For a moment, Lucia went stiff at rightly guessing whom the letter was from before she recovered and muttered, “As I thought! He’s spying on me!”

Sarah chuckled and asked, “Read it, Lucia. It’s your letter after all.”

Lucia shook her head resolutely and replied, “No thanks. I don’t want to find out what sort of horrid things my father has written to me about.”

“You’re so negative, miss,” commented Luna, looking sadly at the older girl. “If you’re not going to open it, may I open the letter and read the contents aloud, miss?”

“Yeah. I suppose so,” stated Lucia with a shrug of her shoulders, and she walked over to sit on Alex’s left.

Luna nodded and smiled as she walked over to sit on Alex’s right and carefully tore the envelope open. The paper was folded neatly inside of the envelope, which she unfolded and shook a little to straighten it before reading the contents of it out loud for them all to hear.

“To my lovely daughter, Lucia,” she began and instantly Lucia snorted disdainfully.

“Miss!” Alex exclaimed, looking at her in alarm.

“Sorry,” she apologised with a sheepish smile, “but I found it rather funny that he’d address me that after speaking so roughly with me yesterday.”

Alex shook his head and turned to Luna while saying, “Please continue, Luna.”

Luna, who was surprised by Lucia’s remark, nodded in return, cleared her throat and continued reading the letter out loud once again.

“To my lovely daughter, Lucia,

I am very sorry about yesterday’s events and how they transpired into me speaking so roughly with you. But, as I’ve been telling you over the years, I am part of the council, and I cannot simply appear to help you out of pity. You may say that I taught you magic, but I never did it with the intentions of you turning against my hopes of you getting into the higher society and travel a dangerous road in your delusion of bringing rationality in our society.”

“I’m not trying to bring rationality!” Lucia suddenly exclaimed, looking annoyed. “What the heck is he saying? I’m trying to spread the knowledge that magic is also available and children shouldn’t be automatically conscripted into the army! Get your facts right, old man!”

“Saying that to us won’t really reach him, miss,” said her student in reply, looking dimly at her which made her nod in acceptance while her shoulders slumped in dismay. After shaking his head, he said to Luna, “Keep on going.”

“Well,” began Luna, turning back to the letter and finding the place where she stopped at. “Okay,” and she continued to read through the letter out loud in a clear voice.

“Be it magic, or energy, or whatever, you’ve taken a dangerous high road, a road that I cannot support you along. So, when you came to my home requesting that I teach you and your student to form a contract with a Spirit of Life, I had to refuse, and I became annoyed when you tried pushing the topic. For that, I am sorry, but I still stand by my word that I won’t teach you or anyone you bring with you the method.”

Lucia sighed in exasperation and said, “Is there any point to this letter then? It’s like he’s rubbing it in our faces, even harder this time, that he has no intentions of helping us!”

This time, even before Alex could say anything, Luna turned to her and asked, “Miss, we’ll never get through this if you keep interrupting me like this.”

She had finally become annoyed by Lucia’s childish behaviour from the continuous interruptions. Lucia looked at her for a moment in stunned surprise before she breathed a sigh, resigned to listening to the letter in silence. After seeing this, Luna nodded and turned her attention back to the letter before continuing to read its contents out loud.

“Okay. So you might think that I am rubbing it in your face even harder,” and she paused to turn and glance sideways at Lucia, who smiled sheepishly at her. Shaking her head, Luna turned back to the letter and said, “but you have got to believe me when I do say that I will help you. Not directly, but I can arrange for you to visit the location known as the origin of the Spirits of Life, which is located near the Huizhou country.”

“This is getting interesting,” commented Alex, starting to smile in anticipation after hearing those words. “Go on, Luna.”

His childhood friend nodded and continued reading the contents out loud.

“Near the Huizhou country, there is a location known as the Forest of Lone, which is said to be the place that all Spirits of Life originated from. Now, the Huizhou country is home to the Warbeasts, who are quite strong and capable warriors who excel at energy control. They treat the entire place as sacred grounds and do no let anyone enter into the forest because it was said that no one returned after venturing into the Forest of Lone.”

“I don’t need him to tell me that when I’ve already found that out on my own,” remarked Lucia, unable to stop herself.

