"Of course dads go to school sweetie. Knowledge leads to the betterment of self, and schools are a place for hoarding it. I will get you there and pick you up everyday, even rip, I mean, have a talking to whoever's mean to you." Aki offered, trying to persuade the little girl as he looked into her eyes.
"But I don't want to go to school! I'm fine with everyone teaching me at home!" Clair pouted, stomping her feet while tears filled her eyes.
"Clair, I don't want to just leave your education to sporadic rests between quests. Don't you want to keep teaching your big sister to read and write? To help your mom with the house accounting?" He pleaded, the captives watching this thinking it a bit strange, but otherwise keeping to their duties. "We can't always be teaching you, and we don't want you to just house sit either, so going to school would be best. I'll still be helping you with homework, your mother will still bring your favorite snacks, just that we will not always be around. I'm learning this teleportation gate technique all for you little monkey, so could you do this for your useless dad?" He smiled, the child shaped projectile shooting to his chest as his daughter began blackmailing him for treats and pampering.
"Hands in the..." Multiple spiked roots pierced all the bandits by the stomach as they announced themselves, startling the twenty or so people on the obove ground camp. "It burns! Why does it burns?!" "SPIDERS!" "They're eating me from inside out!" And so went on the list of nightmare inducing horrors that the poisoned humanoids thought they suffered from.
Smoothly taking out the ear plugs for his daughter, Aki got up and went to collect the new guys, making his 'converted followers' hold them while he wrote the complex geas he'd previously elaborated.
Uhm? Not letting the vampire kid see blood? Read that again dum dum, it's a terrible idea. She'd eventually have to face that one way or another even if only the dumbest vampire would ever only drink blood. There was no need for it, but it was still delicious for them, so some training was nescessary.
The screams and despair? Aki wasn't able to keep those completly out of her mind either, the max he could do was have her not develop some kind of trigger that'd made her enjoy those. Instead, Mari just cuddled the little girl and acted as emotional support.
Incidently, neither Xera nor Sera came with him because of their 'uniqueness'. While someone like Clair could pass for a dhampnir and there was no way to detect the part of his status that said he was an otherworlder, there'd be many a problem if a high-orc or high-ophidian tried to enter the capital, including several attempts at kidnapping them, paperwork and fear. Kora had trouble even staying on a frontier city like the one they lived in, so nevermind trying to get to the capital, where they'd reconize her at the gates through whatever bullshit they had up their sleeves.
No, he'd have to bypass the city's defences and teleport them there.
They were only one day away from the capital anyway, Aki had reached level 100 again by the time he'd 'converted' the the two hundreth bandit. He wasn't going to go inside the capital with the whole company, no, he was going to send them to Duran. Even if large scale teleportation so close to the capital would obviously trigger tons of magical alarms, there was a fun effect that happened when you teleported while inside a dungeon.
While the dungeon would try to stop you with it's own mana, there'd be no trace left behind. So what happens when you use the dungeon core to power the teleportation of over three hundred people? There's almost no mana cost to the caster and the dungeon was almost completly spent.
"Un, neat." Aki smiled. "Guess i can try now then." He shrugged and sent a mental message to Mari saying that everything was managable (code) and that he found something interesting (also code).
Looking at the uncovered dungeon core in a not so well hidden room, idiot stepped back, entered a stance, prepared several spells, and punched the glowing orb.
Which emited a popping sound and fell to the floor, rolling over now that it had no mana holding it in place. When the otherworlder touched a finger on it's surface, he pushed some mana into it. There was no sudden suction force making it so he'd not be able to take his finger off or the like, he just felt the amount of emptiness inside the thing.
Aki smirked. He had more than enough mana bateries to fill this thing up with his own mana, so he did, wasting some fifty thousand MP. Then he received a system prompt.
[You have obtained onwership of a dungeon core. It is now of your domain. Dungeon interface unlocked.]
"YES!" He exclaimed.
*****
Having ditched the hundreds of slowpokes they been dragging, it was easy for Aki to pull their carriage and reach the capital under six hours, which ment they took two days and six hours to reach it with the nerd doing his best to correct the choices the stupid dungeon A.I had made and find some kind of sinergy with the already existing traits, of which he could not actually change.
Even just reading through all the menus took hours, nevermind the gigantic perk list he had to pass through after he reset all the choices. Only some even made sense, because apparently, dungeon cores were always in a hyper focused state which disregard a lot of things. Like continuity.
The place was so absurdly average that it literally thought of hiding and relying on it's pitiful regeneration to level itself to rank five, where it'd be granted a giant boost. This process, if not accelerated by any individual nor subjected to a complete shift of the area's mana veins, would have required a mere 157 years.
"I'll admit it was my fault for trying to talk with a literal rock, but the XP tithe is so worth it!" Aki explained. Now the place would be a hidden base for Duran, teleport station and all! Plus the fact that whatever XP was gained from killing stuff would be partially his.
