Chapter 99: A Bird’s Price

The next school day, a brown skinned teacher in glasses, her hair pulled back into a neat bun, strolled through the main gate and into the school compound. Her dark eyes rested calmly behind thin, round frames, lending her an overall composed, observant presence.

She carried a moderately plump build, her professional attire beneath the teacher’s badge pinned to her chest matching the orderly image she maintained throughout the school.

The badge displayed her name clearly: Charlotte Oakbell.

She carried her handbag slung over one shoulder, walking with steady, measured steps along the paved entrance path. Her heels clicked lightly against the pavement with every stride, and she occasionally adjusted the bag’s position whenever it slipped slightly. The morning air carried the usual mix of activity drifting across the compound, scattered student conversations, teachers moving briskly toward their respective buildings, distant footsteps mingling with the occasional call of students greeting one another.

Charlotte had barely stepped through the gate before reaching into her bag and pulling out her phone.

A message waited for her there.

She read it for a few seconds before a small, genuine chuckle escaped her lips, shoulders shaking slightly as she shook her head at whatever filled the screen.

Just another playful text from her daughter, her only child, a mundane just like herself.

Her daughter had recently graduated from a regular high school located in a distant city. The distance had kept Charlotte from visiting nearly as often as she would have liked, especially during that final, hectic stretch of her daughter’s studies. The graduation itself had pulled her away from home for a while, though that particular situation wouldn’t stretch on much longer.

Once her daughter finished the remaining sign out procedures, certifications, and post graduation clearance, she’d finally be heading home for good.

Charlotte smiled faintly at the thought before locking her phone and slipping it back into her bag.

As a staff teacher and official record keeper for Amstral High, Charlotte Oakbell stood as a mundane woman who’d married a genuinely powerful summoner husband, and through ordinary biological inheritance, ended up raising an equally mundane daughter of her own. Her life, as a result, played out somewhat differently from most people walking these halls.

She’d spent well over a decade now working alongside people whose raw abilities could make an ordinary person feel genuinely insignificant by comparison.

Her husband’s reputation had played a real role in shaping her own circumstances too.

He’d taken part in countless dungeon raids over the years, eventually earning himself a position within the Infinite Guild, one of the nation’s moderately ranked organizations. His experience, reputation, and history of dangerous fieldwork had opened doors for her that she doubted she’d have ever managed to access on her own, as an ordinary mundane woman.

Through her husband’s standing and connections, she’d been lucky enough to secure a position right here at Amstral High.

This school was far from an ordinary institution, of course.

Its students carried supernatural abilities, summoned creatures, unusual talents, and powers genuinely capable of turning dangerous if ever left unchecked. Given the nature of the student body, along with the school’s broader role maintaining order and shaping capable individuals for the wider world beyond its walls, its teaching staff earned considerably better pay than most working at ordinary institutions.

For Charlotte, the opportunity had always amounted to both a genuine blessing and a strange, ongoing challenge.

As an ordinary human herself, she’d never felt entirely at ease surrounded by people with extraordinary talents, or creatures tethered directly to a summoner’s own soul. Even after more than ten years immersed in that environment, a faint, lingering discomfort still crept in occasionally, whenever something reminded her just how different everyone around her truly was.

She’d grown accustomed to it over time.

Still, growing accustomed to something was never quite the same as becoming fully comfortable with it.

That was precisely why Charlotte had always kept such a firm grip on the school’s rules regarding the use of powers and abilities. Whenever students tried wielding supernatural abilities around her without proper clearance, she wasted no time reminding them exactly where the line sat.

Plenty of students found her strictness genuinely irritating.

Others respected her for it.

Charlotte herself simply considered it part of the job, nothing more complicated than that.

Still, despite everything, she couldn’t honestly deny how deeply Amstral High had woven itself into her life over the years. The school had handed her countless experiences, strange incidents, stressful moments, and memories she knew she’d eventually look back on with genuine fondness, chaos and all.

For all its unpredictability, it had become her workplace, and in many ways, a second home, for well over a decade now.

She’d never once doubted how much she genuinely treasured it.

Unfortunately, her most recent problem carried considerably less sentimentality.

Paperwork.

Towering stacks of it.

Charlotte had found herself buried beneath theoretical tests, student assignments, grade sheets, assessment records, and files that somehow seemed to multiply the moment she finally cleared one pile. The sheer volume of administrative work had steadily chipped away at her usual patience.

Her response had been to push back, loading the students down with even more assignments and theoretical tests in return.

If they were determined to overwhelm her with extra work, then fine, she could return the favor in kind.

Petty, maybe.

But after hours upon hours buried in paperwork, Charlotte had decided the students could stand to taste a bit of that same medicine themselves.

Unfortunately, a second problem had surfaced right alongside the first.

She couldn’t find the report book anywhere.

That particular book held most of the students’ grade and assessment data, along with the full arrangements for upcoming tests and homework assignments, predictable questions and prepared answers included for the entire week’s academic schedule.

Charlotte had last seen it the previous day.

Since then, it had simply vanished.

At first, she’d assumed she’d just misplaced it somewhere.

That was the explanation she genuinely wanted to believe.

She didn’t want to jump straight to assuming someone had stolen it outright. Before entertaining that particular accusation, she intended to conduct a proper, thorough search, through every staff desk, shelf, cabinet, and corner where she might have accidentally set it down.

Still, if the book genuinely turned up nowhere after a real search, she’d have no choice but to escalate the matter further.

Her expression tightened slightly as she continued down the footpath.

"Just another layer of stress to pile onto my already exhausted list this period," she muttered bitterly.

She exhaled sharply through her nose, trying to release some of the mounting tension building steadily in her chest.

The morning had seemed peaceful enough, right up until that point.

Then a sudden, sharp screech tore through the air.

Charlotte’s head snapped upward instantly.

A black bird swooped low across the open path ahead.

Its wings beat rapidly as it dropped into a sharp, deliberate arc. Talons extended, its movement carried none of the randomness of an ordinary bird in flight.

Charlotte barely had time to register the threat.

The bird came straight at her.

"Ah!"

She threw her arms up instinctively, though the raven was already closing in.

It streaked past her face in a tight blur.

A sharp, stinging pain bloomed instantly across her temple.

Charlotte cried out, stumbling backward several steps.

Her hands flew to the side of her head.

When she pulled them away slightly, bright crimson blood had already begun trickling steadily from a fresh claw mark carved across her temple.

Her breathing came fast, uneven.

The sheer shock of the sudden attack hit her nearly as hard as the actual wound itself.

"What in the..."

She looked up sharply.

The raven had already landed on the edge of a nearby rooftop.

Its feathers looked almost unnaturally dark against the soft morning light, beady yellow eyes split by narrow, horizontal pupils staring straight down at her, carrying an unsettling, almost calculating weight behind the gaze.

This hadn’t been some random accident.

The way it watched her made that painfully, immediately clear.

It had specifically targeted her.

Charlotte slowly lowered one trembling hand from the wound, staring up at the bird.

The raven tilted its head slightly.

Then, in a tone almost absurdly cheerful compared to the violence that had just unfolded, it cawed out loudly:

"Ah ah ee ee cookie cookie!"

Charlotte stood frozen for a moment.

Her expression shifted rapidly from raw fear into pure, baffled confusion.

The raven simply kept staring. ℯℯ𝘭.

Then, with a sudden snap of its wings, it vanished from the rooftop entirely.

Charlotte watched it go, one hand still pressed firmly against her bleeding temple.

Whatever peace the morning had carried before was officially gone now.