After almost half an hour of waiting Max finally walked out of the nurse's office, his hand was healed and his backpack was all fixed up.
Elina was still waiting for him and she was surprised seeing all his clothes looking new, if a bit dirty.
"Did you change into a spare uniform? How are your clothes all fine now?" She looked at Max in confusion.
"Uhhh... the uniform and my backpack are made of cotton, so i can fix them easily.
Why are you here though?" Max gave her a strange look.
"I- Uh- The Principal! He told me to stay and tell you to go talk to him on his office... Anyway, you're right I gotta go- Wait, do you know the way to the Principal's Office?" Elina asked.
"Uh... No? Do you?" Max Responded.
"Yeah, want me to show you? It's pretty close, just a couple hallways away."
"No need, just tell me how to get there and I'll go, im sure you already wasted enough time here"
"Hey! It's not wasted, I also wanted to know how your hand was doing... but if you're sure, just go to the left here and..." She pouted but ended up explaining the way anyway.
After a couple of hallways Max made it to the Principal's Office and knocked on the door.
"Come in!" He heard from the inside the room and unceremoniously went in.
Now inside the office Max saw that it wasn't that big, it was mostly full of libraries and cabinets, hung in the walls we're multiple diplomas and paintings, one stood out of all the rest, a picture of the Principal and an old man standing side by side infront of a slain Elemental Beast, the Principal seemed shaken while the old man was laughing and patting his back, it was hung right above where the principal was currently sitting.
"Hello Mister Avasius, or should I call you Rowan?" The Principal gave Max a friendly smile.
"Uh... Neither, I'd rather go with Max..." Max gave the principal his best impression of an awkward smile.
"Max it is then, well... Max, my name is Edward Sorrel, but I'm sure you know me as your principal, it's nice to meet you!" The principal continued giving Max a friendly smile, which started to creep him out.
"It's nice to meet you too Sir... uh... did you need me for something?" Max asked, unwillingly.
"Oh yes! Please sit down, I need to have a talk with you, it's about something very important" The Principal continued with his friendly smile, which was starting to raise multiple red flags for Max, yet he decided to sit down, against his better judgment.
"Well, first let me assure you the situation with the ex-student named Tara Ferrick has been resolved, she's been expelled, along with her accomplice Dess Ignatius, we do not tolerate bullying in this school and those two took it too far for me to even entertain the thought of letting them stay, oh, I also got this for you." The Principal opened a drawer and took out the necklace Tara had stolen, then he placed it infront of Max, who quickly grabbed it and put it back on.
"Thank you so much sir, when I walked in I actually thought I was in some kind of trouble..." Max sighed, a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
"Don't worry about it, but this is not the important thing I was talking about, you asked for a reevaluation of your request to join the Short Range Combat Department, right?"
The principal asked while opening another drawer and looking around for something inside of it.
"Uh... Yes? I ended up not attending the reevaluation because of everything that happened, I'm sorry if it caused a problem sir-" Max was about to continue when the Principal slid a piece of paper towards him, it was a slip of paper that knowledged the acceptance of a student into the Short Range Combat Department, all the needed data was already filled out and only the signature of a guardian was needed to seal the deal.
After reading it Max took a couple of seconds to recompose himself "I- A- Accepted?! But I didn't even go to the reevaluation!"
"Yes, but after showing the Director of the Department the video of you punching Tara they decided to let you join anyway, all you have to do is bring the signed paper slip tomorrow and I'll have you started right away, thankfully it's only been a few days since classes started so you haven't missed much, I only have one single question for you... are you sure you want to follow this path? fighting Elemental Beasts for a living?"
The Principal gave Max a mysterious look, it seemed this was a very important question, so Max took a few minutes to think it through.
"I- I'll do it, im sure of it" Max gave the Principal a determined look.
"Great! That would be all, you can take rest of the day" The Principal returned him a friendly smile.
"But- it's barely 2 PM?" Max looked at the Principal, confused.
"So? Do you want to stay in the school doing nothing?" The principal chuckled. "Go and rest your hand, come to my office first thing in the morning, I'll have a student from the Short Range Combat Department help you out in your first day tomorrow"
"... Alright... goodbye Sir" Max took the slip of paper and placed it in his backpack, then he walked out of the office and to his locker to pick up some stuff, after that he walked out of the school and towards the bus stop.
•••••
Edward was on his office, trying to call his master after his meeting with Max, it took a few tries but he finally picked up.
"What do you want?" The voice on the other side of the phone responded in an annoyed tone.
"I got the kid into the Short Range Combat Department, his choice, not mine" Edward responded nonchalantly, he knew why his master was annoyed.
"Oh, that's great, you've just made my job easier... And it seems like im going to be tied down more than I expected, if i'm right it's going to take about four months and if i add into account the time it takes to travel... I'd say I'll get there by the time the kid's on his second year... Damn worms! Why can't these dumbasses just deal with them by themselves?!" The voice turned angry as Edward could hear stones crack through his phone.
