Chapter 116: The Investigation Continues
Out of all of them, Rosa was the one who wanted to clear Hildegard’s name most of all, so hearing that Hildegard was no longer going to be coming to school even after they managed to clear her name must be a heavy pill to swallow!
Headmaster Leonart let out a small sigh, and he turned back to Percy.
"I’m sorry things turned out this way, Percival. I did not predict her mother acting this way."
Percy waved the apology away.
"No need for that. It’s not your fault. Besides, I already had a feeling her mother would come and see her eventually. I just didn’t think she would do it this way. Do your best to try and bring Hildegard back to school. It’ll be a shame if a student like her isn’t allowed to graduate."
Leonart nodded.
"Of course. It won’t be easy, but I’ll try my best."
Percy gave a simple smile in return before saying goodbye to both Leonart and Viva and leaving the meeting hall. On the other end of the meeting hall, Clement, the Artefact Analysis teacher, watched the group with a smile on his face before he huffed and turned to leave! Clement was the one who helped Hildegard’s mother with this entire situation, and as far as Clement was concerned, it was for the best. Someone like Hildegard didn’t deserve to be in such a prestigious academy, and now that she was gone, Clement was sure that things would return to normal once again!
....
Over the next few days, things settled down in the academy just like everyone believed it would. Now that Hildegard was gone, the students were able to return to their normal routine and classes, and there were no more rumors or gossip going around the school. The news about Hildegard being innocent was made public news a few days after the meeting between the teachers and the City Guard, but even after Hildegard’s name was cleared, there were still many students in school who just didn’t want to believe that Hildegard was not involved in this matter one way or another!
People always wanted to have a scapegoat for cases like this, and the death of the eighteen students was serious enough for people to start demanding that the investigation be reopened so that they could find out what really happened. But the City Guard ignored those people because their investigations about Hildegard had already been completed, and they knew that Hildegard was not responsible for the deaths!
Instead, the City Guards began to look into the boy who had used the Synchronization skill on Hildegard and how he was able to do it. The City Guards looked in the student file, and they saw that the boy was a regular human with a fire-based affinity. There was no mention of Hellfire anywhere in the boy’s records, and since the boy was an orphan from the Demihuman war, there was no way for them to track down his family line and find out if any of his family members had the Hellfire ability as well!
Viva was the one who took over as the head of the investigation, and she spent more of her time looking into the orphanage that the young boy had been in as well as the friends he had in school. The students in school were all very cooperative, and even after asking around for more than a week, Viva wasn’t able to find anything at all. But after visiting the orphanage where the young boy had stayed, Viva finally got some information about him.
"Oh, that poor boy. I always knew he was troubled, but I didn’t think he would try something like this."
The person who Viva was speaking to was the Matron in charge of handling the hundreds of little children at the Orphanage. The children were all playing in the large yard with some other orphanage workers, and Viva was inside the Matron’s room as they spoke. The elderly woman was sitting on a rocking chair and knitting calmly as Viva asked.
"Why was he troubled? Did something happen in the orphanage?"
Viva’s brow was furrowed curiously as she wondered about this, but the Matron shook her head and put the sweater she was knitting down as she answered.
"No, it wasn’t here. It was before he arrived here. You see, that boy isn’t fully human. His father was a human, and his mother was a dragon demihuman. It just so happened that the boy was born with mostly human features. But you see, back then, the love between his father and mother wasn’t very acceptable to the people around them."
Viva grimaced slightly when she heard this, and she wasn’t surprised at all by it! During the demihuman war, humans and demihumans were very hostile towards one another, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear about entire families being prosecuted for interacting with the enemy race! If that boy’s father had gotten married to a demihuman, then it was obvious what happened.
"The humans in his hometown found out about the relationship, and they wasted no time killing his parents. According to them, his father was a traitor for daring to mate with a dragon of all things. The boy was very little when this happened, and he became an orphan through no fault of his own. When he arrived in my orphanage, he was very reclusive. He didn’t spend time with any of the other children, and if a human tried coming close to him, he would lash out very aggressively. I just... I thought he had grown past it by now. I never thought he would actually try to hurt others because of this."
Viva felt a little bit of sympathy towards the boy after hearing the story, but even though it was helpful to understand the motive behind the boy’s actions, it didn’t really do anything to help Viva solve the case, and so Viva had to ask the Matron if there were any organisations or groups that the boy was a part of! The boy had used a very sophisticated spell that most students would never even learn about, so the only way he could know about it was if someone else told him about it!
But the Matron said that she had no idea. The boy hadn’t come back to the orphanage ever since he enrolled in the academy on a scholarship. During holidays, the boy would also go and stay with some friends in their homes, so there was no way she could guess which of them was responsible for teaching the boy how to use this spell!
And that was how Viva hit a roadblock on that end as well. And once Viva got to this point, she immediately returned to the one place she felt she could always get answers from.