Try Chicken with Beer, Professors
This is bad.
Princess Elenora felt like closing her eyes. If the professor had remained in the classroom to conduct the lesson, the students would have postponed their fight in order to focus on the class.
That would have given her the chance to meet Irina alone during lunch for a quiet conversation. If things had gone that way, she might have found a way to resolve the current chaos.
But Professor Michaela Evens had simply told them to study independently before leaving the room. She had even placed restrictions preventing any of the students from stepping outside the classroom.
Stopping students from leaving during class was understandable. Yet the situation had become the absolute worst.
Had they been allowed to leave, Elenora could have slipped out with Irina and reached a private agreement through careful discussion.
The original plan to meet Irina alone at lunch had also been designed to keep the content of their conversation from reaching anyone else’s ears. If others learned that the two were not fighting but instead seeking an appropriate compromise, the backlash would be enormous.
Elenora found the complete collapse of her secret plan to negotiate with Irina utterly bleak. They could no longer discuss solutions together.
There was no need to wait for lunch. It was obvious the followers would demand an immediate resolution right here and now.
If we hold a public conversation here… the words I can say are already set in stone….
Princess Elenora’s head throbbed. The moment her followers sensed she was trying to calm the situation, they would rebel first.
Already, her faction, Irina’s faction, and even the neutral students were openly displaying hostility toward one another.
From the very beginning, her followers’ eyes had been sending her looks full of expectation.
“We absolutely can’t yield!”
“Insulting Lord Aberwin and breaking the engagement was Lady Rosengart’s fault from the start! If you have any conscience, give it up!”
“Don’t make me laugh! We absolutely cannot give up either!”
“That’s right! Why should Her Ladyship and the rest of us have to yield?”
“You people laughed when Lord Aberwin’s engagement was broken too!”
“Conscience? How shameless! Anyone listening would think you comforted Lord Aberwin!”
The classroom had transformed from a potion lesson into a battlefield on the verge of explosion. They had already moved beyond arguments and were raising their mana with clear intent to attack.
The instant someone fired off a spell, it would ignite a full-scale brawl.
This cannot continue.
Irina bit her lip hard. At that moment Princess Elenora let out a sigh and looked at her. Ruby-red eyes met emerald-green ones, and Irina immediately sensed the other girl’s heart.
Princess Elenora, it seems you don’t want this situation either.
Correct. Lady Irina, I wish this chaos could be settled.
Irina knew Elenora’s personality well. As rivals of the same age in high society, she had naturally studied her. She had observed every action, and through that process she had learned one clear truth.
Princess Elenora valued dignity above all and avoided unnecessary conflict. She possessed a calm nature that strove to act fairly. Yet she was equally skilled at reading the mood.
Even so, no answer presented itself now. If the two of them could speak privately, deeper discussion might produce a compromise. But under the current circumstances, offering any such compromise was impossible.
Both sides had been driven into a corner. Calming the rampaging followers was already beyond either of them.
The situation looked ready to erupt into battle at any second. Hesitation here would only breed greater turmoil. In the end, Elenora abandoned the ideal solution and chose the next best option.
“Lady Irina, please give up your share of the sausages today.”
Elenora finally spoke the words directly to Irina’s face. Though she had said them earlier, in an atmosphere thick with the threat of physical clash, the statement carried far heavier weight.
Irina understood what Elenora truly wished to say. She also knew the princess had been forced to utter those words. Yet she herself had no other choice.
“Princess. Are you trying to turn me and everyone supporting me into sacrifices? This is unfair.”
Irina had no option but to push back. Protecting the male students who had sided with her to gain favor—and who had subsequently been marked—was her only remaining move.
“Unfair?”
Shurina cut in with a razor-sharp voice.
“Because of you, Lady, the sausages were cut in half, and that’s what you call unfair? If you have any conscience, take responsibility! Show the example expected of the Rosengart Ducal House!”
“Exactly,” added Semira, who belonged to the neutral faction.