“Miss!” Luna exclaimed, putting the letter down and glaring angrily at the older girl. “If you want to keep interrupting like that, fine, but I won’t read it! You read it,” and she extended her hand, with the letter in it, out for Lucia to take.

The magic teacher was flabbergasted by the strong character that Luna was demonstrating when she became very annoyed by her antics. She turned to her student, hoping for some support, but instead she found him shrugging his shoulders and smiling helplessly at her. Realising she was alone on this one, she finally let out a sigh and pushed the letter back towards Luna.

“Sorry, Luna. I won’t interrupt you again,” she said, and she clamped her mouth shut by covering it with both of her hands.

Luna stared at her with an exasperated expression on her face before she said, “Okay,” and opened the letter and continued reading it out loud.

“The journey would take you months, going back and forth, as I don’t believe you’re quite strong enough to fly, let alone carry more than one or two person at a time. In addition to that, the cost of the journey will be high, such as paying the taxes for entering and leaving a country, the cost of travel for hiring a wagon, and the cost of the fee paid to enter the Forest of Lone with a tour guide.

You read it right. A tour guide. Why? It’s because they don’t want to repeat the mistake of letting travellers venture into the forest alone, especially when the mortality rate is pretty high due to the forest being dangerous and it was discovered that travellers are safer when one or many of the Warbeasts tag along with them for support due to the forest seeming to accept their presence better than the tourists’.

That’s why, though I can’t help you directly, I can provide you and your travelling companions with the funds necessary for the journey. If you’re interested, please come by our house in the next few days, and I will start arranging the necessary stuff for you and your companions before you begin your eventual journey.”

Once she finished speaking, she turned towards her childhood friend and said excitedly, “This is great, Alex!”

“Yeah! Miss’s father wants to help us out!” He replied, grinning broadly. Then he turned to his teacher and asked, “Isn’t this wonderful, miss?”

Lucia was still covering her mouth with her hand and looked apprehensively at Luna, who chuckled and said, “It’s okay, miss. You can talk now.” Removing her hands, she sighed and said to her student, “I don’t know, Alex. Relying on my dad’s finances is… well… not a welcomed idea.” Then she added as an afterthought, “It could be that he’s up to something by sending us this suspicious letter!”

Her student narrowed his eyebrows and asked, “Is it because you’re still angry at him?”

She thought about it for a moment before replying,m “Well, yes, I am still angry at him, but it’s more than that. See, Alex, I’m an independent woman that’s trying to do her best to grow up in society, so it meant a lot for me when I visited him personally and requested his help only to end up being refused.”

Alex stared at his teacher and thought, “I don’t know about your individualism, but I had to nag you into visiting him and requesting him for help.” He decided to not share his thoughts and instead say, “True, but he’s got his own reasons as he said so in his letter.”

“That’s the thing! Why couldn’t he just come out and told us that yesterday himself? He didn’t even try to stop us when we were going out the door for crying out loud,” she said, looking annoyed.

“Isn’t it because he was annoyed at us for bringing up that topic and pushing it?” Alex asked, looking very intently at his teacher with a serious expression on his face. “He said so in his letter, and I feel that justifies why he didn’t send us off.”

Lucia looked astonished by her student’s statement and fumbled with her words to reply. Unable to think of an appropriate reply, she looked over to Sarah and asked in support, “What do you think about this, Sarah?”

Alex’s mother was surprised by suddenly being included in this conversation. She momentarily hesitated as she thought about her response before saying, “Well, on one hand, Lucia is right that it’s not right to rely on her father’s funds, but on the other hand, It’s clear to me that both father and daughter are stubborn.”

“What?!” Lucia exclaimed, looking shocked.

Alex smiled as he knew his mother was going to support them as she went on to speak to his teacher.

“Considering the debacle that happened between you and my husband that resulted in my son getting hurt and Luna’s feeling getting hurt, I can safely say you’re stubborn just like your father. Don’t get me wrong, though,” she pressed on when Lucia opened her mouth to interject, “I’ve never met your father before, but going by what that letter says, I can safely say that you and him share a lot in common, and that stubbornness in believing that you’re right is a great similarity.”

Lucia kept opening and closing her mouth with a stunned disbelief on her face as her brain froze in thought. A moment later, she recovered and sighed deeply while bowing to her in agreement. Still, she wanted to put up a fight against the notion of accepting help from her father.

