Chapter 262: Soup

“Ah, I’m going to die, I’m going to die!”

In the misty heat, Muen tilted his head back and couldn’t help letting out a pleasurable groan:

“I’m about to feel so good I could die.”

The time was the next day.

The place was the Sea of Flowers.

After returning to the Academy, Muen had enjoyed a perfectly restful beauty nap that cost no energy at all, only to be briskly summoned by Teacher Meladomir.

And at this moment, the Sea of Flowers had changed drastically.

Amid the layered waves of blossoms, there was a luxurious open-air pool inlaid from marble. Pink gauze drifted, lending a hazy beauty.

It was actually a hot spring.

And the very first thing Teacher Meladomir called Muen over to do was... soak in a hot spring?

Although something felt off, Muen didn’t refuse—he knew refusing was useless anyway.

He stripped on the spot and slid in.

“Feels good?”

Teacher Meladomir squatted by the spring, her amber-crimson pupils fixed tightly on Muen. Her childish face looked brilliantly smiling.

“Good.”

Muen hunched his neck, the unease in his heart growing stronger, but he still spoke honestly. “Even better than the baths at Celicia’s place.”

“That’s good.”

Teacher Meladomir narrowed her eyes. “You don’t need to be so tense. Relax and soak.”

“I—I’m not tense at all.”

Muen stretched out his limbs. “See? I’m very relaxed.”

Anyway, resisting was useless; might as well enjoy it while he could.

It wasn’t like Teacher Meladomir would actually eat him.

“That’s good.”

Teacher Meladomir nodded her little head and repeated the line, smiling even more brightly.

But for the moment she did nothing—just quietly watched Muen soak.

Muen shifted, a little ill at ease.

He’d stripped more than once in front of ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) Teacher Meladomir, but being stared at this directly still made his heart flutter with panic.

“Um... Teacher Meladomir.”

“Speak.”

“Could you not stare at me like that? It makes me feel uneasy.”

“What’s there to be uneasy about?”

Teacher Meladomir curled her lip, disdainful. “Is there something on you I shouldn’t see?”

“It’s not that... it’s just, your gaze right now... is creepy?”

“Ugh, so fussy. If I don’t keep an eye on things, how will I know if the heat is right?”

“Wait—heat? You just said heat, didn’t you!”

“Ah, you misheard. I said temperature, temperature. For my dear disciple to soak in a hot bath with just the right he—temperature after several exhausting battles—surely that’s something a teacher should arrange?”

“You absolutely said heat! I heard it!”

Muen started like a cat and sprang up, snapping:

“I knew this hot spring pool was off. What hot spring has a hemispherical bottom? So it’s a pot!”

“Nonsense. Where would you find a pot this big?”

While dropping all sorts of strangely shaped things into the pool, Teacher Meladomir somehow produced a soup ladle taller than she was and stirred, her tone gentle:

“Come now, lie down nicely. It won’t hurt that much. Just open and close your eyes and it’ll be over!”

The sight reminded Muen of a big bad wolf lighting the fire, hoisting the pot, and stewing a lamb.

“It should be ‘open and close your eyes and you’ll be done!’ You really do want to eat me, don’t you!”

Muen struggled to get out, but a formless force suddenly pressed down on him, shoving him entirely into the po—no, into the hot spring.

“Ah, I didn’t want to be this aggressive either, but seeing my dear disciple disappear for a few days and then suddenly his fleshly body is stronger again—I, as a teacher, how could I possibly endure my excith—excited heart?”

“Glug glug... didn’t you say... glug... we’d wait until I’d fully adapted to... glug glug... the sixtyfold time dilation... glugluglug... before starting the next step?”

“Yes. Though your progress has indeed exceeded my expectations a bit, to reach that stage your realm would need to be at least Third Rank. You’re still a bit short.”

“Then... glug glug... why?”

“Strictly speaking, this is just an optimization on the previous basis—or rather, making a later step proceed more smoothly. There’s an important process that has to begin ahead of time.”

“Glug glug... what is it?”

“Ah, you’re already in the pot and still so many useless questions. Be good. That’s how you take on flavor!”

Teacher Meladomir lifted the ladle and tapped Muen’s head while he was still struggling. Muen immediately felt his whole body go slack and sank completely beneath the hot water.

Glug, glug, glug...

The water temperature rose.

Those materials Muen didn’t recognize at all dissolved into the water, tinting the pool a faint gold.

The water in the entire spring truly became a pot of steadily simmering soup, growing richer and richer.

Bit by bit, Muen’s figure could no longer be seen beneath the surface.

Teacher Meladomir stood at the pool’s edge, casually tossed away the ladle, and her little face turned solemn.

“Clench your teeth, boy. It’s starting.”

She touched with a slender finger, and in an instant the entire hot spring went straight to a rolling boil.

Underwater, Muen’s eyes snapped open in fury.

Hot!

So hot!

In that moment, what wrapped him didn’t feel like rich broth but boiling molten iron!

The violent high heat assaulted his body, turning him flush-red like a cooked prawn.

His features twisted; his pores flared wide, as though he himself would melt away with this pot of soup!

His jaw clenched on its own, because this was another brand-new sensation he’d never experienced—so intense he felt so good he wanted to burst out now and thrash that conniving, unscrupulous old loli!

And as Muen’s consciousness blurred in this extremity of pain, he suddenly felt something equally scalding.

The alchemy core.

And... those artificial mana tracings Teacher Meladomir had personally inscribed.

Those things carved and inlaid into Muen’s body with special materials now blazed hot without any active urging!

A burning body, a burning core and lines.

One was a living, vital body of flesh and blood; the other, dead matter built from special materials. Two things originally utterly incompatible—yet in this surging broth, they seemed to gradually fuse...

“It’s begun.”

By the pool, Teacher Meladomir’s little face was not merely solemn—it was grave to the utmost.

She waved her small hand; countless arcane lines fell into the water, attached to Muen’s surface, and a series of minute, delicate adjustments began.

She ensured the entire magic matrix and alchemy core stayed stable, so they wouldn’t collapse amid the changes to come.

But within this fierce process of compatibility, Teacher Meladomir began to clearly feel a layer of separation.

Like boiling water and hot oil being refined—until one side is completely gone, it will never settle.

It was as if she had expected this. She raised her little hand, and in that white palm there appeared... a wisp of cool moonlight.

“The deathly power from the Moon—will it erase the unbridgeable boundary between these contrary things?”

She sighed softly and, holding a hope whose outcome even she did not know, cast the moonlight into the great pot where life and death were being simmered.