Episode-207

Words : 1497 Updated : Sep 27th, 2025

Chapter: 413 He received Ken’s initial report on the counterfeit AURA operation with a cold, clinical detachment. The information was... interesting. The knock-off was being produced in a small, hidden workshop in the tanner’s district, a place known for its foul stenches and loose regulations. The formula, as Alaric’s preliminary analysis confirmed, was a crude, lye-heavy concoction that was indeed likely to cause skin irritation. The distribution was being handled by a minor, disreputable merchant’s guild known for dealing in stolen goods and counterfeit wares. It was a low-level, opportunistic operation, a parasite feeding on the success of a larger host. The question of who was funding it, who the head of the snake was, remained unanswered. Lloyd filed the information away, his mind already formulating a multi-pronged strategy for its swift and brutal dismantling. But that was a battle for another day. A battle for when he returned. Because on the third morning, the summons came. Not the grand, wax-sealed missive of a king, but the man himself. Or rather, the man who was now, improbably, his most enthusiastic and supportive colleague. Master Elmsworth arrived at the ducal estate’s guest wing, where Lloyd was temporarily quartered, looking less like a dry, pedantic economics tutor and more like a child on the morning of the Winter Solstice festival. His usually severe face was flushed with a pink, almost giddy, excitement. His spectacles were polished to a brilliant shine. He practically vibrated with a kind of suppressed, academic fervor that was both baffling and slightly alarming. “Young Lord Lloyd!” Elmsworth exclaimed, forgoing the usual stiff bow for a gesture that was almost an enthusiastic wave. “Excellent! You are prepared! The carriage awaits!” Lloyd, who had been mentally reviewing the chemical properties of limestone, blinked at the tutor’s uncharacteristic ebullience. “Prepared, Master Elmsworth? For what, precisely?” “For the Academy, my lord! For Bathelham!” Elmsworth beamed, his eyes shining with a light Lloyd had only ever seen before when discussing particularly elegant models of compound interest. “His Majesty’s decree has been issued! The faculty has been informed! Your appointment as Special Royal Advisor and Professor of the new ‘Special Category Class on Innovative and Applied Principles’ is official! I have been tasked by the Arch Duke himself to personally escort you to the Academy grounds to meet the Headmaster and take possession of your new classroom! Is it not magnificent?” Lloyd stared at him. Right. The professorship. In his frantic attempts to bury the memory of the market, he had almost managed to forget the other, equally surreal, outcome of his audience with the King. He was a teacher now. A teacher, returning in a strange, ironic triumph to the very institution that had once so soundly, so humiliatingly, rejected him. The thought was still a bizarre, indigestible lump in his psyche. “Magnificent,” Lloyd echoed dryly, his own enthusiasm significantly more muted than the tutor’s. “I can hardly contain my excitement.” Their journey to the Academy was a strange, almost comical, study in contrasts. They traveled in a simple but comfortable carriage, Master Elmsworth having insisted that arriving in the full, imposing ducal coach would be ‘too ostentatious’ for a new member of the faculty and might ‘intimidate the students’. Lloyd sat back against the leather cushions, his mind a quiet, contemplative sea of strategic planning and simmering emotional turmoil. Elmsworth, however, sat opposite him, perched on the edge of his seat, practically bouncing with a nerd’s pure, unadulterated joy. The old tutor, who had once viewed Lloyd with a mixture of pity and profound disappointment, now looked at him as if he were a newly discovered, living embodiment of a lost economic treatise. He had been present in the Arch Duke’s study during the initial AURA pitch. He had seen Lloyd’s logical dismantling of the traditionalist Whisperwood timber model. He had been the primary architect of the brilliant, legally sound partnership deeds. And he was, it was now abundantly clear, a complete and utter convert. He was no longer just a tutor; he was a disciple. “The sheer elegance of the tiered marketing strategy, my lord!” Elmsworth declared, his hands gesturing animatedly. “It is a masterpiece of applied aspirational economics! Creating perceived value through managed scarcity, then leveraging that value to create a secondary, high-volume market! It will be a case study I shall teach for