The brass pipes lining the walls of the Aetherion Imperial Institute hissed, releasing thin wisps of steam that curled around the gas lamps. It was the sound of the Academy breathing—a machine of magic and industry that never slept.
In a cramped office at the end of the hall, a man stared into a mirror. The reflection showed Professor Valerius Kane: sharp jawline, pale complexion, and the cold, dead eyes of a man who had given up.
But the mind behind those eyes was screaming.
'Jiang Chen. Structural Engineer. Age 28. Cause of death: site collapse. Current status: Transmigrated into a magic academy professor who is about to be fired.'
He gripped the edge of the mahogany desk, his knuckles turning white. The memories of the original Valerius Kane were fragmented, a haze of academic failures and a crippling inferiority complex. But one fact was clear: if he didn't recruit five students by sunset, he would be expelled. In this stratified empire, an expelled noble professor was less than a beggar; he was a social pariah.
"Valerius Kane..." he whispered, testing the name. It felt foreign, heavy on his tongue. But Jiang Chen was dead. buried under tons of steel and concrete. "Fine. I'll be Valerius. I've fixed collapsing bridges before; I can fix a collapsing life."
Knock. Knock.
The door didn't just open; it was thrust inward with precise, military force.
Professor Hugo Voss stepped inside. He was a man who wore his arrogance like his pristine navy frock coat—tailored, expensive, and suffocating. But he wasn't smiling. He looked at Valerius with the weary disdain of a sanitation worker looking at a stain that refused to scrub out.
"Packing, Kane?" Hugo asked, checking his pocket watch. "You have forty-five minutes until the deadline. I've already drafted the requisition form for this office. My graduate students need a storage closet for their failed golems."
Valerius straightened his spine, forcing his trembling hands behind his back. "The sun hasn't set yet, Hugo."
"It's not about the sun, Valerius. It's about efficiency," Hugo said, his voice dropping to a lecture tone. "Magic is a resource. The Academy's budget is finite. Every credit wasted on your salary, every ounce of aether used in your empty classroom, is theft from students who actually have potential. You aren't just a failure; you are an obstruction to progress. Resign. Save us the paperwork."
Valerius felt a cold spike of anger. This wasn't cartoonish villainy; it was the cold calculus of a man who believed he was right.
"I will not resign," Valerius said, his voice steadier than he felt.
"Stubborn," Hugo sighed, turning to leave. "Trash is trash, no matter how hard you polish it."
As Hugo slammed the door, the vibration rattled a brass mana-lamp on the desk. It flickered and died.
Bzzt.
Suddenly, pain lanced through Valerius's skull. It wasn't a headache; it was an influx of data. The world turned into a wireframe blueprint.
[System Online.][The Omni-Archive is calibrating...][Scanning Target: Type-3 Mana Lamp.]
A holographic book materialized in his mind's eye. It didn't offer a solution. It offered a diagnostic report.
[Status: Circuit Failure.][Data Log:][1. Filament oxidization: 87%.][2. Rune Sequence: The 'Ignis' rune at the base is misaligned by 4 degrees, causing mana leakage.]
"Misaligned?" Valerius muttered. He didn't need magic to understand this. It was just a broken circuit. The energy wasn't reaching the terminal because the path was bent.
He picked up a letter opener and tapped the base of the lamp, knocking the copper rune back into alignment.
Flicker... Flash.
The lamp roared back to life, burning brighter and steadier than before.
Valerius stared at the light, a slow realization dawning on him. The System didn't fix things. It showed him the flaw. And for a structural engineer, seeing the crack in the foundation was all he needed to keep the building standing.
The Grand Recruitment Hall was a cavernous dome of glass and steel, echoing with the chatter of thousands of new students. Steam-powered automatons rolled through the crowd, handing out flyers.
Valerius stood at his booth in the desolate "Miscellaneous Theory" section. It was empty.
He scanned the crowd, activating the Archive. Information flooded his brain—not magical intuition, but cold, hard data.
[Target: Student A. Mana Conductivity: 12%. Flaw: Bone density insufficient for heavy spells.][Target: Student B. Mana Conductivity: 45%. Flaw: Astigmatism causes aiming errors.]
"Too many variables," Valerius muttered, rubbing his temples. "I need a specific problem. Something structural."
That was when he heard the shouting.
Near the center of the hall, a crowd had gathered around Professor Hugo's booth. A girl with pale blue hair stood before him, clutching a registration form. She leaned heavily on a cane, her left leg dragging slightly.
"Please, Professor Voss!" the girl pleaded, her voice trembling. "I've memorized the entire Codex of Thermodynamics! I can recite the spell formulas backward! Just give me a chance!"
Hugo didn't even look up from his ledger. "Miss Elara. We have been over this. Magic requires a vessel. Your vessel is cracked. You have 'Mana Congestion Syndrome' in your left leg. If I teach you high-tier magic, the pressure will shatter your femur."
