Lord of the Truth

"…I'll start preparing your fourth bath!" Shaddad shouted as he sprinted toward one of the side rooms.

"Hey, wait! I wanted to talk to you about something!"

Robin took a few hurried steps after him, but Shaddad didn't stop.

"Talk to me during the process!" he called out, vanishing into the room.

"Urrgh..."

Roben's face twisted in frustration — the pain from the last session still haunted his body.

The first time Shaddad told him he was going to prepare a bath for him... well, that turned out to be a trap.

Back then, Robin had no idea what he was walking into. The pain he experienced wasn't normal, not by any means — and it wasn't until later that he understood why.

Typically, those weaponization baths are designed to gradually introduce certain materials into the body. That's all — introduction. After that, the person gets out, resumes their normal life, and then every day — or whenever they have time — they sit in a meditation posture to manually circulate the materials, letting them do their work over time.

It's like food for the structure of the body.

And what is that work, exactly?

Each bath contains various high-grade resources: some targeted for skin, some for muscles and blood vessels, others for bone tissue. These are incredibly delicate compounds designed to infiltrate the body at a cellular level — slowly reinforcing it, gradually transforming it into something stronger and more resilient. The process is slow and personalized, varying from person to person, but on average...

It takes between one to ten years to complete the first bath.

And Robin?

He finished in a few hours.

He started the bath at noon… by dinnertime, he had already reached Body Strength Level 10.

How?

Because Shaddad had modified the process. He added highly reactive compounds and personally oversaw the procedure. Instead of slowly reinforcing Robin's existing tissues, he forcefully destroyed them — breaking down bone and flesh — and then replaced them with newly formed, fortified cells.

Rather than reinforcing what existed, he reconstructed it from scratch.

For those few agonizing hours, Robin did nothing but scream. He was being torn apart and rebuilt again and again — literally!

When the bath was finally over and Robin learned what Shaddad had done — and that this brutal, accelerated method was supposedly faster and better for those who could endure it — and that Shaddad had gambled on Robin's ability to survive it…

He couldn't even bring himself to yell at him.

Especially once he realized the price.

Shaddad had mentioned that he'd need around 70,000 pearls to cover all the five baths. But those extra compounds used had already pushed the cost above 50,000 in just the first bath alone.

Robin had simply sighed at the time and asked for half a day's rest… then he began the second bath. Then the third...

With each bath, his body absorbed more and more of the rare materials. His very cells were being remade — deeper, stronger, sharper. Eventually, even his bones began to shift color — slowly transforming from within.

In less than a week, he had reached Body Strength Level 30.

The cost?

Somewhere around five million pearls.

But Shaddad never acknowledged that. As always, he refused to accept a single pearl.

"..."

Knowing full well that nothing could stop Shaddad once he'd begun preparing a bath, Robin shifted his gaze toward the students.

They were all watching him, hesitant and unsure what to do — standing awkwardly at the back, clearly confused.

"Heh~"

Roben exhaled softly and made his way to the instructor's seat. He sat down, leaned back slightly, and gestured for them to approach.

"Come on. We've got a few minutes before Shaddad finishes. No need to stand back there like that.

You've completed your tasks — you earned your right to be here. That was my promise."

"…Yes, Professor."

The seven students exchanged quick glances before cautiously walking forward and sitting side by side in the front row.

Roben looked over them with curiosity.

"I want to know — why did you come back?"

He asked with genuine surprise.

"What I did to you that day wasn't a lecture. It wasn't a teacher sharing knowledge with his students. It was enough to make anyone turn and run the other way the moment they saw me."

"Professor Robin," one of the seven students suddenly spoke, his tone urgent, almost desperate — as if he had been waiting for the moment to say this.

"You awakened something inside us… something we didn't even know was there. That day, because of your brutal treatment, something cracked open — and through that crack, new potential emerged. We managed to push past barriers that we had thought were absolute. We won several battles in the Student Wars, leaped up the rankings, and eventually— we made it into the top ten thousand."

"Top ten thousand?"

Roben raised an eyebrow skeptically, his expression unreadable.

"How many students does the academy have, anyway?"

"…Roughly sixty thousand,"

replied Merina, her voice softer, filled with emotion. She looked around the room as if seeking comfort, then slowly tilted her head upward, gazing blankly at the ceiling. Her eyes shimmered, lips trembling ever so slightly.

"I even made it into the top one thousand in the first war after your lecture, Professor. I was so proud. But my ranking quickly dropped… My opponents studied and memorized my new fighting style. Meanwhile, I... I couldn't absorb anything else from your teaching except for the part about using slime for movement. That's all.

I feel… completely useless."

Another student chimed in, his voice laced with resignation:

"We're all the same. Right after your lecture, it was like lightning struck our minds. Some sort of epiphany — a glimpse into what lies beyond the surface. Suddenly, we saw the laws not just as tools, but as frameworks with endless applications. Thanks to that new way of thinking, twenty of us broke into the top one thousand. And twenty-seven more managed to reach the top ten thousand. But with each subsequent war… our ranks began to fall again, slowly but surely.

And now… it's just the seven of us left in the top ranks.

The rest couldn't bear to come back here. They didn't feel worthy to return to this building.

To be honest… neither do we. We went against your will, Professor.

We abandoned the path you showed us and reverted to close-quarters brawling. We had to, or we wouldn't have lasted. But we know… that's not what you wanted."

The seven students lowered their heads as one. The air around them grew heavier, their silence full of shame, their hearts crushed under the imagined weight of Robin's disappointment.

They couldn't even look at him.

They assumed that at this very moment, Robin must be filled with contempt. Disgusted with their weakness. Ashamed of ever having taught them.

But in reality…

Professor Robin was thinking about something completely different.

His expression hadn't changed, but in his mind… there was a storm.

Shaddad had once told him that each student paid somewhere between 10,000 to 100,000 pearls per year to attend the academy — depending on their natural talent, their social status, the secondary classes they take like alchemy and rune making, and the influence of their family.

And there were sixty thousand students enrolled?

That meant… the academy was generating billions in revenue every year. Billions.

Roben's stomach churned. His brow twitched.

Was... was teaching really more profitable than innovation, research, or even artifact sales?

Was this what the world had come to?

His fists clenched under the desk.

Those damned elders…

All they really did was open the library gates, offer a few martial technique classes, then pit the students against each other in flashy, brutal wars. That was it. That was the entire system.

And for that, they earned obscene wealth every single year?

Just how many millions — no, tens of millions — of pearls were sitting right now in the vaults beneath this academy?

Knowing this, was it now any wonder that the great stellar academies could stand toe-to-toe with even the Behemoths?