Chapter 44: Headmaster, What Are You Doing?
Uriel shot Galatina a sideways glance.
The echo of her "good job, everyone" was still hanging in the air. The three girls hadn't fully recovered from the emotional whiplash. This was the perfect window to steer the narrative.
He cleared his throat and leaned into the opening she had accidentally provided.
"Once you've rested, resume the investigation into that... you know."
He paused. He timed the silence perfectly, making it look as though he were genuinely trying to remember the term instead of improvising.
"The cult. Report any developments to me immediately."
He added one final directive to lock it in.
"I will remain undercover as a student to monitor internal movements."
Lumina met his gaze and gave a firm nod.
Fenria's ears perked up first, and then her entire posture shifted. The new orders washed away her lingering confusion. Her canine ears twitched as she snapped into a state of total readiness.
Kira looked equally pumped. Her face remained perfectly serious, but Uriel could practically see the wheels turning in her head. She was definitely already fan-casting the dynamic between the Scribe and the Witch.
"Understood."
The three of them spoke in perfect, rehearsed unison.
They pivoted on their heels and marched down the corridor. They looked like they were about to break into a synchronized goose-step.
Uriel watched them disappear around the corner of the old school building. The last thing to vanish was Fenria's massive tail. The tip was drawing excited circles in the air, waving like a victorious banner in a parade.
He turned back to the Witch. She was still waving. Her golden eyes crinkled into happy crescents behind her mask. She whispered a soft "stay safe out there" toward the empty hallway.
Uriel watched them go, then yanked his focus back to the present. It was time to get to work.
Where was the Headmaster?
He activated his Observer. The flow of Aether materialized in his vision. The academy's mana network spread out before him like a translucent web of veins. Most of the nodes had returned to normal, and the residual interference from the barrier was fading. He filtered out the static and narrowed his perception. He hunted for a specific mana signature matching the Headmaster's power level. He looked for a white light, pale as moonlight, with a faint blue-purple hue. A Mithril-tier glow.
He found it.
The residual trail was heading up toward the Headmaster's office in the teaching building.
Uriel stared in that direction and deactivated the skill. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Time to put his detective hat back on.
The conclusion was obvious. The man was burning evidence and preparing to bolt.
"Mom. Let's move."
Uriel tapped the Witch's wrist.
"Teaching building. Headmaster's office. The target is still upstairs."
He quickly briefed her on the next phase of the script.
The Witch nodded. Her figure blurred and vanished. A faint scuff of a boot sounded on the roof above, and then there was nothing but silence.
---
The man in the mask pushed open the door to the Headmaster's office. His gloves were already on. He yanked off the long-haired wig, tossed it onto the desk, and unclasped the mask.
Beneath it was the distinguished face of Headmaster Oswald Rutherford.
The room looked exactly as he had left it. He walked straight behind the massive oak desk and bent down. He pulled a stack of documents bound in dark red leather from a bottom drawer. He reached into a hidden compartment in the bookshelf and retrieved a flat metal case. He piled everything onto the desk without a wasted move.
He popped the metal case open and checked the contents. Two small glass vials sat neatly inside. A deep purple liquid swirled within them, casting an ominous, sickly glow in the dim light. These were the unfinished prototypes. The low-grade elixirs. This was his entire remaining stock.
He snapped the case shut and stacked it on top of the documents in the center of the desk.
"Where the hell did Klein go?"
He muttered to himself as he prepared to ignite the pile. His tone was annoyed but not overly concerned.
"Tch. He better have just finished the job and clocked out early," he muttered. "Irresponsible brat."
The continuous derailment of tonight's operation had planted a seed of subconscious anxiety. He snapped his fingers to conjure a spark, but the spell fizzled. He tried a second time. It failed again.
Finally, a flame caught the corner of the parchment. The orange light threw wild, flickering shadows across the office walls.
He wasn't just burning things in the office. The magic circles he had planted across the academy grounds were igniting as well.
He stood by the desk and watched the documents curl and blacken. His face went still—calculating, distant, eerily composed.
Seraphina had called in sick. Some students had evaded capture. Klein had vanished without a trace.
He frowned. His thoughts circled back to his missing enforcer.
