Ch 21 Dead Man’s Honor

It was an absurd thought… but did a being of that caliber really come back just to eat the cafeteria lunch?

Ivan didn’t wait to rationalize it. He immediately headed straight for the academy kitchens.

The Aeterna Academy dining hall was a commodius space built to feed hundreds of hungry, overworked students. By the time by the time Ivan slipped through the swinging doors leading into the back-of-house, the lunch rush was already winding down. Immediately, Ivan’s face met the heat of giant iron stoves, the ding-dong of copper pots, and greasy cooking smoke.

“It seems like there’s not much food left over today,” a chef remarked, leaning over a steaming metal vat.

“Oh, yeah. Everyone must have been pretty hungry today,” another chef replied over his shoulder, aggressively scrubbing down a wooden cutting board.

Everyone was hungry? Ivan thought, his brow furrowing.

Ivan, who frequently volunteered to help peel potatoes and scrub pots in the cafeteria kitchens to stay in the good graces of the staff—and to score extra scraps to supplement his meager scholarship stipend—politely greeted the rest of the exhausted chefs.

He grabbed a cleaning rag and pretended to wipe down the counters, carefully checking the remaining food trays as he moved down the line.

There was definitely significantly less food left over than usual.

It would make sense if it was a day they served a popular menu item, like the Griffin-egg omelets or the honey-glazed Wyvern ribs. But today’s lunch was actually one of the academy’s universally disliked meals.

It was roasted goblin meat—a cheap, tough protein that the kitchen staff slathered in a thick, violently red peppercorn glaze just to mask its notofiously rubbery texture and pungent, gamey stench.

Most of the noble students refused to even touch it, opting to buy pastries from the campus cafes instead.

Did he really come here to take some food?

Ivan’s mind was spinning.

If it was true, Ivan had absolutely no idea why a god-like entity would go out of his way to steal… cafeteria food, but there had to be some kind of profound reason behind it.

“…I’m going to find him,” Ivan muttered under his breath, tossing the damp rag into a laundry bin.

If that being ever stepped foot on this academy campus again, Ivan swore he would find him.

He was so sick and tired of the empty, pitying words. He was tired of the fake sympathy masking their relief that it wasn’t their own arms severed by the Viper. And that sympathy only came after he’d “succeeded” on a chantless spell.

But now that this tiny sliver of hope returned to dangle in front of him again, the anxiety gnawing at his chest was far stronger than the excitement.

What would it feel like to finally grasp a lifeline, only to let it slip through his fingers a second time?

If he couldn’t find that being, Ivan truly felt like he might go insane enough to try and hunt down a real demon in the lower floors to offer up whatever he needed to for a contract, to be able to cast spells again.

The problem was that the Aeterna Academy campus was larger than most castles.

With a bit of exaggeration, it was a sprawling, self-sustaining city of magical learning.

For the next few days, Ivan lived like a bloodhound.

Whenever he caught even the faintest whiff of that unmistakable sun-baked mana, he dropped whatever he was doing and sprinted.

He scoured the labyrinthine stone corridors of the West Wing, tore through the sprawling botanical gardens where carnivorous mana-plants snapped at his heels, and searched the quiet, dusty aisles of the Grand Library for days on end.

This book’s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The heavy, clunky wooden prosthetic strapped to his shoulder repeatedly slammed against his ribs as he ran, bruising his skin and aggravating his phantom pains, but he didn’t care.

He just needed to find the god he had witnessed in the darkness that day.

“Gone, again?” Ivan whispered as he panted like a dog.

But, as if the universe was telling him to just give up.

Or as if it was sadistically mocking him.

Every single time he managed to track the scent, arriving breathless and desperate at the supposed source, no one was there. All he ever found in his place was a black feather, resting innocently on the ground. The feathers were iridescent in the light, and held that agonizingly familiar mana.

***

A few days later, Ivan was flat on his back in the damp grass behind the dormitories. The sky was a bleak, overcast gray, perfectly matching his mood.

What if it wasn’t a god at all, but a demon? Ivan thought, staring blankly up at the clouds. What if this is all just a twisted demon’s trick, meant to make me chase an impossible hope in circles until I completely lose my mind?

How many days had it been? Ten?

He could have—and should have—spent those ten days holed up in the library studying Magicology. If he was going to transfer to a different academy before Aeterna officially expelled him at the end of the year, he had to pass the grueling entrance exams for his new major. That meant translating thousands of pages of ancient runes, memorize artifact history, and be able to calculate theoretical mana calculus.

Thing he hadn’t even opened a book for yet.

Did I make the wrong choice?

At the most critical turning point of his life, he had completely wasted ten precious days running around the campus like a headless chicken, chasing after a ghost!