My Bugged System Made Me Too OP!

Chapter 132: I have a teacher

He had spent the last hour bracing himself for a barrage of protective, worried questions about dangerous potions, forbidden rituals, or unstable cultivation methods.

He had already structured a dozen different lies to explain away the miracle.

His mother stopped just at the entrance to the dining room. She turned her head back to look at him, her body half-framed by the dim light of the kitchen.

She stared at him for a long, quiet second, observing the tight, anxious line of his shoulders and the defensive posture he hadn’t quite realized he was holding.

Then, she chuckled lightly. It was a soft, warm sound, entirely lacking the sharp edge of suspicion or demand.

"I always knew you were eventually going to break through," she said, offering him a small, knowing nod before turning back toward the pantry. "...one way or another."

Noah stood entirely frozen in the middle of the hallway, a profound, disorienting surprise washing over him. Her words echoed in the quiet spaces of his mind, striking him with a force that was far more intense than any physical blow.

He thought to himself, his chest tightening with an entirely new kind of emotion: ’They... believed in me that much?’

The realization was staggering.

Throughout all those years of being stuck in the apprentice rank, he had assumed that his mother’s quietness was a form of resignation.

He had thought she was simply mourning the loss of their future, politely ignoring his failure because addressing it was too painful.

He had never imagined that beneath her tired eyes and silent grace lay an absolute, unyielding faith in his eventual success.

She hadn’t given up on him; she had simply been waiting for the world to catch up to what she believed her son was capable of.

It was a beautiful, humbling sentiment, but as Noah stared at the empty space where she had just been standing, a darker, colder truth settled into his thoughts.

The depth of their faith only highlighted the sheer, terrifying reality of his own past despair.

Because the truth was, even he hadn’t believed he would still be able to break through.

He remembered the long, freezing nights spent staring at his own reflection in the cracked glass of his washbasin, feeling the stubborn, stagnant pool of his mana refusing to move no matter how many hours he spent sweating through the academy’s exercises.

He remembered the exact moment, roughly a year ago, when the last remaining embers of his ambition had finally died out, leaving behind nothing but a cold, hollow acceptance.

He had simply accepted the fact that he was broken. He had built a wall around his expectations, preparing himself for a lifetime of mediocrity and lowered glances.

This hopeless reality only changed after he got the system.

He took a slow, stabilizing breath, anchoring his weight into the floorboards before letting a small, measured smile touch his lips.

"I didn’t do it on my own, though," he said, his voice cutting through the domestic noise of the room with a deliberate, quiet clarity.

He paused, ensuring his tone carried just enough weight to catch her attention without sounding alarmingly serious. He swallowed the dry lump in his throat and forced the next words past his teeth. "I had... external help."

The effect of his statement was instantaneous.

Evangeline paused in the middle of arranging the dining table, her hands freezing over a chipped ceramic bowl.

The restless, urgent energy that had been driving her movements a moment ago seemed to lock in place.

Slowly, she turned her body around to face him, the fabric of her apron rustling in the quiet room.

Her eyes, which had been bright with the simple joy of celebration, narrowed slightly as they locked onto his face, her maternal tracking instinct instantly reawakening.

"From..." she started, her voice dropping into a cautious, deliberate register as she stepped away from the table. She kept her gaze fixed squarely on his eyes, trying to read the sudden shift in his posture. "...who?"

Noah gulped, the physical movement of his throat tight and pronounced in the dim light of the corridor.

He felt the sudden, heavy gaze of Amelia shifting toward him as well, his sister’s bouncing energy grinding to a halt at the change in tone.

He braced himself against the invisible pressure building in the room, knowing he was about to cross a line into a completely fabricated territory he had spent hours structuring in his mind.

"My teacher..." he said, letting the word hang in the space between them like a fragile glass ornament.

Evangeline’s posture relaxed slightly, a visible wave of realization softening the sharp lines around her eyes.

