The headmaster's office was rather spacious with seven picture frames of the Great Seven across the walls behind the desk. In time, Crowley found the files of the scholarship money and her identification on the papers. Looking through it, Crowley could only hum with deep confusion before he looked up to her, "You really don't have a guardian?"
"Yup." Lotus responded, "I figured out how to read and write from a nearby town's library."
"No adults?" The headmaster seemed to have raised a brow when he heard her answer.
"Nobody wanted me." Lotus replied with a smile, "I was an orphan growing up. A family wants to hire me to make potions for them, so I need to go to school before I'm qualified to. I need a new job so I decided why not. I've never been to school before, so this will be interesting."
The headmaster stared at this black hair boy in bewilderment. He really wanted to kick the student out at first, but it was interesting how she didn't flinch when the words came out of her mouth. Moreover, she never had a school life before coming here.
The Headmaster hummed in thought before he said, "It's a little troubling that you've never gone to school before this. So, how about I left you stay as a student and give you a school experience. For I am gracious."
Saying those last words with a smile, the headmaster continued, "Seeing that you can afford to pay for your education, I'll let you stay in a dorm. Though I say this, there's actually no proper dorm for you at the moment."
"What about where your handyman is staying?" Lotus questioned.
"Yuu?" The headmaster said with a look of surprise, "But the building no longer serves as a dorm. Though, you can make use of it if you clean it up."
"That should be no problem." Lotus responded, "I can explain things to my benefactors later. They'll understand if I say that I have no magic to be placed in a proper dorm. So, I placed myself in the dorm with your other student."
"Yuu isn't a student, though..." The headmaster responded bluntly.
"Well, I don't know about that." Lotus shrugged, "He seems a little special in other cases. Shall we have a bet, Mister Crowley?"
"A bet?" The headmaster raised a brow curiously.
Lotus nodded, "Within the next three days, your handyman name Yuu and the cat will both become one of your school's students."
"Students?" The headmaster frowned in confusion, "Do you perhaps have clairvoyance?"
"Nope." She replied with a smirk, "I just have a good sixth sense that I can rely on."
If she was right, Yuu should have the capabilities of being a student at Night Raven College. The energy coming from his body that evening was enough proof that the young man really wasn't that simple.
"What do you plan to bet on?" The headmaster responded curiously.
"The right to stay up past curfew hours." She responded, "I may need additional time to study if I want to catch up with the other students."
Crowley raised a brow but sighed, "Very well, but don't come complaining to me if you do lose the bet."
"You're not going to push it off as a childish prank?" Lotus raised a brow with a smirk on her face.
Seeing her condescending attitude, the headmaster wanted to put her into her place but stopped when he thought about letting her lose the bet.
"I'll let this event teach you not to overestimate your own abilities." Crowley said with a sigh again, "You said you want to stay at Ramshackle dorm?"
Lotus nodded, "Yup."
"How would I know you won't temper with the bet?" Crowley questioned curiously.
Lotus smiled, "Why not ask Mister Mirror later? We know Mister Mirror wouldn't take sides on such a childish thing like a bet between educator and pupil. It should be easy to ask him about it just this once. It's not like the school abuses the ability to summon Mister Mirror for trivial matters either, so it should be fine. Besides..."
She smiled wider, "I'm interested in the ability of that handyman of your school's. He does have one, doesn't he? So, I wanna be the witness of his growth."
Hearing her words, the headmaster was convinced to let this go and nodded in defeat, "Very well. Have you read the handbook the school sent you with the acceptance letter?"
"Of course." She responded easily, "It's very interesting the way a school works."
"Those guidelines are what you can expect to see from most other schools as well." Crowley explained, "As long as you follow those guidelines, I won't have to do anything ridiculous, such as expulsion."
"I hear you." She nodded in response.
"Good." Crowley got up from his desk with a relieved smile, "Let me take you to Ramshackle room. Tomorrow, you begin with a tour of the campus before school starts the day after. Seeing that you don't have a dorm leader, I'll assign you with one of the other dorms."
As they walked through the halls and out of the gothic building, Lotus noticed the dead trees outside of school grounds as they left the building behind. She was then brought to an old looking gothic mansion with gargoyles on top.
As they walked through the metal gates, they could see the double doors as the headmaster opened the doors. With the flickering of the lamps dimly shining on the halls, the interior was covered in noticeable cobwebs. Furnitures were piled with dust and the wallpapers on the walls were starting to peel from the wood. The floor itself was still rather dusty and there was a smell of old wood through out the room. The headmaster walked in easily having already seen the interior before as he brought her to a rundown room. After doing so, Lotus pretended to be going through the bags, the headmaster had magically transported into the room. With the ring, she sneakily pulled out some scattered paper money to which she quickly stacked up and took out her check from her pocket. the man took the paper money cautiously before she wrote up a check and handed it in.
Having received the payment, though dubious, the headmaster told her the time and place to be at tomorrow. He wasn't very serious about the bet they made as he showed no signs of attention towards it all, but curiosity. Never before had the mirror recommended someone with no magic. So, how did something such as this occurred?
