Apocalypse Redux

Under most circumstances, the dean of Seoul Academy liked to have an open-door policy. If someone was let past by her secretary, they were allowed in.

But once or twice a day, for a few minutes at a time, the inside of her office transformed into a field of high-velocity projectiles that as genuinely dangerous and capable of inflicting serious harm not just upon students but also a decent portion of the staff, had she not locked the whole lot of them out while she took full advantage of her supernatural ability to multitask and mana control to do every bit of paperwork she had in no time flat … even if the flying pens and staplers and everything else had been nerve-wracking at the begining, even for her, the person in control of the whole mess.

Though today’s “session” had already lasted for half an hour and was still going.

After all, it was the end of the very first week of the new year, and as per usual, things had gotten pretty chaotic, initially.

Students overestimating their abilities in dungeons and getting injured, students cutting loose with their bloodline for the very first time and hurting someone, be it themselves or others, and the usual array of spoiled brats who basically needed to have the idea of “you’re not at home, you can’t behave like you can at home” pounded through their heads with a goddamn brick.

Though the two students with connections to S-Rankers weren’t some of her problem children.

Nan Min-soo’s daughter, and Isaac’s youngest sibling.

Even though there were around a thousand people considered to be S-Rank across the entirety of human space, multiple students with S-Rank connections were actually rather rare, due to the simple fact that as humanity’s lifespan had grown by leaps and bounds, the birthrate had cratered, and the most busy and ambitous members of the human race tended to have “better things to do” than have kids a lot more often than most.

But when that did happen … either they wound up being best friends or bitter enemies. Thankfully, right now, it had been the former that had happened.

It was weird, though: the spoiled brats were rarely the children of S-Rankers. Or those who S-Rankers had had a hand in raising. It was almost as if those who’d earned their powers personally knew the value of hard work and it was only those who’d reached their high (but still lesser) positions through money who were turning their kids into entitled little shits because telling their kids to be aware of their own limitations and to value things they earned themselves might also take an axe to the fragile egos of the parents … but that couldn’t possibly be it, right? Kim sighed.

Of course that was it, but arrogant and/or entitled adults were hardly the sort of people to put their own egos aside for the sake of their parents, no matter how many times the flaw in that “approach” was pointed out.

At least the kinds of people who messed their kids up like that also typically lacked the ability to threaten her into overlooking said kids’ misdeeds.

As for her, the children she was actually taking care of … Kim Ye-in was the poster child for why the children of S-Rankers should probably be sent abroad for their studies. Far too many people knew who she was, far too many people knew what she looked like, and far too many people tried to get her to do something for them.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Granted, she shut all that down before it could get anywhere, but it had also led to her latching onto the very first student who was even remotely nice to her and didn’t know who she was. Thankfully, that student seemed to be a good person, but that hadn’t been a given, considering the situation.

And, speaking of … was Derek the way Isaac had been in his youth?

That whole “I can fundamentally break the task you’ve given me, I won’t, but I also need you to know I could” energy was certainly something the two of them shared.