Andrea slowly pushed away her parents from their embrace, which surprised them a little.

  “Darling, what’s wrong?” Bethany asked. She noticed the depressed look on her daughter’s face. Her eyes were baggy and almost lifeless.

  “Is it that girl Caroline again?” She placed her hands on Andrea’s shoulders and frowned. “We’ve reported her to the school numerous times, and they still do nothing. Just because she’s from one of the disciples' families doesn’t mean she can do whatever the hell she wants!”

  “RUFUS!” Andrea’s dad jerked up at the sound of his wife’s scream. “Come on! We’re going back to that school!”

  “Mom, stop!” Andrea exclaimed. Another shocker. Andrea’s sudden outburst caused Bethany to calm down a little.

  “It wasn’t Caroline. I mean… It was… But…” Andrea sighed. “It’s complicated, okay?”

  “Sure, darling. We can talk about it later when you’re ready,” Bethany said.

  ‘That was close,’ Andrea thought. Just like Bethany had said, there were many times when they would notice Caroline’s bullying and would always make a complaint to the academy, but Caroline always got a slap on the wrist.

  Of course, she did. Caroline was a talented mage who belonged to the family of one of Morgan's disciples—that was basically royalty—while Andrea… She was nobody, absolutely nobody.

  Why would they bother trying to help her? Andrea passed her mother and walked up the stairs behind her.

  “I’m going to my room,” Andrea announced.

  “Drea,” Rufus said, causing Andrea to stop climbing. “Listen, since you’re here, would you mind doing your old man a solid? The attic is a little messy. I promised your mother I'd clean it, but… Maybe you could help me. You don’t have to do everything, just half.”

  Bethany turned to her husband and frowned intensely. “What? What did I say?”

  “What do you mean ‘what’?” Bethany asked. “Our daughter comes home upset, and you’re asking her to do chores? How dense can you be!?” Bethany said.

  “Actually…” Andrea interrupted. “I don’t mind. Sure, Dad, I'll help you clean the attic.”

  “You don’t have to. You just got home. Have some rest. Don’t let your father guilt you into doing a chore he was supposed to do months ago!” Bethany continued frowning at her husband, making Rufus uncomfortable. It showed as he scratched the back of his head and looked away.

  “It’s okay, Mum. I think I want to. It’ll help take my mind off things,” Andrea said. She continued her steps up the stairs and headed to the attic.

  “See! I know our daughter better than you think, Beth. I saw she needed a distraction,” Rufus said.

  “Yeah. That’s why you did that,” Bethany said, unconvinced.

  Meanwhile, Andrea had opened the hatch to the attic and climbed up its foldable wooden stairs. As she emerged in the attic, the first thing she did was let out a huge sneeze.

  “Ugh… It’s so dusty here,” Andrea said, rubbing her nose. Now that her two feet were inside the attic, she could see the mess.

  “Come on, Dad. Seriously, you didn’t get any work done.” The attic was littered with junk and stuff not arranged in order whatsoever.

  This is gonna take a while.

  Andrea started organizing. She started by separating the stuff they needed into one pile and the stuff they didn’t need into another.

  The pile of useless stuff contained things like her dad's old record album and an electric guitar he hadn’t used in forever. He might be mad about it, but Andrea thought it would finally teach him a lesson about procrastinating.

  The useful stuff consisted of things like clothes, books, and family heirlooms from her mother’s side.

  It was going pretty well. After she started sorting the useful stuff into their rightful place, she suddenly stopped.

  “This isn’t working.” She took on this chore to clear her head. At first, it was working, but after some time, thoughts began to slowly creep in. Thoughts reminding her that she only had one year to graduate and hadn’t truly achieved anything worthwhile, thoughts on her failure to change herself, and… thoughts about how she lost Lucien to Caroline.

  Lucien was never hers, she knew that. Of course, she did. But she had hoped, no matter how silly, no matter how unlikely, that Lucien would see her, truly see her. But Caroline—

  Andrea frowned and gritted her teeth as she thought of her. New thoughts arrived as she did. Anger, hatred, and pure wrath.

  She stole the hope of her being with Lucien just like she stole the hope of her ever becoming a great mage.

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  “It’s her! It’s always her! She’s the cause of all my problems!”

  “If only she was never born, then maybe… maybe…” Andrea started to huff and pant. The tears she had been holding back in the academy started to roll down like a stream.

  She collapsed on the attic’s floor on her knees.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” She let out a dreadful scream. The stress was too much. She had to let it out somehow, or she felt it would eat her from the inside.

  The scream wasn’t nearly enough. She had to destroy something, anything. It didn’t matter what. She quickly got up and shouted a word.

  “Pulsa!” The word activated the spell used to open the summons hall door. Just like before, a telekinetic wave appeared from her hand. But instead of unlocking anything, it knocked down many of the objects in the room.

  Andrea panted heavily. “More!” She brought out both hands and activated the spell again and again. “Pulsa! Pulsa! PUUUUUULLLLSAAA!”

  The telekinetic spell was ruining all of her work, knocking down and destroying many objects in the process. Andrea’s mental breakdown seemed to have no end.

