I awoke in my quarters within the Annex Manor. My cognitive processors were pristine and fully rebooted, though my physical vessel had struggled immensely to re-establish its baseline equilibrium.
Ellen, the sole maid who stubbornly persisted in serving me despite my formally shattered reputation, stood quietly beside my bed. Her features were etched with her usual, inefficient anxiety.
"Lord Adrian, you have been asleep for two entire days... Everyone in the Main Estate is endlessly speculating—"
"Let the estate speculate, Ellen," I interrupted coldly, smoothly rising from the mattress. My dead gaze remained entirely locked onto the mental schematic of the Academy I was currently drafting in my mind. "Time is a highly volatile variable. I do not permit its squandering on the pathetic ambient noise of servants."
I stepped out of my quarters to find Rain and Luna standing guard at the threshold. Their faces were noticeably pale from acute sleep deprivation, yet their posture was rigid, their loyalty now forged as unbreakable as tempered steel. I offered them a single, curt nod to hold their positions, then marched directly toward the Royal Magic Academy.
Today was not a standard operational cycle. Today marked my formal introduction to the accumulated biological debris known as Class 9.
[Class 9 Lecture Hall]
I pushed open the doors. The entire room practically reeked of systemic failure and deep-seated apathy. The students—publicly designated as unrecyclable trash by Principal Oswald—were slouched in their desks with profound lethargy.
As I strode down the central aisle, I passed Bart. The boy was actively attempting to conceal his heavily splinted right arm beneath his wooden desk, staring up at me with eyes violently swimming in a chaotic blend of raw terror and suffocated malice. I didn't grant him a single microsecond of my attention. Defective scrap does not warrant a second diagnostic scan.
I ascended the central podium, letting my gaze sweep over the sea of faces with unfiltered, towering arrogance. Elena Duval was seated in the dead center of the front row. Her wounded aristocratic pride was glaringly obvious in the white-knuckled death grip she maintained on her expensive water-attribute staff.
"My name is Adrian Faulkner," I stated. My voice was entirely devoid of warmth, echoing through the silent hall like the grinding of heavy, rusted gears. "I am not here to teach you magic. I am not here because you possess potential. You are, fundamentally, biological garbage entirely incapable of calculating the basic mana flow within your own vessels."
A suffocating, heavy silence slammed into the room. A boy in the third row opened his mouth, desperately attempting to voice an objection, but I instantly severed his vocal cords with a single, freezing glare that forced him to shrink back into his seat.
"Observe yourselves," I continued, slowly stepping down from the podium and pacing among their desks with oppressive, tyrannical authority.
"You, Kaelen," I pointed at a nervous boy with my black-gloved finger. "You attempt to project fire mana as if you are blindly pouring water down a black hole. And you, Elsa," I shifted my gaze to a pale girl. "You consistently fail to freeze a single droplet of water because you are entirely incompetent at calibrating the precise 'timing' of your magical pulse. You are not mages. You are merely a collection of critical 'system errors' forcibly dumped into this quarantine zone."
I slammed my palm flat against a wooden desk. The sheer, highly condensed kinetic force generated a visible ripple in the room's ambient mana. Several students violently flinched.
"The Academy administration wishes to permanently expel you. And mathematically? I entirely agree with them. Trash belongs in the incinerator."
I straightened my posture, my purple eyes glowing with a terrifying, absolute dominance.
"However, I will grant you one single alternative parameter. You will execute my calculations with absolute, unthinking precision. If you do, I will personally re-engineer your pathetic disabilities and forge you into flawless, lethal instruments. I do not require your creativity. I do not want your 'art'. I demand absolute, robotic execution of my commands."
I turned back toward the podium.
"Kaelen. Advance to the front," I commanded, my tone completely non-negotiable. "I am going to publicly demonstrate exactly why you are garbage... and I will show this entire room how I systematically 'reboot' your decaying biological matrix."
Kaelen's eyes were practically vibrating with sheer terror and profound bewilderment as he slowly rose from his seat. The rest of the student body—including Elena and Bart—watched the unfolding scene with completely bated breath.
The era of the "Trash Professor" had officially commenced. And he was about to brutally rewrite their entire definition of power using nothing but absolute, freezing logic.