Chapter 37: ANOMALY

Elsewhere at similar time, the headmaster placed a thin folder on Joseph’s desk.

"Keep this off the academy’s official logs." he said.

"The investigation into Leon Carter’s awakening?" Joseph said as he glanced at the folder, then back at the Headmaster.

"Yes. I want the records reviewed quickly, but nobody outside this office needs to know we’re looking."

"Understood." He answered.

What they were working on was the anomaly during Leon’s awakening, the door that appeared. It still gave them trouble, and until they were sure, they didn’t want to startle the student with an interrogation.

The Headmaster remained standing while Joseph worked something on the system.

"There’s something else," the headmaster said. "The summon Leon Carter used in his last match."

"That unusual skeleton?" Joseph asked, "it certainly didn’t look like a Grade 1 skeleton monster." He said.

"Right. That is because it wasn’t. That thing, I’m sure of it, that was an Undead Skeleton Swordsman."

"That’s what its called? I’ve heard of those, though I have never come across one."

"Undead monsters aren’t common after all, its understandable. But I’d know, Since I’ve fought an army of those things before." The Headmaster said.

The words landed with enough weight that Joseph didn’t immediately respond.

’An army?’

He knew the headmaster had fought in the wars against the dungeon outbreaks and knew the man had seen things most Summoners only encountered in reports, but this was really something, after all, undead were a dreadful bunch to face off against because of the death energy that constantly poisons living beings.

Thinking about it more, even for just a few seconds, Joseph’s expression turned, his brows furrowing.

"Sir, what Grade are these Undead Skeleton Swordsmen?" He was curious, and for a reason.

"Anywhere between Grade 3 and 4, but mostly Grade 3, from my experience at least."

’This is serious.’ Joseph thought to himself .

Leaving the fact that Leon’s summon was unconventional, a Grade 3 undead summon was something else entirely.

"At Grade 3, the death energy that thing would emit should be quite dangerous, shouldn’t it? Sir? For living beings..."

"I know... that is why we need to hurry this up." The headmaster said.

Their worry was palpable now. After all, prolonged exposure to death energy at a stretch could lead to severe poisoning that had not been curable so far. In short matches like those in the tournament, the most the energy would do his affect the morale and composure of the opponent and their summon, but in future when he was to team up with people and raid dungeons for longer stretches, it could pose a big problem.

Even worse, was Leon himself, how this energy would affect him long term.

"Not that I doubt, but Sir, are you certain?" Joseph asked, he himself had not watched any matches so far and he wasn’t there.

"I’m certain."

That much was obvious to anyone who had watched Leon’s match. The summon’s size, equipment, and fighting ability were well beyond what anyone expected from the basic skeleton Leon had awakened with.

"Go through everything connected to Leon’s awakening. The original record, any supplementary reports, and the summon’s classification. I want to know whether the academy missed something." The Headmaster said.

Joseph nodded and got to work.

After a while of working, unsurprisingly, they had found nothing. It was their own files after all.

"His official file still lists him as Grade 1 — Skeleton Warrior."

The headmaster walked around the desk and sat down. "Well that too is a problem. A problem for the other students."

Joseph turned to the first page of the folder. It contained Leon’s awakening data, including the initial summon grade and the description recorded on the day of the ceremony.

"Did he evolve it somehow?" Joseph asked.

"Possibly..."

"Then he should have reported the change."

"He should have." The Headmaster said.

Perhaps the bigger question was how he was even able to achieve growth so fast, or was the growth rate and path of undead monsters just fundamentally different from ordinary summons? These were all questions they were pondering.

Nevertheless, a student quietly evolving a summon without informing the academy was a problem... a student doing so while competing in a public tournament was an even bigger one.

"If he evolved the Skeleton Warrior into a higher-grade summon," Joseph said, "then we need to know how, the timing, the conditions, whether he used some external resource..." He said this both having the knowledge of who his backing was, the Carter Family.

"This is all a lot." The Headmaster said, while Joseph lowered his eyes to the file again. "Hey... the Carter Family can’t be working with an enemy, right? They are bigger than that... at least that is what I’d think."

