Ch 3 Smithereens

Aeterna Royal Magic Academy.

The campus was nothing short of an architectural marvel, boasting a spiraling, circular layout that commanded the landscape.

At its center, sweeping walls curved inward, resembling giant stone petals wrapped protectively around a toweringl central spire. That spire—a cone of silver and glass—seemed to scrape the very heavens, catching the afternoon sun through nonexistent ceiling of the Abyss and scattering prismatic beams of light across the manicured courtyards below.

Majestic white marble pillars pierced the sky at regular intervals along the perimeter. Between them, cascading blue holographic runes circled through the air.

To the untrained eye, they might have seemed like beautiful enchantments.

To Asterion, they were a mess of real-time magical calculations—structural arithmancy to keep the building standing, atmospheric warding for protection, and localized climate control, all woven together in… an inefficient matrix that made his eyes twitch.

But the runes weren’t what had caused Asterion to stop dead in his tracks.

Staring up at the extravagant gold-leaf lettering arching over the main wrought-iron gates—Aeterna Royal Magic Academy—Asterion’s jaw dropped in dismay.

“Don’t tell me…” he muttered to himself, his voice buried by the bustling noise of the street. “Someone squatted right on top of my treasures?”

That couldn’t be right.

He must have misjudged the location. Yes, that must be it. He was human, too. An archmage can definitely make a mistake.

Asterion closed his eyes to focus for real this time, tapping a finger against his temple as he summoned his mental map. He felt the subtle magnetic pull of the ground’s ley lines.

He opened his eyes.

The mana flow from his relics were still right in front of him. And the academy was also still there.

“Damn it, of course I didn’t make a mistake.”

The only place his legendary loot could be buried was directly underneath the polished cobblestones of this school.

They buried his ancient relics deep underground and just slapped a building over them?

How dare…? Who…?!

Asterion couldn’t even end his sentences in his mind.

Down there rested the Staff of Ouroboros, the Cloak of Shadows, enough raw mythril to fund a small empire, and—most importantly—his favorite self-heating tea kettle.

Well, that wasn’t all that the tea kettle could do.

And he hadn’t covered even half the list of his lost items.

“Isn’t this a zoning violation?” he hissed aloud. “Erecting a building over someone else’s private property?!”

Already accepting the fact that he was the [Master of the Abyss], Asterion was ready to wield all his rights to get his stuff back.

But a sudden wave of dizziness hit him, as if his hundred and thirty years of age had just caught up to him all at once.

To be honest, his body was practically half-immortal, so nothing was wrong, but his soul could feel it.

“Damn it, I’m too old for this,” Asterion sighed, reaching up to massage the back of his neck to keep his metaphorical blood pressure down.

What in the world was going on?

He thought he could quickly grab his gear and go back to sleep.

How could something this exhausting happen? He had done all his homework—killed a literal goddess—and this was what awaited him on his first day awake.

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If his stuff had just been buried in any regular monster territory in the Labyrinth, he could have wiped the whole place out with a casual [Hellfire] cascade and been done with it.

But he couldn’t exactly glass a school filled with childr—no, what looked like young adults.

Asterion slowly examined the front gates of the campus, watching the flow of foot traffic.

Stay calm, he told himself. Peace. Yes, inner peace.

He drew in a long, slow breath and let it out.

There had to be a way to get his stash back. With magic, anything was possible.

Almost anything, thought Asterion.

Scanning the crowd milling around the academy’s exterior, he noticed dozens of young men and women wearing identical robes. They moved in loose clusters, laughing, carrying stacks of thick, leather-bound tomes, or tossing tiny spheres of elemental light between their hands.

So it’s not just a regular school for the rich. They’re really raising mages here?

Asterion’s brow furrowed.

Back in his day, when he was still stumbling around the new world, there hadn’t been a single institute that focused on magic.