Klein was a Mithril-tier dual-wielder. Oswald had seen the man fight. His strikes were clean, fast, and utterly lethal. Routine trouble wouldn't have stopped him. Yet, there was absolute radio silence. Klein was a man of few words, but he was reliable. He wouldn't just ghost the mission unless he was deeply pissed off.
"Tch."
Oswald exhaled a low breath. He grabbed a brass poker and stirred the burning pile to ensure an even spread. Outside, the secondary fires were roaring to life. He had deliberately routed the flames away from the auditorium. He wanted to draw the Knight Order's attention, not catch a genocide charge.
"A fire this big will definitely grab their attention. The surviving cultists will make perfect decoys to divert the investigation."
He let out a soft, self-satisfied chuckle.
"Flawless."
A draft rushed through the open window and fed the flames. The fire surged upward. The dancing light threw his shadow against the wall, twisting it into a grotesque shape.
His priority now was to scrub this room clean and slip out the back before the knights arrived. Let the cultists in the auditorium get arrested. There was no direct evidence linking them to him. He was still the Headmaster. He still had his reputation.
If the investigators came knocking, he would deal with it then.
He stared into the fire. The flames reflected in his rigid face, blurring his severe features.
Then, a voice drifted from the windowsill.
"Headmaster, what are you doing?"
Oswald whipped around.
A boy was sitting on the wide stone sill. He had short hair, brown eyes, and remarkably average features. He rested one hand on the window frame. One knee was drawn up, while his other leg dangled casually in the open air.
His presence was so faint it barely registered. He looked like a random passerby, yet he also looked like he had been waiting there for hours. If he hadn't spoken, Oswald might never have noticed him at all.
Oswald couldn't place the name.
He saw hundreds of students every year. That face was just... there.
"Who are you?"
Oswald wasn't even sure if they had ever met. The boy was painfully generic. Every time Oswald tried to recall his face, his mind drew a complete blank. Yet here this utterly unremarkable student sat, framed by the firelight and the open sky, staring down at the burning evidence.
"You..."
Oswald's fingers curled into a silent, lethal grip beneath his cloak. He readied a spell.
"What is your name?"
Uriel didn't answer.
Oswald ran a quick tactical assessment. Just a student. The kid probably fled the chaos in the auditorium, panicked, and hid in the teaching building. He just happened to stumble into the Headmaster's office while Oswald was cleaning up.
Oswald weighed his options. If he attacked here, things could get messy. Klein had clearly failed to secure the perimeter. There might be other students hiding on this floor. A loud fight would draw unwanted attention. It was better to placate the boy, wait for the fire to spread, and quietly eliminate him during the evacuation.
Naturally, Oswald had no idea that Klein was currently stacked on the roof directly above his head, forming a very neat pile with the other cultists.
Oswald relaxed his grip. His facial muscles rapidly reconfigured into a standard educator's smile. The curve of his lips was precise. The crinkles around his eyes were perfectly calibrated. It was the exact same welcoming expression he used during freshman orientation.
"Are you alright, young man?"
Since he couldn't remember the name, he defaulted to a generic term. His voice shifted into a warm, paternal register. He took a half-step forward. He kept one hand hidden behind his back and gestured toward the flickering glow outside the window with the other.
"There is a fire outside, and the situation is quite chaotic. You are safe to hide in here for now."
Uriel neither nodded nor moved. In truth, his brain was currently experiencing a minor buffering error.
Crap. Should I have made up a sufficiently NPC-tier fake name before speaking?
He sat on the sill and let his dangling leg swing slightly. His brown eyes caught the firelight, burning with an unnatural intensity. His face remained completely blank as he stared at Oswald.
There was something deeply rotten in the Headmaster's eyes. The smile was plastered on. It was entirely fake. The man's eyes were darting around, measuring distances and calculating angles.
Uriel figured his mother had drilled too many survival instincts into him. Reading hostile intent had become pure intuition. This man was off. And that posture, with one hand hidden behind his back, screamed of an impending cheap shot.
Uriel tilted his head. He swept his gaze toward the burning stack of documents on the desk. He asked a question he already knew the answer to.
"What's with those papers?"