Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 160: Stalker Pro Max

Even a dumb person could have seen her from a mile away... It wasn’t like she was hiding it, she had been sitting opposite his House!

’Of course,’ Silas thought, a migraine-inducing throb pulsing behind his eyes. ’Of course she’s here... I can’t even register my sister for basic math without tripping over another generic anime-villain plot device. What are the odds that her little sister is the exact same age as Lia, enrolling on the exact same day? Zero... It seems like the universe is actively conspiring against me.’

The Principal quickly navigated the introductions.

"Lady Harper, this is Lord Silas Graves. He is also enrolling his sister, Lia, into the Second Year Cohort this morning. I was just about to send them down to the uniform reservoir."

Harper finally turned her head, looking down at Silas as if she had just noticed him sitting there.

She acted perfectly surprised.

"Lord Graves...? What an unexpected coincidence."

"Yeah. Thrilling," Silas muttered deadpan.

"Excellent!" the Principal clapped his hands together, completely oblivious to the tension that was suffocating the room. "Since you both require outfitting, the Secretary can take both girls down to the reservoir simultaneously... It will save us a tremendous amount of time!"

Within five minutes, they had relocated.

They left the plush mahogany-lined office and rode the elevator down to the sprawling, brightly lit uniform reservoir located on the ground floor of the administrative spire.

The reservoir was massive, looking more like a high-end commercial department store than a school supply closet.

Rows upon rows of perfectly pressed Valoria Academy uniforms hung on enchanted racks.

There were dark blazers with silver trim, pleated skirts, tailored trousers, and heavy winter cloaks adorned with the Academy’s glowing crest.

The Secretary was currently showing the two young girls around the racks, pulling different sizes and styles for them to try on.

Lia and Penelope were ushered into a massive mirrored fitting room at the back of the reservoir.

Silas didn’t follow them in.

He walked over to a polished wooden bench situated in the hallway directly outside the fitting room doors, intending to sit down in silence, stare at the wall, and mentally prepare himself for the Secret Realm raid that was happening later.

He sat down, resting his elbows on his knees.

The curtain of the fitting room was drawn shut, but he could clearly hear the interaction taking place inside.

"Ugh, this fabric is incredibly stiff," Penelope’s voice whined loudly from behind the curtain.

The obnoxious popping sound of bubblegum being aggressively chewed punctuated her complaint.

"It’s so tight around the shoulders. My private tailor at the estate uses imported silk for my daily wear. This feels like I’m wearing a burlap sack."

’Haah... I can’t relate to Nepo Babies at all.’ Silas thought.

Lia, who had literally spent the last two years wearing actual burlap sacks and stealing clothes from donation bins, let out a highly unamused sigh.

"It’s just a uniform," Lia replied flatly. "It’s not supposed to be silk... You just wear it so you don’t look like a slob."

"Excuse me?" Penelope snapped back with her chewing pausing. "Do you know who my sister is? We don’t wear cheap cotton. I’m Penelope. What’s your name?"

"Lia," his sister shot back immediately, completely unbothered by the aristocratic threat. "And I don’t care who your sister is. My brother kills monsters for a living so he could probably throw your sister over a building."

Silas closed his eyes, rubbing his temples.

’Well, she’s not wrong about that...’

The Secretary, clearly realizing the situation was devolving into a playground turf war, quickly excused herself.

"I will leave you girls to finish adjusting the hemlines!" the Secretary announced cheerfully, stepping out from behind the curtain and practically sprinting down the hallway to escape the hostile energy.

Silas was left sitting alone on the wooden bench in the quiet hallway.

He let out a long slow breath, closing his eyes and trying to cycle his mana to clear the impending headache.

’I just need to think... and calm down.’

However before Silas could even try to, he heard the rhythmic click of expensive heels walking down the polished floorboards.

The footsteps stopped directly in front of him.

The fabric of the bench compressed slightly as someone sat down right next to him, invading his personal space and Silas didn’t open his eyes.

He already knew who it was.

