Chapter 213: Algebra?

He was currently staring down his worst nightmare.

Sitting behind an ornate, child-sized oak desk in the center of the library was Seraphina.

She was wearing a lovely, modest beige dress, her dark hair neatly combed, her hands folded perfectly on the polished wood. She looked like the absolute picture of angelic, aristocratic innocence.

Alistair knew better.

He knew she was a feral, glitter-wielding, pastry-stealing goblin who had glued a holographic unicorn to his face just twenty-four hours prior.

When Kaelus had casually announced over breakfast that Alistair would serve as the Sovereign’s temporary tutor until a suitable academic professional could be vetted, Alistair had genuinely considered throwing himself into the reflection pool.

He had begged, cited his workload, even pointed out that he was a geopolitical economist, not a babysitter.

Kaelus had simply leveled a terrifying, glowing violet glare at him and said, "She requires intellectual stimulation, Alistair. Do not bore her."

And so, here he was.

Trapped in a room with the enemy.

’She is probably going to throw books at me,’ Alistair’s internal monologue wept, his emerald eyes darting nervously around the room, assessing potential projectiles. ’She is going to scream. She is going to demand candy. She will draw on my ledgers with crayons. I must maintain absolute, unyielding authority. I must not show fear.’

Alistair cleared his throat, adjusting his spectacles.

He squared his shoulders, attempting to project the imposing, untouchable aura of a senior academy professor.

"Lady Seraphina," Alistair began, his voice tight, formal, and dripping with reluctant condescension. "As per His Grace’s orders, I am to assess your current educational baseline. I assume, given your... provincial upbringing, that your grasp of literacy and mathematics is rudimentary at best. We shall start with basic Imperial phonetics. Please direct your attention to the chalkboard."

Seraphina sat perfectly still.

She looked at Alistair.

She saw the dread radiating from his beautiful, flawless face.

She knew exactly what he expected of her.

He expected a brat.

He expected a tantrum.

He expected her to refuse to learn, to cry, and to tattle to Kaelus.

Seraphina’s adult soul, which possessed two university degrees in her past life, found this assumption deeply, incredibly offensive.

’You think I’m just a spoiled little tyrant who only knows how to eat cake?’ Seraphina thought, a sharp, fiercely competitive spark igniting behind her dark eyes. ’You think I don’t know how to play the academic game? Oh, you beautiful, arrogant, fussy little man. I am about to ruin your entire worldview.’

Seraphina didn’t pout.

She didn’t complain.

She sat up perfectly straight, correcting her posture until it mirrored the flawless, rigid elegance of an Imperial Princess.

She placed a blank sheet of parchment on her desk, picked up her quill, and looked at Alistair with an expression of intense, unwavering, terrifyingly focused concentration.

"I am ready, Professor Alistair," Seraphina said.

Her voice was completely devoid of its usual, bubbly, childish lilt. It was calm, precise, and chillingly articulate.

Alistair blinked, slightly taken aback by the sudden shift in her demeanor.

’A trick,’ he reasoned frantically. ’She is lulling me into a false sense of security. The moment I turn my back to write, she will strike.’

He cautiously turned to the chalkboard, writing out the Imperial alphabet. He kept glancing nervously over his shoulder.

She didn’t move. She just watched him, her quill poised.

"Now," Alistair said, pointing to the board. "Can you identify—"

"That is the archaic, pre-unification script of the Southern dialects, primarily utilized in formal ecclesiastical documentation prior to the reign of Emperor Valerius the Second," Seraphina interrupted smoothly, not missing a beat. "Though you have a slight structural error in the fifth consonant. You’ve drawn the High-Elven derivative, not the standard Imperial."

The piece of chalk snapped in half in Alistair’s hand.

He slowly, agonizingly turned his head.

His emerald eyes were wide, staring at the six-year-old child as if she had just sprouted a second head and begun speaking in tongues.

"I... I beg your pardon?" Alistair stammered.

"You’re testing my baseline, right?" Seraphina tilted her head, her dark eyes pinning him to the spot. "I am fully literate in standard Imperial Common, Northern Runic, and basic High-Elven. My mathematical proficiency extends to advanced algebra and preliminary calculus. If you intend to spend the next hour teaching me how to spell ’cat’, Professor Alistair, we are both going to be bored."

Alistair’s jaw literally dropped.

The broken piece of chalk fell from his trembling fingers, hitting the floor with a soft clack.

He stared at her.

He searched her face for the bratty, sticker-wielding toddler.

She wasn’t there. Sitting behind that desk was an intellect that felt heavy, dense, and suffocatingly powerful.

When she looked at him with those dark, serious eyes, Alistair didn’t feel like he was dealing with a child.

He felt like he was standing before a seasoned, ruthless, highly educated academic peer who was actively judging his lesson plan.

’She... she corrected my consonant,’ Alistair’s brain misfired, the intoxicating thrill of academic validation warring with his disbelief. ’She knows pre-unification script? She knows calculus, too? She isn’t just a gremlin. Is she a genius?’

The reluctant, miserable tutor vanished in that moment.

Alistair’s eyes lit up with a sudden, blinding fanaticism. The scholar within him, starved for intellectual stimulation in a fortress full of sword-swinging barbarians, roared to life.

"Algebra?!" Alistair gasped, slamming his hands down on her small desk, leaning over her, his beautiful face flushed with academic greed. "You comprehend algebraic variables?! At six years old?! What are your thoughts on the socio-economic impact of the mythril trade embargo on the Eastern provinces?!"

Seraphina smirked, leaning back in her chair, tapping her chin with her quill.

"The embargo is a short-term political band-aid," Seraphina answered smoothly, dropping into a deep, highly nuanced geopolitical analysis. "It artificially inflates the value of the Northern reserves, but it creates a dangerous black-market vacuum in the East. If the Emperor doesn’t subsidize the Eastern agricultural sector soon, they’ll turn to the Verdant Reach for unregulated trade, completely bypassing Capital taxation."