Alureino trots her way past the crowded halls, her pace barely above the crawl of a snail; her presence was hard to ignore, not even her short stature could hope to suppress the mana leaking out of her, leaving the many students in her vicinity at a loss for words. From just briefly walking past them, she instilled a forboding sensation into the primal instincts of the surrounding students, scaring them into fleeing to their classes.

  What could be the cause of her dreary and lethargic disposition?

  It's rather simple; she'd gotten not a wink of sleep: a parent with newborn triplets would get a better night of sleep than she had. After all, she'd spent a good part of the time she should've been partaking in her beauty sleep, venting like a madman at Karuoe over the phone. Some would say being able to shout for so long without getting a hoarse throat to be a feat of physical achievement; the target of the venting, however, did not find the achievement as praiseworthy.

  He found it... endearingly annoying at best.

  For the specifics of her choice of words, I'd rather not say. She's anything if not feisty when intoxicated. At least she was about to go to bed before calling, so her husband was there to keep her in check... for the most part.

  Even if he was constantly egging her on by accident with all those mentions of Alureino's new job.

  Now on little more than an ember of what could be considered energy, the newly appointed teacher metaphorically dragged herself towards the classroom that those stupid head masters had assigned her to the day prior. This single fact was the sole cause of her dismay and terrible sleep; had one thing about it just been slightly different, the woman wouldn't be in such a fractiously sour mood: Inkaro was in the Star Course.

  It wasn't like she was expecting any other outcome; the exhausted woman had to reluctantly accept that he deserved to be in the class. If he wasn't, it would've been a slight against her by proxy of her being someone who taught Inkaro remotely for a time. Even if it erked her to acknowledge, Alureino knew if Inkaro hadn't gotten into the Star Course, by some impossibly stupid series of incidents, she would have been the first to storm into the office of a certain head master and knock the first bit of sense into them for the first time in their life; because if someone was dumb enough to not see Inkaro's talent, then they were clearly a threat to society by merit of pure inccompetence.

  She found herself gritting her teeth with such toxic malice that any remaining students in her path departed and dispersed like clouds in a tornado.

  Alureino didn't have the mental clarity to notice the effect she had on those around her; after all, she was too focused on fuming about the injustices in this world that were still allowed to exist. If there was one thing she hated more than overzealous students that made more work for her, it was morons who believed in noble supremacy.

  The very act of recalling such an ignorant and illogical concept was enough to replenish her once-deprived energy using nothing but rage. The very notion made her horn tingle with a thousand tiny prickling sensations, sort of like how someone's skin feels when going from a cold place to a warm one in a short space of time.

  Trying to calm the neurons of her ever-cramping brain, the woman brought a finger to the base of her horn before dragging her fingertip across it in a short burst of speed. Despite the long sleeves of her robes mitigating some of the intended effects, the results were swift; she carved right through the carpet of tingles and made her body tense up from the release of tension. Then, in the long sprawling hallway she found herself in, a faint, drawn-out eep of respite fluttered its way through before teetering out, much like an ember someone was trying to snuff out, out of embarrassment.

  A few more similar sounds, padded with irritation, followed shortly after.

  "Aah-h... ahem, this is going to be such a headache, five years of having to bear the brunt of the obscurities of that fiend's ex-pupil."

  Her attempt to divert her attention from the cute noise she made didn't work in the slightest; her only saving grace in the situation she created for herself was that the many halls of the academy had long since been cleared out of any prying eyes, on account of classes being mere minutes from officially beginning and the murderous aura she'd unintentionally exuded.

  So, with that thought in mind, Alureino picked up the pace.

  As she finally turned a corner, Alureino felt her heart flutter, the sheer volume of relief that surged from her as she layed her eyes upon the students she was to be the homeroom and curio rune scribing teacher for: no Inkaro in sight.

  It was a short moment of mental respite. But she knew it was nothing but a self-serving delusion, wishful thinking cranked up to the height of absurdity. After all, it was hardly a challenge for her abundant collection of curios, the tracking/locator one to be more accurate, to regrettably divulge a most disheartening of news.

  Inkaro was approaching fast, along with the youngest daughter of the Feubread family and the Princess of Uythunova in tow. If Alureino were in a soundproofed room, her screams of anguish would easily overpower any soundproofing magical device and burst it like a strained speaker's speaker. All she could do was slump her shoulders, resembling a slain slime monster to some extent. The woman could only hope the trio's proximity to each other wasn't foreshadowing, leading to her receiving a headache on the first day as she exhaustedly clasped her horn for support.

  She waddled her way through the gathering of her students, defeated and mentally battered, as she reached into one of her many pockets. After a little bit of rummaging, she pulled out a golden, moon-shaped pendant bearing the academy's Emblem that could function like a ring. Which Alureino would never do.

  Solicrave Academy's Emblem is um... let me check my notes... a golden heart covered in magic circle-like engravings with a keyhole-shaped groove on the front and back.

