
“Tea?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Gladwin’s eye bags had become heavier than I had ever seen them. With a slight frown, he picked up the kettle and poured some tea into two cups. He slid one to me and grabbed the other for himself before slowly laying back on the couch.
“I am sorry again…” said Gladwin. “I don’t know why they keep doing this.”
“No, not at all. Like I said, it’s only natural.” I took a sip of the tea. “I am a weapon, it is natural to flaunt your weapons.”
“I do not wish to steal credit for your achievements, Professor Ethan. And to get punished on top of it… can you believe they promoted me and gave me a raise? Those crazy bastards!”
Huh?
I thought he said punished, then why the hell was he promoted? Gladwin seemed on the verge of breaking down as he mentioned his promotion.
“What would a reward look like?” I asked.
“I won’t be stupid and say retirement with a pension. Getting fired is the best reward.”
What the hell was going on in the ministries of the empire? Was the actual threat in this world in that place? If it was, then it was something I couldn’t solve. I decided not to stick my nose in those affairs.
“Are you in better health now, professor?”
“Yes, thanks to you.”
Gladwin had naturally spared no expense in helping Richard and me have a speedy recovery. He was for some reason thoroughly guilty about that too. His subordinates were all crying about someone getting healthy faster. No seriously, should I be getting worried about these civil servants?
We continued drinking in silence, then when we were on the second cup of tea, I posed my question.
“How did Mrs. Frock escape from all your checks?” The civil servants had extensively monitored every person in the city. They had also looked at the other groups, all of which were larger than Shirley’s, which helped mitigate the damage a lot. But the fact that a Chimera scientist of her caliber was in the city was strange.
“Mrs. Frock was born in this city, and has spent her entire life here.”
My eyes widened at his words.
“That doesn’t make sense. I am sure the Chimera I faced was similar to Professor Denadis’ chimera.”
Of course, Gladwin knew that Ier and I had fought the chimera. He knew everything that happened in the academy.
“That’s right,” said Gladwin. “I was puzzled about it too. Even more so when we found Mrs. Frock’s corpse in the basement of her boutique. An eight-year-old corpse.”
“What…? What do you mean—”
“Mrs. Frock had been born in this city and spent her entire life here. There was nothing particularly strange about her. The people of the city though, did say that eight years ago she had contracted a bad case of jaundice.”
I pursed my lips and listened.
“She was reclusive for a month, and when she finally healed and came out of her house she had lost a lot of weight, her bones looked weaker too, sickly.”
“Someone… replaced her? Magic…?”
“No.” Gladwin shook his head. “The Mrs. Frock you know—the one who had been living here for the last eight years—had cut off the face of the real Mrs. Frock and grafted it on her own. Sewed it over her face with her skills.”
A sigh left me as I placed a hand on my head.
Crazy. What the hell was this? She had quite literally stolen someone’s face.
Just why…
What drove her to that?
“Why?” I said.
Gladwin reached into his pockets at my words and pulled out a book. He dusted it lightly and placed it on the table.
“This was at the lab,” he said as he slid the book toward me.
I inspected it, flipping it in my hand. Slowly, I opened the book and skimmed through it.
All of it was scribbles. Scribbles and notes muddled over each other, but if I looked closer, I noticed traces of words underneath the marks. It seemed to be a diary before it was used as a notebook for research. If someone gave it enough time, they would be able to figure out something.
“Did you read it?” I asked.
Gladwin nodded. “Listen carefully, Professor Ethan. You deserve to know. And you can decide if you want to tell the vice principal… The Mrs. Frock you knew was not Mrs. Frock, of course, and we still don’t know her real name. But… she was a villager who lived near the magic tower with her son before they were all kidnapped by the tower for their human experimentations.”
I gulped. The magic tower had been doing it for years before the war began, and as soon as the Freedom Alliance learned of it, they charged straight in to destroy the tower.
“Mrs. Frock, or whoever she was before, was very confused. They were trapped in a cell, all together. No one was given any food, not until they all started eating each other. The atrocities of the tower are far too great… Every time they wanted a new subject to put into their chimera, they simply took one out of the cells. And eventually, one day…”
I flipped to another page in the book and froze. Just this page, just this page still held what it originally had. There was almost no white space left on the page anymore. With her blood, no, with someone’s blood, Mrs. Frock had written one line over and over.
[They took Graham. They took Graham. They took Graham. They took Graham. They took Graham. They took Graham. They took Graham. They took Graham. They took Graham. They took Graham. They took Graham.]
“It was her son’s turn.”
Terrible.
How utterly terrible.
“The fake Mrs. Frock was a genius, Professor. You saw it right? All those notes, all those documents. She became a genius chimera researcher simply through observing. Her genius is tens, no a hundred times greater than even Denadis.” Gladwin waved his hands, before putting them to his sides.
I could guess what happened next. “Her son was turned into the chimera…?”
“They surely tried,” said Gladwin. “But no. We already know the human and the demon used as the base for the chimera that we all fought… Unfortunately, the chimera they tried to make with the fake Mrs. Frock’s son was a failure. It probably died within days, if not in hours.”
I clutched the book tightly.
“In the end you were right. Before a criminal or a psychopath, she was a mother unable to cope with her son’s death. Unable to cope with the unjustness of this accursed world.”
Gladwin stretched his hands. I took in a deep breath and handed him the book back.
Mrs. Frock, the fake Mrs. Frock. She saw her son in that chimera. Even though he had died, he was surely dead, she couldn’t accept it.
“Her life may have been in vain,” said Gladwin, “but her genius doesn’t have to be. I’ll entrust this in the right hands, I promise.”
***
A gentle morning breeze blew past my cheeks. The sounds of the chirping birds and the scent of the blooming flowers carried over by the wind were as refreshing as ever.
In this mountain trail, there was no longer blood. With my attache in hand and my hat in the other, I made my way up the South-Eastern Plateau near Glorenstein.
My mind was clear today. A thought haunting me for almost a week had been resolved.
I found myself standing in a clearing. The wind sent my coat aflutter. I took a slow step forward and knelt in front of the remains of the laboratory hidden and made by a genius.
That day, Mrs. Frock had sacrificed herself.
The greatest, most taboo sacrifice one could make. That day, she was faster than me. Even if just a split second, she was faster.
In front of me was a tombstone. A ‘fake’ tombstone.
[Here lies the spirit of Greta Frock]
I took out a knife from my attache and brought its blade next to the stone.
I had seen it myself. The power of self-sacrifice. Not just once. Over and over, the stronger someone was the more unbalanced their death. It was terrifying, and war was a cesspool of it.
After all, there was nothing one valued more than themselves. Even those who hated their lives found the most value in their lives. The ones with nothing, and the ones with everything, all of their value was enclosed within their ‘lives.’
I believed there could be no greater sacrifice.
But how foolish was I? I had seen them too, times when someone truly valued something else above their own life.
That day, Mrs. Frock may have sacrificed herself, but she truly did not value her life. In her eyes, all the value was in the life of the Chimera…
A mother’s sacrifice was one of her children.
I put the knife down and bowed, praying for a safe passage for both of them.
I stood back, adjusting my coat and hat. After a final glance at the tombstone, I turned and left the laboratory.
Left with a bright smile. A bright smile for all who looked back at us.
[Here lies the spirit of Greta Frock and Graham]
The Academy’s Professor is Overpowered Book 1: END
Wuhu ! Welcome back!
Thanks for the tombstone
Tftc!
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