A cool breeze brushed against the skin, prompting everyone to reach for thicker clothing as the temperature began to fall. Brown, withered leaves drifted down one by one, quietly announcing that summer had ended and autumn had taken its place.
The students of Aetherion Academy had also returned, for the summer holiday was finally over.
An academy with towering, magnificent buildings and excellent training facilities. Swordsmanship, magic, alchemy, politics, strategy. This was the place where students from every corner of the world gathered to learn, and where talent was both forged and tested.
And here, too, began the story of someone who wished for nothing more than a quiet and lazy life, yet was forced to become a professor.
'I will teach peacefully. And lazily.'
But that was nothing more than a wishful dream. Because the class he would be teaching was infamous for its talented yet high-status and deeply problematic students, students who would shatter every single one of that professor's plans.
'Is even a small dream like this truly impossible?'
He wept silently in his heart, standing before the academy gates. How was he supposed to live peacefully with students like these?
---
Inside a fairly spacious room, large enough to be called a proper professor's bedroom, sunlight poured through the window. It carried warmth and energy, the kind of thing that lifted most people's spirits and filled them with motivation.
But not for him.
A man, 183 centimeters tall with a well-trained physique, stood before a mirror. His eyes were crimson. His electric-blue hair was tied back, the ends of the ponytail reaching his shoulders.
He stood there, expressionless, staring at his own reflection. The distant voices of students passing through the academy corridors drifted into the room. He could hear all of them clearly.
'Why is this happening to me.'
He collapsed to the floor, weeping.
"I only wanted to live quietly and in peace after reincarnating, and after waiting twenty-one long years, I finally had it! So why did Father and Mother force me to become a professor?! Why?!"
His voice echoed beyond the walls of his room, drawing the attention of nearby students and professors alike.
"I just wanted to be lazy and live peacefully after graduating from the Academy. That was all. But why did I return here a year later, not as a student, but as a professor?! Why me? There are plenty of students and alumni from my generation! They are better than me. So why me?!"
The man weeping on the floor was Ard Le Ventias, youngest son of Duke Ardan Le Ventias and Duchess Isabel Le Ventias. He was the youngest child of a great noble house, one famed for its swordsmen and military strategy. The Ventias family stood second only to the Emperor himself within the Empire.
Ard was a reincarnator. He was twenty-one years old, which meant he had already lived in this world for twenty-one years.
'I want to go home.'
This world was the continent of Tarthahar, the second largest continent, ruled by four great empires across its every corner. The empire Ard lived in was the Pathlight Empire, a prosperous land with fertile soil and orderly seasons. It was known for its mountain ranges and the deep religious devotion of its people.
'I want to go home.'
And Aetherion Academy had stood for six centuries. A neutral institution, loyal to no empire and no faction, devoted solely to educating students of all races and backgrounds. And all of that was, currently, completely irrelevant to Ard's suffering.
"Could you be quiet? You are making my headache worse and making me want to cry even louder."
...
"That is better."
Ard felt his headache ease slightly. He began to rise, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
"I said be quiet!"
---
Ard finally stood and prepared himself. He dressed carefully and pinned a small brooch to his collar, the kind that marked him as a professor of the academy.
"Alright."
He took a long, deep breath and steadied himself. Then he stepped out of his room and walked through the academy corridor toward the classroom he would be teaching.
The hallway stretched on longer than it had any right to. The decorations were lavish, the atmosphere lively and ordinary. Students of many races and backgrounds passed by in every direction. Ard walked with a steady pace, gaze fixed straight ahead, one hand resting in his pocket.
"Is he the new professor?"
"Where? Who?"
"Open your eyes and look!"
"Oh. I think I know him."
"Really? Then who is he?"
"He is..."
*Serious.
"He is who?"
"A professor."
"I KNOW THAT!!!"
Shortly after, the conversation dissolved into cries of pain and the sounds of something hitting something else. Ard could hear it even as he walked further away, but he only thought to himself,
'Those two must be very close friends.'
They were not. Ard was simply being too positive in an attempt to calm himself on his first day back, even though he had once lived in this very place.
* * *
Ard arrived before the door of the classroom he would be teaching.
'That was quite far.'
The moment the door opened, a grand classroom greeted him.
The seats rose in tiered rows toward the back, each row sitting higher than the one before it, as if the entire room ascended along an invisible staircase. It was a room designed so that every pair of eyes would naturally fall on the single point at the very front.
The students were already seated and quiet. Ard stepped inside and made his way to the professor's desk at the center, his back to the large blackboard behind him.
He looked out at them with a calm and steady gaze, carrying an air of quiet superiority. But inside, he let out a long and heavy sigh.
'I want to go home.'
The moment he had walked in and seen them, he already felt tired. Their talents were extraordinary, nearly every single one of them, human and demon and beastman alike.
So what made Ard feel so reluctant?
Because he knew they were not only talented. They were also problematic. He knew this because every single one of them had been his junior during the years he had once spent as a student in this very academy.
* * *