"What exactly implies that disappointed look in your eyes?" Rimuru's mouth twitched. "And have they decided on my faculty placement yet?"
"Don't be ridiculous, it's barely been a night. The emergency meeting regarding your assassination attempt isn't until this afternoon."
May glanced down at the breakfast tray sitting untouched in front of Rimuru. She frowned slightly. "It's gone cold... does it not suit your taste?"
"No, I was just thinking about some things."
Rimuru shook his head and reached for the spoon. Cold or not, food was food.
But before his hand could make contact, May snapped her fingers. A bodyguard materialized from the doorway and whisked the tray right out from under Rimuru's nose.
"???"
My breakfast!
"It won't taste good if it's cold. I'll have them make you a fresh one." May Riddell saw the look of utter devastation on Rimuru's face and couldn't help but giggle. "What do you want to eat? I'll have the chefs make whatever you like."
"?"
Rimuru paused. A mischievous glint flashed in his golden eyes.
"Whatever I like? You said it."
"Mhm. I said it!"
"Alright then..." Rimuru cleared his throat, adopting a tone of high sophistication. "I would like a serving of 'Imperial Golden-Fried Unleavened Dough Batons,' paired with a 'Hot, Stone-Ground Legume Velouté.'"
"Huh?" May blinked, her brain stalling for a second.
"And for the side," Rimuru continued seamlessly, "I'll have a 'Sicilian-style Vermicelli-Stuffed Egg Crepe, infused with aromatic chives.'"
"Oh... and make it medium rare!"
"..."
May Riddell forced a composed nod, frantically trying to process the gibberish she just heard. She turned to her subordinate with a look of absolute seriousness.
"Did you get that?"
The bodyguard in the black suit fully confused, "???"
….
That afternoon, a refreshed, albeit slightly hungry, Rimuru stepped out of his room, ready to head to the Clock Tower.
Don't get the wrong idea. May was the one attending the high-level meeting. Rimuru was just tagging along as living evidence, essentially a glorified file folder to be opened only if the Lords needed clarification on how he survived getting shot in the face.
Strictly speaking, he wouldn't even be allowed inside the council chamber.
Rimuru didn't complain. Given his current status, he was technically just an informal Lecturer. He didn't even have an office, let alone faculty housing; he was a temp worker living out of a hotel on the periphery of the association.
At the Clock Tower, the gap between a 'Lecturer' and a 'Professor' wasn't just a pay grade, it was a chasm of social standing.
This had baffled Rimuru at first. He was the sole survivor of a prestigious lineage. Even if he wanted to avoid power struggles, falling all the way down to a mere Lecturer seemed excessive.
He was known as the "Blue Lecturer."
A Lecturer with a Color Title?! That was absurd. It was like calling someone a "Grandmaster Intern."
If the Rimuru from yesterday had faced this treatment, he probably would have flipped the table, called the Clock Tower a dump, and left without looking back. But after digging through May's explanations and his own recovered memories, he realized the truth.
It wasn't that the Director refused to give him a position. It was that his predecessor had stubbornly refused to accept one.
That explained why May had been so ecstatic last night when he finally agreed to take the Professorship. It also explained why she had spent all morning terrorizing the kitchen staff.
They were currently staying in May's private research tower within her Academic City. It was technically Archelot family territory, and the building felt less like a school and more like a seven-star hotel.
As they walked past the dining hall, Rimuru felt a chill run down his spine. It wasn't magic. It was the concentrated resentment of several Michelin-star chefs glaring at his back.
Rimuru shrank into his collar.
You call yourselves five-star chefs, but you spent four hours and couldn't figure out street food. That's a skill issue, not a customer issue!
May, of course, didn't care about the chefs' mental breakdown. She simply noted that her family's culinary team was lacking in knowledge regarding some cuisine.
Rimuru likes these types of food, she mentally noted. Prioritize that.
They reached the ground floor. May produced a key fob, and with a confident stride, she approached a vehicle that looked like it had driven straight out of a synth-wave poster.
It was a pink Lamborghini.
She unlocked it, revved the engine, and backed it out with a smooth, practiced motion. As the scissor doors swung upward automatically, inviting Rimuru inside, he felt a sense of dislocation.
It felt less like he was in 1980s London and more like he was in a 20th-century metropolis where magic didn't exist at all.
"I've been meaning to ask since yesterday," Rimuru said as he slid into the passenger seat, buckling up. "Aren't most Magus supposed to be technologically illiterate?"
He watched the traffic blur past the window. They had just exited the hidden Bounded Field of the Academic City and were now merging onto the regular streets of mundane London.
It wasn't the car itself that surprised him.
Sure, it was impressive, but the technological gap between the late 80s and the 21st century wasn't visually drastic when it came to luxury vehicles. Aside from the lack of GPS screens and Bluetooth, the leather was just as soft and the engines just as loud. The only real difference was the information age, the internet hadn't exploded yet.
No, what shocked Rimuru was the driver.
May Riddell... could drive?
And judging by the way she was weaving through London traffic, aggressively overtaking black cabs and taking corners with zero hesitation... she was actually good at it.
"So, tell me," May said, her eyes fixed on the road as she shifted gears. "How long have you been ignoring me, exactly? Hm?"
She glanced sideways at him. "I like to think I'm your closest friend, yet you seem shocked I can operate a vehicle."
Faced with such a lethal question, Rimuru made the tactical decision to remain silent.
Sigh.
May turned her attention back to the road. She couldn't shake the feeling that Rimuru had changed since the attack. He seemed brighter, more open.
But at the same time... he had become slippery. More socially adept. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing yet.
"Not all Magus reject technology, you know. It's mostly just the old traditionalists who refuse to touch anything with a circuit board," May explained, though she kept it brief.
"The Archelot family holds majority shares in several major companies in the mundane world. It pays to keep up with the times."
That single sentence silenced Rimuru for a full ten minutes.
He sat there, thinking.
Wait. If she's that rich… Even if I don't go back to Earth... I could probably live a very, very comfortable life here as a leech, couldn't I? Oh, you damn capitalist sugar mommy!
….
Mass release tomorrow…;)