Chapter 871 - 870- Academy’s Journey was Long

Chapter 871: Chapter 870- Academy’s Journey was Long

Two Weeks Later,

’I need to get help. Now.’

The thought burned through Yuki’s mind like a lit fuse as her shoes slapped the stone floor of the corridor. Her lungs ached. She’d been running since leaving the dormitory, and the evening air bit at her exposed arms where her uniform sleeves had rolled up from the sprint.

Aldric’s face kept flashing behind her eyes. Not angry Aldric, or jealous Aldric, or even the Aldric who’d grabbed her wrist hard enough to leave marks. The one she couldn’t stop seeing was the version of him sitting on the floor of that storeroom with his head in his hands, staring at his own lap like it had betrayed him.

Two weeks. It had been two weeks since the first time he couldn’t get hard. They’d tried everything the campus infirmary offered—standard restoration potions, mana circulation balms, even one of those overpriced herbal tinctures from the market district that smelled like boiled socks and tasted worse. Nothing worked. Whatever was wrong with him wasn’t physical in any way the healers could identify, which made it worse, because at least a physical problem had a physical fix.

She bit her lip hard enough to taste copper.

’It’s my fault. He said it himself. It happened because of me. Because of the professor. Because I went to him for help and he—’

No. She shook the thought off mid-stride. That wasn’t fair. Viktor hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d been teaching her. Checking her mana flow. That was all. The wetness on the floor was just... she’d been nervous. Sweating. It meant nothing.

But Aldric couldn’t get hard. And Aldric was getting worse—quieter, angrier, flinching every time she touched him like her hand burned. Last night he’d pushed her away when she’d tried to hold him and told her not to look at him. The shame in his voice had been worse than the anger.

She rounded the corner near the faculty wing. The corridor was empty. Most students had already headed to the dining hall or their dormitories. Good. She didn’t want anyone seeing her like this—red-eyed, disheveled, running toward a professor’s office like a desperate woman.

’Because that’s exactly what I am.’

Her hand hit the door. She steadied herself. Breathed. Wiped her face with the back of her wrist and tried to compose her expression into something that didn’t scream ’I’m falling apart.’

She knocked.

"Come in."

Viktor’s voice was calm. Unhurried. The voice of a man who had nowhere to be and all the time in the world.

She pushed the door open.

The office was lit by a single candle on the desk. Warm light pooled across the wood, catching dust motes in the air. Books were stacked along the shelves. The window behind the desk showed the last bruised light of evening pressing against the glass.

Viktor stood beside the desk, holding a candle in one hand. His coat was off, draped over the chair. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow. He looked like he’d been in the middle of something.

He had been.

On the desk—on top of the books and the papers and the inkwell that had been pushed aside—Sofia lay completely naked.

Yuki’s breath caught.

The half-cow woman’s body was bare from head to toe. Her skin, which always carried that faint warm glow, was flushed pink across the chest and throat. Marks trailed down her neck—bite marks, red and fresh, the kind that came from teeth pressing hard enough to leave impressions but not break skin. Her breasts rose and fell with slow, deep breaths. Her legs were parted just enough that Yuki could see everything. The dark hair between her thighs was matted with moisture. Her horns caught the candlelight and gleamed.

Her eyes were half-closed. Dreamy. The expression of a woman who had been thoroughly and recently fucked and was still floating in the afterglow.

Yuki’s mouth opened. No sound came out.

Viktor turned. The candlelight caught his violet eyes and made them look almost black. He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh? Yuki?" He said it the way someone might comment on an unexpected visitor arriving at a dinner party. Mild. Curious. Not remotely guilty. "What brings you here at this hour?"

Yuki’s gaze bounced between Viktor and Sofia. Between the composed professor holding a candle and the naked woman on his desk. Her brain tried to form a coherent thought and failed three times in a row.

"What... what is happening here, Professor?" The words came out thin and reedy. She gripped the doorframe with one hand.

Sofia stirred on the desk. Her eyes opened a little wider. She turned her head and saw Yuki, and a lazy, unfocused smile crossed her face. She didn’t move to cover herself. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t seem to register that being naked on a professor’s desk in the evening was something a person should be embarrassed about.

"Hi, Yuki," Sofia murmured. Her voice had a drowsy quality, like someone waking from a deep sleep.

Viktor set the candle on the desk beside Sofia’s hip. The wax pooled at the base, warm and soft. He turned to face Yuki fully and leaned against the desk’s edge with the ease of a man settling into a lecture.

"Miss Tanabe," he said. "I understand this looks unusual. Let me explain."

He gestured toward Sofia with one hand. "Sofia came to me with a mana circulation issue. A fairly rare one. Her beast-folk lineage creates periodic imbalances in her core channels—residual energy from her mixed blood that builds up and causes physical symptoms if left untreated. Fever, tremors, sensitivity. The standard infirmary protocol doesn’t address it properly because they categorize her as fully human in the registry. Her half-breed status isn’t documented."

He said it smoothly. Every word landed like a fact. Like a lecture. Like exactly the kind of thing a professor would say.

"The treatment requires direct mana transfer through physical contact. Skin-to-skin conductivity is higher when clothing isn’t interfering, so she disrobed. That’s all."

Yuki blinked. Her eyes dropped to Sofia’s body again. To the bite marks. To the matted hair. To the flush that covered her from neck to navel.

’That doesn’t look like a medical treatment.’

But Viktor was already continuing, and his voice had that particular cadence—the one that made you feel like you were learning something, like you were being let into a confidence that most people weren’t smart enough to understand.

"Interestingly," he said, "the condition you’re describing with Aldric—his inability to maintain function—may be related to a similar root cause. High emotional stress can create feedback loops in the body’s mana network. When those loops persist, they begin to affect biological traits. Erection is, at its core, a mana-mediated response—blood flow directed by energy channels. If the channels are disrupted by prolonged stress, guilt, or anxiety, the body stops responding even when the mind wants it to."

He tilted his head. Studied her face. "Am I correct in assuming you’ve tried standard healing potions?"

Yuki nodded slowly. Her grip on the doorframe had loosened. The explanation was technical enough to sound real, and she was desperate enough to want it to be real.

"Yes," she said quietly. "Healing potions. Mana balms. Nothing worked."

"Of course not." Viktor said it with the confidence of a man who’d expected exactly that answer. "Those treat symptoms. They don’t address the underlying disruption in the channel network. You’d need a targeted approach. Something that resets the feedback loop at its source."

He paused. Let the silence work.

"Is that why you came here, Yuki? Because of Aldric?"