Chapter 88: Soul of Ice

The initial shock on the guards was great, and even Steven had to admit he hadn’t accounted for this type of outcome.

Whatever happened here wasn’t normal at all even for a wild spirit fusion going mad.

As the staff quickly moved forward inspecting the weird corpse or what remained of it at all, some of them even took a step back, not out of fear but out of guilt.

Properly, everyone knew that Qwenz had been a student in the university before, and even if he wasn’t liked by many, such a sudden death was truly unforgettable.

Finally daring to look away from the corpse Steven took a few silent steps backwards to not be caught by any of the staff members.

They were professionals after all; if he was careless, they could easily spot his presence from such a distance, even though he doubted their minds were focused on some invisible target right now.

While everyone worked in silence, Steven carefully watched the slowly rising water levels inside the room, as even the staff seemingly didn’t know what to do against them.

Until sudden loud steps could be heard approaching from the still open gates as a singular person stepped through them.

Professor Alem seemed to be devastated by what he saw, his whole body shaking visibly, as he approached the ice shard on the ground.

"What happened here?" Steven could hear him ask a staff member, who could only shrug.

"The student... No, a spirit seemed to have gone wild killing his host as the result." A guard finally spoke while staring at the cracks in the room.

Steven could watch Alem pick up a single ice shard and then switch his focus towards the damaged room, which was barely holding together.

As with a firm voice, he finally spoke out loud. ’’We need to fix this fast before any more damages arrive...’’ But even then, did Alems’ voice seem to lack any motivation?

But a guard interrupted his speech, ’’What about the intruders? We need to catch them first before we should focus on repairing anything.’’

But Alem only raised his hand to silence him. ’’I already took care of them... They won’t cause any trouble ever again. ’’Shutting up anyone trying to debate his decision.

Steven was amazed at how well Professor Alem was able to manage the staff members and even other professors with such precision on top.

As quickly as possible, everyone started working using their own magic to either repair or stabilize parts of the room until more support arrived.

In just a few minutes most of the major damages were fixed, but of course the runic magic was much harder to restore and probably wasn’t going to until the ship arrived at its target.

As they finished their work, Alem still seemed disappointed, but Steven wasn’t sure if it was because of the destruction of the death of Qwenz.

Until a guard walked up to the professor announcing. ’’We fixed everything we can; it should hold for the event, but we would need some people more knowledgeable on the boat to fix the rest.’’

Alem nodded in agreement. "Thank you, you can all leave now," he answered, waving them towards the steel doors.

Everyone quickly left, even though some of them seemed to be unwilling, but there was no one daring to discuss with Alem.

Steven also thought about leaving with them; it would be easy to escape in a group, especially with his current uniform.

But something felt wrong about Alem staying behind; he almost seemed to have calmed down too fast after everything that had happened.

And why was he going to stay behind at all? Steven was pretty sure the detection machine was broken, and Alem had also claimed he took care of any other intruders inside the ship.

So in the end he decided to stay behind too; after all, it was his mission to find Aleem’s room and place the bomb there, but as long as the professor wasn’t there, his mission would be a failure.

With the giant doors closing behind them, the room fell into an eerie silence, only the dripping of water echoing through the room.

With the doors barely having closed, Alem’s pose shifted as he turned back towards the corpse, slowly stepping towards it.

His face had lost any empathy as he came to a standstill in front of the pile of ice shards.

His gaze had turned towards something completely different as he pulled something from his pocket resembling a horn.

As Steven could feel the professor purring mana into the device, it began to glow slightly.

Until a voice purred out of it, ’’Professor, what brings you to call me at such an hour?’’ An unfamiliar voice spoke judgingly.

But Alem answered flatly, ’’The experiment has failed; the body couldn’t sustain a wild spirit for too long.’’

Steven froze in place. What was the professor talking about? What experiment?

’’How unfortunate, were you able to collect his samples after all?’’ The horn answered the voice only slightly bothered after hearing somebody had died.

"Yes, they will be enough to recreate him soon again, but I don’t have the materials here to achieve something like this," Alem answered casually as if he was talking about the weather while picking up each ice shard one by one.

"Good, good, just return them towards the laboratory so we can create a new subject." The horn spoke one final time before the glow slowly grew weaker and then disappeared.

Leaving Alem standing in the middle of the room holding a pile of ice, whispering. "As you wish, sir, number 36 will be better."

Steven watched the professor walk towards the steel door, opening it with one hand, careful to not drop a single piece.

Stepping through the entrance, he didn’t even look back towards the room before leaving.

This time Steven decided to follow the professor, having the feeling wherever he was going was of great interest to him.

Because what maniac would talk about students like they were test subjects?