Turns out, that's how the other 17 dungeon masters in history leveled up. It'd sacrificed two of his few perks, but he as the dungeon owner now offered the dungeon more resources too, so it was a give and take.
"And you just had to read and experiment with every choice. Yeah, sure." Grumbled the irritated cat girl holding the switch. Clair was giving Baal some head scritches right behind her on the wagon.
This treatment did not stop when they reached the short morning line.
"I can stop now, right? People will get the wrong impression when they see me acting like this." He tried, seeing the wife frowning, but ultimatly nodding.
"I take it you are not their slave then?" Asked the guard while raising a brown.
"I can't really say that. I'm her husband, and kind of deserved it, so please, just try to pretend it was the horse here that brought us over." He demurily said
"Are you the slave of either of them?" Asked the other guard, much more seriously and demurily.
"Nope. Here's my adventurer card. The amount I have to pay?" He shook his head, calmly asking.
With no more trouble attributed to them thanks to several aura spells, Aki directed his demonic donkey to the richer part of town, rented a room there, reinforced it to the brim, and only then went to the adventurers guild.
It was, however, out of his expectations that nothing would happen and he'd simply be put on a list, being told that they'd call for him when everything was ready.
"In that case, I guess I will be going to the royal academy then." He shrugged.
Going back outside town and reaching the palace like campus, there was a small problem at the entrance where Aki had to threaten the snob guards a bit, but otherwise, it was a simple affair that led to them waiting in a room for someone to deal with their situation.
"Adventurers Aki and Mari, I assume." Asked a ginger woman wearing a witch outfit in grays, light blue and black, with deep cleavage and a long skirt. No need to mention she was a beauty with a hourglass figure.
"That would be us. This is our adoptive daughter, Clair, who we're looking into fully enrolling." Smiled Aki as he got up and stored his book after he marked the page, offering a nod instead of a handshake and quickly being followed by the other two, though Clair had been snacking on some fruit and Mari reading a leaflet.
"I see." Lazily said the witch while nodding to them. "I will be direct, it may not be the best idea to enroll a dhampnir on our school even if you rank up." She explained with a serious tone and squinting eyes.
"It is no problem miss vice-principal. I will just brainwash whoever mistreats her and escalate things from there." He giggled as if he'd just told a joke. "On a different note, I think you'd find yourselves quite fortunate to teach a child with the blessing of Ark. Even if there are others, providing a healthy and safe environment for your students is what a school is for after all." He said, ignoring the fact both girls were pinching him.
"That is... Surprising. Why do you wish for her to enroll here then?" She asked, more relaxed physically and more serious magically.
"We want the best education and a place where she can better learn to be sociable." Answered Mari before her husband could say anything.
"There shouldn't be a problem or any danger with introducing her as a human either. Unless someone succeeds in completly starving her, in which case I will begin several acts of terrorism against said people and the academy, of course." Aki calmly said, suppressing the witch's magical pressure before it could even be released, the room's enchantments burning purple as they release all their energy without being able to even activate any of the affects. "Deactivate those and I will return the energy. I am not your enemy, I just don't trust you at all." He coldly said, releasing her energy.
"I... understand. The paperwork shall be done." She said, cold sweat flooding her back as the teleportation and exploding formations shone like a sun around them.
Payment, paperwork and scolding done, Aki started shoving several school suplies, snacks, books and comunication talisman's for the case that his daughter needed more of those, before kissing her all over and leaving her to the very surprised witch as he left for the research department so he could directly do the test to join it as an honorary menber.
"Your father is quite the character, isn't he?" She weakly commented, Clair following by her side.
"He is just afraid for me." She waved the older woman off. "I'm still wondering about the entrace exams though..."
"Oh, that, It is not in question wether you can enter the school, just what class and year you'd be put on. After all, student's not passing the normal entrance exam are all of some special status, so their failure to uphold our standards is enough punishment. Being expelled from the royal academy leaves a spot on your record for the rest of your life after all." She shrugged. Being the daughter of an affluent future A-rank was enough to get her in even, but staying was entirely up to the child. "I will be aplying your tests to be sure there's no cheating, but that's about it."
Edna completly didn't expected the little girl to straight up answer everything perfectly till she reached the high-school section, however. When asked about it...
"One of the first things my dad teached me was how to answer tests and extract answers." She shrugged. "But i actually quite like magic too, so i ended up learning a bit since dad was over eager."
That's what she said before destroying quite a lot of magic targets, standing as a new C-rank adventurer in fire power alone. The fact her father could teleport to her whenever as he so showed when he appeared out of nowhere despite the academy's reality stabilizers, also increased her danger level by quite a lot.
The girl would be fine even if the academy did nothing, but it'd be better if they did.