag some terrified, sweaty little nerd back to the Tower for me to bully.’