The Good Teacher

Shyn Raynor had prepared extensively for a myriad of possibilities and scenarios that he could experience in his daily life. Amongst those scenarios, the ones he rehearsed the most involved his life and its security. He was, after all, an extremely affluent man with generations worth of wealth supporting him. He'd ruffled an uncountable amount of feathers in reaching this far, that is excluding the already innumerable opponents his father and forefather had garnered through their ventures.

To wit, his ancestor who first broke ground for the mansion he was currently living in had installed some pretty basic protective measures in anticipation of such dangers. Over the years, and through each subsequent generation, the security systems were built upon until eventually the mansion and its surrounding grounds had turned into a veritable fortress. It may not look it at first glance, but not even a fly could enter the grounds without raising a plethora of alarms. There were redundancies upon redundancies in place for this very reason.

Now imagine Shyn's utter horror when two seemingly mundane-looking folks, an elderly man who looked around the same age as himself and a teenage girl, simply popped into existence right within his office - the part of his mansion which should have, on paper, the highest level of protection! Shyn was smart enough to realise that the fact that they could reach so far, regardless of their methods, meant their strength trounced everything he and all of his ancestors had installed for protection.

'A Tesseract Transformation realm expert!' Shyn surmised and swallowed a difficult gulp of saliva. His most recent additions had been tested for their effectiveness by the most elusive of mages in the Core Condensation realm - specifically mages specialising in infiltration and assassination who'd "turned a new leaf" and now worked in security systems. If this man could do something that experts in their field couldn't, there was only one conclusion, which was that Shyn could under no circumstances mess with this man and earn his ire if he wished to get out of this interaction with his life intact.

Once that sobering thought finally settled in Shyn's floundering mind, a wave of calm washed over him. He'd realised that a rephrasing of the question was in order.

"What can this one do for an esteemed mage such as yourself, Master Mage?" Shyn said with an over-the-top but believably sincere level of respect.

The mage in question approached Shyn's desk and rested the walking stick he was using for support against the chair.

'A method of deception,' Shyn decided. Who would suspect that a semi-crippled man walking with a limp could annihilate someone with a snap of a finger?

The mage gazed blankly at Shyn while the girl followed and took the second seat opposite the table. The silence grew increasingly uncomfortable as neither party initiated a dialogue. Eventually, the mage released a sigh and said, "Your eyes are a lot like Maynor's, now that I think about it. I can see the resemblance in your frames as well."

"Maynor...?" Shyn murmured. "Are you by any chance referring to my great-grandfather?"

"I don't know. Thin guy, really long, dirty brown hair- Died about 135 years ago..." the mage muttered. "Anyway, what matters is that I have confirmed that you are in fact a descendent of Maynor. Hence, we can now proceed with the transaction."

"Transaction?" The Shyn repeated with anxiousness creeping up his voice. Conducting business with mages was... undesirable. Their breed never behaved following predictable conventions. It was best to leave mages to their own devices - let them fight amongst themselves. This was why Shyn avoided touching anything related to cultivation and the path of magehood. It was what his father taught him, and so did his grandfather.

'Just what trouble did you get us into, great-grandfather,' Shyn grieved. 'You brought our business into this world and paved the way for it to reach such heights. I hope its unmaking isn't by your hands.'

Shyn followed the mage's hand as it reached into the simple bag slung over his shoulders. From it, he retrieved a ceramic, cylindrical canister with a metal clasp at its bottom. The canister had symbols snaking around it with a systematic design. Just laying his eyes on it caused Shyn to involuntarily release a gasp.

"You've seen this before," the mage commented matter-of-factly. Shyn stood up and beelined towards a bookshelf behind him. He counted off three shelves from the bottom, and then thirteen books from the left. The book upon which his finger landed was then pushed in, causing the shelf to slide inwards to reveal a locked box. He placed his hand over the lockbox, which started to blink with blue luminescence, and only removed it once the light settled on solid green. He lifted the lid of the box and retrieved a similar ceramic canister from within.

"When I officially took over from my father, the very first thing he did was show me this container. He told me to guard it with my life. He didn't tell me why, in fact, he barely remembered why he was supposed to guard it since my grandfather told him! I'm pretty sure he thought it was some kind of handing-off ritual that was followed in our family. Of course, I was sceptical at first. As someone with a lot to lose, I was intrigued by the fact that my father assigned the same, if not more worth to this small canister compared to the life of his son."

Shyn twirled the canister in his palms while returning to his desk. "I hired a horde of mages to inspect and unlock this canister. None succeeded, of course. Almost all of them didn't even know what it was. Only one managed to gain some understanding based purely on the faint symbols etched around it. It was a Contract Seal - Dwarven."

He placed the canister on his desk and slid it towards the mage on the opposite side, who picked it up and expertly latched the two canisters in place by their clasps. Once they clicked into place he extended it towards Shyn.