With the man gone, Lotus quickly cleaned out her bed that had been covered in dust and spiders hiding under the covers and pillows. She dragged the mat away and sweeped the large floor of the room diligently. It was later that she grabbed her toothpaste and brush before leaving the room. With a wide yawn, she walked out the room to the bathroom she recalled passing by. However, during this, she saw something drift by her vision to which she smirked.
It was a little late and she hated to be messed with. However, these guys will need a beating to learn their lesson before they could leave her be. She looked up and saw a few chubby ghosts in white stare back at her with one of them being rather thin.
"I thought it was a little noisy tonight." the thinner one said curiously, "So, it seems we have another guest tonight."
She yawned, "Yup. I'm new here. Sorry to bother you guys tonight."
"Hm?" The chubby one raised a brow and glanced over to the thin ghost, "Boss, this one isn't crying or screaming."
"Crying? Screaming?" Lotus responded in confusion, "Why would I be doing that?"
"Y-You're supposed to be scared of us." The chubby one responded with a slight surprise to having been overheard.
"Have he seen other ghosts before?" The second chubby one questioned curiously.
"I have." Lotus responded with another yawn, "In all honesty, you look much better than those tattered and bloody ghosts I've witnessed before."
"B-Bloody!" The chubby number one stammered aloud, "A-And tattered?!"
"What kind of ghosts did you encountered?!" The thin one nearly screamed instead, "N-No, wait! Forget what I said. Anyway, there's another resident here in this mansion."
"I know." Lotus nodded, "I've heard from the headmaster. The student name Yuu."
"He's a handyman." The ghost corrected.
"For now." Lotus smiled, "It's best to watch and see. After all, you can't really judge a book by its covers."
Having finished her words, Lotus went to get ready for bed much to the ghosts' bewilderment. The ghosts here were really naive than that she had seen from her previous life. With this, she couldn't wait to see when the fairy gala comes around. She'll have a lot to say to her mother, after all!
When she returned to her room, she quickly threw some white stones around the door which blocked out the ghosts from entering her room. She then took off her gloves and said with a sigh, "Xiao Li. Ying Hui."
Two miniature figures appeared from the black and white gem ring. One was a young boy in green robes with black short hair and the other was a young girl in a yellow brocade dress with chestnut hair partially pulled back with a white ribbon.
"Yo, Xue! Finally called us out, eh?" The boy said with a wide smirk as he sat on her shoulder with his arms folded around his chest and propped a leg on the other.
"We've been waiting for hours, you know." The girl giggled as she landed softly on her black hair.
Lotus sighed, "Well, you've seen the guidelines. No visitors in the school from outside unless at the teacher's lounge. But, it didn't say any spirits."
"This world is really weird, Xue." The boy spoke up curiously, "There are such weird looking ghosts too. No one could beat up the other and no closed-door cultivation. You're also divided according to your magic, not your abilities or what you want to learn."
"Yes." The girl nodded her head curiously, "That was a strange magic beast earlier too. There was also a magic mirror."
These two are her weapon and storage spirits. The boy is Xiao Li, a ring storage spirit, and the girl is Ying Hui, a weapon spirit. These two spirits are siblings created from one large material and by the same smith of the cultivation world. When Lotus was in the orphanage, she was left with the supposed "ugly" ring because nobody wanted it. However, when they grabbed a hold of everything she arrived with, such as any gold bracelets on her wrists and ankles, they tried to come back for the ring too.
However, Lotus was already four by then and have figured out that the safest way to protect things that are hers is if she could stuff them into her mouth. So, she hid the ring under her tongue. As time went by, she was soon left in the woods when she buried it shortly after having been abandoned hoping to come back for it after she found a place to shelter from the elements.
Who would've known that her mother would find her and take her in?
When she could start cultivating from her memories of her past, she reached her first level at the age of thirteen, but she hadn't started fiddling with the ring till a week ago and spent a whole week sorting out the situation where she encountered the two spirits who formed a contract with her. Right now, she had elevated from the starter level of Qi formation to Base practicing. She was quite close to Gold Core after two years of diligent practice. She had also built up her body from Mortal Flesh to Soul Forming but stopped when she started to feel pain in her muscles. Something wasn't quite right, but she wasn't certain of what it was.
Now she's been learning array formation and alchemy from the books left behind by the previous owner of the rings. There was a beast taming book that she picked up on, but there was no beasts to practice it on.
In the world she came from, there were many abilities and skills to learn when being a cultivator and cultivation was so common is was less common to come across regular people that can't cultivate. Despite being in a different world, she learned that the energy here was rather wild and harder to gather than that of her previous world. Moreover, it would seem that Lotus was the only one who could cultivate by absorbing the magic in the air which the people here have been using as their magic.
This was the case for a while as Lotus found that she can only speak of cultivation matters with the two spirits who proved to her that she wasn't insane. Though she didn't mean to isolate her activities from the other fairies, it was good to also be friends with people who understand her studies.