Aeterna Royal Magic Academy.

  The campus was nothing short of an architectural marvel, boasting a spiraling, circular layout that commanded the landscape.

  At its center, sweeping walls curved inward, resembling giant stone petals wrapped protectively around a toweringl central spire. That spire—a cone of silver and glass—seemed to scrape the very heavens, catching the afternoon sun through nonexistent ceiling of the Abyss and scattering prismatic beams of light across the manicured courtyards below.

  Majestic white marble pillars pierced the sky at regular intervals along the perimeter. Between them, cascading blue holographic runes circled through the air.

  To the untrained eye, they might have seemed like beautiful enchantments.

  To Asterion, they were a mess of real-time magical calculations—structural arithmancy to keep the building standing, atmospheric warding for protection, and localized climate control, all woven together in… an inefficient matrix that made his eyes twitch.

  But the runes weren’t what had caused Asterion to stop dead in his tracks.

  Staring up at the extravagant gold-leaf lettering arching over the main wrought-iron gates—Aeterna Royal Magic Academy—Asterion’s jaw dropped in dismay.

  “Don't tell me…” he muttered to himself, his voice buried by the bustling noise of the street. “Someone squatted right on top of my treasures?”

  That couldn't be right.

  He must have misjudged the location. Yes, that must be it. He was human, too. An archmage can definitely make a mistake.

  Asterion closed his eyes to focus for real this time, tapping a finger against his temple as he summoned his mental map. He felt the subtle magnetic pull of the ground’s ley lines.

  He opened his eyes.

  The mana flow from his relics were still right in front of him. And the academy was also still there.

  “Damn it, of course I didn’t make a mistake.”

  The only place his legendary loot could be buried was directly underneath the polished cobblestones of this school.

  They buried his ancient relics deep underground and just slapped a building over them?

  How dare…? Who…?!

  Asterion couldn’t even end his sentences in his mind.

  Down there rested the Staff of Ouroboros, the Cloak of Shadows, enough raw mythril to fund a small empire, and—most importantly—his favorite self-heating tea kettle.

  Well, that wasn’t all that the tea kettle could do.

  And he hadn’t covered even half the list of his lost items.

  “Isn't this a zoning violation?” he hissed aloud. “Erecting a building over someone else's private property?!”

  Already accepting the fact that he was the [Master of the Abyss], Asterion was ready to wield all his rights to get his stuff back.

  But a sudden wave of dizziness hit him, as if his hundred and thirty years of age had just caught up to him all at once.

  To be honest, his body was practically half-immortal, so nothing was wrong, but his soul could feel it.

  “Damn it, I’m too old for this,” Asterion sighed, reaching up to massage the back of his neck to keep his metaphorical blood pressure down.

  What in the world was going on?

  He thought he could quickly grab his gear and go back to sleep.

  How could something this exhausting happen? He had done all his homework—killed a literal goddess—and this was what awaited him on his first day awake.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  If his stuff had just been buried in any regular monster territory in the Labyrinth, he could have wiped the whole place out with a casual [Hellfire] cascade and been done with it.

  But he couldn’t exactly glass a school filled with childr—no, what looked like young adults.

  Asterion slowly examined the front gates of the campus, watching the flow of foot traffic.

  Stay calm, he told himself. Peace. Yes, inner peace.

  He drew in a long, slow breath and let it out.

  There had to be a way to get his stash back. With magic, anything was possible.

  Almost anything, thought Asterion.

  Scanning the crowd milling around the academy’s exterior, he noticed dozens of young men and women wearing identical robes. They moved in loose clusters, laughing, carrying stacks of thick, leather-bound tomes, or tossing tiny spheres of elemental light between their hands.

  So it’s not just a regular school for the rich. They’re really raising mages here?

  Asterion’s brow furrowed.

  Back in his day, when he was still stumbling around the new world, there hadn’t been a single institute that focused on magic.

  The very concept of a “magic academy” would have been laughed out of the royal courts, since magic was limited to nobles and the rich.

  To see hundreds of students, all gathered in one place, openly studying… it was a huge leap in the history of magic. He scanned the building with a slightly shifted perspective.

