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Fame has bitten me in the ass. Not a big bite, but a bite nonetheless. From the moment I got back to my seat in the stands with my class, all the way to the campus grounds, I had people or representatives of people coming up to me to introduce themselves.

Instead of interacting with them, I got Dave and Sam’s help to body-block them, and as angry as they got, they were not stupid enough to strike a twelve-year-old boy, much less one who was wearing the Royal Academy’s uniform.

But even when I made it back to campus grounds, fame was gnawing on my ass. The following days after my last tournament event, I started receiving letters of introduction and invitations from nobles, merchants, and other private entities within the kingdom, and even some from outside the kingdom, they must have been here for the tournament, but I was not interested, in fact, to me, all these letters looked like poisonous vipers ready to strike.

If they want to be my future employers, they can employ me when I am of suitable age. I will not waste my years as a somewhat free man (boy) by being bound by someone.

Just when I thought the letters were the worst of it, I was swiftly proven wrong by having “random” encounters with my schoolmates, who suddenly became very interested in introducing themselves and their house to me.

These were the same schoolmates who I was effectively persona-non-grate with, which effectively doubled my aversion to them.

Out of all the people who approached me, there were only two who I did not, or could not avoid, that being Alistair Arundel, my last opponent in the Magic Duels event, and Lavinia Castilene, my last opponent in the Swordsmanship Duals.

As for why I did not avoid Alistar, I found him to be rather mild and easy to get along with after I met him in the academy’s hallway and got into an array of theory discussions with him. He did not invite me to any galas or to see his father, just normal talk… well, not normal… it was mainly about magic. But that was his thing, and I respected that.

In Lavinia’s case, it was more like I could not get rid of her. Whenever she caught sight of me, she would latch on to my arm and declare me as her future husband. I asked Dave and Sam to body block her, but they were not about to get in the way of a duke’s daughter who gave anybody who approached me the stink eye and practically hissed as any girl who tried.

My only respite was when we were separated for our different classes, and at the end of school, that is when I tried to get away before Lavinia could hunt me down and stake her claim over me.

To avoid all these “random” social encounters and being hunted down by my self-appointed wife-to-be, the moment my classes ended, go full stealth mode and avoid as much interaction as possible, sometimes resorting to illusion spells. When I successfully made my getaway, I would cloister myself in Professor Sageira’s office, whose door was locked and protected by an array I had access to.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The moment I re-activated the array behind me, my dragon-in-disguise professor, who was sitting in a corner, called out to me, “Well if it isn't the tournament’s conquering hero and the hottest name of the year. Manage to give your suiter the slip, I see.” Professor Sageira said with an amused smile. I could not see the curl of her lips behind the book, but her eyes revealed her mirth at my expense.

“I am glad my inconvenience has brought you such amusement, but as usual, I will be hiding here until my pursuers have given up.” I replied sarcastically to Sageira as I proceeded to catch up on the lab rat experiments I did with her.

As I checked the cages, well, they were not cages anymore; magical containment shields were now containing the huge rats because they were now powerful enough to bite through steel cages, and the academy was not willing to waste higher grades of metal on lab rats. I picked up the charts that tracked their progress, and I saw that things were going well… relatively well.

For one, there were some survivors of the experimentation of being exposed to high levels of mana and cycling said mana at an ever-increasing speed. For the rats that did not explode like a blood balloon, they had mutated in slightly gruesome ways to keep up with the mana stress.

Firstly, all the surviving rats were now bald. Secondly, most of the surviving rats had one or more disfigurations on their body, be it overly elongated and muscular limbs, pronounced hunched back with protruding spinal bones, growth of bony layer over the tail’s dermal layer, and the enlargement of the cranium or eyes of the test rats.

The professor’s conclusion of these tests is that I should not need to worry too much about the rats’ results, as their mana circulatory system is not as robust as mine is and is not constantly bombarded with mana and forced to circulate mana at relatively rapidly ever-increasing speeds. According to her calculations, I should be clear to ramp up my mana pathways tempering by around fifteen percent without seeing any adverse side effects like the test rats experienced.

So I spent the rest of the time testing her conclusions and took a seat to begin an increased regime of my mana pathways’ tempering while she observed and took notes.

When I was done with my tempering training for the day, I realized that it was past dinner time, and I would have to see what the lunch ladies had as leftovers.

After grabbing a few sandwiches from the lunch ladies, I entered my dorm room only to see a rack adorned with a full set of half-plate armor and a parchment tucked into its collar.

When I took the parchment and opened it, the first thing that caught my attention was the royal seal at the bottom, “Oh right, the king did promise me something for revealing my age.”, I then concentrated on what the king wrote.

“Dear Luke Ironcrest, I promised to get you something nice, and what kind of king would I be if I did not keep my word? I noticed that you are wearing what I can only assume is the adventurers’ guild rental armor, and that that just would not do. So I took it upon myself to get you something more fitting to go out adventuring.

My agents have taken note of your preference to keep a low profile, so I got the Royal Smiths to whip something up ordinary-looking. The armor set that comes with this note is made of mithril alloy, great for mana conductivity while looking like everyday steel armor.

I hope you like it.

Regards, King Argus IV”

After I put away the king’s letter, I inspected my new armor. This consisted of the breastplate, pauldrons, gauntlets, and greaves. All I need to complete the set is some chainmail to wear, cover my exposed bits and a helmet.

Looks like I will need to do some shopping.