"But no matter how mighty they are, even they can’t produce this..." Joseph said.

Both men knew what the other had in mind, but even in the comfort of privacy, none dared voice it out. Could Leon have colluded with a Terrorist Organisation to get power? It wasn’t impossible, especially with the circumstances surrounding him. This was the major reason why they were yet to confront him directly, and instead spent their resources in investigating.

At the moment, there were too many possibilities, and none of them could be confirmed from the available information. They needed to establish what had happened before deciding what it meant and how to carry on.

"I’ll review the awakening records first," he said. "Then I’ll compare them with the tournament footage and the reports." Joseph said, shifting the mood back to the present issue.

"Good. Don’t make assumptions, and don’t let anyone else know you’re doing this."

Joseph nodded.

The headmaster leaned back in his chair.

"And Joseph?"

"Yes?"

"Move quickly."

The Door remained the most difficult and important part of the entire investigation, as they had concluded that it would be the explanation for his undead summon.

By the end of the day, Leon Carter had been formally marked as a special case within the academy’s administration.

...

As far as the rest of the school was concerned, Leon was still a student preparing for the tournament finals, and currently, that was where most of the attention had shifted.

The finals were only a few days away, which had been officially announced.

Leon himself had expected the attention after his last match to fade once people found something else to discuss. Instead, it had continued to grow.

The first time he’d won, people had mostly been surprised that the Carter family’s supposed failure could beat someone with a stronger summon.

After the second match, that explanation had become harder to maintain.

Now, students who had barely acknowledged him before were watching him in the corridors. Some wanted to know how he trained his summons, while others asked whether he had some special technique he wasn’t telling anyone about.

The very fact that he was getting such positive attention was a big change, even those that simply stared at him when he walked past did so with a different gaze.

While it was all welcomed development, all the attention was mostly annoying to Leon, but he could deal with that, at least this was better.

Perhaps, what he found stranger was how people had started talking about his father.

"Leon." A voice cut through to him as he was sitting on a bench drinking a soda.

He looked up, confused at who exactly he was looking at. He could vaguely recognize him, though he couldn’t remember ever having a proper conversation with the guy.

"Your father must’ve been proud," the student said.

Leon blinked, bambuzulled. "My father?"

"Yeah. He was a Hero, right? I mean, with you reaching the finals and all..." The student gave him an awkward smile. "It’s good to see you living up to the Carter name."

Leon didn’t answer immediately, simply at a loss for words to even decribe what he was hearing.

The student seemed to take his silence as modesty. "I’m sure he’d be happy to see how far you’ve come."

’Where is this coming from?’ Leon thought to himself. Surprisingly, at that moment, his mind was completely blank, and all he could do was nod once.

The student was being friendly. There was no reason to take it personally. Rise enough and bootlickers will appear to take advantage of the situation.

Still, Leon didn’t want to encourage the idea.

"I’m sure he would’ve wanted me to do well," he said.

The classmate nodded. "Of course."

"But I’m not really trying to live up to his name." He concluded, turning away while he continued to drink his soda.

The response made the student pause.

Leon didn’t want to further the conversation, so before the guy could process and think of what to say, he stood up, gave him a small, polite smile, then walked away.

The conversation ended there, but Leon kept thinking about it.

’Would he though?’ He had no idea.

He hadn’t known the man. Whatever memories belonged to the original Leon were still difficult to separate from his own thoughts, and his father’s legacy was one of the things he understood least about this life, but he knew enough about the academy to understand why the comment bothered him.

Before the tournament, being the son of a Hero had been another reason for people to look down on him. He’d been expected to live up to a name he couldn’t match, and every failure had made the comparison worse.

Now that he’d started showing some strength, the same connection was being used to praise him.

He didn’t hate his father, and he wasn’t angry that people remembered him. From what he’d heard, the man had done a lot for the country and was a genuinely great person as far as being a human being.

Even then, that didn’t mean he wanted people handing him respect because of it.

’If I’m going to make something of myself, I’d rather it be because of what I do.’ He thought to himself.

’That’s the only way I’d want it.’