Rebellious kids always ended up grounded. Ergo, the girls were grounded on the next day. To make the decision even clearer, Baiyi confiscated their allowance, along with Tisdale’s own “private funds”.

  He also delayed his own expedition just so he could rent a conference room from the General and restart his long-forgotten lesson on Elementary Formations!

  “Hmph! Mr. Hope is mean! Why do we still have to have classes during vacations? I’m never liking you again!” Little Mia mumbled under her breath.

  Baiyi ignored her complaint, using the feather duster as his pointer on the chalkboard and said, “Mia, please answer this question.”

  The girl stood up, went to the chalkboard and scribbled for a good dozen minutes— and she still got it completely wrong.

  The Soul Armature corrected her workings, showed her the correct answer, then coldly remarked, “Didn’t I teach you the solution multiple times before we left? This is a key foundation! Tell me, do you want to get a wallop in your palm, or do you want to stand in a corner 1 ?”

  Little Mia replied coyly, “How about we braid my hair and call it a day?” She stuffed her twin tails into Baiyi’s hand.

  She was sentenced to stand in a corner for ten minutes.

  While Mia and Tisdale were taking their magic lessons, Attie and Laeticia—both with different affinities—didn’t get to escape class, either. Each of them was presented with a copy of The Complete History of Isythre and made to read it in a corner because Baiyi believed that “those who know history are less likely to repeat them”.

  “These…… letters are so…… difficult,” Laeticia murmured quietly in Attie’s ears, causing an itch. “They look quite different from what Tisdale taught me……”

  Attie cocked her head to her side and glanced at Laeticia’s book. She hesitated and finally said, “Laeticia, your book is upside down.”

  “Oh.”

  Her face reddened as she swiftly turned the book upright, but at least, she was finally able to read the passage slowly but surely.

  It had passed midday—and close to lunchtime—when Baiyi concluded the class. He handed out a few papers to the girls and said, “This is your homework for today. I’ll check them when I return home tonight. If you don’t finish them, or if there were too many mistakes…… well.”

  He waved his feather duster, and colors were drained from the girls’ faces.

  During lunch, the girls reunited with Mordred. Her actions and behaviors were jarringly unnatural and mechanical, which was very different from how she acted normally. One could guess that she may have just finished some aristocratic ethics class.

  “Huh……” All the girls were dispirited throughout lunch, their chins resting on the table. Maybe they were reflecting on their previous day’s antics.

  \r \r \r

  When the meal was over, and Baiyi once again whisked Aya away on a trip, Mordred visibly heaved a huge sigh of relief. However, when she turned to face her friends, she found them all wallowing in their unmotivated state.

  “Mia, what’s wrong?” She shook Mia’s shoulders in concern.

  “These handouts are so tough, and I don’t know how to do them……” Mia showed her the paper Baiyi had given to them. She looked at Tisdale and asked, “What do you think, Big Sister Dale?”

  Disheartened, Tisdale appeared just as upset as Mia was. “Not good either. Sir’s homework for today is so much harder than usual. I think I’m gonna get another spanking……”

  She rubbed her bottom as she trailed off traumatically.

  “Is it about magic?” Mordred scanned their papers. She then rapped on her flat chest confidently, “Never fear, I’ll help you!”

  When dinner time came, Baiyi returned with Aya. He patiently waited for the girl to finish their meals, then had them submitted their work. As he read, the girls stood in a line before him as if they had all committed a crime and was waiting for their time.

  It’s no wonder they made such a guilty formation. After reading Mia and Tisdale’s answer, he almost wanted to rip the papers into confetti. ‘ These two had completely forgotten everything I’d ever taught them after just a few days of games! ‘

  In anger, his hand gripped the cheek of each girl, and he yanked mercilessly.

  “Ah-oowww!” cried the girls as tears welled up.

  He looked at Laeticia’s paper—and indeed, it was her paper, for there were hardly words on them, and the lines that had actually been written on contained writings that resembled small and wiggly like worms.

  Obviously, the answers were all wrong. “Mr. Hope, I’m sorry,” She said, her hand automatically extended towards him for a beating.

  “Huh. Never mind. You don’t have the necessary foundation.” he shook his hand in dismissal and grabbed Attie’s paper.

  ‘Not bad at all.’ The answers were almost correct in every part, and that was why Baiyi furiously crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it at a side, and his voice thundered afterward, “Who wrote the answers for you?!”

  “M-Mr. Lecturer guy from the m-museum—”Attie was frightened out of her wits at Baiyi’s display of rage, so she stammered out the truth.

  “Hahaha. Meaning, you didn’t learn anything, except how to get someone else to do your homework for you, hmph?” Baiyi snapped, grabbing Attie like a mother cat, placed her on his thigh and again spanked her with the feather duster five times.

