Chapter 2: The Master’s Coffee

“Mind bringing that up for me?”

Up on the second floor, the woman’s tired face brightened a little, as if the mere sight of Landon had instantly lifted her mood.

“Oh my!”

An imperceptible smile tugged at the corners of her lips. She leaned out, pressing her upper body against the windowsill, her arms hanging down casually as she offered a little wave.

“If it isn’t Landon. Why don’t you come up and have coffee with your master?”

Landon looked up, squinting against the light. He couldn’t help but notice how her generous curves were pressed flat against the sill, spilling over the edge like a stubborn balloon squeezed out of shape.

“Hey now, are you ignoring your master?”

Professor Helentine smiled, gazing down at the poor boy with indulgent eyes. She watched with amusement as he clutched his aching lower back, struggling to bend over just to pick up the metal rod before limping into the faculty building.

Oh, did the doctor tell him not to strain his back? Helentine honestly couldn’t remember.

Because she had taken full responsibility for the “incident,” Helentine was currently acting as Landon’s official guardian.

The story given to the public was that Helentine had arrived just a step too late, stumbling upon Olivia fighting to the death against heretical cultists. In the official report, she had swooped in, picked up the pieces, and saved a life. In reality, she was the one who had kicked Olivia into a coma.

Only Duke Eisenberg, Helentine, and Landon knew the truth.

Regardless, she temporarily set aside the document she had been reading—a relief plan for post-disaster reconstruction in the Western Ring City-States, which the academy was using as a practical training site for its architecture students.

Helentine slowly strolled back to the tea table in front of her desk. With a wave of her elegant, slender fingers, she traced a few runes in the air, using magic to reheat the two cups of coffee she had prepared earlier.

A couple of minutes later, the unhurried sound of footsteps echoed down the hall, accompanied by the muffled sounds of Landon greeting other professors. Finally, the footsteps stopped at her door.

Though she was a master of ancient magic, Helentine only taught basic courses at the academy. In all her time here, she had only ever taken on two personal disciples.

Landon pushed the door open. His first words were a flat complaint. “Dropping things from a second-story window is a safety hazard.”

“You really have zero sense of romance, you know that?” Helentine teased, her eyes drooping playfully.

She flicked her fingers, and an invisible runic force yanked the metal rod from Landon’s hand, floating it neatly back onto the windowsill. She could have easily used that same magic to pull the rod up from the ground floor in the first place—she had dropped it entirely on purpose, just for an excuse to talk to him.

Landon didn’t seem to care. He limped over to the other side of the tea table and took a seat. For a moment, the two just sat in silence.

A simple silver hairpin casually held her thick, dark-purple hair in a loose, fluffy bun at the back of her head. Her skirt fell to her mid-calf, though a daringly high slit rode all the way up her thigh. She wore a sleeveless white blouse, unbuttoned just enough at the collar that her faculty ID badge rested directly over a very deep valley.

She stared at Landon in silence, her slitted, feline purple eyes studying him intently. Finally, she sighed, stood up, and carried the two cups of coffee over to him.

Originally, she had placed the two cups side-by-side, expecting him to sit next to her on the sofa. But Landon, apparently not wanting to deal with the pressure of sitting that close, had chosen the armchair nearest the door.

Perhaps he was still harboring some resentment toward her.

After all, Olivia was her senior disciple, hand-raised by Helentine since childhood. In the entire Griffin Academy, Olivia was one of only two students qualified to study rune magic.

Landon was the other. But his mastery was clearly nowhere near Olivia’s level—otherwise, he wouldn’t have been completely helpless when she bound him with those rune-inscribed black stone shackles.

Helentine crouched slightly to set the coffee cups down, freeing her hands to smooth the back of her form-fitting skirt over her hips before taking a seat on the far left edge of the long sofa.

She was less than two feet away from him now. Naturally, her eyes fell on the packed suitcase resting by his feet.

“I brewed it myself. Have a taste?” she offered, gently pushing the milky-white guest mug toward him. She kept the red mug for herself—the one that Olivia and Landon had made together in class.

It was a so-called “apprenticeship gift.” Easily the cheapest thing she owned, but also the most practical. At the very least, looking at it kept her from smashing things when she lost her temper.

Landon accepted the cup with deep suspicion. He stared down at the murky brown liquid for a long time. Helentine might be an ancient powerhouse who had lived for centuries, but she definitely was not the domestic type.

Fully prepared for massive stomach cramps later, Landon took a cautious sip, forcing himself not to spit it back out.

“How is it?”

