The police interrogated several students who had been healed enough with minimal healing magic and were able to answer questions. Cæ found it a little bit strange that Headmistress Lenolia felt the need to speak with the press before the authorities, but he supposed public relations and image were truly just that important to her and her business.
He simply avoided them, heading straight towards the dormitory wing of the Elendir Institute of Magic, directing a wary gaze across the beautiful gardens of the institute. He normally felt remarkably safe on campus, but given that he was holding a document that was of great importance, significance, and even danger, he couldn't help but grow paranoid about implausible scenarios like someone ripping it out of his hand.
He guarded it like he was carrying a briefcase full of cash as he briskly walked through the campus.
"Cæ!"
He froze as a familiar voice called out to him.
He turned around with a knowing expression.
"President Mileila."
Her long, green hair swiftly approached him with a concerned expression. "What happened?! Why are law enforcement and investigative teams swarming the Elendir Institute of Magic?! The Headmistress has temporarily taken over the executive wing of the Institute for the next three days, overruling the Student Council's authority for that period of time."
Melia, who was by her side, was equally overwhelmed by the most recent events. "I've never seen so many police officers inside the Elendir Institute of Magic before…"
Both of them were members of the student council and thus were present in the Elendir Institute of Magic despite the magicademic year having yet to begin. It wasn't particularly surprising that they had been alerted to most abnormal recent happenings in the Institute.
Cæ wasn't particularly surprised that Headmistress Lenolia had decided to temporarily override the student council and take over the executive wing. While the Elendir Institute of Magic almost never did so and let students take on heavy responsibility to forge the leaders of tomorrow, there were some things that were clearly just far over the heads of the student council.
Another reason was the fact that the Student Council President, Mileila, was the daughter of the Karjakin Family, one of the thirteen great families of the Democratic Republic of Elendir, and Headmistress Lenolia's primary enemy in the recent political battle.
She couldn't allow the Student Council to handle something that was so sensitive and important to her agenda when it was led by a student of a family who was on the very opposite end of the battle lines.
Cæ heaved a sigh, calming his racing heart, before turning to the two of them who gazed at him with worried expressions.
"There has been a serious incident," Cæ informed them with a heavy tone as his gaze shifted between President Mileila's stunned golden eyes and Melia's anxious dark eyes. "We were ambushed by a master mage of the Colohen Mafia in our time in the field. If not for Headmistress Lenolia's personal intervention at just the right moment, a whole lot more than just a handful of assistants of our task force would have passed away."
President Mileila's eyes widened while Melia's eyes darkened.
"What…?" A faint whisper escaped the former as she gazed at Cæ with a profoundly shocked gaze. "The mafia attacked you with a master mage…?"
Master mages were tactical powerhouses that could rout small armies and many apprentice and senior mages.
One did not deploy such a powerful asset for little matters.
"…Are you okay?" Melia asked with a concerned question, stepping closer to him with a worried expression.
Ever since Cæ helped her out with her family situation, she had grown much closer to him in just a short period of time.
"I'm fine," Cæ replied, heaving a sigh. "However, the same certainly can't be said for everybody. I was lucky because I was armed with a powerful artifact that protected me just enough to minimize my wounds to an extent that allowed me to be fully healed with emergency magic treatment. However, there are other students who were more injured and still require more medical attention. There are assistants on the staff who are critically injured and have been rushed to the medical wing, where they will then be taken to a hospital."
President Mileila's expression grew grave as she clenched her fists.
It was clear that she understood who was responsible for this and who funded and sponsored the attack. If it wasn't for her family, the Karjakin Family, it was unlikely that the Colohen Mafia would have deployed a master mage to deal with the operations after the legal attack failed.
Flashes of conflicted emotions emerged on her face.
Melia, on the other hand, wore an expression of righteous anger.
Unlike the president, she didn't have any affection for her family anymore and was very comfortable taking the side of the Elendir Institute of Magic and the side of the Headmistress.
Unfortunately, Cæ didn't particularly care about them at this moment, simply turning away to walk to the dormitory.
"Wait…" President Mileila stopped him with a worried tone. "Tell me about everything that happened. How many people were hurt? How many people died? Is the operation still going on? Will it continue next—"
"Mileila."
Cæ's tone was firm.
"I understand you have a lot of questions," he said to her calmly. "But I have had a long, exhausting day, and I need to prepare for the next magicademic year, so I really need to get back to my room."
She winced at his words as she stepped back, sweeping a tuft of her long, green hair behind her ears, before smiling at him melancholically. "…I understand, I can only imagine what you have gone through. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have bothered you."
"It's alright," Cæ replied with an uncharacteristic gentleness. His gaze softened as he shifted his gaze to Melia. "Take care. Both of you. Things are going to get hectic from now on."
He nodded to the two of them before taking off with a brisk walk to his room.
In reality, in that moment, he didn't even care about the attack of the mafia master mage, or the next magicademic year, or the hectic year that they were undoubtedly in for.
In that moment, he had only one priority.
The identity of the man who had killed Lilia.