decades to come! I have already begun drafting a monograph on the subject!” Lloyd just nodded, offering a faint smile. “I’m glad you approve, Master Elmsworth.” Chapter: 414 “Approve?” Elmsworth scoffed. “My lord, I am in awe! And your insights into logistical efficiency at the manufactory! The application of systematic rotation to the curing racks, the optimization of workflow to minimize redundant movement... these are not the thoughts of a novice! They are the principles of a master of the craft! Where did you acquire such a profound, practical understanding of applied commerce?” Lloyd deflected with a practiced, enigmatic shrug. “I am a keen observer of the world, Master Elmsworth. And I have read... many books.” He let the implication hang that he had stumbled upon some obscure, revolutionary text in the vast, dusty Ferrum library, a more palatable explanation than ‘I had eighty years of experience running a multi-billion dollar tech corporation on another planet’. Elmsworth seemed to accept this, his eyes shining. “Of course! The forgotten knowledge of the ancients! It must be so! To think that such brilliant principles were simply gathering dust on a shelf!” He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “And this new class, my lord! The opportunity! To expose the next generation to these... modern principles! To challenge their hidebound, traditionalist thinking! It is a revolution, my lord! A quiet, intellectual revolution, and we are at its very heart!” Lloyd listened to the old man’s fervent, academic passion with a sense of detached, almost weary, amusement. He had not intended to start a revolution. He had just wanted to make some soap and earn enough magical currency to not die. But the world, it seemed, had other, grander, and significantly more complicated, plans for him. As the carriage rumbled on, leaving the bustling commercial districts behind and entering the grand, tree-lined boulevards of the academic quarter, Lloyd’s own thoughts grew more somber. The familiar, elegant architecture of the Academy buildings began to appear through the trees, their white stone spires gleaming in the sunlight. Each one was a monument to his past failure, a silent testament to the boy he had once been. He remembered the feelings of that time with a startling, unwelcome clarity. The constant, gnawing sense of inadequacy. The frustration of trying and failing to grasp the complex theories of magic. The humiliation of being so easily bested in the training yards. The quiet, lonely walks through these very grounds, feeling like a ghost, an imposter, a drab duckling in a world of magnificent, powerful swans. And now he was returning. Not as a failure, but as a professor. Not as a student, but as a master. The irony was so thick, so profound, it was almost suffocating. He felt a strange, twisting knot in his stomach, a mixture of grim satisfaction and a deep, lingering apprehension. Could he do this? Could he stand before a class of the kingdom’s brightest and best, in the very halls where he had been so soundly defeated, and command their respect? Or would they see right through him, see the ghost of the failed student lurking beneath the thin veneer of his newfound confidence? The carriage came to a smooth halt before the magnificent, arching gateway of the Bathelham Royal Academy. The roaring lion crest of the kingdom was carved in the stone above the gate, its silent, majestic gaze seeming to challenge all who entered. Master Elmsworth, practically trembling with excitement, threw open the carriage door. “We are here, my lord!” he declared, his voice filled with a reverence usually reserved for entering a cathedral. “Welcome back to Bathelham!” Lloyd took a deep breath. He stepped out of the carriage, his boots landing softly on the hallowed, familiar ground. He looked up at the soaring spires, at the ancient, ivy-covered walls. He was back. The drab duckling had returned to the swan pond. But this time, he thought, a flicker of cold, hard resolve in his eyes, he was not here to swim. He was here to teach the swans a new, and very different, way to fly. ________________________________________ The air at Bathelham Royal Academy smelled exactly as he remembered: a clean, scholarly scent of old stone, clipped grass, and the faint, almost electric, tang of ambient magic that seemed to permeate the very atmosphere of the place. It was a smell he had once associated with failure, with the bitter taste of inadequacy. Now, it just smelled... like an opportunity. And a challenge.

Episode-207

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