“Still, I’m an independent woman! I don’t like the idea of taking his help,” she stated firmly.

Her words made Sarah laugh and look softly at her before asking, “You call yourself independent, but did you give birth to yourself, did you feed yourself, or did you raise yourself without any kind of support from your parents?”

When Lucia nodded while looking uncomfortable, Sarah pressed on by asking, “So, this means you relied on your parents at every step of the way in growing up, right?”

“Yes, but that was the growing stage,” stated the young adult with her fighting spirit back in action. “I’m now a young adult and can stand on my own feet, and by all means, I should be able to take care of myself.”

Sarah did not say anything immediately but merely smiled at her before saying, “You want to know something, Lucia? The way your belief is warped in that thinking is very arrogant.”

“Huh?” Lucia asked, widening her eyes and looking shocked. “What do you mean, Sarah?”

Alex’s mother smiled and explained, “Take me for example, Lucia. I’m a single child who only had her grandmother to depend on in growing up. Let me tell you a bit of my story. It was back when I was at your age, I also felt the same and ventured out of home to search for jobs to stand on my own feet even though my grandmother didn’t want me to leave home. Sad thing is that I only found problems at every turn, and I lacked finances to support myself, and I couldn’t take a loan from the bank because I couldn’t show them that I could repay the amount.

When I was feeling lost, I feared that my grandmother wouldn’t accept me back after walking out of her home despite her telling me otherwise. So, when I returned, she was very happy to see me, welcomed me home and fed me all the favourite food I liked her making. In that instant, I felt ashamed of myself for not listening to her at all because of my stupidity of thinking I’m an independent woman. Even my grandmother had gotten thus far with the support of her parents, and then the support from her husband, my grandfather obviously.

So, I took her advice and realised that working in offices or shopping centres isn’t really my thing, so I let her find me a nice husband to get married to, and that’s how I got married to Samuel, and that’s how Al came into being.”

With that, she turned her head towards the left to where he sat in between Lucia and Luna. He looked at his mother in happiness and smiled warmly at her. Luna looked between them before extending her arms to either side and pulling them closer to her with a broad grin on her face.

“And I’m glad to be part of this family!” She exclaimed loudly with great happiness.

All three of them laughed chuckled and smiled at each other with joy on their faces. Lucia watched the scene unfold before her with a small smile on her face. After breaking away from the hug, Sarah turned back to look towards Lucia and smiled sweetly at her.

“Luna told me how your father spoke to you roughly yesterday when you went to meet him, but then she told me how he welcomed you home with great excitement,” she stated, wearing a knowing look on her face. “If your father was truly stubborn, he would have shut the door on your faces, but instead, he got excited to see his own child come home after I don’t know how long. It’s even evident in his letter when he admitted that he spoke roughly with you, but it’s good to see that he’s apologizing for it.”

“But… If he really missed me, then why… why didn’t he stop me when I left home?” Lucia asked her, a look of anguish forming on her face. “Why didn’t he stop me then?”

To that, Sarah merely smiled softly and replied, “It’s for the same reason as my grandmother.” When the magic teacher looked at her in amazement, she went on saying, “As the heads of their respective families, they obviously cannot take a wrong step in their decision, otherwise, their entire family would be affected.

In my case, if my grandmother did help me out finding jobs or paying for my rent in an apartment, I would’ve wasted a lot of our finances. Instead, she took the tough choice of watching me leave even though it hurt her a lot. I believe the same would apply with your father. I mean, he’s a member of the council that’s known to be crooked and dangerous, so maybe he was concerned that him showing outright support for you might cause them to come after you in a more serious manner? Maybe that was it?”

While Lucia looked shocked, Alex stared at his mother in amazement by her deduction skills. The truth of the matter was that there was a death threat on Lucia if her father, Matthew, supported her in a direct manner that helped her further her ambition of bringing awareness in people that magic is something that can be leant. This was something her father shared only with him, so he was amazed by how close his mother came to deducing the actions that Matthew had taken.

“That’s,” began his teacher and hesitated, unsure how to continue from there. She thought for a moment before asking, “That’s… um… That can’t be the case. I mean, my father’s strong and all. There’s no way some measly members of the council could possibly threaten him like that.”

