Ashok lifted his wrist and glanced at the watch strapped there, the thin hands ticking steadily forward. The black needle pointed clearly to the numbers—10:45 A.M.

His eyes lingered for a moment before he clicked his tongue in irritation.

He had only two classes scheduled for today, and ordinarily that would have been a blessing.

Most of the Academy's courses ran for about an hour—long enough to drain the mind or body, but short enough to leave breathing space between one and the next.

Of course, there were always exceptions. Physical Training could stretch far beyond that, just as the Compulsory Survival Course.

And now, after running twenty kilometers under the merciless eyes of Griselda and the sadistic hand of Robert, the Academy expected him to attend his second class as if nothing had happened.

Mana Control Training, scheduled neatly at 11:00 A.M. Barely fifteen minutes away.

His lips curled into a bitter line.

'Do they even think before making the timetable?'

Ashok's irritation wasn't just from exhaustion—it was from the clear knowledge that the Academy administration knew exactly how Griselda handled her classes.

Her reputation was no secret. Content originally comes from novel•fire.net

She was infamous for pushing her students past their limits, wringing out every ounce of strength, and then demanding more.

Most of the Students who went into the Infirmary of the Academy came from her class, a very particular style of making students collapse like corpses on the field.

And yet, despite all that, the management had still placed his next class immediately after hers, as though mocking the idea of recovery.

Ashok clicked his tongue again, sharper this time.

'Sadist Bastards.

What sane person schedules Mana Control right after she makes us run till our legs are ready to fall off?'

It wasn't just carelessness on the Academy's part either.

Ashok knew very well that everything in this place was carefully calculated down to the smallest detail.

The schedule wasn't random—it was deliberate.

The higher-ups had considered things such as the average time new students took to finish Griselda's endurance training, and based on those numbers, they had placed Mana Control Training right after it.

And this was one of the things one can't even complain about.

On any other morning, Ashok would have been in a very different place. He pictured himself sitting comfortably beneath the trees, enjoying a proper breakfast at his own pace.

The Bottle of Spirit Wine in one hand, food in the other, with the cool breeze carrying the fresh scent of the island across his face—that was how his day should have been around this time.

Today Breakfast was skipped, and the short fifteen minutes he had left could only be spent rushing across the Academy grounds to make it in time for the next class.

"Can't miss the External Art training at noon either," Ashok muttered inwardly, tilting his head back as he downed his protein shake in quick gulps while walking.

The distance itself only added to his irritation.

The training ground for Griselda's course was located at the southeastern edge of the Main Island. Mana Control Training, however, was positioned in the northwest corner, right beside the Blacksmith Department.

In other words, to reach it he had to cross nearly the entire Academy in fifteen minutes, exhausted and still sore from the brutal run.

Ashok sighed through his nose, his eyes narrowing at the path ahead.

'If not for that beastwoman wasting time with her battlefield lecture together with her extremely result oriented mindset, I would have had at least another fifteen minutes to spare,' he thought bitterly.

That was also one of the main reasons he hadn't waited around with the others after class.

The moment Griselda had dismissed them, he had left immediately without a backward glance.

For him, time was not something to throw away lightly when it is already running bad.

On his way across the Academy grounds, Ashok's eyes wandered almost of their own will.

As he passed near the Cafeteria, he couldn't help but sneak quick glances inside. The polished counters, the faint aroma drifting out.

Just seeing them was enough to stir his cravings.

The thought of drinking, of tossing aside the protein shake in his hand and replacing it with a real drink, clung to him like a sweet whisper in the back of his mind.

For Ashok, alcohol was greater than food, greater than water, almost a sacred indulgence. Nothing compared to the warmth it left in his chest or the sharp clarity that sometimes followed the haze.

But right now, he could not allow himself that luxury.

Not when another class was waiting for him. If he gave in now, he might lose control, and that was something he couldn't risk in front of the instructors.

