Meanwhile, tensions were rising in Contingent. After what happened with Ashton, not a single soul dared to stand up against the nobles who were still attending the academy. The students were only aware that Ashton had been expelled from the academy and was training somewhere else. Which more or less meant he was gone for good.
What they didn't know was that he was now working as an adventurer and gaining more and more powers and abilities as days passed. But why was Ashton still a source of tension in the academy? The answer was pretty simple.
While Ashton was attending the academy, all of the nobles more or less had their focus solely on him. But with him gone, the bullies had to look for new targets. Especially those who had their eyes set on the bounty which was placed on Ashton's head.
They felt as if they had been cheated out of the opportunity of earning a lot of money. That feeling led to frustration and with the primary target of their frustration gone, the nobles decided to find new toys to play with.
The academy had no shortage of such toys either. After all, the noble populous of the academy only constituted about 20%. The rest of the students belonged to the side families of the noble lords or were simply admitted into the academy on the basis of their talents.
These were the people who ended up on the receiving end of the noble's abuse of power. For the first time since the semester began, they were now being subjected to innumerable horrors, ranging from casual beating to downright torture.
The Academy was slowly turning back to the hell hole it was before. Only this time, there was no one who dared to stand against the nobles as they did whatever they wanted to.
Even the professors often turned a blind eye to the blatant abuse that was going on there because they had their own problems to deal with.
While all of this was going on, no one had seen the director. Even the professors didn't know what was going on with her as one day she just up and left without saying a word to anyone.
They were hoping she would return back soon, but that did not seem to be the case. The professors tried their best to not let the news of her disappearance leak out, but they inevitably failed.
Prior to her disappearance, the director was often seen wandering around the campus at least once a week. But it had been roughly three weeks and none of the students had seen her. This led to the students thinking and soon they realised she must have gone missing a few days after her trial.
Despite the professors not wanting to, they had to inevitably inform the authorities about her disappearance but nothing of substance was found. It was as if she had vanished in thin air.
Everyone had their own theory about what could have happened to her. But the majority of them believed someone must have gotten rid of her. As absurd as the thought of one of Lycania's strongest mages disappearing out of nowhere was, there was no other explanation for it either.
Either way, the investigations were still going on, but the director's absence only made the nobles rampage even more. She was the only one in 'power' to stop or at least keep the bullying and tormenting on the leash. But with her gone, all hell had broken loose in the campus.
However, it wasn't like all of the professors were ignoring the matter. Some professors had their own way of dealing with noble brats, especially Kakaroff.
Since the nobles wanted to prove their superiority so desperately, he gave them a chance to do so by giving them 10 times more work than the rest of the students. It was intended to punish the wrongdoers as well as give them less time to practically do anything apart from focusing on their work.
This 'diplomatic' way of punishing the students was somehow showing results so more and more professors incorporated it in their classes. While some of the professors were busy tending to the matters of the academy, the rest of them began looking for the director with little to no luck.
In the end, they had to give up, not knowing how far they were from finding her under the clutches of the Conundrum.
***
"He died!?" Baiter yelled in shock, "A royal knight died? How? Why? How…?"
"Shut it Baiter… didn't you see how shook Ashton was?" Renee retorted, "And now he is unconscious as well."
It had been an hour since Ashton turned back in the ruined city, drenched in his own blood. There were uncountable bite marks on his body, while the acidic rain had turned whatever remained of his skin into a canvas of pain.
Fae was desperately trying to heal him up while Virgil tried to untangle the head from the tail of what Ashton had told them before collapsing.
"Killing a royal knight is no joke." Virgil murmured, "But I can see it happening. This place, including the cave they went into, is shrouded in mystery. No one knows what kind of creatures might be hiding in the dark out there."
"But it's a royal knight we are talking about-" Baiter was having the hardest time accepting the reality.
"Royal knight or not, they are still living beings who can die." Virgil sighed, "We have to report it to the guild as well as the king. But first, we need to get our stories straight. For that, we need Ashton to regain consciousness."
A few moments later, Fae had done whatever she could to help Ashton. Although everyone had their questions, they had no choice but to wait for him to wake up. The atmosphere had turned gloomy with no one knowing what they were supposed to do now.
"Let's just hope the king is kind enough to let us keep our heads.." Virgil subtly hinted at the obvious, "He might not freak out about losing a knight as much as he would if something happened to Ashton."