"It won't!" Elara cried, tears welling in her eyes. "It hurts, but I can take it!"
"It is a waste of resources to pour water into a leaking bucket," Hugo said coldly. "Go home. Marry a merchant. Stop wasting my time."
The students around them whispered and snickered. Elara turned away, her face burning with humiliation, her knuckles white as she gripped her cane.
Valerius narrowed his eyes. He focused on the girl. The Archive whirred.
[Target: Elara Vance][Diagnosis: Mana Congestion (Incorrect).][Thermal Scan: High concentrations of Cryo-Mana detected in the lower lumbar region.][Structural Analysis: The subject possesses a 'Cryo-Generator' constitution. Current Mana Intake Method: Fire-attribute (Standard Imperial Breathing).][Status: Critical Overheat. Safety mechanism active.]
Valerius's mind raced, translating the magical jargon into engineering terms. She doesn't have a blockage. She's a cooling unit being forced to run on high-octane fuel. Her body is freezing her leg to dump the excess heat from the wrong cultivation method. It's not a disability; it's a thermal safety valve.
He stepped out from his booth, his cane tapping rhythmically on the marble floor.
"You there," Valerius called out. His voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the murmurs like a steel beam.
Elara froze. She looked up to see the infamous "Trash Professor" blocking her path. "Professor... Kane?"
"Your leg," Valerius said, looking not at her face, but at the limb in question with the detached scrutiny of an inspector looking at a rusted bolt. "It hurts most at night, doesn't it? Specifically, when you try to circulate your mana?"
Elara blinked, wiping her eyes. "Y-yes. Everyone knows that. It's the congestion."
"It's not congestion," Valerius stated flatly. "Tell me, when you cast a spell, do you feel a burning sensation in your chest, followed by a sharp, freezing pain shooting down your spine?"
Elara's eyes widened. "How... no doctor has ever asked that. They just said the mana was getting stuck."
"Because they are treating a clog," Valerius said, stepping closer. "But you aren't clogged, Miss Vance. You are overheating. You are an ice-engine running on fire-fuel. Your body is freezing your leg to keep your heart from burning out."
"Kane!"
Hugo Voss marched over, his face flushed with irritation. "What nonsense are you spouting? 'Ice-engine'? Stop confusing the girl with your pseudo-science. She is a cripple. That is the medical consensus."
"The consensus is wrong," Valerius replied without looking at him. He held Elara's gaze. "I can't cure you in ten minutes. Anyone who says they can is a liar."
Elara's hope flickered and died. Hugo smirked.
"However," Valerius continued, raising a finger. "I can teach you how to open the valve. I can show you how to vent the pressure so you can walk without that cane. Right here. Right now."
"You're lying," Hugo scoffed. "You're desperate, Kane. You'll say anything to fill your quota. You're already expelled at sunset. Why drag this poor girl down with you?"
"Then let's make it interesting," Valerius turned to Hugo, his expression hardening. "If I fail to make her walk unaided in ten minutes, I won't just resign. I will surrender my teaching license and my family crest to you."
The crowd gasped. A nobleman surrendering his crest was social suicide.
"Professor..." Elara whispered, terrified.
"Do you trust me?" Valerius asked her. "Or do you want to believe you are broken?"
Elara looked at Hugo's sneer, then at Valerius's calm, analytical eyes. She took a deep breath. "Tell me what to do."
"Drop the cane," Valerius ordered.
"I can't..."
"Drop it. Now, cast the Ignis cantrip. But listen to me carefully—do not draw mana from your heart. Visualize the intake valve at the base of your spine. Reverse the flow. Push the cold out, don't pull the fire in."
It was a crazy theory. He was asking her to run her internal engine in reverse to flush the system.
Elara hesitated, then let the cane clatter to the floor. She wobbled, pain flaring in her leg. She squeezed her eyes shut and did as he said. She stopped trying to grab the fire and instead pushed the coldness down.
Whoosh.
A blast of icy mist erupted from her feet, freezing the floor tiles instantly. The temperature in the hall dropped ten degrees.
Elara gasped. The gnawing pain in her leg... vanished. It wasn't healed, but the pressure was gone. The 'heat' had been vented.
She took a step. Then another. She looked at her own legs in disbelief.
"I... I'm walking," she stammered. "I'm walking and it doesn't burn."
Silence descended on the hall.
Valerius looked at the stunned Professor Hugo. He didn't smirk. He didn't gloat. He simply adjusted his cufflink, looking bored.
"Thermodynamics, Professor Voss," Valerius said dryly. "You should catch up on your reading. Flaw number one: You diagnose the symptom, not the system."
He turned back to his empty booth. "Miss Vance, if you want to learn how to keep that valve open, sign the paper. Class starts at dawn."
Elara didn't hesitate. She scrambled to the desk, grabbed the quill, and signed her name with a flourish.
[Student Recruited: 1/5]
Valerius let out a long, slow breath, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. One down. Four to go. And I have no idea what I'm going to teach her tomorrow.