PFC Chapter 120 : Chapter 120
Chapter 120 : Chapter 120
Chapter 120. Barnabas
Dean’s Tower, top-floor office.
This was the highest point in the entire academy, and also the place where the greatest minds on the continent gathered.
At this moment, the highly respected Seventh-Tier Archmage, the academy’s dean—Barnabas Reinhardt—was sneakily crouched behind his enormous desk.
He was holding a syrup-dripping donut, about to stuff it into his mouth hidden beneath his white beard.
“As long as I eat it fast enough, the doctor will never know…”
The old man muttered to himself, opening his mouth wide to swallow it whole.
BANG!
The office door was pushed open without the slightest courtesy.
“Cough—cough—cough!”
Startled, Barnabas’s hand trembled, and the donut stuck directly onto his beard. He choked, his eyes rolling back as his hands flailed wildly in the air like a drowning old seal.
“Cleanse!”
The old man hurriedly cast a spell and finally managed to clean the sugar from his beard before angrily looking toward the door.
“Which bastard dares to barge in without knocking—”
His scolding stopped abruptly.
Logaris West leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching the supposedly dignified dean with a teasing expression.
“Barnabas, if the board finds out you have diabetes and are still sneaking sweets, your insurance premiums are going to double.”
Barnabas stared at him with wide eyes for a long moment, then suddenly jumped up from his chair.
“Logaris?!”
The old man did not even bother wiping the crumbs from his mouth. Moving with agility that did not match his two-hundred-year age, he rushed over and looked Logaris up and down.
Logaris was just about to say something polite—like “long time no see” or “I missed the academy.”
But Barnabas’s first sentence completely shattered that thought.
“You rascal! I heard you slept with that girl Sylvia in the Northern Territory?”
Logaris’s face instantly darkened.
“Who started that rumor?”
“Still pretending? The whole academy is talking about it!”
Barnabas looked thoroughly entertained, his previously dull old eyes now gleaming with gossip-fueled excitement.
“They say the two of you have been inseparable in the Northern Territory, slaughtering nobles left and right during the day, and at night inside the Governor’s Residence—”
“Stop.”
Logaris pressed his throbbing temple, already regretting coming back.
“That was for work. And I am a respectable man.”
“Respectable? You?”
Before Barnabas could continue, ripples of blue light suddenly spread through the air.
That was the glow of a spatial teleportation spell.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
Several figures appeared out of thin air inside the office.
All familiar faces.
Celes, the head of the Divination Department, the old alchemy woman who always burned off her eyebrows, and several rune scholars.
Normally, if you tried to gather these people for an academic meeting, each one would have an excuse—back pain, closed-door cultivation, or something else.
Now, however, upon hearing that Logaris had returned, they had arrived faster than dogs smelling meat.
“Oh my, what a rare guest!”
Celes, bald-headed, smiled so broadly that the wrinkles on his face piled together.
“I calculated that today would bring great misfortune—oh no, great fortune! Come on, tell us, how far have things progressed between you and Her Highness Sylvia—”
“I saw in the papers that the Northern Territory held some kind of public trial? Well done! I have long disliked those old nobles!”
“Do not interrupt! Talk about Sylvia first! I heard there is even going to be an engagement?”
A group of elderly men and women, whose combined age likely exceeded a thousand years, surrounded Logaris, chattering endlessly.
Academics?
No one cared.
They were no different from gossiping old women at the village entrance.
Aaron stood in the corner holding the stack of brochures, his mouth twitching, not daring to interrupt.
“Enough.”
Logaris finally lost his patience.
His voice was not loud, but it carried a chill.
The crowd quieted slightly.
Logaris took a deep breath and raised his hand to pinch the frame of his gold-rimmed glasses.
“My matter with Sylvia can wait.”
He slowly removed his glasses and casually tossed them onto Barnabas’s desk.
The glasses slid across the surface, producing a faint scraping sound.
Revealing a pair of heterochromatic eyes—one blue, one red.
The room instantly fell silent.
Barnabas stared at those eyes for a long time.
The playful expression on the old man’s face gradually faded, replaced by a complicated look unique to an elder.
“You brat…”
Barnabas sighed and scratched his messy beard.
“So you finally figured it out?”
“Mm.”
Logaris took out a cloth and calmly wiped his glasses, even though there was no dust on them.
“I used to think it was a nuisance. Now it is nothing special.”
A faint smile curved his lips. Though he was smiling, there was both arrogance and relief in that expression.
“Looks like the Northern Territory really does change people,” Barnabas said with emotion.
Logaris shrugged without comment.
“Enough reminiscing.”
Logaris took the thick document from Aaron and tossed it directly onto Barnabas’s desk.
“Sign it.”
“What is this?”
Barnabas picked it up suspiciously. After just one glance at the title, his eyelids twitched wildly.
[Proposal for Establishing a Strategic Talent Transfer Partnership Between the Northern Territory and Saint Arcadia Academy]
“You want people?” Barnabas frowned. “I will say this first—I follow the students’ personal wishes…”
“You do not need to worry about that.”
Logaris interrupted him.
He pointed at the stack of brochures in Aaron’s hands.
“Distribute one of these to every department.”
Barnabas picked up a brochure.
The Winter City on the cover looked like paradise. The smokestacks spewing black smoke had been forcibly beautified into mysterious magical towers, and the slogans below were highly provocative.
[There are no restrictions here—only truth.]
[As long as you have talent, even if you are mad, the Northern Territory will give you a stage.]
The atmosphere in the dean’s office became extremely strange.
Aaron moved like a diligent little bee, distributing the beautifully printed (and highly misleading) Northern Territory Magitech Talent Recruitment Plan to each of the professors present.
The elderly woman from the Alchemy Department adjusted her reading glasses and pointed at a pillar emitting a seven-colored glow on the cover, her tone hesitant.
“Logaris, if I am not mistaken… this is the latest mana amplification tower?”
Logaris calmly spoke nonsense while sipping his tea.
“That is a boiler chimney. To avoid ruining the city’s appearance, I had someone add some visualization powder to the exhaust gases so it looks more… dreamlike.”
“… ”
The old woman’s hand trembled, nearly throwing the booklet away.
Turning industrial exhaust into something so refined—impressive.
The head of the Rune Department examined it carefully, stroking his sparse beard thoughtfully.
“These benefits… triple salary? Accommodation included? Logaris, that is quite a generous offer. If you can truly deliver, those brats under me who complain about funding shortages every day will probably drool over this.”
“I do not make empty promises.”
Logaris set down his teacup.
“As long as they have real ability—whether they want to pursue research or earn a living—I can accommodate them. Even those with strange personalities or the troublesome ones you dislike—as long as they are capable, I will take them.”
These words struck directly at the hearts of the old professors.
Every department had a few talented students who were either poor or socially awkward. Keeping them was troublesome, but abandoning them was a waste. Now that someone was willing to take them—especially someone like Logaris, who might be irritating but was absolutely reliable in academics…
“Fine!”
Barnabas stuffed the last piece of donut into his mouth and muttered vaguely.
“Since you are leading this, I will not stop you. But let me make this clear—if those kids suffer over there, I will not let you off.”
As he spoke, the old man pulled out a stamp stained with sugar from his drawer and pressed it firmly onto the document.
SLAP!
A bright red seal was imprinted.