  As the woman continued to ruminate on how and what countermeasures she should employ in the defence of her sanity, some of the Star Course students wondered what was keeping Alureino so preoccupied that she couldn't unlock a door. It made some shudder, fearing it must be pretty bad for someone like her to be absent-minded for so long.

  While those students were discussing all sorts of crazy theories, a certain otome-obsessed teen was currently preoccupied with something of her own.

  "Still, isn't it rather amazing how fast it happened, in relation to the house's history; I mean, ever since the current head took over, the long standing Marquess ranking of the Feubread household shot right past the rank of Duke and swiped the Grand Duke spot in just five measly years...," Myendi bellowed playfully, innocently mouthing of another random tidbit of trivia like it was going out of fashion. Xythio is most displeased, the being who reincarnated him sends its regards... probably.

  [Myendi Auphuna is a slightly tall,fifteen-year-old female yukachuo, but looks fifteen due to her dainty and small body; she has ear-low fluffy bubblegum pink hair with two pigtails styled to look like hoops. Slightly pronounced chest and thighs. Light cyan eyes. Tanned skin with intricate marks sprawling all over her body(a pale rose red hollow five-pointed stars on each of her cheeks, three thick pale rose red zig-zag rings on her biceps, and a large pale rose five-pointed star on her back). And, a twenty-foot-long, pale pink and metal-like prehensile tail that also runs up her spine(the first twenty percent of her tail that isn't attached to her spine is a normal thin tail, while the remaining eight percent looks like thick barbed linked chains)]

  [Myendi is wearing a black and faintly dark grey horizontally striped form-fitting plain shirt with elbow-length sleeves. The shirt has holes that expose her entire back and the sides of her biceps. A shoulder-low black cloak covered in frilly pale pink extensions, opaque dark pink leggings with frilly cuffs, and knee-high black fur boots]

  :Attributes:

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  [Base]

  [Mana Capacity: A]

  [Mana Control: SS]

  [Mana Tolerance: S]

  [Advanced]

  [Affinity: Telekinesis]

  [Proficiency: Precise Control]

  Even with so much displeasure coursing through his very being and feeling a murderous inclination to shut the source of it up for good, Xythio refrained from letting even a smidgen of it show and allow himself to tickle Myendi's ego.

  [Xythio Kroanavo is a tall, seventeen-year-old human male with a slightly built frame; he has hip-low, finely combed, almost black royal blue hair that slowly turns to royal blue near the ends. Royal blue eyes with dark royal blue pupils. And, fair skin.

  [Xythio is wearing black reading glasses with slightly tinted lenses. A deep royal blue hooded fur jacket with a super soft bright cyan inner side. A black fingerless left-handed wool glove with a dark blue diamond-shaped crystal filled with various runes. Royal blue lantern trousers with bold black rings at the bottom of the legs. And, thick/padded black fur socks]

  :Attributes:

  [Base]

  [Mana Capacity: B]

  [Mana Control: X]

  [Mana Tolerance: A]

  [Advanced]

  [Affinity: Storage Magic]

  [Proficiency: Casting Speed]

  "If you expo dump on me again, I'll hit you up the head so hard you'll get three episodes worth of flashbacks," Xythio grumbled as he kept his forehead firmly against the fairly spacious classroom's wall, his face a distorted contortion of mental illness manifesting in reality. Clearly, the guy was presently overdosed on Myendi's baleful ramblings. How unfortunate.

  Myendi puffed up her cheeks, trying her damnedest to look like she felt the slightest hint of unjust offence at the earned threat, but her smug little grin made that illusion fruitless. "Aww, but I thought you liked history lessons, Xythio."

  The guy tore his forehead away from the wall, risking his resolve to glare daggers at the beaming Myendi, smiling sunshine right back at him.

  "Yeah, when it isn't coming from you, so I suggest you shut it; don't make me-.". He swung a hand to his mouth, like that would undo what he'd already uttered, his eyes as wide as a deer in headlights with how much they were sparkling with dread.

  To the guy's dismay, Myendi heard the verbal slip of the tongue.

  A sinister grin that bordered on villainous crept its way onto the otome-lover's face as she crept socially unexcusably close to Xythio, basically a hair's width away from making physical contact. She became so enraptured with her teasing that she failed to notice how Alureino long since unlocked the door and most of the other students had filed into the classroom.

  "Were you about to say: Don't make me pull a sword out on you again?" Myendi murmured sultrily, dripping with unrestrained mocking glee as she watched her friend roll his eyes especially hard in irritation at being caught. She pounced on the opportunity, eagerly poking and prodding at the guy's sides with a conflicting amount of affection to tick him off just that much further. "My-my, how crude of you, Xythio, to say that to a mai-."

  That remark would never be finished as Myendi found a very firm hand covered in wool pressed against her face, squeezing her especially passionately to ensure she wouldn't consider speaking again. Speaking coldly, Xythio grumbled, "Please, you're the furthest thing from a maiden, you dating sim freak."

