"Wait, if he's so dirt poor, just how could he afford all those resources?"
Muttering to herself as she messed up with all sorts of raw materials, acids, herbs, and half-made concoctions, Tesh couldn't help but sit and watch as her confusion grew through the roof.
There wasn't a single object of luxury or even basic comfort in this room beyond what it came equipped with. That would normally indicate the man was exactly the kind of trash teacher that everyone pointed him out to be, a total waste unable to secure any students or even fulfill the basic missions to get his standard of living up to par.
This logic was so strong, Tesh considered more than just once to simply drop her investigation, assuming Theo's mumbling to be just that — a bunch of bullshit he spewed to make himself look bigger, more important, and knowledgeable than he was in reality.
But this logic simply couldn't survive the clash with the reality of just how much value could be found in that man's resource stash!
Puzzled beyond any recognition, Tesh looked up, away from the resources, and to several vials that still hung within the holding contraption within the stand, looking like a half-product of some recipe waiting for the man to return and finish the job.
Yet, as she looked closer at those vials, Tesh's heart accelerated.
She could recognize this devious liquid.
And how could she not, when her own sister tried to feed it to her once it became clear Tesh would be the one to go to the academy instead of her?
'Don't tell me…' With her eyes dilating, Tesh reached out, only for a sliver of mana to tug on her soul, a sensation she grew extremely familiar with over her many past escapades to misinterpret its meaning!
'Trish!'
Tesh's eyes darted over to the doors of the room, only to then turn towards the easiest possible escape route she had. Yet, even as she turned and dashed towards the window… she just couldn't help but grab one of the two vials from the stand.
'So that's what he was all about!' she thought triumphantly, easily reaching the window as her thoughts already drifted to when she would bring this vial out to the director's office before revealing her findings — the trash teacher of the academy was actually a drug manufacturer, most likely operating within the limits of the market so black, even the academy itself — normally neutral in everything that was happening on its turf — did everything in its power to crack down on it whenever it reared its ugly head.
This, however, was when Tesh faced her second surprise for the day… night?
The window, while appearing as ordinary as literally everything else in the room, was actually nothing like what she expected.
What she took to be glass turned out to be perfectly polished crystal, often used in the very same devices the academy used to measure the strength of its students by making them punch it with all their might.
The frame of the window wasn't just slightly decaying wood but actually a poorly painted steel so thick, only the strongest teachers in the whole academy could try to bend it.
In just a single moment, what was supposed to be the easiest part of the whole raid — the escape — turned out to be the hardest. And with the noise of someone pushing the key inside of the door's keyhole, Tesh had no other choice but to dart to the corner of the room, right by the alchemy stand, activating her contingency measure right as the doors swung open.
The illusion worked.
By the time Theo waltzed into his room as if he owned it — oh, the irony — the illusion distorted the space itself, projecting a slightly scaled-up image of where Tesh hid to cover up the small cut of space where she just… stood still.
As long as she remained perfectly silent, there was no way a trash so talentless he had no other choice but to turn to outright crime would be able to detect her — one of the veterans of the student proxy war fought by nearly all the academy dormitories over a year ago.
And while the illusion wasn't perfect… no teacher, in their right mind, would return so late at night only to then get right back to working with extremely dangerous materials!
'Now, I only need to wait for him to go to sleep,' Tesh silently breathed out, daring not to take a proper breath in fear of causing a noise that would alert the man.
She was so close!
As long as she could escape from this place unnoticed, she could bring the vial out to the director's office and have that piece of shit arrested! Heck, if things went sour, she could still try to fight her way out, even if it meant giving that bastard the time to erase the evidence that could otherwise stay perfectly preserved.
'Once he retires for the night, I will be…'
That's when Theo dropped his luggage down on his crude bed before turning towards the alchemy stand, crossing his arms over his chest and just… staring straight in the direction of Tesh's face.
"You've really picked the worst time of the day to annoy me."
//\ //\ //\ //\ //\
"Are you done?"
This wasn't how this whole thing was supposed to play out.
Never before in her life was Tesh caught while raiding someone's room! And the very first time it happened, it was no one else but…
Who exactly was the man that caught her?
Initially, she knew him as the trash teacher of the academy, a noble parasite inserted into the institution where his apparent lack of talents quickly forced him to become the infamous nobody with nothing more to his name than… well, his family name.
Then, after their first encounter, sparks of curiosity made the girl re-evaluate the man into someone that potentially used his infamy to merely hide his real potential, his real means, and ultimately, his real goals.
Later, or just recently, when raiding his room, she came to believe he was a bandit, a mastermind of the true black market of the academy that not even the elite professors managed to curb, dealing with drugs and thus likely involved in a whole slew of other matters of a criminal nature.
And now?
After he quite literally slapped her with recipes that proved his innocence only to then use some sort of unknown magic art that Tesh never even heard about to threaten her with the very drug that she so abhorred?
Now, this man turned into an enigma.
And with both the sound of his threatening words and the sickly sweet aroma of the drug, many times more intense than the few times she was nearly tricked into consuming it…
Between the unknown the man represented, the unknown powers he manifested, and how there seemingly wasn't a single way in which Tesh could classify him…
She simply broke down in tears, her brain failing to process such an unfamiliar situation, failing to provide a solution or give her a path to follow.
All of it, only for Theo to shift and send her an even colder glance than before.
"Are you done playing the victim yet?"