Establishing Dominance
Ah, I really don't want to go to work.
It's the kind of thought countless office workers share the moment Monday morning arrives and the weekend is over. Of course, "going to work" is only the classic example — students simply swap in "I don't want to go to school" and mutter the exact same thing. I was no exception.
I'm the sort of person who loves a soft bed and a solid night's sleep, so dragging myself out of that morning haze and getting ready to leave is never easy.
"Where are you going?"
I was still trying to slap my foggy mind awake with cold water and straighten my clothes when Jerie, who'd been wandering around the house, drifted over.
"Getting ready for work. I hold down a perfectly respectable job, you know."
I answered casually and slipped on my instructor's coat — then a thought struck me. Jerie had already come completely over to our side. There was no longer any need to hide my power from her. And as luck would have it, today's lesson was about synthesizing materials through alchemy: the foundational theory behind combining various ingredients into tools and potions with special effects. Anyone who knows the field understands that the pinnacle of that craft is none other than the Elixir.
I'm still less famous than the other instructors, and the cadets probably aren't convinced of my skill yet.
An educator's reputation matters more than people think. The greater the renown, the more students trust their teacher — and the more actively and obediently they follow the lessons. In other words, they stop needlessly pushing back against the path and knowledge the instructor offers, and actually absorb it as their own. That was directly tied to teaching efficiency, which meant I, as a brand-new instructor, had to solve this problem.
Otherwise I'll just keep hearing "parachute hire" forever.
I finished getting ready and turned my head. Jerie was standing blankly in the doorway, staring at me with her usual disheveled look. A good idea hit me. If there'd been a lightbulb in my skull, it would have blazed on and lit up the whole landscape of my thoughts.
"Jerie, go wash up."
"Huh? All of a sudden?"
"Yes. You're coming to work with me today."
Bewilderment flooded her eyes. If that feeling had words, they'd be something like: Is this guy seriously so unwilling to go alone that he's asking me to die with him? I am human, so I won't pretend that kind of personal motive was completely absent — but I had a proper plan as well.
"You remember the pact we made last night, don't you?"
"Of course. You give me an Elixir before the year ends, and I help with your plan and wreck those old fossils. Am I wrong?"
"Exactly. So get ready."
What leap of logic connected the contents of a pact to getting ready for work right now? The question was written all over Jerie's face — but that expression vanished almost immediately, washed away by urgency.
"I'll show you how to make an Elixir today."
That, without a doubt, was an offer she would find very hard to refuse.
Origin Academy — widely regarded as the greatest educational institution in the world. Its brilliant history and towering reputation guaranteed that both its cadets and its instructors stood at the absolute peak of their fields. The students who enrolled were the finest, most promising talents from every corner of the globe, and the instructors who taught and led them were heroes and great figures whose names would be carved into the history books of later generations.
Lately, however, noise had begun to creep into that reputation.
"I heard there's a new alchemy instructor?"
"Ryu Seojun…? Has anyone heard of him?"
Someone had abruptly begun making a name for himself as a newly appointed instructor.
"No idea. Isn't he a parachute hire?"
"Come on. This is Origin Academy, not some random school. There's no way they'd take a parachute instructor."
Whether he was some reclusive master or not, he had almost no public reputation to speak of. According to Origin Academy's official announcement, he was barely older than the current cadets themselves. The news that someone their own age had become an instructor at Origin Academy left the students thoroughly unsettled — and more than a few of them wondered whether he had gotten in through connections or some other shady means.
"Hey, the instructor's coming."
"Ugh, I still haven't finished the Transmutation Circle interpretation assignment."
"Honestly, a week was a little tight."
The cadets, who'd been chatting away with their various opinions, scrambled back to their seats at once. Clear footsteps from the corridor announced that the instructor for the class had arrived.
Thud. Thud.
The footsteps came in a two-beat rhythm, repeating as they approached. When the sound finally reached the door, one cadet muttered without thinking,
"Hey… isn't that a man's shoes?"
"…You're right."
Until now, the only alchemy instructor at Origin Academy had been Charlotte van Hohenheim. She was, of course, a woman, and the shoes she usually wore produced a sharp click-click. The footsteps they were hearing now were a solid, heavy thud. In other words, it meant someone other than Instructor Charlotte had come.
A thought flashed through the cadets' minds. The new instructor who'd been the subject of all the parachute-hire gossip — his assigned subject was alchemy.
"Ah…"
Someone let out a small sigh just as the classroom door opened. Not Instructor Charlotte, who had been teaching them until now, but a man who was unmistakably the new instructor stepped up onto the platform.
"Good morning, everyone. I'll be conducting today's class in place of Instructor Charlotte. My name is Ryu Seojun."
The atmosphere in the room sank heavy and cold.
What is this atmosphere?
The moment I stepped into the classroom, a chilly air settled over the room. It wasn't quite hostility — more like a vague, simmering displeasure. At any rate, just as I'd expected, the cadets all seemed to harbor doubts about my ability, each to a different degree.
Figures.