  In the midst of her rampage, a tome stacked on top of the piles was gradually slipping to the edge due to the impact of the continuous use of pulsa.

  It finally fell over and hit the floor. As it did, it bounced a few inches into the air. “Pulsa,” Andrea activated the spell once more, and it clashed with the tome.

  As it did, the book fell on its back, but that’s not all it did. The tome slowly started to levitate. After numerous uses of pulsa, Andrea had somewhat calmed down, more like she had tired herself out.

  She continued panting. She might have been physically exhausted, but the rage still remained. So her outburst had done very little to make her feel better.

  She turned behind her and noticed the floating tome. It was a few feet above her. She was surprised but not as surprised as someone who had never witnessed magic would be.

  After all, she went to a magical academy. A floating book was far from the strangest thing she had ever seen. “I didn’t know we had any magical items.”

  Andrea stared intently at the tome. The cover, made of dark, weathered leather, had a pentagram at its center with a blood-red gem set into it. Metallic plating lined the edges and spine, giving it a sturdy and distinct look.

  “Wait. Is that a grimoire?” The red gem generated a line of flexible light from its end to Andrea’s chest. It happened so fast that Andrea was unable to react in time.

  Andrea was frozen. Not frozen out of fear or shock. No, she was actually frozen, unable to move even her eyelids. The line of light floated Andrea to the same level as the floating grimoire.

  Andrea had a strange sensation as she floated. She could feel her energy, her mana, the source of magic which mages used to perform spells, being sucked out of her, and at the same time, she could feel a new, different type of energy flow into her. It was mana, but not hers. It felt more… potent.

  After minutes of the strange occurrence, the light returned to the red gem, and both Andrea and the tome crashed into the floor.

  “Ow!” Andrea grunted in pain. “What was that?” Andrea brushed off the dust from her clothes and picked up the tome.

  She flipped through the pages of the book and found nothing. It was blank. “That’s disappointing.” Seeing the grimoire had given Andrea some sort of excitement. After the day she had, she really needed to feel something else, anything else.

  But there was nothing written on it. “Okay, there’s no writing on it, but this isn’t a regular book, that’s for sure. It did something to me.”

  Andrea grabbed her chest. “My mana. My body, it feels different. It feels….. Hot?” That was one word to describe what Andrea was going through, but her rise in body temperature wasn’t all that she was feeling. The mana in her body, a wave of colorful energy, constantly swirling around chaotically, running through every cell.

  She felt uneasy, like at any moment this energy inside her could explode. But she didn’t feel any pain.

  In the midst of her trying to figure out what was happening to herself, both her parents burst through the trap door and rushed to her.

  “What happened!?” Bethany asked.

  “Uhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Andrea uttered, not sure how to explain her situation. Her parents’ gaze turned towards the littered stuff lying around all over the attic.

  Somehow, it was even worse than when Andrea had arrived, and that was truly saying something. “I stacked one of the piles too high, and it fell on another pile and made a kind of a domino avalanche.”

  Andrea gave her parents an awkward smile. ‘That’s a good lie, right?’

  Bethany let out a sigh of relief and placed both hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m glad you’re alright. When I heard you scream, I feared the worst. It sounded like you were being stabbed,” Bethany said.

  This saddened Andrea. The last thing she ever wanted to do was sadden her parents. Bethany placed her hand on her daughter’s forehead.

  “You’re burning up. You might have a fever. I could try using a healing spell, but I think it’s better if you just sleep it off. Besides, you need the rest.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good, Mom,” Andrea said. “Wonderful. And your father will clean this place up, just like he was supposed to,” Bethany said, giving her husband the stink eye.

  He rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. Bethany led Andrea out of the basement and into her room while she still held the grimoire in her hand.

  That night, while sleeping, Andrea twisted and turned. Her body temperature had gone up, way up. She sweated buckets in her sheets, and she was struggling for air. It was torture.

  She had placed the grimoire she had found in the attic on one of her drawers. After hours of an uncomfortable slumber, the grimoire slowly opened up by itself and flipped to a random page.

  Symbols of an unknown language began to burn into one of the pages of the tome, leaving writing that resembled dark, bold ink. It translated to “Evolution spell.”

  Morning had come, and the sun had risen. Andrea got up and yawned loudly, and surprisingly, she felt better than ever.

  “Wow, I guess Mom was right. I just needed to sleep it off.” She stretched and headed to the bathroom. In the midst of her brushing her teeth, Andrea looked in the mirror.

  She screamed, dropped her toothbrush, and backed away to the bathroom wall. She was shocked by what she saw.

  After a while, she slowly walked back to the mirror to confirm what she saw was reality and not a figment of her imagination. Finally approaching the mirror, Andrea knew what she was seeing was indeed real.

  “This can’t be. I’m… I’m… I’m tall!” Not just tall. Andrea had grown about 1.80 centimeters overnight. Her red hair curled more and traveled all the way down to her waist. Speaking of her waist, it was slim and slender, with abs slightly showing. Her face had a more feminine look, her skin was smooth and glowed, and her arms were slightly built.

  She had achieved the body of an athlete overnight. “I guess the growth spurt finally came.” Andrea chuckled and smiled.