Chapter 357: 357

After Michelle left the dorm room and Antony remained alone there, he looked down at the floor.

When Michelle walked out of the bathroom and went to the window, she left bloody footsteps all over the place.

Strictly speaking, it was her room, so there wasn’t exactly a reason for him to care about it.

But at the same time, anytime, someone could come to call him and tell him that Ana Ostrich had returned and he was to come to the council building.

And if someone like that came, they would see the bloody footsteps and realize someone was in the room.

Luckily, Antony had a quick way to solve it: he was a water element Spirit Master, so he could wash it off in a matter of seconds.

In reality, the footprints Michelle left behind weren’t the only ones.

A few teachers walked in and out of the bathroom to investigate what was going on, especially who the culprit was, so it was inevitable that some blood got smeared.

But those people left behind shoeprints.

Michelle was the only one who walked through the blood and gore barefoot.

Antony didn’t understand why she did it, but he decided not to think about it.

Instead, he just summoned some water and swept it over the footprints Michelle left behind, while being careful not to mess up the shoeprints.

That, too, could be noticed.

As Antony was cleaning, he heard someone approaching the door.

The footsteps were still a bit far, but he could already recognize that walk.

Well, he was a Master of Detection, so it wasn’t surprising.

And knowing who the footsteps belonged to, Antony wasn’t worried and just continued the cleaning.

A moment later, the door opened and Marcus stepped inside.

“Antony, Ana is back,” Marcus spoke before freezing when he saw what Antony was doing.

“She was already here?” he finally asked, closing the door behind him.

Antony nodded. “She was fine, but something was strange…”

Marcus looked at the fresh bloody footprints and proceeded to help Antony with the cleaning.

Though it wasn’t a rule, it wasn’t rare for siblings to have the same element.

Marcus was also a water element Spirit Master.

“What was strange about her?” he asked as he formed a small ball of water in front of him.

Antony had a slight frown on his face.

“She was acting strange since the moment she stepped through the bathroom door. And then she asked whether monsters need to eat regularly even at high ranks.”

Marcus didn’t understand what was wrong with that.

“Sounds like a valid question.”

Antony shook his head.

“It didn’t make any sense in that situation. Also, she kept touching her neck the whole time. Like something was stuck behind her jawbone.”

Marcus had to agree with that.

Asking about monster eating while in a room with human remnants was indeed strange.

That made him glance towards the bathroom door.

“Maybe she noticed something we overlooked…” he thought out loud.

“Maybe something that made her think of monsters…”

“That could be true…” Antony agreed.

“But a healer, a Poison Master, and even an Array Master looked at the state of the room, but none of them found signs of monsters. What could she have seen?”

Marcus lifted his shoulders helplessly.

“Neither of us knows what’s going through her head. To someone like that, even a completely normal thing could resemble a monster.”

He was surprisingly calm considering how reckless he usually was.

But that was just how he was: usually reckless, but turning dangerously calm when something was wrong.

“You can’t forget,” Marcus continued, “that neither of us knows who she really is. She isn’t the young lady of the Ostrich family. We will never know what she had gone through that shaped her thinking.”

Antony couldn’t say anything more when he heard that.

He could just focus on the cleaning as the image of Michelle holding her throat remained printed into his mind.

When the two were done with the cleaning, they both went to the council building, to the headmaster’s office.

They weren’t exactly needed, but since Michelle was their disciple, they could come to listen too.

In the headmaster’s office, the atmosphere was tense.

Francis was sitting at his desk, Vincent standing behind him, leaning on the window frame.

By the door of the office was Lucas, standing upright.

And in the middle stood Alexander, posture relaxed.

When Antony and Marcus entered and saw Alexander, they both froze.

Unlike the three men in the room, they knew that Alexander was the Dark Lord, and thus held deep respect mixed with fear for him.

But, at the same time, they knew that Michelle was personally acquainted with the Dark Lord, so his presence in the academy must have been her plan.

“We were waiting for you,” Francis nodded his head a bit when he saw the Julians brothers enter.

“This here is the man who brought your disciple back to the sect. But he didn’t do it in an exactly gentle way.”

The last sentence wasn’t all that surprising considering Alexander was the Dark Lord, but Antony and Marcus still wanted to know what happened.

“What happened?” they eyed Alexander warily as he stood relaxed in the middle of the room.

Francis sighed. “One teacher had to be taken to the healers’ facility to be treated because this man pushed his head into the wall. He also broke the roof of this building. You can check it if you go to the top floor.”

While Francis spoke about his deeds, Alexander remained motionless, not reacting the least bit.

From an outsider’s eyes, it could even look like Alexander was a random bystander while Francis spoke about something not concerning him.

Antony and Marcus were unsettled by it, but so it seemed that Francis, Vincent, and Lucas got used to Alexander being like that.

Before Marcus and Antony came, they had been in the office with Alexander for a while already.

In reality, Alexander was listening closely while also thinking about what was Michelle’s plan.

While he was talking with Francis, pretending to be antagonistic, he did put some clues together in his head, so he had a vague idea.

But that was far from the full picture.

It was quite funny actually.

Alexander could be sure that both Noctis and Unlucien already knew what the plan was.

Unlike him, they cared about the happenings of the world, and knew about the top organizations in the upper realm.

He himself never really cared, even though he knew he would be staying in the upper realm for a while.

So, that meant that while he was oblivious, Noctis and Unlucien must have known what implications Michelle’s plan would have on him.

But Alexander didn’t plan on asking.

Michelle came up with the plan knowing he wasn’t aware of the implications.

So he wanted to see what she had prepared for him.

What she had up her sleeve.

Still, Alexander already knew one thing: if things went according to the plan, he would somehow end up tied down to the academy.

Or to Ana Ostrich, which was Michelle in disguise.

If the first thing was the case, Alexander would let it be while Michelle remained in the academy.

But once she left, he would make sure the connection was lost.

But if his second guess was the case, Alexander wouldn’t be the least bit against it.

So, in the headmaster’s office in the council building, the five teachers and Alexander discussed things for quite a while.

A conclusion was already forming in Francis’ head, and Vincent had it long concluded in his head.

But still, they said that things would get concluded after asking Ana what happened.

But they could only ask her after she rested enough so the discussion was left for the next day.

Until then, Alexander was to stay in one of the guest-teacher courtyards.

He didn’t complain.

Michelle had told him beforehand it would end up like that.

As darkness shrouded the academy, Alexander snuck out of the courtyard.

Well, snuck out.

With his power, he could walk in front of a person, and as long as he didn’t want it, they wouldn’t notice him.

That was the power of a Chasm ranked Shadow Master from the heavenly realm.

After leaving the courtyard, Alexander momentarily closed his eyes to locate Unlucien.

As the Dark Lord, he could locate all the shadow guards within a split second if they were within a certain distance from him.

Sensing Unlucien’s location, Alexander went there.

And in just a few seconds, he was on the same tree as Unlucien, the branch above him.

“Which window is into her room?” he asked, glancing down at the shadow guard.

Unlucien pointed to a window a bit further.

He knew that considering how possessive Alexander was towards Michelle, even if he was tasked with protecting her, he couldn’t stay just outside her window.

That would be signing his death.

So he was up on a tree a bit further.

Seeing the window, Alexander kicked into the branch beneath him, and the next moment, he was floating in front of the window.

Lifting his hand, he knocked on the glass, so Michelle would notice him.

The whole room was engulfed in shadow and darkness because Michelle was training her shadow essence control.

But the moment she heard the knock on the glass, she retracted the shadow essence.

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