Chapter : 399

King Liam’s smile widened, becoming the warm, engaging, and slightly dangerous smile of a master teacher about to explain a profound, world-altering concept to a particularly slow, but promising, student. “Of course, you don’t, my boy,” he said, his tone gentle, almost paternal. “You are thinking like a student. Like a subject. You are thinking about your past failures. I am thinking like a king. I am thinking about the future.”

He leaned forward again, his sapphire eyes losing their playful twinkle, becoming sharp, serious, the eyes of a ruler discussing matters of state. “The Bathelham Royal Academy is the finest institution in this kingdom. It produces the best warriors, the sharpest mages, the most capable administrators. It is the very engine of our nation’s strength. But,” his voice dropped slightly, taking on a new, graver tone, “it has a weakness. A flaw, deeply embedded in its very success.”

He paused, letting the statement hang. “It has become… stagnant. It teaches tradition, not innovation. It rewards mastery of the established, not the creation of the new. Our professors are brilliant, yes. They are masters of their respective fields. But they are masters of a game whose rules have not changed in five hundred years. They teach students how to be the best swordsmen, the best mages, within the existing paradigm. They do not,” his gaze was sharp, penetrating, “teach them how to break it.”

He gestured vaguely, as if encompassing the world beyond the enchanted glass of his study. “The world is changing, Lloyd. New threats are rising on our borders. The Altamiras grow bolder, their methods more insidious. The old ways, the old strengths, may not be enough to face the challenges of the next century. We need new thinking. New ideas. We need… disruption. And that,” he fixed Lloyd with a look of absolute, unwavering conviction, “is where you come in.”

“Me?” Lloyd whispered, still reeling.

“You,” the King confirmed with a firm nod. “You, Lloyd Ferrum, are the single most disruptive force to enter my kingdom in a decade. You are a walking, talking, soap-making paradox. You failed at the Academy because you did not fit its mould. You did not think like they did. Your mind operates on a different set of principles entirely.”

He began to tick off the points on his fingers. “You looked at a simple bar of soap, a thing that has not changed in a thousand years, and you saw not just a cleanser, but an entire ecosystem of luxury, status, and desire. You created not just a product, but a brand. You did not just sell it; you crafted a narrative so compelling that the most powerful women in my duchy are now engaged in a cold war over who has the softest hands.”

“You looked at a political conspiracy,” he continued, his voice gaining momentum, “and you did not just defend yourself; you transformed it. You took your enemies, desperate men who tried to ruin you, and you turned them into your most loyal business partners. You saw not a threat to be crushed, but an asset to be cultivated. That is not the thinking of a traditional Ferrum warrior. That is the thinking of a new kind of ruler.”

He leaned back, his eyes shining with a fierce, almost predatory, intellectual excitement. “I do not want you to teach swordplay, Lloyd. I do not want you to lecture on the history of Void magic. I want you to teach them… how to think. How you think. I want you to expose my brightest, most promising students—the future generals, the future guild masters, the future leaders of this kingdom—to your strange, brilliant, and utterly revolutionary way of looking at the world. I want you to infect them with your innovation.”

The King’s vision was staggering. It was audacious. It was… terrifying. He didn’t want a professor. He wanted a prophet. A catalyst. An agent of intellectual chaos to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting minds of the next generation’s elite.

But the core problem remained. “Your Majesty,” Lloyd said, his voice still hesitant, “even if I were to accept this… this incredible, and frankly terrifying, responsibility… my own history, my own failure… it would undermine my authority before I even spoke a single word. They would see me as a fraud. A joke.”

“Which,” the King interjected smoothly, a cunning smile returning to his face, “is where the terms of my proposition become… rather more persuasive.”

Chapter : 400

He held up a hand, forestalling any further protest. “I am not asking you to become a full-time academic. That would be a waste of your considerable commercial talents. This would be a ‘Special Category Class’. A seminar, perhaps. For a small, hand-picked group of the Academy’s most gifted, most open-minded senior students. Your presence would be required, let us say, four times a month. Perhaps six, if a particularly interesting topic arises. You would be free to teach whatever you deem appropriate. Economics. Logistics. The philosophy of brand identity. The practical application of rock dust in industrial processes. I do not care. I only care that you expose them to your mind.”

He paused, then delivered the first part of the incentive, a lure designed to appeal to Lloyd’s practical nature. “For this service, the Crown would, of course, provide a generous stipend. And a formal, royal title. ‘Special Royal Advisor on Innovative Practices and Education’. A title that would grant you significant standing and access within the court.”

It was tempting. A title, a stipend, a platform. But the risk, the potential for humiliation, still felt immense.

Then, the King played his final, brilliant, and utterly, completely, irresistible, trump card.

He leaned forward, his sapphire eyes gleaming with the light of a master negotiator about to close the deal of a lifetime. “And in addition to the title and the stipend,” he said, his voice a low, silken promise, “there is one other, small, matter of compensation. The matter of your… AURA.”

He smiled, a slow, predatory smile that was all business. “I understand you are planning to expand your operations, to export your products to other duchies, other kingdoms. Such a venture requires trade licenses, royal charters, the navigation of a thousand different bureaucratic hurdles. It requires… powerful advocates.”

He let the implication hang, thick and heavy as gold, in the air between them.

“Accept my offer, Lord Lloyd,” King Liam Bethelham purred, his voice a promise of unparalleled commercial power. “Become my unlikely professor. And I, in turn, will become the Royal Patron of the AURA brand. I will personally and publicly champion your enterprise. I will grant you exclusive royal charters for trade throughout the entirety of my kingdom. I will ensure that AURA becomes the officially sanctioned cleansing elixir of the Royal Court of Bethelham. I will, in short, give you an advertising boost, a marketing advantage of such incalculable value that it will make your current success look like a child’s game of selling lemonade by the roadside.”

The offer was staggering. It was a checkmate. It was not just an offer to open a door for his business; it was an offer to replace the door with a triumphal arch, pave the road with gold, and provide a royal herald to announce his arrival. To refuse would not just be foolish; it would be commercial suicide.

Lloyd looked at the King, at the brilliant, charismatic, terrifyingly shrewd man who had just presented him with an offer that was both a profound, terrifying responsibility and an unparalleled, irresistible opportunity. The pragmatist, the businessman, the man who knew the value of a royal endorsement, had no choice.

He slowly, deliberately, picked up his teacup. He took a final, thoughtful sip of the magnificent, fragrant tea. He set the cup down with a soft, decisive click.

He met the King’s expectant, triumphant gaze. And he smiled. A slow, resigned, and deeply, profoundly, impressed smile.

Your Majesty,” Lloyd Ferrum said, the words a surrender, a contract, and the beginning of a whole new, and incredibly complicated, Chapter of his life. “When does my first class begin?”

The agreement hung in the air of the sun-drenched study, a pact forged from political pragmatism and a king’s audacious, almost reckless, faith in disruptive innovation. Lloyd Ferrum, the newly appointed ‘Special Royal Advisor on Innovative Practices and Education’, felt a strange, almost vertiginous sense of unreality. Just an hour ago, he had entered this room a simple (if secretly overpowered) nobleman on a mysterious summons. Now, he was leaving it a royally-sanctioned professor, tasked with shaking the very foundations of the kingdom’s elite educational system, his future inextricably, and terrifyingly, linked to the will of the charismatic, tea-loving monarch before him.