Free Web NovelChapter 14: Principal Claris
Principal Claris questioned her own hearing. She even searched her secretary’s face for a sign of a jest. Finding none, she excused herself from her office and walked out to the lobby just to see Luke.
He was standing near the desks, speaking to another clerk.
Principal Claris stopped in her tracks, studying him from a distance. Luke looked different from the student who had left the awakening stage a week ago in tears. More than his appearance, Luke also emitted an unignorable aura that felt dangerous for a teenager to have.
"Luke," Principal Claris said as she walked up to him.
Luke turned around and looked at her. "Principal Claris. It’s good to see you."
As usual, the conversation opened with pleasantries, but theirs felt like a pair of rival politicians playing nice for the camera. It was so tense that Brenda, the secretary, held her breath, staring at them.
"Brenda, take the rest of the staff and clear the lobby," Principal Claris commanded. "Do not come back up until I call you."
"Yes, ma’am!" Brenda scrambled to obey. Within moments, she and her colleagues had vanished down the hall, leaving Luke and the Principal alone in the lobby.
Then, Principal Claris turned her eyes to Luke, her gaze locking onto him while her heart quickened with a mix of emotions just by looking at him.
Before the awakening disaster, Luke was Claris’s best student in the entire academy. He was refreshingly smart, he studied harder than anyone else, and he was very handsome.
As heir to the Kingsley family, Claris had dedicated a chunk of her own time to his studies, giving him one-on-one lessons to make him the best. Somewhere along the way, those private meetings took a personal turn, and Luke eventually became her "special" student.
But all of that was in the past now. When Luke stood on that stage and summoned nothing but a stupid metal glove, he had turned into a disgrace to the academy. He had ruined their perfect reputation, and his father had kicked him out of the family. Claris felt disappointed and even a little bit betrayed. She honestly wondered why Luke had the nerve to walk back into her school today.
"Why are you here, Luke?" the Principal asked, crossing her arms. "You shouldn’t be showing your face around campus after what happened."
Luke looked at her calmly. "I just came to check on my enrollment status. I wanted to make sure I am still registered as a student at Montclair Academy."
Principal Claris laughed at his words. "Still a student?" she asked. "Luke, be realistic. Why should you remain at this academy after your awakening? Montclair is built for the elite. We have a reputation to maintain, and we cannot have you ruining our prestige. The board is already talking about throwing your records in the trash."
"What do you think happens the moment the media catches wind that a disinherited failure is still sitting in our classrooms? The public would laugh us out of the industry. I cannot, and will not, allow this academy to become a laughingstock just to accommodate your stubborn delusions."
As Principal Claris dabbled on the topic of his failure to meet the standards, Luke remained silent. He didn’t interrupt her, and he didn’t get angry. He just stood there and took it.
Luke knew that the principal held all the power right now. He couldn’t afford to get kicked out of the school, no matter how much she insulted him. To become an acknowledged hunter, you needed a graduation certificate from an official academy. Without that piece of paper from Montclair’s end, the Hunter Confederacy would never grant Luke the privilege to operate.
When Claris finally stopped talking to catch her breath, Luke decided to defend himself just a little bit.
"The awakening wasn’t what it looked like, Principal," he said. "The gauntlet isn’t a useless toy. I’ve been training this past week. I can handle myself in combat, and I am much stronger than the doctors think I am. I’m not going to bring any shame to your school’s reputation if you let me take the final exams." freewebnoveℓ.com
Luke did his best to convince her, but he made sure to keep his mouth shut about his actual ability. There was no need to say he could forge powerful beast armor or the fact that he could bring back living mythical creatures from the Yggrin era. If he told Principal Claris that, she would think he had completely lost his mind.
Meanwhile, Principal Claris listened to his defense, her mind spinning in a debate.
Part of her wanted to believe him because of how close they used to be, but that soft spot didn’t match the magnitude of the public backlash the school would face. If she kept a failure just because she liked him, the media would wreck her career overnight.
However, there was one reason to consider his request.
During Luke’s turn on the stage, her secretary, Brenda, had been holding the awakening tablet to measure his soul. When Luke summoned the gauntlet, the entire auditorium—teachers, students, and Brenda herself—was amused. The crowd erupted into confusion, laughter, and jokes, no one actually even bothered to look down at the tablet’s interface. Immediately after, Scarlett’s mythic summoning occurred, causing a frenzy that pushed Luke out of everyone’s minds.
But later that day, Principal Claris had called for a review of the tablet’s history in her office. When she arrived at Luke’s log, she expected to see a very poor grading, but she saw something else:
〖Name: Luke Kingsley〗
〖Summon Rank: Ancient 7.5〗
〖Potential: Mythic 5.5〗
Unbelievable.
It defied all logic. Claris stared at the numbers so long, she got a headache. How could a metal glove be classified as an Ancient-grade artifact? And a growth potential of a staggering Mythic 5.5? That was a score so close to Scarlett’s phoenix, which sat at a 7.7.
Was it a system error? Had the tablet simply malfunctioned, or did the measuring crystal suffer a glitch? It seemed impossible for a boy who had seemingly failed his summoning to possess a soul with Mythic potential.
But looking at Luke now and his red eyes, Principal Claris realized the tablet might not have been lying after all.
An Ancient-grade asset with Mythic potential was far too valuable to neglect or discard. If Luke truly was hiding power behind that glove, keeping him under the radar would be the smartest move she could ever make for her own career and the school’s future.
--
-- freewebnøvel.com
--
A/N: Thanks for reading!
