Theo opened his bloodshot eyes, struggling to push his consciousness beyond the level of primal pain — the mix of aching and itching that came from every single part of his body.
'What the hell?' Groaning from pain, Theo rose up… Only to realize he wasn't in his air-suspended bed. He wasn't in any of the few medicinal seats left in the world either.
No.
He was in… a simple bed?
"Wait, what the…"
By the time Theo blinked his eyes and attempted to look around, it all came back to him.
The academy director's — that vile bastard's — scolding. The taste of the last drink he brewed. The ultimatum the director offered. The feeling of his hand crushing the glass beneath it. Theo's first drunken episode since his awakening, caused by his absolute lack of ability to meet the director's unreasonable demands. The explosion and the following sense of extreme wrongness…
All of those things came back to him in a single moment, mixing and stirring together like one hell of a moldy drink. Yet, even while all messy and chaotic, there was one thing Theo could notice about those memories now assaulting his pained head.
'Only half of those are actually mine… Or wait, maybe all of them are?'
According to the knowledge that he was… just aware of, he was Theo Dogma, the fourth son of the powerful Dogma household, which currently held one of the four ducal titles within the empire.
His background, however, mattered little, for he was also a teacher at the Imperial Academy — a teacher as high profile as he was as a duke's potential heir, although for much different reasons.
After all, rather than being famous… he was infamous as the one teacher in the Imperial Academy who got the role not through the merit of his own efforts, but the influence of his father!
A magical reject that failed to reach the first realm of cultivation, magic, or aura. As such, he ended up delegated to teach alchemy, supposedly the only subject that didn't require one to have any sort of magical talent.
And not even his former self was stupid enough not to realize the position of a subject like alchemy in a highly militaristic, hierarchical school where not even the teachers were spared from the rule of "might makes right!"
"Is this some sort of reincarnation stuff?" Theo groaned through his pain, pushing himself to the limit just to move up and sit on the edge of his bed. "Or maybe it's like in one of those stories where one merely recovers their memories of their past life?"
Muttering to himself, Theo shook his head with exasperation… only to then curse his own stupidity when this small movement caused his headache to explode with renewed intensity.
Still, by shaking his head, Theo caught a glimpse of the one and only thing that offered a chance of alleviating some of his mind-numbing pain.
A half-finished loaf of dry bread sat on the small table by the bed's front, likely some leftover he failed to discard the day before.
It was a sight that forcefully activated a selection of Theo's neurons, making him instantly give up on all that made him human in favor of just… leaping at the plate like some sort of starved animal and then devouring the bread with just a few greedy bites.
"HAAAA…."
The pain lessened. And the wave of relaxation that followed was enough to cut Theo's ability to stand, sending him straight back down to his bed.
"Why did stale bread taste so good?"
Before the hive could even fully project its message atop Theo's vision, he merely waved his hand as an empty, meaningless gesture.
'Automate it and don't bother me with stuff like that,' he thought dismissively, too used to the presence of the hive AI to notice the weirdness of the moment.
Yet, when the visual overlay faded away, Theo suddenly stood up straight, right before a new wave of energy exploded in his body, chasing away the mind-numbness while slowly doing away with the overarching pain.
"Wait a second…" Muttering to himself, Theo looked down at his hands, as if their palms could hold any answers to the question that just popped into his mind.
He then jumped from the bed, scanning his room with his eyes before rushing towards a small bucket of water that stood nearby.
Theo fell down to his knees with complete disregard for the pain or potential damage to his clothes, leaning over the bucket to see his own reflection painted on the surface of the water inside it.
"Just like I thought," the words involuntarily left his mouth as he raised his hand to touch his face. "This isn't how I'm supposed to look!"
The face that looked back at Theo from within the bucket had nothing to do with the face he sported in his original life, nor even the face he was born with, only to then make himself infinitely more handsome with nanites.
Staring back at him was a slightly androgynous, perfectly handsome yet downtrodden face of a golden child. His skin was fair, although marked by the escapades of the day before, while his shoulder-long hair shone with a bright hue of gold.
'If I had that kind of face to begin with, I wouldn't even need to alter it!' Theo thought, still touching his face as if he couldn't believe his eyes nor the feeling below his fingers.
"But now the fact that this isn't my original body is pretty much settled," Theo continued to mutter to himself as he leaned back only to then drop his bottom on the floor before staring up at the room's ceiling.
"Just where the heck did my nanites come from?"
Theo's question hung in the air for a short moment as he tried to guess any sort of potential answer to it…
Only for his thoughts to take a sharp turn when someone started to violently smash their fist against his door!
"Theo! You slimy, old bastard! The director gave you an earful just yesterday and you are trying to slack off already?!"
With one last thud, the knocking stopped, blessing Theo with a moment of silence long enough for him to gather his thoughts.
'Oh right, before he can kick me out, I was still supposed to go an—'
"Screw it!"
The person on the other side of Theo's door lost their patience.
"Whether you want to get fired or not, I can't care less anymore! But I'm not letting you skimp on my own damn lessons…"
This time, it wasn't a thud.
It was merely a dull sound followed by Theo's door violently swinging open, revealing a flushed, furious face of a nice-looking redhead lowering her leg from when she kicked Theo's door open.
"Not when the director himself told me to make sure you will participate!"