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 … Nan 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.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  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.

  Therefore, if Derek Thoma was going to wind up the same way, perhaps even sharing the same ability to find trouble under almost all circumstances … the next few years might get interesting.

  Hopefully, he wouldn’t be too much like his older brother. Isaac could be quite the menace when he wanted to be.

  Of course, the people he blew up at usually deserved it, but dragging every shady thing someone had ever done out into the open in about five minutes, weathering the fallout, and somehow getting back out of the limelight before the hour was up was the sort of thing that only the older Thoma brother could pull off. For now.

  She’d actually met the twins too, who’d proven Isaac’s description of “like the human reincarnation of a pair of whirlwinds” correct less than five minutes in.

  Then again, however chaotic his life would become if his siblings were any indication, right now, things were mostly fine.

  For starters, he’d gone out of his way to avoid even mentioning his last name whenever possible, so a large chunk of the student body had straight up failed to realize who he was, though that was liable to change in time. Some almost certainly had figured out who he was, but that information had yet to spread.

  Oh well, when it inevitably did, the academy did offer a “how to tell people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions” course. Of course, it had an actual name, but “diplomacy for the connected” lacked the same degree of descriptiveness.

  Even so, rebuffing those who sought to use you without making an enemy for life, because people could be petty like that, was an essential skill Derek Thoma would learn, either here or over the course of his life.

  For now, though, there was nothing for her to do, except keep an eye on things the way she did for all her students, and be prepared to respond appropriately.

  Kim’s phone chimed, so she picked it up, read the message, and sighed.

  Oh, hell.

  She’d just gotten confirmation that someone had picked up the Heir-[Class] for Jack the Ripper and gotten away with it.

  On one hand, that meant there was a quintuple murderer (at the bare minimum) running around.

  On the other … having the [Class] known to be claimed meant that greedy people would stop trying to “earn” it, leaving … well, leaving something like a thousand more likely Heir-[Classes] out there that were equally repugnant.

  Nazi high command, more serial killers, Caligula, Leopold the Second of Belgium, the Confederacy, Joseph Mengele … and, unfortunately, she knew how some humans were. If it gave them power, they’d do it.

  But here was the thing: she had power. And if someone with a proven appetite to murder got anywhere near Seoul, and therefore the students that fell under her care, she’d turn them into a grease stain on the pavement.

  And that sort of thing was allowed under the compact, depending on your reading.

  “No picking fights” included the fact that a “fight” was something that required actual effort. If some wannabe “bastard for the history books” came close enough that their presence implied a threat, and she could take care of them before they killed again … well, to both borrow and butcher an English phrase she found rather amusing, that math mathed.

  Besides, it wasn’t like that was needed very often. Before Leviathan, Isaac and Jason had dealt with issues like that, and while it happened fewer times nowadays, the former was off perpetually galivanting around the galaxy, and the latter was only usually off-world, tweaking the nose of various assholes trying to throw their weight around.