The Dirrium Royal Academy was in a state of absolute, sparkling hysteria. With the Grand Academy Festival only days away, the usual scent of old books and floor wax had been replaced by the aroma of frying festival dough, fresh paint, and the panicked ozone of students failing to enchant decorative lanterns.
"Move that banner to the left! No, the other left!"
"Does anyone know how to make a mana-cannon fire flower petals instead of kinetic slugs? Anyone?!"
In the center of the chaos, the classroom for the foreign exchange students was unusually quiet. Two desks—the most pristine ones in the front row—were empty.
"Where are they?" Emil asked, clutching a stack of silk ribbons for the class cafe. She looked at the empty seats of Leornars and Stacian. "The festival committee needs the final layout for the security perimeter, and the Headmaster says only Leornars has the blueprints."
"They're at 'The Geysers,' remember?" Kaelen sighed, looking exhausted. "Apparently, 'owning' a natural wonder requires a lot of paperwork. Or, knowing Leornars, he's currently teaching the tectonic plates how to be more efficient."
Miles away, the atmosphere was far more clinical.
Leornars stood on a newly constructed obsidian platform overlooking the main geyser vent. He wasn't wearing his school blazer; he was in a crisp, white shirt with the sleeves rolled up—a rare sight of the Auditor "at work."
"The pressure in Vent 4 is fluctuating by 0.002%," Leornars noted, tapping a holographic ledger floating in the air. "Adjust the mana-stabilizers, Stacian. I want this district to be a closed-loop energy system by sunset."
Stacian, standing near a control crystal, waved her hand. The ground hummed with a deep, resonant power. "Adjusted, My Lord. The local workers are... confused. They keep asking why we're installing 'luxury lighting' in the caves."
"This region should generate enough income for a small city" stacian said
"What do we do about the workers?" Stacian asked
"They need too much pay, we could cut them and replace them with the other servants" stacian said
"The labor would be great but I need cooperation with the locals "Leornars said calmly
"I see" she said
"I see you've raised a tax to the nobility, why's that?" She asked
"Because," Leornars said, a faint smirk touching his lips as he looked at a blueprints for a high-end spa, "the nobility will pay ten times the price if they think the steam is 'aristocratic.' We aren't just selling water, Stacian. We are selling a curated experience of superiority."
"And the student discount?"
"Porthos pays double," Leornars said flatly. "For the safety of the infrastructure."
Back in the classroom, the remaining students were struggling to build a "Cafe of the Future."
"I don't think we can do this without him," Porthos moaned, currently tangled in a roll of magical tape. "Leornars would have calculated the weight distribution of the tables in five seconds. I've spent three hours trying to make this chair stay on four legs."
"That's the point, Porthos!" Emil laughed, coming over to help him untangle himself. "For once, we get to do something ourselves without feeling like we're being 'audited' every five minutes."
"Yeah," Kaelen added, pinning a flower to a pillar. "It's actually... nice. It feels like a normal school for a second. No conspiracies, no international incidents, just... a really messy cafe."
The class spent the afternoon laughing, bickering over the menu (Porthos suggested an all-jerky menu, which was immediately vetoed), and sharing snacks. They felt a strange sense of camaraderie. For a brief window, they weren't just "worthless souls" or "pawns" in a grand game. They were teenagers.
"Do you think they're having fun out there?" Porthos asked, looking toward the southern horizon.
"Leornars doesn't 'have fun'," Emil mused, leaning against a table. "He probably views the sunset as a waste of potential lighting energy."
"And Stacian?"
"She's probably just happy she doesn't have to watch you trip over your own shadow for a day," Kaelen joked.
"Or prove that you are hopeless" Emil adds
As the sun set over the Academy, painting the walls in hues of amber and violet, the class stood back to look at their work. It was slightly crooked, the colors clashed, and the "automatic" door squeaked like a dying bird.
It was, by all accounts, a disaster compared to anything Leornars would produce.
But it was theirs.
Just as the bell rang for the end of the day, the heavy oak doors of the hall creaked open.
Two figures stepped in. Leornars and Stacian looked perfectly composed, though the faint scent of sulfur and high-density mana followed them. Leornars stopped, his eyes scanning the room. He looked at the crooked banners, the squeaky door, and the exhausted, happy faces of his classmates.
"The structural integrity of this room has decreased by 15% in our absence, feels like a zoo" Leornars stated, clicking his silver pen.
"We missed you too, Leornars!" Porthos cheered.
"Well I certainly didn't" Leornars said
Leornars looked at a banner that was held up by nothing but hope and a bit of spit. He sighed, but his eyes weren't cold.
"Stacian, get the mana-glue. We have forty-eight hours to turn this 'disaster' into a profitable enterprise. I will not have my class's reputation liquidated by a squeaky door."
"Wow they are entirely hopeless like a bread in a oven waiting to be saved," Stacian said, already rolling up her sleeves.
"They truly are as reliable as wet chocolate teapots"Leornars sighed
The class cheered