A few moments later, they arrive at the place, or in this case, right in front of the door which happens to be open, allowing them to have a view of everything inside of it. They peep inside before entering and here, they see Anya organizing things to her liking, quite the mess but she’s getting there it seems.
Knock! Knock!
Once they confirmed that Anya was indeed inside of the lab, Taniah gently knocks at the door, grabbing the attention of Anya towards them. But as anyone can expect, its complete chaos inside of it. Several wood boxes, some are metal even, are laid out randomly inside the lab, basically filling it up, making it quite hard for anyone to walk inside. Some of the boxes are open and empty, these ones Anya has already taken out what was inside of them however, the majority of what she took out from them, she still hasn’t organized meaning that, just like the boxes itself, they are laid out in the floor occupying space and making even harder to walk around. The rest of the boxes are closed which means that Anya still has to go through them however, still they are occupying space nonetheless. Don’t get one thing wrong, the lab is not small by any means whatsoever, and even though she has a “few” things laying around, the reason that there is no comfortable space to move around is thanks to a massive steel table that occupies a good portion of the lab.
The table is also right in the middle of the room and that alone makes it even more inconvenient as Anya cannot have her things in a single place as she organizes everything. They are all around the table but, let me tell you the dimensions of the room itself, this way we can get a better idea of the dimensions of everything. The entry is right in the middle of the room with a metal door that seems quite sturdy to be honest. The room is roughly 4 meters wide in both directions, add the door 50 or so centimetres of width, making it around 9.5 meters wide. The length however is even bigger than this, being at around 12 meters long. From this alone the room is massive but since this is supposed to be a lab, it’s quite easy to understand the need for such dimensions. The table occupies around 3 meters of the room width and another 5 meters of its length. Even with the table, Anya still has 7 meters of length and 4.5 meters of width of empty space… Not really, as you can expect, there are a few cabinets here, others there, machine here, machine there, cables here and so on. Her real empty space is much less thanks to all of this. Enough of this, Anya clumsily gets up as she was on her knees going through the boxes and it seems she was like that for a few minutes as you can see her slender legs shake a little bit as she tries to get up. She quickly faces the door and when her brain processes who it is at the door, she makes quite the face because of it.
“(The President of the Student Council and Alice Florence!? Why are they here? Oh no, did I do something wrong?)”
Anya panics quite a bit and understandably so, after all, both Taniah and Alice are two extremely important figures in this Academy. While we can discuss who is more important, the fact still stands and having said individuals near her makes her of course go into panic mode as she also has no clue why they are here. As fast as she can, she walks up to the door, stumbling into some boxes while doing so and almost falling down because of it but luckily, she was able to keep her balance when that happened. Once at the door, she greets them and she does so with a deep bow.
Taniah- Sorry to bother you, Miss Pandora, I see that you are a little occupied right now. But if you don’t mind, I would like to discuss with you something that happened a few hours ago. Miss Kiana told me a few things that have happened to you, but we would like to hear it from you personally.
Although her face is serious, her voice is for the soft side. However, it still isn’t enough to calm down Anya in fact, what she said made her anxiety shoot through the roof and her nerves quickly follows it.
Anya- Oooo-Of course! You’re not bothering me at all! Yo-Yo-What do you want to discuss with me?
And she’s a complete mess. Sweat falls down her face as she stutters to say what she wants. The palms of her hands are sweaty as anxiety takes control of her body. Her legs are a bit weak, trembling even, all thanks to her nerves. Luckily for her, Taniah notices this in an instant and the serious look on her face softens up.
Taniah- Don’t worry about it, Miss Pandora, it’s nothing bad or anything like that. It’s just that Miss Kiana told me a few things that have happened to you, and as you can guess, they were serious to say the least. At the same time however, someone else told me a completely different version than what Miss Kiana told me and that’s why we are here. We would like to hear your side of the story if you don’t mind. But first, here’s what happened…
Taniah then proceeds to tell her the following: She tells her Kiana version of the story, the one where a group of students were bullying her (Anya) and that Kiana comes in to rescue her. Then she told Anya the version from said group of students, where Kiana was the one in fact bullying them and that her (Anya) was nowhere to be seen. The completely different version of the same story and while Kiana version is the one that makes most sense, she can’t still dismiss the other version as false and a lie. Of course, Anya is surprised to hear all of this, she didn’t expect that group of students to simply lie to the President of the student council. What a despicable group of people, aren’t they?
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“(That’s a lie! But why are they doing this? What did we do to them to deserve this? Why do they hate us so much? I can’t comprehend their reasons…)”
Anya- I don’t have anything to prove it but, Kiana is telling the truth. Miss Florence must remember but it’s the same group of people who insulted me yesterday. I was walking around the Academy, trying to get familiar with the place when they walked up to me. From there, they started to throw insults at me and even one of them got physical with me, pushing me. I lost my balance and I fell. However, the small injury that I got Kiana healed with a simple healing spell. In fact, if it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would be here right now. Those monsters… They… They were horrifying.