"Well, it's not like everyone is immune to lava, and youre not doing them a favor, they're probably paying you an arm and a leg for it."
Edward responded, being the voice of reason as always.
"... I hate it when you're right, why can't you just go back to being the innocent little apprentice that did everything I told him to do?!" The voice laughed heartily.
"That innocent little apprentice died after he ate Basilisk poop because you told him to-" Edward grimaced at the memory.
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA-" Edward muted the call for a few minutes and then unmuted it
"Huff... Huff... don't remind me of all that or I'll die laughing... thanks for that kiddo, I really needed it..."
"Well, now that you aren't laughing, anything I should teach the kid or anything that he should know?" Edward asked, happy that his master was on a lighter mood.
"Hmmmm... Not really, encourage him to meditate and keep his emotions in check, even though I'm pretty sure that's an impossible ask for a teenager... if you see him becoming aggressive or doing that sort of stuff tell him about me, everything, that'll set him on the straight and narrow again, y'hear?" The voice spoke with a slightly grim tone.
"Everything?" Edward spoke again, unsure if he heard his master correctly.
"Everything." The voice spoke with a serious tone.
"Alright... I'll do it, but I'll also try to keep him in check so I don't have to resort to it..." Edward spoke with an unsure tone.
"Alrighty-o! See ya later Eddie, I gotta butcher a worm now, bye!" The voice ended the conversation with a cheerful tone and turned off the call.
Edward put his phone on his desk and had a lost look on his face.
Far away, the old man was butchering the corpse of a great Wyrm, it's blood flowed like a wounded volcano, burning to ashes the little vegetation around, the old man seemed unaffected by this and continued butchering the corpse and ransacking it for everything valuable it had, any valuable that did appear suddenly dissapeared as one of the gems on the many rings the old man wore flashed with a blue light for a split second.
But suddenly the old man found something unexpected, when he was butchering the Wyrm an oddly shaped rock came out of its intestines.
'Hmmmm? What the heck is this, some sort of bladder stone?' The man entertained the thought for a bit, laughed it off, and then grabbed the stone to inspect it, when he did he started feeling confused 'Wha- but wasn't the matriarch the only one- hmmmmm... Well they did tell me to kill her and all her children, but they said nothing about her children's children! Even though you're a worm i'm sure you'll be a great pet little one'
And with that thought the oddly shaped stone dissapeared.
•••••
Max got out of the bus and started his short walk back home.
After about 5 minutes of walking Max made it to his apartment complex, from there he took the stairs and after going up 5 floors he was right in front of the door of the apartment he lived in, he grabbed his key ring from his backpack and opened the door, what welcomed him was the place he had been calling home since... Well, since his parent's divorce about 5 years ago, after... The Incident, they hated eachother's guts since before, but it was the drop that spilled the glass for their relationship, spiraling downwards until it crashed.
'... I should get started with my chores...'
And so he started listing what he had to do: do the dishes, sweep the place, clean his room, do the laundry...
'Actually, I'll procrastinate for a bit and then start...'
He then went to his room, it was sparsely decorated with some posters of random bands, a bed, his wardrobe, and his desk where he kept his laptop, or where he would keep it if his mom hadn't pawned it off.
He went to the corner right besides his desk and pulled up the floorboard, revealing his secret stash, there he kept his laptop that he managed to get back from the pawn shop guy, his phone and laptop charger, a can where he kept all the money he managed to save up along with some other valuables and trinkets.
From there he took out his laptop and was about to turn it on when he heard the door get unlocked and opened, Max scrambled to put the laptop back on its place along with the floorboard in a split second and then jumped on his bed and unlocked his phone, then he made his best impression of a 'casual pose' while making it seem like he was just watching videos.
In the nick of time he did that his mother opened the door and took a look inside.
Max's mom was an Earth Elemental, her reddish-brown hair was seemingly made of metal strings and her skin had a slight tan.
"What the fuck are you doing here? Weren't you supposed to be at school?!" His mother said as she walked inside his room.
"Yeah, I got let go early, take a look at this..." Max walked towards his backpack, pulled up the paper slip, and showed it to his mom.
"You- how in all that is holy did you manage to get your principal to sign this?!" She took the paper from his hands and started to read it carefully.
"I did the reevaluation like you told me not to, I ended up doing pretty good so they said I could join!" Max blatantly lied but his mother was none the wiser.
"Max, This is awesome! I can't believe it-" She hurriedly got a pen and signed the paper slip, then she handed it back to him like it was a priceless treasure.
"Oh my heavens, I'm going to call your dad and plaster this on his face! That'll show the bastard... I'm going to go all out for dinner tonight sweetie, it's time to celebrate!" Then she walked out of Max's room, which made him sigh in relief.
'Well, that went pretty good if you ask me...' He thought.