  A shiver of gleeful fear shot through her pleasure receptors at being so abruptly manhandled and in such an uncaring way by Xythio. She went silently feral. The vice-like tightness of the guy's grip didn't help the girl's deteriorating mental clarity; it got so bad she began to drool from the sheer satisfaction she felt. Despite seeing the satisfied grin on her face, Xythio remained resolute in keeping her in his grasp, mainly fearing she'd do something beyond his comprehension should he release her while she was in such a feral mental state.

  So with no other option but to wait out the consequence of his rash decision, he carried her, by the face, into the classroom, leaving the few students and Alureino at a loss for words as they stood in the hallway.

  "Should we..., I presume, do something...? That girl most certainly has some crazy eyes buried under that guy's hand," the short-haired redhead girl with a warrior princess air to her asked while cautiously pointing out she, out of anyone, would know the telltale signs of someone going feral.

  Myhail could only lightly sigh with nothing but pessimism escaping his body as he had to reluctantly agree with the royalty from another nation.

  "Surprisingly, this is a normal occurrence between them, if what my father mentioned to me from his conversation with the pope," Prince Myhail mentioned, still semi-unconvinced that the scene between the two reincarnators wasn't a standard case of two-way bullying.

  Between frantics looks to her side, Alureino's patience became increasingly thin, to the point her horn made shaker noises.

  "Can you lot hurry it up? Schedules don't care if you're royalty or not," Alureino barked as her words somehow seemed to push the remaining students forward; her voice was a little more urgent than usual, but the remaining students just assumed she was just getting antsy about getting behind schedule. So, if only to appease their homeroom teacher, the remaining students entered the classroom just in the nick of time: moments after, Inkaro and Lizu arrived.

  "Cutting it a little close, aren't we? It's not like you can just leave everything to the last second then teleport," Alureino quipped, knowing full well Inkaro could do such a thing: courtesy of hearing Karuoe brag about the types of teleportation magic Inkaro developed a few years ago. Lizu could only nervously laugh, thinking the woman's words were more of a veiled warning than the silly quip it was intended to be.

  "True, but those unacustomed to teleporting are prone to immense motion sickness without the usual preventative measures of normal teleportation shrines. So we thought it would be less conspicuous to simply run here."

  A single eyebrow raise of suspicion from Alureino was all it took for Lizu to realise how dumb, in hindsight, running to school so quickly was. Physically, she remained poker-faced; internally, screaming her head off that she was starting to be as ignorant about normalcy as Inkaro: not that she cared about such things on a personal level, just a family perception level.

  "Through all three districts in five minutes?"

  Not seeing the issue, Inkaro puzzledly tilted his head before saying, "Yeah, why do you say that?"

  Lizu pulled at her cheeks and lightly slumped her tail fully against the reflectively clean wooden floors, already foreseeing the mini-outburst Alureino was about to have at Inkaro's lax question.

  The outburst did indeed follow shortly after, but not even Lizu's prediction could've foreseen just how much the woman would refrain from going full-on venting mode like she had at the entrance exam. After a few practised and timed short breaths, Alureino addressed Inkaro with such a stern tone of voice that everyone in the nearby classrooms felt the sudden urge to apologise out of the blue. "Listen here, Inkaro; I'm your homeroom teacher now, so for the time that the consequences of your actions will be a pain in my butt, I expect... no... DEMAND no funny business from you, got it?"

  Despite how clear the words from Alureino were and how no normal person could possibly misconstrue them, Lizu knew Inkaro was one of those few outliers to such a feat.

  "Ma'am, although I get what you mean, using phrasing like that will get you nowhere with Inkaro," Lizu said with a resigned and regretful tone, having been the victim of Inkaro's abysmally poor reading between the lines skills and taking everything at face value herself many a time. "Just using what you said as an example: Inkaro takes magic creation and experimentation very seriously, so... you know."

  "I see...," Alureino whimpered out, only now recalling Vergilou's mention how, as a kid, Inkaro heard the then bishop offhandedly mention how it would be nice if the forest around Inkaro's home town were a little more colourful. Only for his next visit to the place to be pushed to the following morning, when reports flooded in about not only had rare tree species suddenly appeared, but many of the existing ones had been transmuted into other ones. "Just... don't do anything on the scale you've done back home... okay?"

  "Also, what's with the bag?" the woman added weakly, having only now noticed the Enetha cocoon on Inkaro's back. Which Inkaro casually informed Alureino was just Enetha in the middle of recovering from trying to outlast Lizu in a bath calibrated for Lizu's scales.

  The woman slumped, fully body over, having expected some sort of monster experiment, not for it to be something mundane, even if the person on his back was a princess.

  "And somehow... carrying a princess around like a backpack is the least bizarre thing you've done today... Wait, who's that?" Alureino murmured defeatedly before pointing at Nuenala, barely clinging onto consciousness as she slipped off Lizu's tail and flopped heavily onto the floor with a deafening, obnoxious thud that could rival a defeated titan.

  "I'll just die here for a bit, my classes don't start for another ten minutes...uurrr...," Nuenala groaned out as she mustered the last of her strength into her tail and pushed herself onto her side, just in time for her to groan at seeing the world spin.