Bogdan, or as any other teacher of the academy would call him—the respectable vice-principal—merely cast a single glance at the half-full glass of the clear, perfectly see-through liquid that was slightly on the thicker side.
He didn't react to the fact Theo came all this way just to pour him a deep one, nor to how the smell, with the drink now moved to a perfectly open container, fully unleashed the unbearable stench it carried.
At this point, even Theo himself, the architect of said drink, struggled to keep his eyes from turning all watery and his stomach from turning inside out, only for him to cover Bogdan's carpet, the rare piece of luxury in the man's barren room, with a stomach full of his vomit.
"Did you…" Bogdan spoke out, only to squint his eyes and then look down at the drink for a moment before raising his glare back to Theo's face again. "Did you seriously climb all this way just to… pour me a glass?"
Hearing this, Theo gulped down his tears of disgust caused by the smell and forced a small smile onto his face.
"What? No!" he exclaimed while waving his hand as if to dismiss such a stupid idea. "I came here to pour you a glass of this very specific drink!"
To an outsider… Heck, to Bogdan himself, this was like turning a mere provocation into a clearly defined and spelled-out insult. Or, if one wanted to make a big deal out of it, a straight-out attack!
Still, the look on Theo's face didn't match the intentions one would instinctively attribute to such behavior, action, and the stench resulting from both.
"So…" Bogdan muttered, stretching this single word for a while as he grabbed the glass before bringing it up to the level of his eyes, inspecting its contents against the light coming from the tower's window. "Is this drink your way of taking revenge for the mercy I've offered you?"
Theo squinted his eyes, slightly taken aback by yet another weird angle the man tried to push this conversation towards.
"What mercy are you even… You know what? Forget it and just take a damn drink!"
When he gulped down the contents of the glass, he did so to prove this liquid wasn't a poison… Or, at the very least, wasn't what a normal person would consider to be a poison. And while it wasn't definitive proof, given how easily he could've swallowed an antidote beforehand or kept a fresh dose of it on himself…
Not even with all the nanites his organ could produce in a perfect scenario would current Theo be able to create anything to match Bogdan's power.
If Theo was a gimmick character relying on an insanely creative, technologically advanced, and outright magical technology filling up his bloodstream and housed in every organ of his body, then Bogdan…
Then Bogdan was a classic secondary boss, someone a gamer would face right at the last leg of their journey, long after things would get really tough and just moments before facing the main boss of the game.
In simpler, less nerdy terms, Bogdan was a powerhouse. For how else would he be able to not only get himself into his current role of vice-principal but also hold onto this title for as long as he did, in an academy that valued merit and power above everything and encouraged competition across, quite literally, every single rank of both the students and the teaching cadre alike?
That's why, while Theo's actions were unusual, surely suspicious, and outright weird if not born out of his desire for revenge… He simply didn't have the means, ability, or power to do the man any actual harm!
"Well then," Bogdan muttered under his breath as he raised the glass up to his mouth, only for the bridge of his nose to wrinkle, the first sign that the smell was actually getting to him too. "I hope you know what will happen if…"
Rather than voicing a threat and making it real, Bogdan opted to just down the glass in one go, caring not for its smell or taste, leaving the threat behind his words unvoiced.
'What is he even trying to threaten me with?' On the inside, Theo couldn't hold his amusement back.
This man was the centerpiece of the scheme aimed at getting him booted out of the academy. Unless it came to the level of physical abuse—something very risky to do given his familial connections—what else could he try to pull?
Still, this was a curiosity Theo would never get to tickle, for his plan was never to poison, harm, or attack the vice-principal in any way or form.
For while the drink he prepared smelled like all hells combined, refined with an essence of a durian fruit, and then enriched with the rich aroma of feces mixing with the stench of rotten flesh…
"Oh sweet Goddess in heaven…"
Bogdan's first breath after the drink came out carrying a call to the Goddess, betraying his religious affiliation that, for some reason, he opted to keep private all the way up until this point, throughout all the years he was in the academy.
A weird choice, given how widespread the Goddess cult was in this world—at least, according to Theo's memories.
"What is this liquid gold?!"
All the facade of a calm and collected elder vanished from Bogdan's face without a single trace of it left, replaced with a child-like excitement of a man who finally managed to tickle the scratch that had bothered him for so many years, he somehow managed to forget about it.
"Do you get it now?" Theo finally revealed his true face, bringing one of his legs above the other as he sat relaxed, cross-legged, and perfectly dismissive of the excitement brimming in the man's eyes.
Just like that, the power dynamic within the tower's chamber changed… No, not changed.
Flipped.
"Do you get why I'm here?" Theo asked, raising his face and then lifting just the left of his eyebrows while arrogantly crossing his arms over his chest.
Bogdan merely squinted his eyes in response.
"Don't tell me, do you really want to stay here, at the academy?" he asked, only for his eyes to flash with a new emotion, something that went beyond the simple, primordial excitement caused by the drink more delicious than anything he had ever tasted before in his life. "So it's like I thought, you really did find a way to fix…"
"I don't give a crap about this academy," Theo countered before the man could dive too deep into his misguided delusions. "And I don't have any plans to stay here any longer than your scheme will take to get me fired from here," he stated while shaking his head, only to then stand up and finally let go of the bottle out of the cradle of his arms, slamming it down on Bogdan's table.
"What I'm here for is for you to tell me just how much you are willing to pay for this bottle. And not in some speculatory tokens that I don't care about," Theo quickly added before the man could delve into another train of thought propelled by some stupid misconception.
"I'm talking raw, unadulterated gold."