The Secret of Ruby

thunder and lightning summoning

It was nearly nine o'clock in the evening before Coral finally returned to her residence. She lived in a small place, but the usual one-bedroom apartment in an apartment building. In the crowded living room, a simple meal had been set on a small dining table - it was Coral's dinner. A plate of rice was covered with a lid, which in turn was labeled with a heat preservation spell that could maintain the temperature of the food, so that even if Coral arrived home late, he didn't have to worry about the meal in his mouth getting cold.

Also on the table was a note. It was a note left by Coral's nanny, Granny Venator. On the note was today's recipe, along with a list of chores.

Laundry checked.

Cooking checked.

Sweeping and mopping.

......

Being a nanny is hard work. Coral lamented in her heart.

To tell the truth, Coral had been living alone since two years ago. The reason for living alone was simple, the place she used to live was remote and far away from the school. For the sake of convenience, her parents rented her a separate house next to the school and arranged for Granny Venator to take care of her.

Although Granny Venator took care of Coral for almost two years, Coral basically never spoke a few words with Granny Venator.

Venator was a strange person, she had long, extraordinarily conspicuous white hair that was coiled to the back of her head, but from other aspects of her appearance, she looked like an ordinary human, but the magic she used was very advanced, such as Instantaneous Movement.

It wasn't by chance that Coral had found out about the fact that she could move instantly; after all, Venator never entered or exited Coral's residence in a normal human manner. She came in silently, and disappeared into thin air with a snap of her fingers when she left - a complete manifestation of instantaneous movement magic.

As a species with no magical talent, there were very few humans who used such advanced magic as instantaneous movement, and only humans with a high level of magical mastery knew how to use it.

By all rights, a human with such magic should have been famous long ago. However, Koral had never heard of Venator's name on the mage forums.

The second reason Coral decided Venator was odd was that she only showed up at certain times when she was doing chores, and on weekends she came and went in a hurry and wouldn't spend an extra second nattering with Coral.

During those only times when the two of them spent time together, such as midday on weekends, when Venator came over to Coral's house to make lunch, Coral also worked up the courage to take the initiative to ask about Venator's mother-in-law with the mindset of communicating more. She never reaped any valuable answers, however; Venator usually just said, dismissively and without a hint of respect, “Hmph, my business doesn't need to be known by you.”

Coral was helpless at Venator's cold and rude attitude, but she wasn't one for prying eyes, and wouldn't intrude more than a little if Venator didn't want to be close to her. So Coral, at best, just watched Venator leave bashfully after she had taken care of everything at home.

So no matter how curious Coral was about her nanny, she couldn't come to any reasonable conclusions for the time being. Thinking too much about such things didn't make much sense for herself either.

After cramming, Coral continued to eat her dinner sporadically as usual, leaving the leftovers on her plate and in her rice bowl, tossing them at the kitchen sink and then ignoring them. Too tired to do anything else, Coral washed up and cleaned up before falling asleep in bed.

When Coral opened his eyes, a new day had already begun.

In the new day's elemental magic class, Grandma Getty's expression was extraordinarily serious.

Coral only saw Grandma Getty solemnly walk to the podium, cleared her throat and said, “The midterm exams are approaching, this is your first large-scale exam in school, and it will have a great impact on your future decisions on choosing subjects, so please be sure to take it seriously and remember to focus on your review.”

Coral rested his chin on his hands, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Quizzes were embarrassing enough, wouldn't a major exam kill you? Coral thought.

But before she could think of a few more spiteful words in her head, today's classroom quiz - the lightning summoning art test - began.

Because of the tutoring she had attended yesterday, Coral was expecting a little more from her performance. The classroom quiz was a one-on-one test, and the criteria for the assessment was based on the display of elemental phenomena, and the second was based on the data from the elemental force tester. The elemental force tester used in middle school had a numerical control range of 0 to 32, and usually, even if a student's display of elemental phenomena was not perfect, an elemental force of 16 could be considered a pass.

Finally, it was Coral's turn for the one-on-one quiz. In front of Grandma Getty, Coral held his breath and recited the incantation word for word, his fingers entwined like a pentagram as instructed in the textbook, attempting to summon out lightning from his fingertips.

In theory, summoning lightning would be sufficient to do so.

However, she held herself back until her face turned red, but nothing happened where her fingers touched, she didn't even hold back a single half-finished lightning bolt. The Elemental Force Tester on the side flickered at 5 and went back to zero.

It was a complete failure! In Coral's afterglow, Grandma Getty was frowning with a complicated expression.

After the quiz was over, Tania walked briskly over to Coral, “I heard you failed the quiz again, is that true?”

“Well ...... it's true.” Coral smiled bitterly.