“It’s… great. But please don’t bother next time. When I come back, I’ll bring you some proper coffee from the Warren Commercial District.”

“Come back?”

“Yeah. I’m planning to head home and rest for a while.”

“A while” could mean anywhere from six months to a year. After all, taking the magic rail from the imperial capital out to the provinces would take a week all on its own.

Helentine felt a sudden pang of panic. Would her only two disciples really ever return? One was effectively a vegetable, and the other was packing his bags to flee the capital. If neither of them came back, wasn’t all her rune magic instruction completely in vain?

Her stellar reputation as a teacher was already melting away like ice cream in the sun thanks to this scandal. Now, the student she had worked so hard to train was running away. Were her last two years of effort just going up in smoke?

She stared at Landon, suddenly remembering the childishly earnest vow he had made to her when he first enrolled: ‘I want to become a knight who can protect people.’ She had believed he wouldn’t let her down.

“…Right,” Helentine said, narrowing her eyes slightly, her brow furrowing. “Look, I know it’s hard to forgive the Eisenberg family or Griffin Academy for what happened, but I really hope you’ll come back and finish your studies.”

“I don’t hate anyone,” Landon replied calmly, realizing she had misunderstood his intentions.

“Olivia is a Duke’s daughter,” Helentine pressed. “It would be an absolute scandal if the truth got out. I understand why you’re frustrated.”

“Even though Griffin is independent from the nobility, if word leaked that a Duke’s daughter abused her power to lock up a commoner, it would be a political nightmare.”

Landon actually understood the politics perfectly well, which was why he hadn’t complained about the cover-up. Fighting back would only bring more humiliation and suppression from the nobility. It was better to just close the book on it now.

At least Duke Eisenberg had paid a massive sum of hush money, the academy had waived his tuition and guaranteed his graduation prospects, and on top of that, they now owed him a massive favor.

“So, what happens now?” Helentine pushed the two coffee cups aside, looking a little forlorn. She stretched her arms above her head, her chest heaving slightly with the motion, but Landon had already turned his gaze to the blue sky outside the window.

“I think I’ve told you about my childhood friend back home, right? I haven’t seen her in years,” Landon said, a genuinely warm smile touching his lips. “I’m going to go give her a surprise.”

“Ohhh, the little girl from your hometown, huh?”

Helentine suddenly paused. Her mind raced back to the timeline of when Olivia first locked Landon in that basement. If she remembered correctly, it happened right around the time Olivia caught Landon writing a letter home.

That was the day Olivia found out Landon had a childhood sweetheart named Liana.

Landon had foolishly rambled on to Olivia about how sunny, cheerful, and kind Liana was, and how she had scraped together her own savings just to pay for his travel to the imperial capital.

Oh, gods… Helentine realized with a sinking feeling. Was that what set Olivia off?

Landon frowned slightly at Helentine’s silence. Deep down, he always felt that this legendary great mage—a woman written about in two-hundred-year-old history books—still had a painfully childish side to her. Sometimes, when she stood next to Olivia, people actually assumed Olivia was the professor.

“I won’t deny that I adored Liana when we were kids. She brought so much light to an otherwise incredibly dull childhood,” Landon said, feeling no need to hide his affection.

“Well, she sounds like a wonderful girl! So, where exactly are you heading? Is it a long trip?” Helentine asked, playing along while selfishly trying to figure out how far away he was moving.

“The Western Ring City-States,” Landon said proudly. “I haven’t had any news from home in six months. I purposely didn’t send word that I was coming back this time—I want to surprise her!”

Since returning to the academy, Landon hadn’t found a single letter waiting for him from the Western Ring City-States. He assumed Liana had just been busy with work. Regardless, he was vibrating with excitement to see her.

But for the first time, a look of profound discomfort crossed Helentine’s beautiful face. She was like a child who didn’t know how to lie, making her reaction painfully obvious.

“What’s wrong?” Landon asked, immediately sensing the shift in the air. She hadn’t been acting strange until he mentioned his hometown. Did something happen?

“Well…” Helentine hesitated, chewing her lip. She awkwardly tried to adopt the formal, bureaucratic tone of the academy administrators. “We are… currently organizing disaster relief and reconstruction efforts…”

Landon’s blood ran cold. The moment he heard the word “reconstruction,” he knew the Western Ring City-States had suffered a disaster massive enough to require imperial aid. And if it required reconstruction, the casualties had to be severe.

“What exactly happened?” Landon asked, his expression dropping into something grim.

“This past April,” Helentine said softly, “less than a month after you went missing… your region was hit by a catastrophic earthquake…”

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