Sarah shrugged her shoulders at that and said, “I don’t know. It was just a thought of mine, and it shouldn’t be taken literally, but I spoke about it because of the possibility of it happening. After all, there is no telling the lengths the council members go to in order to carry out their goals.”

“Perhaps,” said Lucia, looking as though she did not believe her words, “but how does that tie into me feeling okay to accept help from my father when I’m trying to strike out on my own?”

“Because the only people in this entire world who would care to give you anything… is your family. Not the family who are just there, but the family who are willing to do their best for their loved ones. As far as I’ve seen from the letter that your father wrote to you, I can guess he is a good man who’s doing his best for you. Even though there are circumstances that he can’t openly admit, he still wants to help you and that coincides with your intentions.”

“Yes and it’s very suspicious. It’s almost like he knew this would happen,” admitted Lucia, looking out of the window as if expecting to see someone spying on them.

Alex’s mother chuckled and said, “Be that as it may, but there is no shame in accepting help from family members because what they earn is for you to spend and live happily. That’s why I believe your father is not wrong considering my grandmother did pretty much the same in the past when I was being rebellious.”

“Mom’s right, miss,” said Alex, looking hopefully at his teacher. “Your father wants to help, and you know we would really struggle in trying to provide finances by ourselves without his help.”

“Yes, but,” she said and hesitated, looking troubled. “I… I don’t want to take his help just for his money. He’s my father after all, and taking advantage of him is‒!”

“You’re under a misconception, Lucia,” said Sarah, causing the magic teacher to look at her in surprise. “If you acted in front of him, made stuff up, downright lied to him, and tricked him, then yes, I’d say you’re taking advantage of him. Here, however, he wants to help you on his own volition because he wants to see you grow. Don’t get me wrong that I’m being supportive of this choice because it’ll save me from depositing my finances, but I wouldn’t have thought like this if he didn’t write that letter to you, but he did write it, and it goes to show that he wants to see you succeed. So, no, you’re not taking advantage of him and instead doing him a service of fulfilling his dream of seeing you becoming a successful woman in your own right.”

Lucia listened to Sarah speak continuously and remained silent when the woman finished her speech. She continued to look troubled, but with the way that Sarah explained it, she was starting to see the sense of it. Besides that, she was also feeling a little relieved that she would not have to worry about finances in order to go to the Forest of Lone.

As everyone was looking expectantly at her, she finally sighed and said, “Fine. I understand.” As Alex and Luna cheered and Sarah smiled with satisfaction, the young adult woman said, “I’ll go visit him tomorrow.”

While they were feeling happy with her decision, Luna looked down at the letter and read it one more time to be sure that she did not miss anything. It was then that she noticed some kind of writing that was sticking out through some words, making her feel confused. She turned the letter over and saw that there was more writing, but it was short compared to the rest.

“Hey. There’s a P.S.,” she said to them, catching their attention and making them turn to her.

“What does it say, Luna?” Alex asked curiously.

By the time he asked, his childhood had already read the statement and let out a hearty giggle. This made the three other people in the room to become curious at her reaction.

“What is it, Luna? Why did you laugh?” Lucia asked, looking apprehensively at the kid.

“Um, well,” began Luna hesitantly, wearing a smile and looked in embarrassment at her. When they urged her to go on, she grinned and read the single like that said, “P.S. If you meet a guy on your journey that you really like and is nice, don’t hesitate to marry him and give me a grandchild. As for gender, that’s your choice. I just want to be a grandfather.”

As she finished, she looked at Lucia along with Alex and Sarah, who were both looking astonished. Sure enough, Lucia froze on the spot and looked at the letter with wide eyes filled with shock. Then she quickly rose to her feet, hurried to Luna and took the letter from her to read what her father wrote before going red in the face and tearing the letter apart and each time she tore, she uttered a word to express her annoyance.

“That. Damn. Old. Man. Is. Always. Being. Like. This,” and she stuffed the shredded pieces of paper into her pocket. “On second thought, I probably shouldn’t go see him.”

“Miss!” Alex protested.

“Okay, okay,” she said, relenting a little, “but you two also need to come because I’m worried my father would nag me about marriage.”

“Sure thing!” Alex and Luna said simultaneously, and the two kids grinned at each other in excitement at the prospect of going on a journey.