“Last year you led the engagement break that humiliated Lord Aberwin, and now you’ve even resorted to violence! Shouldn’t you apologize to us first for reducing the sausages by half, take responsibility, and declare you’ll yield? Yet you can’t even give up a single day?”
Marina snorted at the words.
“A single day? Then why don’t you show a little mercy for that single day? Where has noble generosity and compassion gone? Is this the behavior of those without the honor to refrain from persecuting a pitiful lady?”
“What did you just say?!”
Elenora raised her hand to silence the uproar, but only a handful even noticed the gesture. The argument only grew louder.
In the end she had no choice but to raise her voice.
“Enough! This debate is meaningless. Lady Irina and her people will forfeit today’s sausages. Since the lady’s actions created this situation, she will take responsibility today and give them up. I pray you will not do anything that stains the name of the Rosengart Ducal House.”
Honestly, Irina wanted to stop right there. But the image of tonight’s sausages kept flickering before her eyes. What awaited them at lunch was only that horrible coarse black bread.
Everyone had been anticipating the evening sausages since yesterday. The followers’ craving had already spiraled beyond her control.
“Princess! Why are you forcing us to sacrifice!”
“Exactly! Shouldn’t you be the one acting fairly, Princess? This is too much!”
The classroom once again boiled with noise. Both Elenora and Irina felt headaches bloom at the same moment.
Meanwhile, Professor Michaela Evens, having abandoned the classroom to its chaos, made her way to the indoor auditorium.
This hall was a space not used publicly within Tartaros Academy. Outside the academy it might have hosted events or festivals, but in this hell where only coarse black bread was provided, no one could expect such a bright atmosphere.
Yet today, inside this very auditorium, something the professors had dreamed of for decades—or in some cases hundreds of years—was about to take place.
With a pounding heart, Professor Michaela Evens opened the auditorium door and stepped inside. Kael, Rin, Ming, Serenity, and even Professor Lucia were already waiting.
“Welcome.”
Michaela Evens approached the young man who greeted her with a radiant smile.
“Kael, I don’t know how someone can be so wonderful and cool! Hehe~”
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
Michaela Evens praises: “Kael, I don’t know how someone can be so wonderful and cool! Hehe~”
Point +1
Experience +1
Current Points: 10,419
EXP: 549/1000
Kael gave a soft chuckle and erased the empty beverage can in his hand using the shop window’s trash disposal function. At the same time he gently stroked Michaela Evens’ full, rounded backside.
“Tonight I’ll look forward to it with Anna. From then on I’ll let you speak comfortably like Lucia, and I’ll keep doting on you for a long, long time.”
At his touch and words, Professor Michaela Evens nodded with open delight.
“Yes, Kael! No… Yes, Master Kael! Please look forward to it!”
The way Michaela Evens addressed Kael had completely changed.
“Good.”
Kael, satisfied, finally withdrew his hand from her rear. Moments later the door opened again and the professors, led by Principal Albert, poured inside.
“Kael!”
Professor Anna approached his side with a bright smile. Principal Albert followed, wearing a warm, grandfatherly grin.
“Hahaha! Kael! Thank you so much for inviting us like this!”
Principal Albert offered thanks on behalf of all the professors. Their eyes glittered with ravenous anticipation for the special food Kael had promised. Archmages and grand sword masters alike looked half-mad with gluttony.
Kael felt secretly pleased by their reaction.
Hehe, I’ll show you the taste of modern chicken.
Since they were nobles, they must have eaten chicken at least once before entering the academy or during brief vacations. Yet what they had tasted would have been nothing more than tough, stringy fowl grilled with crude herbs. Modern chicken was on an entirely different level. Even without the crisp fried coating, the meat itself—improved through generations of selective breeding—was tender and existed in a completely different realm of flavor.
Even on Earth, people said that pre-improvement chickens had poor meat quality and almost no edible flesh.
Now the time had come to let them experience true modern chicken.
While the magic department students tore each other apart over whether or not to share two sausages, a chicken party was about to begin here.