Tania revealed a sad expression, and when she opened her mouth again, she brought up the matter of extra training.

“It's my dereliction of duty that you're not doing well.” Tania's tone was filled with regret and regret.

“Come see me at noon later as well, for sure.”

And so Coral spent his noon after this in the t*****e of elemental magic as well.

Tania, in order to improve Coral's magical literacy, even found a large pile of study materials herself and assigned Coral special homework cramming papers.

Between classes, Coral slumped on his desk. Leleko gently walked over, sat in the seat in front of Coral without making a sound, and asked, “Why are you so tired?”

Coral then complained to Lelekko about the hard work of tutoring.

Lyraco couldn't empathize with Coral; basic magic had never been easy for her.

After all, she was a Blood - a magically gifted species.

Though people had long named them after vampires, though over a long period of evolution the vampire diet had not been limited to blood, while the creation of imitation blood had eliminated the vampire's need for human blood.

To this day, society has legislated that Bloods may not attack humans for their blood, so humans and vampires have been able to coexist peacefully, and there are schools for both vampire and human students, as well as other species, the Emerald School, where Coral and Lelocke are now enrolled, being one of them.

After hearing about the hardships of Coral's tutoring, Leleko first sighed a human student is really not easy, and then asked with wide eyes: ''Tutoring thing, do you want me to accompany you? After all, I didn't participate in the club, academically it's also easier than you guys, just idle boredom, want to find something to do.”

Although the Emerald School gave vampire students the same treatment as human students, but in the learning system, considering the differences in magical talent of different species, it also conducted tiered teaching.

As a vampire, Lyraco didn't participate in the elemental magic class until after the midterm of the first semester, and now she was taking one less class than the human students, so her academics were indeed much easier than Coral's.

“...... You don't want to trouble yourself, going home and resting isn't better than cramming at school, not to mention you live so far away.” Coral was surprised to say that Lyrakko was really a good person.

Leleko replied, “I'll be picked up and dropped off at home by a car anyway, I won't have any more trouble just because I live far away.”

“I do wish you could make more friends outside of me la.” Coral rested her chin, her eyes slightly narrowed in a lazy manner, “Leleko is pretty and gentle, she's totally the type to be welcomed by everyone, isn't she?”

Leleko shook her head. “But everyone else says I'm a nerd.”

The “others” she was talking about were probably the vampire powerhouses. Coral knew that there were always some tough-talking, bad-talking people in the big vampire clans.

“How can you be a nerd when you have such good grades? And if you're a nerd, what does that make me?” Coral laughed.

Lelarco smiles back, “You're a lot smarter than I am.” She turned the tables and urged Koral again, “If you don't want to go to tutoring, why don't you just take a day off with Tania and go home to rest.

“I can't, she said it's almost midterms and I can't take any more time off.”

“So strict, I was going to go with you after school.” Leleko sighed.

Because of the different modes of transportation home from school, Leleko was taking the bus home and Coral was walking home. So what Coral and Lyraco called walking home from school together was just walking a few meters away from the school's entrance and parting ways. But because they were friends, they would stick together all the time, and they tacitly agreed that they would be with each other until the last second of separation.

Coral listened to Leleco's words with regret in his heart, sighed, and shifted his gaze aside, “I'm sorry that I won't be able to get out of school with you for a long time.”

“That's okay, after all, elemental magic is still an important discipline, I'll just go with Violet these days.”

Violette was Lyraco's cousin. Even though they were considered cousins, the age difference between these two was very small, so they were in the same grade. They both belonged to the Blood Clan and both lived in the Fitzroy family's manor, so going to and from school together was extremely convenient.

“That's quite good.” Coral naturally knew Violet's name.

“When will you and Violette get to know each other as well?”

“Not a long time ago.”

“When? I don't know ......,” Leleko looked surprised.

Coral smiled bitterly, “I've known Violet for a long time, but he just doesn't know me.”

After a dumbfounded “Oh”, Lyrakko said, “I actually think he should get to know this you as well.”

“Doesn't he hate humans? I don't think he's ever looked at me favorably on a regular basis, and he's clearly not messing with him.”

“He does harbor some prejudices against humans, but those are all misunderstandings, and it's always a shame that he misunderstands you in particular.”

“No pity, my clumsy human doesn't deserve to know him yet.” Coral laughed to herself.

At that moment, the bell for study hall rang. It's time to come out of her leisurely state, Coral said to herself, so she fumbled in her desk pocket for the tutorial paper Tania had written for her, fumbling for half a dozen times but finding nothing.

Huh? I didn't lose the tutorial paper, did I?

Thinking of Tania's face that was serious and earnest all the time, Coral was inwardly bitter.

I'm afraid I'm going to get a lesson this time.