I lay staring at the ceiling for nearly an hour, the weight of the silence in the room pressing down on me.
'How does an executive of a secret society get caught in a train raid and die?'
It felt fundamentally unfair. If you were important enough to plant forty sleeper agents in the Empire's most prestigious academy, you should have better survival skills. But the universe didn't care about my sense of fairness. Ludger was dead, and I was holding his smoking gun.
'I have to survive for two years. Two years of teaching and two years of high-stakes espionage.'
I had the magic. I had the theoretical knowledge. In my past life, I'd even done a bit of tutoring. Under normal circumstances, I could have faked being a professor with a bit of luck and a lot of bluffing. But this wasn't normal. This was "Hell Mode."
If the Academy found out I was a fraud, the Principal—a Rank Six Lexure—would personally turn me into a charcoal briquette. If the secret society found out I wasn't their "First Order," they would likely peel my skin off while I was still breathing.
"Think," I whispered, sitting up. "There is a second First Order. An equal. I need to find out who they are before they find me."
But I couldn't just walk around asking, 'Excuse me, are you a high-ranking terrorist?' I had to be subtle. I had to look like the real Ludger—cold, efficient, and probably a complete bastard.
The Code of the Gentleman
I dragged Ludger's suitcase back onto the bed. If there were clues, they were in the books.
I ignored the grimoires for a moment. Instead, I looked at the mundane titles: [Watcher in the Rye], [Lingert's Philosophy], [Trace of Totalitarianism]. They were all pristine, as if he'd bought them just to look intellectual.
But one book was different. [Gentleman's Culture].
The cover was worn. The edges were frayed. I remembered the real Ludger on the train—he had been unkempt, shaking his legs and tapping his fingers. He wasn't a gentleman; he was a man who needed a book to tell him how to act like one.
'No,' I realized, flipping through the pages. 'This isn't a manual. It's a key.'
I brought the coded letters over and began to compare them. Every world has a unified language, but every region has its dialects. Ludger was from Queoden, a northern kingdom with a vocabulary that was eighty percent unique idioms.
Using [Gentleman's Culture] as the codebook, the numbers in the letters began to align with specific page and line counts.
[First Order. Infiltrate Sorenth as a professor. Gain their favor. Maintain position and await instructions for the "Great Eclipse."]
The message was simple, but the implication was staggering. My mission from the society was just to... be a good teacher? For now?
'Gaining favor' meant I had to be the best damn professor Sorenth had ever seen. If I failed as a teacher, I failed the society. If I succeeded too well, I might draw the attention of the Empire's inquisitors.
"I'll use the Academy to destroy the society," I decided. "Let the barbarians fight the barbarians."
If I could leak the society's information to the Principal without getting caught, I could let the Empire's military handle the "First Orders." But that was a long game. First, I had to survive the orientation.
The First Bell
Two weeks bled into three. I spent every waking hour in my study, memorizing Ludger's theses and practicing his signature magic style—a cold, precision-based casting that prioritized speed over raw power.
Finally, the first day of the semester arrived.
Sorenth was alive. Thousands of students in navy-and-gold uniforms swarmed the courtyards. The atmosphere was a heady mix of excitement and old-world snobbery.
In Sorenth, there were three castes: the High Nobles (royalty and dukes), the Merchants (the "new money"), and the Commoners (the scholarship geniuses). They didn't mix. They moved in separate orbits, forming walls of social etiquette that were harder to break than any mana-shield.
I walked toward the Lecture Hall of Elemental Theory. My boots clicked rhythmically on the marble floors. I wore the black frock coat with the golden embroidery, my long hair tied back with a leather cord. I kept my face expressionless, my eyes fixed forward.
Outside the classroom door, I paused. I could hear the chatter inside.
"Did you hear? The new professor for Magic Casting... he's a fallen noble."
"A Queoden exile? How did a peasant with a title get a Senior post?"
"I heard he has a military record. Probably just a common soldier who learned a few tricks."
The sneers were audible. To the high-born students, a fallen noble was worse than a commoner—they were a reminder that status could be lost.
I didn't knock. I placed my hand on the heavy oaken door and pushed.
The room went dead silent.
Forty pairs of eyes—some curious, some mocking, some bored—turned toward the front of the hall. I walked to the mahogany lectern, my footsteps the only sound in the cavernous room. I didn't look at them. I opened the class register, set my silver pocket watch on the desk, and turned to the chalkboard.
With a flick of my wrist, a piece of chalk flew into the air, guided by a thread of mana. It began to write in sharp, aggressive strokes:
[PROFESSOR LUDGER CHELYSIE: APPLIED ELEMENTAL DYNAMICS]
I turned around and leaned against the desk, my arms crossed. I let the silence stretch for five seconds, then ten. I looked at the boy in the front row—a young noble with a jeweled crest on his collar who was currently smirking at his friend.
"You," I said, my voice cutting through the air like a whip. "Tell me the three fundamental flaws in the Langester Formula."
The boy's smirk vanished. "I... what? We haven't even started the—"
"I didn't ask for an excuse," I interrupted, my eyes narrowing. "I asked for the flaws. If you can't answer, leave. My classroom is for wizards, not socialites."
The air in the room shifted. The boredom was gone, replaced by a sudden, sharp tension.
'Phase one,' I thought, my pulse steady. 'Establish dominance.'