There is fear in her eyes as she finishes saying this, so much so that she embraces herself and tightly grabs each arm as she does so. To Kiana, those Black Wolves were nothing more than mere ants, a bunch of weaklings; however, to Anya, the reality couldn’t be so much different. Those beasts were something straight from nightmares to her and even to the majority of people to be correct. Those beasts are easily capable of tearing a limb from a human body with their mouths, they have claws that are big enough to pierce through the body of a human from one side and come out from the other. They are bigger, longer, faster and stronger than a human being, and by quite a bit at that, it’s easy to understand why Anya sees them like something that only belongs to stories and in worse case, nightmares.
Taniah- Don’t worry about the proof Miss Pandora, I already got everything that I need to make my decision. I still think Kiana was a little too aggressive but since she did it to protect you, I think I can make them let her go with a simple warning. The other students however, don’t expect much, I will try my best for them to be punished but just like Kiana, they might come out with a simple warning.
Alice- Miss Pandora, I want to apologise for what happened. Not only you got bullied for something that we didn’t properly prepare for when we did the mock battles, the very next day, the same students did the same thing to you. I’m so sorry, maybe if I was harsher with them, they wouldn’t have done it and we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.
Before Taniah could keep on going with her train of thought, Alice intervenes. She slightly bows to Anya as she apologises to her. She means every single word that she said, she’s genuinely sorry for what happened. She never wanted for them to take revenge on Anya, if she knew that they would do such a thing, in her mind she thinks that she should’ve punished them even more. Anya eyes widen a little bit as she sees this, once again she never expected for someone that looks like Alice, acts like Alice, is as strong as Alice, to be this sensitive and apologetic. A kind soul in a body of a giant I would compare them.
“Ah, please raise your head! I would never blame you for the actions of other people, not only that, you did protect me, I couldn’t be mad at you after that… No, they did it on their free will, you had nothing to do with it.”
Taniah- I agree with her Alice, it’s not your fault. You didn’t ask them to do it, well in fact, you even punished them for doing it! They went too far and we all know that. However, we do have to thank fate, as Miss Kiana was at the right place and at the right time. Although I do think that if it wasn’t for her, I somehow doubt they would use those summons or at least, I don’t want to believe it. Don’t take this the wrong way, Miss Pandora but by themselves they would easily be able to do and get what they want from you, there is no need for such methods, I think.
Alice- You think? They are a bunch of cowards so I don’t doubt they would use the summons as an excuse for whatever happened to Miss Pandora. What I am having trouble understanding is how did they got their hands on such summons. Black Wolf Fang is not a summon that you can get in your groceries store. How in tarnation did they get them?
Anya- I don’t know, I didn’t even know such monsters existed but I did see them use some magic stones. Kiana said that they were summoning stones but nothing else, I also didn’t pursue any further so not much else I can say.
Alice- Taniah did say that, but whatever they were summoned by using magic or simply by using special stones, we still are left wondering how did they get their hands on something of that level. I can see them buying them, however just as I said, you cannot acquire them just anywhere you can think of. I don’t think you have to go to the black market but at least here, in this city, there aren’t any places that sell summoning stones.
Taniah- Hmm, maybe it came from outside the city? You said black market, but I do think there is one here in the city. Maybe from there? But, these types of people dealing with the black market also seem improbable and from how high status they are I also doubt they knew such stones existed… Maybe someone gave them?
Anya- Now that you are saying that I did hear one of them saying something like that. Once Kiana defeated the wolves, she threatened them and that was when one of them said that he got the stones from someone, he was complaining that the wolves were defeated too easily when it happened. But the other ones quickly shut him up, so that’s the only thing he ended up saying.
She’s much calmer now, her voice is calm and no longer stutters, the complete opposite from how she was just a few minutes ago. However, as she recalls what happened and as she was saying this, she brings both of her hands towards her chest, holding each other tightly. Although she’s calmer, she has failed to see the implications of what she just said. Someone gave them the stones, that alone should make her worry. There is a good chance that said someone knew that this group of students were angry and revolted to what happened yesterday. Said person took advantage of this, giving them the stones and allowing them to use them towards their revenge. If Kiana was not there, one and it only needed to be one, if one Black Wolf Fang was summoned against Anya, she would be dead right now, a complete gruesome death at that, one that would leave a mark at those that were unfortunate enough to see it and of course bring down the Academy reputation with it. Either someone has something against Anya herself or just like I said, said person wants to harm the Academy by any means. But while Anya fails to see this, that someone might be after her, both Alice and Taniah do not, and their next actions will take this into consideration.