She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, her shoulders dropping by a fraction of an inch as her mind immediately leaped to the most logical conclusion available to her.

She thought he was referring to an instructor from the academy—perhaps a sympathetic mentor who had seen his struggles, or a low-ranking tutor who had taken pity on his stagnation during his suspension.

"Really...?" she said, her voice carrying a distinct, cynical edge that she didn’t even attempt to hide.

She shook her head slightly, her lips twisting into a faint, bitter line as she thought about the cold, bureaucratic institution that had spent years taking their money while offering nothing but humiliation in return. "There’s at least one helpful person from that academy?"

Noah shook his head immediately, cutting off her assumption before it could take root any deeper in her mind.

"No," he said, his voice firm and unyielding as he looked directly into her eyes. "Not from the academy."

He exhaled a long, heavy breath, the warm air leaving his lips in a slow, defeated hiss.

The lie was officially live now, and he could feel the invisible boundaries of his secret world tightening around his chest, forcing him to play the part with absolute precision.

He adjusted his collar, his fingers feeling cold against his skin despite the warmth of the house.

"That’s not it..." he muttered, his gaze dropping to the floor for a brief second before returning to his mother’s face.

He wanted to make sure the distinction was entirely clear, separating his future achievements from the shadow of the school that had rejected him. "He’s not even related to the academy at all."

His mother was starting to get confused at this point, her brow furrowing deeply as the familiar, predictable landscape of Noah’s life began to blur into something entirely unrecognizable.

She adjusted her grip on the edge of the dining table, her fingers tapping rhythmically against the wood as she tried to piece together how her son, who rarely left the lower districts or the school grounds, could have encountered anyone else.

Beside her, Amelia’s head tilted to the side, her large eyes darting between Noah and her mother, her small face clouding over with the realization that the conversation had moved past the simple, joyful magic she understood.

The silence stretched, turning thin and brittle under the weight of her growing incomprehension.

"So..." Evangeline said, her voice rising slightly as she took a tentative step back toward the hallway, her hands folding over her chest in a protective, questioning gesture. "Who’s this teacher you’re talking about?"

Noah sighed, a heavy, ragged sound that seemed to come from the very bottom of his lungs.

He felt like he was walking on needles at this point, every single step forward requiring a terrifying amount of calculation.

One wrong word, one slight hesitation in his delivery, and the entire structure of his explanation would collapse, leaving his family to face a reality that was far too dangerous for them to harbor.

He was managing a delicate balance, trying to give them a name and a shape to hold onto so they wouldn’t look any closer at the mechanical anomaly hidden within his soul.

He anchored his heels into the floorboards, gathering whatever scattered fragments of confidence he could find, and forced the persona into existence.

"My teacher’s name is Mr. White," he said, the fictitious name sounding strange and heavy as it left his lips for the very first time.

He looked his mother dead in the eyes, ensuring she felt the gravity of the title. "He’s a... very powerful magus... and has also helped a lot in my breakthrough."

He deliberately left the specifics vague, allowing the phrase very powerful to do the heavy lifting.

In their world, rogue magi and eccentric masters of high caliber occasionally wandered through the lower districts, hiding their true power from the authorities while looking for rare talents or simply living out their lives in obscurity.

It was a rare occurrence, the stuff of popular tavern tales, but it was a recognized phenomenon—and more importantly, it provided a perfect, unassailable shield for his sudden leap in rank.

Evangeline stood perfectly still, her mind racing through the catalog of names, merchants, and low-ranking officials she had encountered or heard about during her years of working in the city.

She searched her memory for any mention of a powerful figure operating under that specific designation, her eyes darting across the room as if the answer might be written on the walls.

After a long, agonizing five seconds, she shook her head slowly, her lips parting as she gave up on the search.

"Mr. White..." she muttered, her voice trailing off into a quiet, tentative whisper that carried the distinct weight of her deep suspicion and unfamiliarity. She looked back up at her son, her fingers tightening against her arms. "I’ve never heard about him."