[A smart choice master, but what about your mother?]
"Oh her? Yeah... She's definitely going to kill me after she finds out."
He left the ruined office room, strolling through the dim glow of Metro City's night. The streets pulsed with a strange kind of life—each futuristic lamppost flickering through shifting arrays of color, casting restless patterns that danced across the slick pavement like memories trying to forget themselves.
His uniform was torn, dirty, and tattered from the dungeon raid earlier.
"Damn it... Mom's gonna flip her switch when she sees me like this, system, is there any clothes in the store by any chance?"
[Yes master, there's a variety of clothes to choose from in the store. Would you like to access them?]
"Yes."
The system showed a range of clothing options, and after checking his remaining points, he chose to buy black pants, a black hooded jacket, and a white shirt.
"Alright, all set."
He arrived home late, not realizing that time flowed differently inside the dungeon. What felt like just one hour of clearing floors and slaying beasts had stretched into four hours in the real world.
By the time he arrived home, the clock had already struck 7:30 p.m. As he turned the knob and stepped into the house, he found his mother seated directly in front of the door, legs crossed, with a steaming cup of tea cradled in her hands.
"Welcome back Mason." She took a slow sip of her tea, her demeanor calm and composed, as if nothing at all was out of place.
Mason gulped.
He knew instantly he was in deep shit, his mother was always at her calmest right before a storm. "G-good evening mom." He said nervously.
"Where have you been?" She asked calmly, her voice soft as she sprinkled sugar into her tea, stirring it gently with a spoon.
"You know, projects and stuff." He chuckled nervously, closing the door behind him before taking a few tentative steps toward his room, as if testing whether he could escape without triggering whatever storm was about to break.
"I'm exhausted, I'll be going to my room now."
"Wait." Her tone shifted as she set the cup of tea down on the table with a soft clink. Slowly, she rose to her feet, an innocent smile spreading across her lips, the kind that made every muscle in his body tense, his bones shiver.
"You didn't pick up any of my calls, you came back home with your uniform with the excuse you had projects to do, and you are exhausted?"
'Calls? I didn't receive any calls from-" As his hands brushed against the side of his trousers, a sudden realization hit him—his phone was missing. He unknowingly dropped it during the battle with Lycan.
'Ah, shit.'
"Where were you young man?" She asked again, her smile unwavering with a quietly determined eyes, as if she had already decided that tonight, he would bleed.
With little choice left, he let out a soft sigh, exhaling sharply before finally coming clean.
"Fine, today at school we were visited by recruiters." He began.
"Recruiters?"
"Basically, they are agents of the Spirit Caster's academy so to speak."
At the mention of the Caster's Academy, her demeanor shifted in an instant. The warmth drained from her tone, replaced by a chill that cut through the room as old memories stirred behind her eyes.. "I see, why did they come to your school out of all places?"
It was obvious that the atmosphere in the room has become darker, but at this point, lying would only make things worse.
"On request, they came to recruit capable spirit casters, they even introduced an Orb which had the ability to draw out one's spiritual energy."
"And what were the results of yours?" She asked immediately.
"D-rank, I didn't qualify."
"Oh, I see, that's good. I don't want you anywhere near those people."
"But Mom-"
"Enough, that's the last I want to hear of this, go to your room."
With a soft sigh, he turned and headed straight to his room. There was nothing he could say or do to change her view of Spirit Casters—it was, after all, the very reason she was a single mother.
He went straight to his desktop, fingers flying across the keyboard with practiced precision, punching in keys like a seasoned typist on a mission.
[What are you going to do now master?]
"Mom's never going to allow me to participate in that exams, which leaves me no choice but to attend it anyways."
[So you're going to go against her orders?]
"Do you know how many times she's told me to stop watching explicit contents? But here I am subscribing to the best of the best. Since mom's not going to take me there herself, I just have to do it on my own."
After tapping in a rapid sequence of keys, a window blinked open on the screen, displaying the details he'd been searching for, the date, time, and location of the Caster's Academy entrance exams.
"Twelve in the afternoon? That works, mom will think I'm in school by then, giving me the perfect opportunity to take the exams and be back before she even realizes it."
Despite knowing it went against his mother's wishes, he couldn't ignore the nostalgic pull that swelled within him. Ever since the dungeon raid, his hunger for strength had only grown—no, multiplied—driven by the thrill, the danger.
to mention, enrolling in the Caster's Academy would finally give him the chance to fully realize and explore his bloodline, the thought was exhilarating, like his meat before he could climax.
"Sorry mom, spirit Caster's academy, here I come."