True, his resistance to alcohol was absurdly high. Even before gaining any Traits, he could already drink far more than most men without faltering, and with Drug Resistance backing him,

Even the famed dwarves—whose entire culture revolved around drinking—would struggle to match him cup for cup.

Yet none of that changed the fact that today he was already worn out, both in body and mind. And when someone drank while tired… mistakes happened.

The mere idea of it made him shake his head. Losing control wasn't just a phrase. It had weight.

There was an old saying he remembered: Alcohol brings out the demons hidden in a man—the worst kind of demons, the ones that chase their desires without restraint.

Ashok gave a small smirk at the thought.

'Can't let that kind of demon out, can I?' he mused, almost laughing at himself. Yet part of him—just a small part, buried beneath layers of restraint—was curious.

What would happen if he did let go completely?

If he drank until his already questionable sanity drowned in alcohol?

He was already called a madman, and that was while he was perfectly sober. Even he couldn't picture what kind of chaos would follow once he was drunk.

With that thought lingering like a faint itch in his mind, Ashok pushed it aside. Thinking of such pointless fantasies wouldn't help him right now. His steps carried him past the looming forge halls of the Blacksmith Department which looked like the lairs of dragons.

But it wasn't his destination. A little farther ahead, another structure rose into view—one even stranger than the blacksmiths' domain, if that were possible.

If someone laid eyes on this strange structure for the first time, the first thought that would rise in their mind would likely be cogs or gears.

The entire building seemed to have been designed with that idea in mind. From a distance, its outline was confusing—caught somewhere between a crooked clocktower and a windmill that had lost its sails.

The walls weren't smooth stone or brick like most departments but instead looked as if hundreds of gears of every size had been fused together into its surface.

Large wheels turned slowly along the outer walls, their teeth catching against smaller ones, creating the illusion that the whole structure was alive and constantly grinding forward.

Even the tiniest cogs spun without pause, each movement feeding into the next, so that the entire tower hummed faintly like a great machine at work.

Compared to the Blacksmith Department, whose core was an enormous furnace belching out smoke, this building wasn't nearly as wide or broad, but it was far taller.

Its body stretched upward like a narrow pillar, ending in a long cone of glass at the very top.

The glass was strange—completely opaque from the outside, dark and seamless, giving no hint of what might lie within. From afar it almost resembled the tip of a giant hourglass turned upside down.

The structure carried a very different atmosphere than the dragon-lair-like forge halls of the blacksmiths. This place had a colder, more mechanical feel to it, as though it had been built not by masons but by engineers obsessed with precision and endless motion.

It was here that many of the Academy's magical courses found their home as well as the Headquarters of the Maintenance Department.

Two courses in particular were tied to this tower—Mana Control Training and Mana Engineering—and today Ashok was here for the first of the two.

After crossing the open grounds, he stepped up to the entrance, where a crystal scanner was fixed to the doorframe. Sliding his ID card over it, a faint blue light pulsed, and the doors creaked open with a sound like interlocking wheels turning in unison.

The moment he crossed the threshold, Ashok noticed the drastic contrast between the interior and the outer shell.

Where the outside looked strange and mechanical, the inside opened into a wide hall that resembled a museum or exhibition center.

Rows of glass cases stretched across the chamber, each one containing a curious device of some kind—mana-infused instruments, intricate artifacts with glowing cores, or small machines that ticked softly as if still alive.

Inside the hall, there were countless devices on display—creations made by both the Teachers of the Academy and past students who had managed to invent something useful enough to be preserved here.

Some were complex instruments filled with gears and mana cores, while others were simple but clever tools meant to make daily life easier.

Among the many, two particular inventions caught Ashok's eye immediately, mostly because he already had them installed in his dorm room: the Temperature Regulator, and the Automatic Air Freshener.

As he walked past the glittering glass cases and made his way toward the spiral staircase leading up to the classrooms above, another thought crept into his mind—one that made his lips twitch with amusement.

I wonder if they would be willing to place a bomb displaying it as a Creation?

....

LONG TIME NO SEE... I AM BACK