  Asterion had never expected to see the world after he saved it. Or, to be precise, hadn’t wanted to see how the world would unfold.

  Had he done the right thing? Was his friends’ sacrifice worth the cause? How would the world change?

  He had intentionally casted a self-destruction spell in the battle with the Dark Lady because he didn’t want to see the ugly part of peoples’ greed that always shaped the aftermath of war. But this was different.

  Because they had saved the world, the world had a chance to build a safe haven for young, budding mages.

  Just from looking at how they carry themselves, Asterion could tell a noble’s child and a peasant child apart. And they were arguing over arcane theories in sunlit courtyards. Like equals.

  A faint, unfamiliar warmth spread through his chest.

  He saw a girl with pigtails accidentally drop her books, only for a boy next to her to mutter a quick levitation incantation, catching them mid-air. They both laughed awkwardly.

  Asterion watched them for a moment before slamming the brakes on his train of thoughts.

  Doesn’t change the fact that this is a zoning violation.

  He hated becoming sentimental. A terrible waste of energy when he could’ve been doing something productive. Like napping, for instance.

  As he stood there, a pair of older students walked past him, their voices drifting over the ambient noise of the crowd.

  “I’m telling you, it’s not just a ley-line fluctuation,” a tall boy with slicked-back black hair argued, adjusting the collar of his uniform. “The mana tremors in the lower vaults have been getting worse all week. Professor Vance had to reinforce the containment wards twice yesterday.”

  His companion, a girl carrying a staff topped with a very tiny yellow crystal, rolled her eyes. “Vance is just paranoid. I learned during our histroy class that the academy was built over a natural mana convergence. So it burps sometimes.”

  “A burp that melts the Sub-Basement Four archive doors?” the boy shot back.

  “…Okay, you have a point.”

  Asterion’s ear twitched.

  Mana tremors? Melting doors? Asterion thought, his eyes narrowing. That’s not a ley-line hiccup, that’s my Arcane Core reactor leaking because it hasn’t had maintenance for who knows how long.

  The professors of this institute must have been keeping it under control by containing its mana flow through external wards.

  Perhaps that was one way to do it. Until it didn’t.

  Slipping past the eyes of trained mages would be a bit of a hassle, but then again, nobody knew mages better than Asterion.

  He studied the students as they walked away, committing every detail to memory. The detail of their attire.

  The uniforms—blue robes with gold trimming—were actually quite sharp.

  Unlike the baggy, traditional robes he was used to, these had a clean silhouette and looked much more like a high-end coat.

  Asterion snapped his fingers.

  “[Transform].”

  This was also a feature of his robes.

  A ripple of mana cascaded down the robes like liquid glass. The fibers of his old tunic unwove themselves at a molecular level, spinning and re-knitting in a fraction of a second. If he had to calculate all that himself, he would’ve had a headache.

  The fabric shifted, cooling against his skin as it settled into a sleek, perfectly tailored replica of the blue academy uniform.

  He adjusted the lapels, rolling his shoulders to test the fit. He didn’t know how the actual uniforms felt, but his was surprisingly comfortable, as usual.

  Now he could naturally blend right into the crowd.

  Just in case there are professors who can see through [Camouflage].

  Asterion was technically a hundred and thirty years old, but thanks to his monstrous density of his mana pool, he hadn’t aged a day past twenty.

  With his dark, messy hair and the uniform, he looked like a typical upperclassman who had to pull all-nighters for his research.

  …Alright, then. It's obvious my gear is underneath the academy.

  Asterion examined the massive structure, letting out a final, long sigh. He really, really didn’t want to go to school today.

  Let’s figure out what kind of place this “academy” actually is.

  He needed to find a way into the central spire, navigate down to the probably restricted lower vaults, and see if the treasure could be physically moved without collapsing the foundations. If they needed replacements, he was willing to even charge the place with his own mana.

  But in the worst case scenario, if the place proved corrupt and incompetent, he would just end it by blowing the whole thing into smithereens.

  He was in a better mood than usual, after all.