Harper leaned back against the wooden bench. She reached up with a manicured finger, slowly and deliberately pushing her wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose.

She turned her head, looking at his sharp profile with a smug smile.

"Silas-kun!" Harper chimed softly, her voice dripping with artificial, saccharine sweetness. "We meet again..."

He immediately rolled his eyes. "You’re not Yamatoan."

’Apparently that’s what they call Japanese people in this world...’ Silas thought, he could have come up with a much better name but hey, he wasn’t on the World Council.

Harper froze.

The bubbly smile faltered slightly on her lips as she blinked behind her expensive lenses with her expression cracking just a fraction.

"Yamatoan?" Harper repeated, her brow furrowing in genuine confusion.

She tilted her head. "Wait. What country did ’kun’ actually come from? I thought it was just a generic pre-cataclysm term of endearment."

"It’s from the Yamato Sector of the island archipelago outside..." Silas corrected her flatly, leaning his broad shoulders back against the wall. "And it sounds ridiculous coming from a Lord who tried to recruit me not too long ago."

Harper’s cheeks flushed a very dusky pink as she cleared her throat, quickly abandoning the poorly researched linguistic angle.

Silas didn’t let her recover her momentum.

He turned fully toward her with his golden-ringed eyes locking onto her purple ones.

"Let me ask you a question," Silas said. "Is it just a coincidence that your little sister happens to be enrolling in the exact same cohort as mine, on the exact same Saturday morning... right after you spent the last two hours sitting on a bench directly across the street from my Silverleaf apartment?"

Harper let out a slow quiet breath.

She knew he had seen her on the bench, of course.

He was a Lord with a high ranking Core; his sensory perception would have picked up her mana signature the second he walked out of the lobby.

She just hadn’t expected him to be so brutally direct about it.

The standard noble males she usually dealt with would have danced around the subject for an hour, playing political chess while Silas just took a sledgehammer to the board.

’Right,’ Harper thought rapidly, adjusting her strategy. ’The aggressive approach isn’t working. If I keep pushing the hostile takeover angle, he’s just going to drop a spell on my head and walk away.’

Harper needed to make herself sound a lot less forceful, lest she scare him away before the actual endgame could begin.

She visibly deflated.

The rigid posture of a ruthless CEO vanished as she slumped her shoulders slightly, shyly looking down at the wooden bench between them.

Harper reached out, gently twiddling her manicured thumbs in her lap, presenting the perfect image of a humbled and slightly embarrassed young woman.

"After you rejected my offer in front of Solstice Cafe," Harper murmured with her voice soft and surprisingly vulnerable. "I took some time to reflect. And... I apologize. I apologize for approaching you out of the blue like that, and for asking you like that when it’s obvious what your answer will be. My father puts a lot of pressure on me to secure talent for the guild. I just hoped... I hoped we could start over. I just hoped we could be friends, is all."

Silas stared at her.

He looked at the downcast eyes, he looked at the twiddling thumbs and he looked at the perfect picture of remorse that seemed to be in her eyes.

It was times like this that Silas wished he had Eluned’s ability to read intents.

’That doesn’t really excuse the stalking,’ Silas thought. ’You can’t just slap a cute bandage over the fact that you actively tracked my residential address and followed my eleven-year-old sister to school.’

He didn’t keep the thought to himself.

"That doesn’t really excuse the stalking, Harper," Silas told her bluntly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Following me to my house isn’t exactly ’friendly’ behavior."

Harper winced with her shy facade breaking too as she realized he was immune to standard manipulation tactics.

"Okay, yes. The bench was a bit much," Harper admitted, letting out a heavy sigh and completely dropping the shy-girl act.

She leaned back against the wall, crossing her own arms and finally acting like a normal human being. "I apologize again. Truly. I just needed to figure out what your daily routine was... You’re an anomaly, Silas. You don’t operate like any other Lord in this city. I just wanted to figure you out."

’Why is she speaking like she got this from ChatGPT? Anomaly? Don’t operate like any other Lord in this city?’ Silas thought. What bullshit was she on?

