Chapter 90 - 24
The afternoon sun cast long, amber shadows across the central plaza of the Aegis Academy, throwing the student body into a state of quiet, mounting frenzy.
Down in the main quadrangle, small clusters of female students—ranging from elite vanguard swordswomen to high-born noble heiresses—searched every courtyard, library nook, and training pavilion. Word had spread rapidly that the enigmatic, strikingly handsome commoner freshman from Lecture Hall 101 had vanished mid-afternoon.
"Where did he go?!" a raven-haired noble girl demanded, checking behind a marble pillar near the central fountain. "He didn’t return for the applied mana-mechanics block! Did someone from the upper years corner him?!"
"I checked the dining hall and the eastern gardens," another girl sighed, crossing her arms in frustrated disappointment. "He isn’t anywhere. It’s like he completely dissolved into thin air!"
Further down the colonnade, Lord Julian and his disgruntled clique stood scowling in the shade, watching the girls frantically search the campus. Julian’s eyes burned with petty, aristocratic disdain. "Good riddance. The arrogant peasant probably realized he didn’t belong in an elite institution and ran back to his mud hut in the badlands."
Meanwhile, up in the high back corner of Lecture Hall 101, Katherine sat entirely alone at her wooden desk. She held her quill tightly over her blank parchment, her deep violet eyes darting nervously toward the empty chair beside her. Her heart felt heavy, a quiet wave of anxiety washing over her massive, cardigan-draped chest.
Did I do something wrong...? Katherine thought, her lower lip quivering as her face flushed a bright, mournful red. Did I breathe too loudly? Was I taking up too much room at the desk? Please... please don’t let him have left for good...
Unbeknownst to the frantic academy, Arthur was nowhere near the common student areas.
Using his mastery of physical mana-flow, he moved through the shadows of the campus like a silent phantom. His mana-suppression ring kept his signature down to absolute zero, rendering him invisible to the security barriers and runic sensors embedded in the stone walls. His mind, usually a fortress of cold, calculated economic algorithms and geopolitical strategies, thrummed with a rare, restless tension.
He bypassed the grand library, ghosted through the administrative archives, and tracked Dr. Elena’s distinct, methodical footstep resonance toward the secluded western wing—the restricted faculty research laboratories.
The Western Wing was silent, far removed from the noisy bustle of the freshman corridors. Clean stone hallways lined with glowing blue mana-lamps stretched into the quiet depths of the medical division. Arthur walked slowly down the sterile corridor, his sharp eyes scanning the polished brass nameplates beside each reinforced wooden door.
At the very end of the hall, a soft, warm light spilled out from an open doorway labeled Clinical Pathology & Diagnostic Synthesis.
Arthur stopped outside the threshold. His heart, a steady drum that remained unbothered even when facing continental financial collapses, gave a sudden, hard thud against his ribs.
Inside the dimly lit laboratory, Dr. Elena stood beside a high marble workstation. She had removed her heavy outer coat, wearing only a simple white blouse and dark trousers. A pair of silver-framed reading glasses rested low on the bridge of her nose. She held a glass glass beaker up to the light, her brow furrowed in that exact, bossy, hyper-focused scowl Arthur had seen a thousand times in his previous life on Earth.
She reached for a small brass scalpel, holding it with a precise, three-finger surgical grip, before letting out a soft, tired sigh that sounded identical to the ones she used to make after a twenty-four-hour hospital shift.
Arthur didn’t check her soul signature with a spell. He didn’t need to consult Vespera’s intelligence reports or Celeste’s academic archives. Every gesture, every subtle shift in her posture, and the undeniable aura of self-sacrificing authority radiating from her made the truth glaringly, undeniably clear.
He stepped out from the shadows into the warm glow of the doorway.
The quiet sound of his leather boots striking the floor didn’t startle her. Elena didn’t even turn around initially, assuming it was a late-night lab assistant or a junior faculty member bringing the evening patient charts.
"I told the department clerk I wouldn’t be accepting patient records until tomorrow morning," Elena said crisp, sharp, and without breaking her focus on the beaker. "If you are a student looking for a medical exemption slip, leave your name on the clipboard by the door."
Arthur stood motionless in the doorway, staring at her back. A soft, rare smile—one completely devoid of corporate arrogance or sovereign dominance—touched his lips.
"You haven’t changed at all..." Arthur said smoothly, his voice dropping into a low, quiet tone that carried a depth of affection he hadn’t spoken with in two lives. "...Sis."
The glass beaker in Elena’s hand froze mid-air.
The crisp, professional atmosphere of the laboratory vanished in a single, shattered second. Elena’s shoulders went entirely rigid. Her breath caught violently in her throat, a sharp gasp echoing off the cold stone walls.
That specific word, spoken in that exact, calm, unbothered cadence—a tone reserved for a stubborn younger brother who always worked himself to exhaustion—struck her soul like a physical shockwave.
Slowly, almost fearfully, Elena set the glass beaker down onto the marble table with a trembling hand. She turned around, her silver-framed spectacles slipping slightly lower on her nose as her wide, disbelieving eyes locked onto the tall, remarkably handsome youth standing in her doorway.
Elena stared at the tall, dark-haired youth standing in the doorway, her breath catching in her chest. For a moment, her mind flatlined. She blinked once, twice, adjusting her silver-framed glasses with a hand that trembled violently.
"I’m... I’m hallucinating," Elena whispered, her voice cracking slightly as she pressed a hand against her forehead, taking a step back toward her workstation. "Exhaustion. Double shifts at the clinic and now this academy contract... I’m seeing ghosts. Student, whatever joke this is, leave. Now."
