Chapter 85 Volume III – Chapter 6: Testimony

I opened the drawer, took out a bottle with a gray liquid inside, and without a second thought I drank the whole bottle down my throat.

A strange sensation suddenly appeared in my body. My whole body trembled slightly from head to toe. I felt my heart, its slowing down, in every cell of my body. Then the sensation began to disappear and by the end of the process, I felt even more ‘normal’ than I usually do.

After putting the empty bottle back in the drawer, I quickly made my way to the door and with five other people waiting for me outside the door, we moved off. We went to the building that was the headquarters of the security guards.

In general, this building was no different from a normal police station, except that it was staffed by security guards, not police officers.

There are six hundred and twenty-five people from each year at the academy, and since the academy is a four-year program, there are only two thousand five hundred students on campus.

Considering that the academy is one of the best in the kingdom, the vast majority of these students are nobles. So things like fights between students are quite common. Of course, the academy doesn’t hold back, and they pump more money into security and strengthen their influence over the academy.

The academy is not perfect, though. Bribery and all sorts of things go on, and security guards are sometimes afraid to go up against very powerful families, but even so, without the investment in security, it would probably be much more chaotic here.

“Keep following us.”

With these words spoken to me when we arrived in front of the building, we went inside and I must say that it was quite crowded.

The first floor was relatively calm, but the second floor and above were quite chaotic. Staff members were running here and there, and noble family elders, some of whom I vaguely recognized, were talking to some of the staff members.

Some of the nobles were calm, but some were crying and venting their anger at the staff.

Well, security was trying to comfort them as much as possible, but they were nobles after all. I would say they were trying their best.

“You’re Aiden Tenebra, right?”

I was walking when I heard a voice coming from my right side and I paused, reflexively turning in the direction of the voice.

There was a woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties. She had short to long black hair and golden yellow eyes. She was about the same height as me, but she could clearly show the ‘difference’ between us just by looking at me.

This woman was Jenny Malus. In other words, the person standing in front of me was Justin’s mother, and she was looking at me in such a way that I felt like she was going to attack me without caring about the people around her.

“Yes, it’s me.”

I put a slight smile on my face and gave a perfect royal salute.

“Did you want something, ma’am?”

I don’t care how much pressure she puts on me, no matter how hard she tries. I have Absolute Mind, mental things have almost no effect on me.

So I am very much at ease.

Jenny Malus gritted her teeth slightly and narrowed her eyes after my noble bow.

“I hope you don’t have a hand in this matter, young man.”

“If I knew what I was accused of, I could give you an answer here, ma’am, but believe me, I don’t even know what it is yet. It seems you have a connection to the matter I’m about to testify about… I’ll help you with the case in any way I can.”

She raised one eyebrow and looked at me blankly. For a moment I could see the sharpness in her eyes diminish and that was enough for me.

“You may continue.”

The suits, who had been waiting for Jenny Malus to give the go-ahead for her to finish speaking, moved again at her words.

As we slowly left her behind and made our way up to the third floor, I was happy, even if I didn’t show it outwardly. I thought I had performed well in front of Jenny Malus.

We made our way along the floor and finally got away from the crowd, into a large area where there was no one but the staff, and then I was led into an interrogation room.

So I was seated in a chair on one side of a large table and waited.

The room was basically black walls, or rather one-way glass, a large brown table in front of me, a small device for projecting holographic screens on the table, and an empty chair on the other side of the table.

I continued to examine the room, but it was very plain and not at all different from what I remembered. Therefore, I quickly focused on what was in front of me. Eventually, the door of the interrogation room opened again and a woman walked in.

She had short blond hair down to her neck and blue eyes. She was of average age and looked like a regular person.

“We’re going to begin your testimony now. I’m just going to ask you a few questions and you’re going to answer as much as you can. Okay?”

As she said this, she sat down in the empty chair opposite me and then activated the holographic device between us. This opened a window on the table.

“Okay.”

The woman smiled slightly and then pressed a few buttons on the holographic screen. Suddenly there were about twenty photographs of students in front of us.

“How many of these students do you know?”

“I know only one of them directly, the others I have seen a few times, but I don’t really know them.”

“Which one do you know?”

“Justin Malus.”

There was a short silence, so I quickly started to say what I was thinking.

“Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t friends. We just worked together on a small job, that’s all. Of course, the outcome of this deal was not good. We had a little argument, the deal ended and I went against our agreement, that’s all.”

“So you admit you had a quarrel with him?”

Her blue eyes narrowed slightly, not breaking eye contact with me for even a second.

“I don’t see any reason to deny it, and we only ‘agreed’ with each other, there was no contract or written source to prevent us from disagreeing.”

“Okay, got it.”

The woman jotted down a few things on the screen in front of her.

“The thing is, all the students I showed you a photo of disappeared after entering the wooded area of the academy a few days ago. The location data from their watches is not working, nor can we find any trace of them. They seem to have disappeared from this world and that’s why there’s such a massive investigation going on. Now, I’m going to ask you to answer my questions in order.”

I nodded in agreement.

“First of all, are you responsible for the disappearance of these students, do you have any knowledge of their disappearance, where were you doing the night they disappeared and when was the last time you saw any of them.”

So… that’s how we do a question and answer. Okay, no problem. It’s already too easy.

“First of all… Can I know when this happened?”

This was the simplest of the traps in her questions. She didn’t give me the date of the incident, but she asked me what I was doing that night, which was almost clichéd, frankly.

When taking a statement from a guilty person, they are often under a lot of stress. That’s why their answers are often incoherent and they don’t pay much attention to the other person, or even if they do, they miss things because of the tension. I, on the other hand, because of Absolute Mind, am not under the slightest stress. On the contrary, I am quite relaxed and studying the woman in front of me.

So there is no way such simple things can influence me.

“They entered the wooded forest on the night of October 30th.”

The woman still had that sharp expression on her face. Her eyes were actually on me, but I knew that wasn’t exactly the case. If I focused on her a bit, I could tell that what she was looking at was not me but the ‘space’ between me and her.

Of course, in this space, there was a system window that I could not see but she could.

“On the night of October 30th…”

I waited a few seconds as if thinking, but after a while, I continued.

“If you look at the CCTV footage, you can easily see that I was in my room all night and never came out. And of course, I am not responsible for their disappearance. I have no connection to the case and I don’t know anything about it. As for when I saw them… I saw Justin a little before the preliminary, but we haven’t seen each other since then.”

“Even though you betrayed him, you weren’t afraid of him?”

“Not that I wasn’t afraid of him, but I doubted that he would do anything to me because of my current position in the academy. After all, I’ve met with a few scientists, I did quite well in the preliminary, I saved many students’ lives, and with the grade I got in the last essays, I think I will compete at least once in the intelligence section in the inter-academy competitions.”

“One last question then, what do you know about Justin’s former girlfriend Olivia Sue Gemma?”

Oh… I didn’t expect that. Did the rumors about me saving her catch their attention?

“I met her for the first time on the academy grounds a few days ago. She was being bullied by a group of people, and I didn’t want to be a bystander, so I helped her. Then I realized that she had a lot of psychological problems of her own, so I invited her to our study group with some of my friends to support her. Now we are just friends in the same study group, that’s all.”

“Can you name all the members of this study group of yours?”

“Me, Adrian Caleo, Alice Liate, Celine Potenbea, Julian Virhen, Lucia Quie, and finally Olivia Sue Gemma.”

The woman looked at the space between us, genuinely puzzled by the names I had mentioned. This time she didn’t do it secretly, but quite openly, which is why I had a slightly curious expression on my face. Of course, when the woman realized this, she quickly tried to compose herself and wrote something else on the holographic screen above the table. After a short while, a slight smile formed on her face.

“Thank you for answering my questions honestly, Aiden, and of course we apologize for the inconvenience. Since the academies are on a break again due to the investigation, you can go to your room and rest.”

A smile formed on my face as well.

“If I’ve helped the case even a little bit, no problem.”

With that, I stood up and headed for the door in a relaxed manner.

When the suits who had brought me here came out from behind the doors, I headed toward the dormitories as if nothing had happened.

The testimony had gone well, I was sure that I was perfect and I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

Oh, right… I wonder if Sue has started to give her testimony.

I had already sampled some of the trick questions for her and a few of them had already appeared in mine. Besides, she has the elixir that prevents lies from being discovered… I hope it goes smoothly and I won’t have to deal with this for a while.

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