"You grab your canister," the mage instructed. Shyn extended his arm warily and grasped the conjoined ceramics by his end. Right as his fingers curled around the eerily warm container, he found that his hand instantly adhered to the ceramic surface and a burst of information swarmed into his mind. It was an exhaustive amount that should have taken him at least half a day to absorb via text, but this sudden injection did the job in mere seconds. He gained an immediate understanding of the gist of the contract stored within the seal.

To summarise: "Krish Nara swears to protect the Raynor family and all of its interests. This is until Krish Nara voluntarily cashes in a favour with the Raynor family (given a grace period of at least 100 years following the establishment of this contract), which they must accommodate no questions asked."

Shyn furrowed his brows and pointed out, "Protect my family's interests? That's really vague. How do I know you've been keeping your end of the bargain." He just could not help his businessman facet from bursting out.

"I would like to point out that no unaffiliated business makes it past the second generation in this political climate. Raynor Ship Management, however, is now entering its fourth? I truly hope that you didn't believe this was because of some genius tactics employed on your family's end," Krish said with a chuckle.

"Maynor was a simple fisherman when I found him," Krish continued with a crescendoing firmness in his tone. "He lost everything because of his gullibility. I raised him from the dirt and set him on the path of success. You are sitting behind that desk of yours without trouble constantly breathing down your neck BECAUSE of me."

"You can choose to believe it or not, that matters little. What does matter is that you keep your end of the deal because if you don't then your soul is forfeited since that is the cost of breaking the terms of a Contract Seal," Krish concluded.

Shyn recovered from the sudden pressure bearing down on him and asked, "What would the favour be?"

"I and my Disciple here need boarding on one of your ships leaving Eastwards," Krish responded.

"That's it?" Shyn blurted out. The request was far too reasonable, there had to be something wrong here.

"Do you agree? You need to agree to complete the deal," Krish repeated exasperatedly.

"Well... I mean, sure," Shyn said. Once the agreement left his lips, the ceramic containers cracked and immediately lost their lustre. The faintly luminous symbols turned invisible from the container as well.

"With this, my contract with your family has ended," Krish commented as he returned the cracked containers to his bag.

"Seriously? That's it?" Shyn exclaimed.

"What did you expect?"

"I-I don't know..." Shyn sighed as his form deflated in disappointment. Why was he feeling disappointed? "So what happens now?"

"Not my problem anymore," Krish shrugged in nonchalance. "With this contract completed, I have washed my hands of you."

A trace of panic started to wash over Shyn's face at this point. Although he did not fully believe Krish had anything to do with his success, a part of him considered the possibility. Businessmen were superstitious folk. Coincidences can quickly turn into rituals should they occur twice in a row. As Krish said, no business in the Solar Empire had lasted beyond two or three generations. Raynor Ship Management was in its fourth going on fifth with his son set to take over soon... Did he want to risk it?

"Of course, you could enter into the contract again," Krish said right as that thought bloomed in Shyn's mind.

Without hesitation, Shyn agreed.

"This time, though, I won't be the primary contractee," Krish added. "It will be my Disciple. Of course, I shall protect your family's interests as long as I live. Following my passing, the responsibility shall fall upon my Disciple. Are you satisfied with those terms?"

It didn't make much of a difference to Shyn. Even if Krish never helped their family in the future, just knowing that nothing had truly changed would itself give Shyn peace of mind.

As Shayn held a new ceramic container in his hands and locked it in place with another being held in the little girl's hands, he recollected an old story he'd heard being told by the local fisherman.

A long time ago, the seas off the coast of Dawnbreak Town, or the village or town that used to exist in this place before, used to be treacherous - brimming with dangerous sea beasts that could swallow humans in a single gulp. On one particular day, a fisherman operating near the coastline pulled out his net and found it empty barring a small squirming creature caught between the ropes. The creature was snake-like, barely filling the man's palm. It looked troubled, like a little baby lost from its parents. The fisherman took pity on the creature and took it to his home. He fed it and raised it. Within the first year, the creature grew to nearly fill his entire home. The fisherman took the snake-like beast, which he now realised was a juvenile Aqua Wyrm, and released it into the sea. The Wyrm would visit the man regularly at first and would assist him by luring fish towards his nest. Over time, the Wyrm's visits ceased, but the man firmly believed that he was being silently protected by that Wyrm. The other fishermen believed him because, amongst all of them, he was the only one who consistently and safely fished within the deeper parts of the sea. Once the man grew old and incapable of going out into the sea, his son took over and took his father's mantle. The boy too faced similar success. This was until one day, the boy decided that the small boat that had been in the family since his father's time just wasn't large enough to haul his catch. The boy commissioned a newer, bigger boat and took it to sea. He went to the same fishing spot and prepped his nets. Alas, as the nets landed in the sea, a massive fish-like creature breached the surface and swallowed the boy whole. The boy's father was right when he said that the Wyrm was watching over him. On the Wyrm's final visit, it had sprayed a special cocktail of hormones on the boat that spooked the common predators roaming that part of the sea while attracting the smaller fish. Unfortunately, the boy didn't know that in changing the boat, he had sacrificed his protective ward.