CLACK
He locked his door behind him after entering his dorm room.
"…"
The silence was eerie.
The mood was dark despite the bright light of the afternoon Sun shining through the glass sliding doors of the balcony outside of the living room. Cæ's expression crumpled with cold, chilling determination as he opened the magical filing envelope, drawing out a thick file with many stacked sheets.
The investigation into the accident was conducted by law enforcement.
FLAP
He flipped over the first page, carefully reading through everything.
[Colohen Police Department - Investigative Division]
The first page detailed a report from the police officer detailing the time of the call, as well as their arrival at the scene and the impending events. They described how the ambulance had already arrived and transported both the young man and the young woman to the accident for emergency treatment.
Cæ skimmed through many of the boring paperwork and irrelevant details, skipping through the next few pages.
That was a mistake.
He was confronted with images.
Images from the place of the accident.
The blood.
The damaged vehicles.
Images of the two patients.
His eyes widened as he found his horrified gaze absorbed by an image of a mangled Lilia.
She was unrecognizable.
Her face—her beautiful, bright face with all her little perfect imperfections—was bloodied and bruised beyond recognition. The rest of her body was so horribly deformed, broken, and bloody that he felt his heart breaking all over again.
The last time he had seen her was when she was behind him on his little magiscooter.
It was something that he regretted as a curse.
But now, only now, did he realize that having seen her that way for the last time was perhaps mercy.
It spared him from the raw agony that assailed his very soul as he gazed upon the horrifying image.
"Huff… Huff… Huff…"
His heart began beating unsteadily as his breathing grew labored.
His vision started growing dizzy as he felt a wave of weakness wash over him.
He felt himself choking with emotion as his eyes grew bloodshot, tearing up in a rare moment of overwhelmed grief. More than two years had passed since she had passed, although he was in a coma for six months of that time.
He thought he had moved on from the grief stage.
He thought his grief had hardened into great anger and rage.
He had overestimated himself.
For the first time in a long time, he shed a tear.
He tossed the file on the little tea table in the living room before taking a seat on the luxurious couch, burying his face in his hands as he breathed slowly, calming himself down.
When he opened his eyes, they had regained the fierce intensity they had had from the day he had resolved to destroy the world order and build a better one.
They had grown stronger.
His severe gaze crumpled with cold, malevolent bloodlust.
If there had been even the slightest chance that he would have taken Headmistress Lenolia's advice before, now there was none.
He would not stop.
He would not yield.
He would never give up.
"I will kill you no matter what." A chilling whisper escaped him.
His menacing gaze returned to the document as he quickly opened it up, flipping through the painful, heart-wrenching images that evoked a myriad of painful memories with his heightened recollection.
He arrived at a page detailing the investigation into the offender.
He expected to see an image of the walking dead man responsible for the accident.
He expected to see a profile.
A name.
An address.
And yet, he didn't.
Instead, he found himself staring face to face with a familiar logo.
A familiar logo of a familiar corporation.
[Elenel Motors]
His eyes widened with shock.
It was the name of the largest corporation in the Democratic Republic of Elendir, a dominant oligarch with a monopoly on the automobile industry in Elendir, with tremendous power and influence across the entire country.
The report featured a picture of a truck.
The one that had crashed into them.
[Beatle-A23: Self-driving truck]
Cæ's eyes widened with shock.
Of all the possible identities that it could have been.
Of all the possible names he could have expected to read.
Of all the possible faces he had fathomed.
He couldn't have expected that the culprit behind the crash was a self-driving truck. The report featured a small write-up from the investigation into the model of the function of the truck, allowing him to learn more about what happened.
The truck was in a line of products with the new self-driving automobile technology that Elenel Motors had released just a few months prior in a large and massive expo and product release that buzzed across the entire country for months.
The report revealed no malfunctioning components, broken brakes, or anything of the sort.
In other words, the product was entirely functional mechanically.
Which meant that it had run a green light at top speed despite being entirely functional and working the way it was supposed to, and had ended up crashing into Cæ and Lilia, killing the latter while leaving the former in a coma, which, at the time, he was uncertain whether he would ever recover from.
It was damning.
A PR nightmare that would have destroyed the reputation of the company and drowned them in a devastating legal battle. It would tarnish not just the product but also the brand entirely, reducing their sales and causing a plummet in their stocks.
"…And so they decided to pay off the police enough to bury the investigation as an accident and not indict the company." Cæ's tone boiled with rage, hatred, and malevolence.
His dichromatic gray eyes grew ferociously bloodlusted.
"They will pay for what they have done."
By then, he had already decided.
He would destroy that company and kill everybody who bore Lilla's blood on their hands, starting with the man who stood at the very top.
His bloodshot eyes fixated on one name in the report.
[Founder and CEO Bardur Elenel]
It featured the image of a middle-aged man in a beige custom-tailored formal suit with slicked-back, glossy, black hair and a five o'clock shadow across his jaw. His sharp, gray eyes brimmed with confidence while he wore a perfect smile in the image.
Cæ's eyes flared with hatred and rage.
"I will kill you no matter what."