Arthur didn’t move. A soft, genuine smile—the kind he never showed to the grand duchesses, the archmages, or his corporate board—spread slowly across his face. He stepped into the warm glow of the room, letting the heavy oak door swing shut behind him with a quiet click.
"You always blamed exhaustion," Arthur said gently, his voice carrying the exact, effortless calm she knew better than anyone. "Just like that winter on Earth when you worked thirty-six hours straight at the municipal hospital and insisted you saw me sitting in your breakroom when I was three states away at university."
Elena went entirely motionless. Her wide, amber eyes locked onto his dark gaze.
"You used to steal my medical binders to read about arterial structures when you were twelve," Arthur continued, taking another slow step forward. "And every night I stayed up managing investment portfolios, you’d burst into my apartment with lukewarm instant ramen, scold me for ruining my liver, and threaten to confiscate my laptop."
The glass vial she was holding slipped from her fingers, shattering against the stone floor.
"Arthur...?" Elena breathed, her voice trembling with an overwhelming, breathless shock. "It’s... it’s really you...?"
"It’s me, Sis," Arthur replied softly.
The stoic, bossy doctor vanished in an instant. A sob choked in Elena’s throat as tears flooded her eyes. Crossing the space between them in two frantic strides, she threw her arms around his neck, pulling him into a desperate, tight embrace. Arthur wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, feeling her warm tears soak into his uniform shoulder as her frame shook with pure, ecstatic joy.
"You idiot! You absolute idiot!" Elena cried, half-laughing, half-sobbing as she buried her face into his chest, clutching his back as if he might vanish if she let go. "I thought you were dead! I thought I lost you forever when that crash happened!"
For the next hour, the world outside the laboratory completely ceased to exist.
They sat together on the small leather sofa in the corner of her private quarters. Elena kept one hand tightly laced with Arthur’s, refusing to break physical contact as they exchanged their stories.
Arthur explained everything—his death, his reincarnation into this world, the system of absolute dominance he had constructed, and how he sat at the top of the continent’s secret shadow government, controlling its economy, banks, and military branches through his executive inner circle. Elena listened in stunned, watery-eyed wonder, occasionally shaking her head with a tearful chuckle.
"A secret monarch?" Elena laughed softly, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve, her heart brimming with affection. "Of course you built a global financial empire. You couldn’t even enjoy a summer break without trying to optimize the local market!"
Then she shared her own journey. After her sudden heart failure on Earth brought on by years of overwork, her soul had reincarnated into an infant abandoned at a northern borderland orphanage. Carrying her past-life memories and medical knowledge, she had spent twenty-seven years surviving, curing illnesses, and fighting her way into the academy’s faculty just to find a safe place to live.
"I was so lonely, Arthur," Elena admitted, leaning her head on his shoulder, her eyes shining with unconditional love and warmth. "In a world full of magic and noble wars, all I wanted was to see you again. I prayed every night that wherever you were, you were safe."
"I’m here now," Arthur said, his tone resolute, his dark eyes flashing with absolute protection. "And nobody in this realm will ever threaten or burden you again."
As the midnight hour approached, the deep emotional drain of their reunion caught up with Elena. Her heavy eyelids fluttered, her body relaxing completely against Arthur’s side. She refused to let him leave her quarters, tugging his arm until he lay down beside her on her wide, comfortable bed. Wrapped safely in Arthur’s warm embrace, her head resting on his chest, Elena fell into the deepest, most peaceful sleep she had experienced in two lifetimes. Arthur held her gently, his gaze watching the moonlit ceiling, perfectly content.
While Arthur slept peacefully in his sister’s quarters, absolute chaos reigned across the rest of the academy and the city.
In the executive spire, twelve top-tier women were driven completely out of their minds with burning jealousy, frantic worry, and helpless frustration.
Inside Director Celeste’s private office, a emergency council had formed in the dead of night:
Lyra was pacing the rug, furiously biting her thumb, her cheeks flushed bright red with possessive envy. "He hasn’t returned to his room! He’s been alone with that doctor woman for four hours! Valerie, break down the door!"
Vespera leaned against the window, her crimson eyes glowing with a dangerous, jealous light as she drummed her nails against her wine glass. "If she so much as touches a single hair on my lord’s head, I’ll turn her clinic into ash."
Celeste sat behind her desk, clutching a pillow to her chest, her face red, her spectacles fogged as she whimpered softly. "What if... what if she’s giving him a ’private examination’ right now?! Oh divine heavens, my heart can’t take this!"
Valerie stood by the wall, her hand resting on her sword hilt, her face a mask of dark, murderous jealousy as her shadow operatives reported zero breaches from the laboratory.
The other eight executive women—ranging from Sylvia the chief alchemist to the high commanders of the central bank security—were swarming the encrypted comms channels, trading frantic, jealous theories about why their sovereign had spent the entire night wrapped up with a plain substitute doctor.
Meanwhile, back in the student dormitories, the commoner dorm halls were equally restless.
In her tiny room, Katherine sat up in bed, hugging her knees to her chest under the dim light of her desk lamp. Her deep violet eyes were red from crying softly, her massive chest heaving with anxious sighs.
He didn’t come back to his room... Katherine thought mournfully, a painful, jealous ache twisting her heart as she looked out her window. Did he get taken away by one of those rich, beautiful noble heiresses? Will he... will he even come back to sit next to me tomorrow?
Outside Arthur’s empty room, dozens of high-born noble girls were still lurking in the corridors under the pretext of taking midnight walks, their faces pale with worry and disappointment, wondering where the handsome, mysterious youth had vanished.
Unaware and entirely unbothered by the storm of jealousy shaking the entire continent, Arthur simply closed his eyes in the quiet lab quarters, resting his chin against his sister’s hair as they slept peacefully through the night.