  Attie didn’t manage to swallow the pain this time. She immediately burst into tears.

  When Aya heard Attie’s cry, she came over to find out what had happened. After learning of what transpired, Aya quickly went upstairs and into her room, and not very long after, Mordred’s teary howl rang out from that same room.

  Mia and Tisdale comforted Attie, but in their own minds, they were happy for their fortune. The sorcerer who Mordred had summoned using her prestige as the High Counsel’s daughter couldn’t answer questions about formations, so they had to do it on own in the end. In another reality, it may have been them whose butts were “unraveled”.

  Only Laeticia had been honest with her homework. She wouldn’t cheat because she couldn’t bear crossing her faith, so although she was the only one who submitted an almost empty paper, she was also the only one who didn’t get punished in any way.

  So after a few days wherein the feather duster reigned supreme, the girls finally settled down and improved. They even managed to recall their past knowledge, so they didn’t really waste away throughout their holiday.

  It had been a week. The girls were back to being docile, but the progress of the investigation seemed to have reached a bottleneck. Half a month worth of massive investigation had turned up fruitless, except for the confirmation that only the temperature had experienced some anomaly, leaving other aspects of nature to be largely stable.

  In fact, even the wild beasts appeared to be accustomed to the change in environment, and their activities had slowly ceased.

  Their conclusion was that although no one had any idea what caused the anomaly, its effect on the realm appeared to be largely controlled, with minimal consequence to those who lived within the thermal barriers. They concluded that the problem was probably never too serious to begin with.

  The experts and elites were feeling quite awkward, however. The Armageddon scare turning out to be nothing was all good and well, but they had made a big fuss about it when they recruited everyone into their team, as well as delaying the much-anticipated Harvest Festival celebration. This had stirred up a major unrest among the consensus, and with this anticlimax…… well, it just felt bad.

  A lukewarm conclusion for such an epic buildup was partially due to Special Consultant Baiyi’s suggestion. He was the one who first suggested that it could be an Armageddon, yet he was also the one who, in later meetings, who suggested that it probably wasn’t as bad as it seemed, to the point of admitting that he may have been wrong in his judgment to hype up a small matter. For what it was worth, the people began to slowly settle down again.

  Not a lot of people criticized Baiyi. Maybe some would mumble about him being a tad bit paranoid, or being too hung up on small details, but these little talks didn’t do much to tarnish his name 2 . It was always better to be cautious about something strange.

  All in all, Baiyi felt that all preparations had been completed. He had gained a position due to this anomaly, and he had acted confident and dependent throughout the Crisis. Even if anything were to occur later, he wouldn’t think anyone would relate it to him.

  At the same time, using the data collected from the research, he had significant reason to eliminate the possibility of finding the source of the anomaly through normal means. The final prize—was truly difficult to get a hold of.

  He tried using the War God’s Sword, but it yielded no results. In the end, all he was left with was one final method—and if that didn’t work, he would have to admit it was all a practical joke from the War God and return without any gain. ……

  Well, not exactly without gains. For one, he had obtained something in the semblance of genuine companionship from the dragon-lady Aya.

  The youthful dragon had been taking care of her appearance every day as she groomed herself into a dazzling presence. Every day she would wait outside the makeshift classroom demurely, like a devoted wife waiting for her husband.

  But that was all there was. Close friends. Neither wanted to do more. Baiyi didn’t, and Aya didn’t seem to want to either; they were both single parents with kids. Their statuses were different, and their species very even farther apart. How would a relationship escalate from pure friendship?

  ‘That’s all there is to it,’ Baiyi thought.

  And as if to prove that, he stopped taking her out for the rest of the week. The research team had disbanded, the focus shifted to the preparations for the Harvest Festival, so it no longer mattered if Baiyi kept conducting his own expeditions.

  He had used “on site learning” as his excuse to take turns bringing the girls to go out. Meanwhile, Aya was busy with her own duties and affairs as the High Council.

  They both needed the space.

  Too bad that sometimes Baiyi still found Aya standing by the entrance of the Command Unit, awaiting his return. This habit caused the rumors not to disperse completely, which slightly disappointed the Soul Armature.

  Today was Attie’s turn to go on a trip with him. The other girls were free again, but they were all conditioned to be obedient enough to only frolic in the dragon knights’ plain.

  Just as they were tired enough after playing and were about to go home, Mordred, who sat on the back of a lindworm, leaning her back on Mia’s, her hand wrapping around her own knees, and her head slumped slightly sideways as he suddenly asked Mia,

  “Hey, Mia. Do you think we’ll be sisters?”