I let out a quiet sigh and forced a smile onto my face. I'd hoped they might at least trust Origin Academy's reputation enough to give me the benefit of the doubt, but it looked like I would have no choice but to use the shock treatment I'd prepared.
"Before we begin the lesson, let's have a short digression."
First-year cadets at Origin Academy spent their first semester as a kind of sampling term. Over six months they took classes across a wide range of fields, trying out specialties and career paths until they settled on a curriculum that fit them. That meant most of them were only sitting through alchemy because it was on the timetable — very few had chosen it as a genuine field of interest and were taking it with real enthusiasm.
The reason's simple enough.
I could say it a hundred times and it still wouldn't be enough: alchemy was inefficient and brutally difficult compared to other disciplines. Even I wouldn't recommend becoming an alchemist unless someone had a talent that was almost unnaturally specialized for it.
"You don't find me particularly trustworthy, do you?"
A few cadets flinched and started whispering. Those were the ones who had genuinely suspected me of being a parachute hire — but I could rewrite that impression starting now.
"I don't blame you. A nobody alchemist only a year older than you, appointed as an instructor at Origin Academy? I'd be suspicious too."
The blunt self-assessment drew a few awkward coughs and a ripple of murmurs.
"Education only works when it's built on trust between teacher and student. The moment you start wondering whether the person in front of you is actually better than you, an instructor's authority hits the floor — and the quality and efficiency of the teaching drop right along with it."
A few heads nodded slightly. Feeling their attention gather, I smiled.
"So go ahead. Test me as much as you like."
What the cadets wanted was obvious. They simply wanted to know whether I had truly earned this position through skill, or whether I was just a parachute hire. It wasn't an unreasonable request — for Academy cadets, it was a legitimate right. In that case, rather than trying to persuade them with words, it was better to let them feel it for themselves. A hundred explanations pale beside a single firsthand experience.
Clap.
I clapped my hands, and someone opened the classroom door and walked in. A half-elf with slightly curly blond hair and half-lidded violet eyes — Jerie.
"This is my colleague, Miss Jerie. In terms of pure skill, she could give most active professionals a run for their money."
Her appearance stirred the classroom into a restless murmur. First the instructor's absurd invitation to test him, and now a sudden outsider. Every cadet still in their seat looked at me as if they had no idea what any of this meant. Of course, I didn't leave that look unanswered. An instructor's role — their very reason for existing — was to answer their students' questions and resolve their doubts. So I curled the corner of my mouth and made my declaration.
"For the next ten minutes, Miss Jerie and all of you will form one team and test me."
Jerie turned to look at me as if to ask what on earth I was talking about, and the cadets broke into an uproar of pure disbelief. It might look like overconfidence, but every instructor at Origin Academy came with this level of ability as a baseline.
"You're free to destroy the building during the test. Feel free to come at me ready to kill."
And if someone actually died or got badly hurt? I answered the unease I could feel in the air.
"You worry too much. You've been at the Academy for a month and a half, right? You already know how this works."
A first-year cadet's strength wouldn't pose even a cute threat to an instructor if the sky split into three pieces and flipped over twice. So skip the fretting and spend that time thinking about a strategy instead.
Cadets who had read my sincerity began rising from their seats one by one. Mana rippled around their bodies, and Jerie sighed and walked over to join them.
"Oh, and without a prize, where's the fun?"
I clapped again and opened my mouth with exaggerated gestures and a theatrical tone. Without proper motivation, neither Jerie nor the cadets would throw themselves at me in earnest. If I simply told them to attack, the cadets wouldn't show their truly desperate faces — and that would leave room for noise later. We were just going easy on him. Who knows how it would have gone if we'd fought for real? To prevent that kind of talk before it started, I needed to show a gap in ability so absolute that no one could make excuses. To put it in blunter, more professional terms: I was going to grind them under my heel.
I reached into the pocket of my instructor's coat — the symbol of Origin Academy faculty. A small spatial pouch was sewn into the lining, and on the way in I'd taken various materials from the storage in Research Building 12.
"This is something you couldn't buy for any amount of money."
I pushed the core ingredient — Dream Lotus — into a glass vial along with assorted herbs and materials, then poured in highly refined liquid ether. Then — snap — I closed the lid, flicked my fingers, and transmuted everything inside into a single whole.
"Well? You're all well-informed cadets. You know what this is, don't you?"
I casually shook the vial holding the finished product. A lustrous purple liquid sloshed inside the glass. Shock flooded the cadets' faces; a few of them couldn't even get the words out, their mouths working soundlessly as they trembled. Jerie was no different.
"Starting to get the idea?"
Thud.
I set the Elixir on the lectern, looked out over the room, and made my declaration.
"Take it from me."
The cadets exploded with mana as if everything until now had been a joke. Jerie, too, radiated a presence even sharper and more serious than when we'd first met.
"If you succeed, I'll give every single one of you a bottle of Elixir."
The words had barely left my mouth before attacks of every kind poured toward me.
The ten-minute instructor qualification exam — and parachute-hire confirmation test — had begun.