I wait.
One by one, students start submitting their solutions through their personal mana panels. Glowing runes float toward the podium like fireflies, eager, brilliant, confident… and completely wrong.
I review the first.
– Missed Chaos fluctuation factor. The solution assumes predictable behaviour from the nodes. Rookie mistake.
Second response.
– Misaligned stabilization coefficient. Used a linear decay curve instead of a feedback loop.
Third.
– Excellent calculation of net force, but forgot to subtract the ambient mana bleed from peripheral nodes.
And so, it went on.
Seven students. Seven different answers. Seven impressively calculated failures.
No one's even close.
I watch their faces go from smugness to uncertainty, and finally to the cold realization that understanding power isn't the same as controlling it. Ah, Now I know why college professors like tormenting people.
The mana screen folds inward into a single glyph, signalling time's up.
As I deactivate the simulation, I can't help but glance toward my own notebook, kept in my coat.
Where did I get this question?
It's hazy, but I remember… waking up this morning to find a thick parchment resting right beside me on the bed. Handwritten. Elegant. Annotated. Every formula, every simulation, every correction neatly laid out: as if some ghost mathematician had spent the entire night doing my job.
No signature. No mana trace. Just the smell of old ink and stars.
If I didn't know better, I'd say someone left behind a draft of a published research paper from the future. Or maybe from a higher realm.
I don't know if this guy had this much in him to create some absurd question and research but perhaps who knows if it was effect of some really great magic cannabis
"Well," I mutter aloud as I close the lecture glyph and the classroom lights return to normal hues, "looks like time's up."
I tap my magic watch, and a soft chime echoes in the space around me. A new notification appears midair:
✉️ Summons from Headmaster Celestine
Meeting Requested. Immediate. Tower Wing Alpha.
I exhale slowly.
"...sigh. My day just became long."
The students begin filing out:> some puzzled, others silently respectful. A few glance back, unsure whether they were just shown a taste of genius or madness.
Either way, they'll remember this lecture.
I tighten my cloak, slip the manuscript into my inside pocket, and step out of the classroom.
Toward the tower.
Toward more questions, this time but from the looks of it me being one answering them.
Though I didn't expect not even a single student answered right. Given the intelligence of these organism against humans of my world they should be able to do it.
I don't even know if I would be able to solve it or not. My bet is on the latter.
The path towards Headmaster seems long don't they have some magic teleportation or something? I thought they liked efficiency.
*Reached finally, Knock Knock*
"Hello Prof. Wade. You took your pleasant time, although I was certain even in case of world ending you would wait for campus tramps rather then walking. Seems like you have changed since I saw you last time"
*The Fruit coconut they had tramps!!!*