"I like quiet mornings and staying out of guild wars," Silas replied smoothly. "There. You figured me out."

Before Harper could attempt to dissect that statement, the velvet curtain of the fitting room was violently shoved aside.

The two girls stepped out into the hallway.

The transformation was immediate.

Lia was wearing the impeccably tailored uniform of the Valoria Academy Foundational Cohort.

She wore a dark, charcoal-gray blazer with silver trim along the lapels, a crisp white button-down shirt, a tasteful dark blue tie, and a pleated gray skirt over dark leggings.

The uniform fit her perfectly, erasing the last lingering traces of the street-rat she used to be. Lia looked intelligent and fiercely proud.

Penelope stepped out right beside her. The purple-haired noble was wearing the exact same uniform, though she had somehow managed to make it look slightly chaotic.

Her blazer was unbuttoned, her tie was loose, and she was still aggressively chewing her bubblegum, popping a small pink bubble as she looked at her older sister.

Silas and Harper immediately stood up from the bench.

"Look at you," Silas smiled genuinely, stepping forward and adjusting the collar of Lia’s blazer. "You look like you’re about to run the entire campus."

Lia beamed, her chest puffing out. "I told you! I’m going to be the smartest kid in the building!"

Harper walked over to Penelope, offering her little sister an equally approving nod. "The tailoring suits you, Pen. It hides the fact that you keep getting into fistfights with your combat tutors."

"The tutor was weak," Penelope mumbled around her gum. "He couldn’t even block a basic attack."

They took off their clothes shortly after that.

The Secretary hurried out from behind the curtain, looking incredibly relieved that the two children hadn’t actually murdered each other in the fitting room.

She was carrying two massive paper shopping bags bearing the gold-leaf crest of the Valoria Academy.

"The uniforms are a perfect fit!" the Secretary announced cheerfully, maintaining a safe distance from Silas after her earlier talk.

She held the bags out toward the two Lords. "You may keep the primary uniforms today. I have packaged their old clothing and the secondary uniform sets in these bags for you to carry."

Silas didn’t reach for the paper bag and Harper didn’t either.

Instead, Silas simply raised his right hand.

A brief pixelated flash of golden light illuminated the hallway, and the pile of folded clothes resting on the fitting room counter instantly vanished, pulled directly into his Lord Inventory.

Right next to him, Harper casually flicked her wrist. A spatial ripple opened in the air, swallowing Penelope’s belongings into her own Lord storage space.

The Secretary froze, her hands awkwardly holding out the empty paper bags.

She blinked, her cheeks flushing a bright, embarrassed red as she realized she had just offered baseline terrestrial carrying bags to two incredibly powerful awakened Lords who could store entire buildings in their pockets.

"Ah... r-right. Of course," the Secretary stammered, quickly pulling the paper bags back and hiding them behind her back.

She cleared her throat, forcing her professional smile back into place. "The two girls will officially resume their classes on Monday morning. The required cohort timetables, access credentials, and standardized textbooks will be delivered directly to your respective residential estates by courier tomorrow."

"Thank you," Silas nodded, resting his hand on Lia’s shoulder.

"We appreciate the efficiency," Harper added smoothly.

With the logistics officially concluded, they turned and walked together down the plush carpeted hallway, riding the runic elevator back down to the ground floor.

They left the administrative spire, crossing the bustling courtyards, and finally stepped back out through the massive wrought-iron front gates of the Academy.

The cool morning air hit them as they reached the cobblestone sidewalk.

It was time to split up.

Silas looked at the purple-haired noble.

Harper was really a character.

She was manipulative and invasive but she hadn’t actively tried to kill him yet.

Regardless, Silas didn’t want to talk to her much longer. She felt quite slimy, and he had girls to manage.

"Well, see you around," Silas said, offering a curt nod.

Harper stopped on the curb.

She turned to face him with the cool CEO look returning flawlessly to her features. She reached up, adjusting her wire-rimmed glasses, and offered him a slow smile.

"I can’t wait to see you in the Secret Realm tonight, Silas-kun," Harper waved at him.