The Messenger of Death

"Vincent, what's the situation? Why were students gathered here?" Argus asked.

"Forgive me for keeping this from you, but I cannot do so anymore. A few people in the academy were killed last night. One staff and 4 students, the students that were killed are all affiliated with the offspring of a class-3 bloodline family.

The students were killed in an illegal business that was being run in the school ground, by students and overseen by corrupt staff; hidden with the power of runes that seem to have been inscribed by Etruscan runemasters.

After rigorous questioning, we found out that the students were killed by a blue badge student with a bald head." Vincent bowed as he explained to Argus.

"What about the staff? Who killed the staff?" He asked.

"That… we still don't know," Vincent asked.

"Hmm, an assassin might have sneaked into the school disguised as a student, or this student must have had a grudge against these four." Argus thought out loud.

"We are afraid that someone is targeting the offspring of bloodline families," Vincent added.

'That will be good then. I don't really care for those oblivious fools.' Argus thought to himself. He has seen people that are a thousand times stronger than the class-3 bloodline families here in this lower plain realm, and they weren't as power-crazed as the mere class-3 bloodline families here.

Although Argus wasn't as strong as Tsukishima or the principal, he was strong enough to become a strong figure in the ordain plain realm, the people of this realm do not scare him. Apart from Xiao En, there were other reasons why he and the principal remained in this lower plain realm…

"Can I see the corpse of all of them?" Tsukishima arrived and asked.

Vincent was about to refuse, but he saw that Argus was also waiting for that. Vincent and Tsukishima had never had any fights or disagreements, but they weren't exactly close too. Vincent had a problem with Tsukishima's attitude to almost everything.

Every time that they spoke, Tsukishima always looked him in the eye without any fear or an ounce of respect, despite the fact that Vincent was above him officially in the academy and also has a stronger cultivation base than he did. Or so he thought.

Tsukishima had to lie about his real cultivation base, he couldn't possibly reveal his real strength to those of the lower plain realm. Besides, they were there undercover.

"Alright," Vincent said and brought out the corpse of Hinata and Duna's underlings.

Just from seeing the faces of the students, Tsukishima could tell that they were poisoned. "They were poisoned." Argus and Tsukishima said at the same time as they looked at themselves.

They turned and looked at Hinata's corpse. "She was also poisoned." Argus and Tsukishima chorused again. "She was poisoned before the skin on her face was ripped off. From the look of things, it seems like she died after bleeding for a while." Tsukishima relayed what he had analyzed from just seeing her corpse.

Tsukishima kneeled and smelled the lips of the deceased.

"This type of poison…" He frowned and looked at Argus.

"This poison is not meant to be in this plain realm, and if it is here, there are only a few people that I can suspect. One of them being Nana, and the other being her disciple." Tsukishima transmitted to Argus.

Vincent noticed that Tsukishima was transmitting something to Argus, Vincent tried to eavesdrop but he wasn't able to.

"Nana is not in the lower plain realm and she hasn't been here for a while." Argus transmitted to him.

"Meaning that her disciple might be the one that did this," Tsukishima uttered.

"If he was the one that did this, then we better not touch him until Nana comes back. If anything happens to her disciple then she might take it out on us." Tsukishima uttered. They all knew how unreasonable Nana was and they didn't want to be her target.

"Yeah, as much as I want to follow the school rules, I don't want that woman's problem. Although I don't know what happened to her first disciple, I do know what she did after her disciple was killed. If we try that, we might as well be signing our death certificates." Argus concurred.

It was just as Nana claimed, there was no one in the lower plain realm and the ordain plain realm that can deal with her. Even in the celestial realm, there were a few that could do anything to her.

"I will stop the investigation now. Since we know who the killer is, we don't need to keep stirring things." Argus informed Tsukishima.

Tsukishima got up and nodded at Argus.

"Vincent, I want to commend you for taking it this far and showing your concern for the wellbeing of our prestigious academy, but I have to ask you to call off this investigation and stop everything that you have you planned for this investigation.

Tsukishima will take over everything concerning this case, and he will get to the bottom of this, on his own. Although what you are doing is for the academy, there's no denying that, but you are also disrupting the activities of everyone like this." Argus stated.

"But sir I can do this, the killer took Hinata's storage ring, if we can find that ring then we would be able to find the killer," Vincent mentioned, he really didn't want to be taken off this case. If he is able to solve this case, then he is sure that he will be rewarded with a promotion. This was his chance and he didn't want it to be given to someone else.

He knew that Tsukishima was telling Argus something and since he couldn't tell what they were talking about, he assumed that what Tsukishima did was to ask for the opportunity to take care of this discreetly.

"Let Tsukishima take care of this." Argus insisted.

"I can also do this alone, on my own, without the help from other staff," Vincent stated.

Argus frowned and glared at Vincent.

His glare was enough to make Vincent back down. "As you wish, sir." Vincent backed down.

Vincent did all that he could to hold his anger back, he turned and glared at Tsukishima. "You better do a good job." He forced those words out of his mouth. It sounded like he was threatening Tsukishima.

Nonetheless, Tsukishima didn't act as if he heard him.

"Now to the second issue at hand. What happened here?" Argus asked. He was referring to the people that got affected by Emma's ability.

Albeit Vincent's anger, his curiosity as to what happened here wasn't clouded by his anger.

"I don't know, I was far away from here when whatever happened, took place, and then when I arrived here I saw that some people were already dead," Vincent answered.

"You over there, come here and tell us what happened," Vincent called one of the staff that was present during the whole ordeal.

The staff was wearing a brown attire that was unique to the teachers of the severance academy. His hair was cut short and he was average in height.

This staff rushed over to where the Argus and the rest were.

"Tell us what happened here." Argus requested.

"Yes sir." The staff proceeded to do as Argus requested. He explained to them everything that happened. From what he could remember.

After he finished explaining to Argus and the rest, they couldn't do anything but frown. While Vincent was thinking about another possibility, Tsukishima and Argus were thinking about another thing.

"Did you sense a strong individual here?" Argus asked Tsukishima.

"No, I didn't notice anyone that strong around, not even on this continent." He replied.

"Could the person be stronger than you? I thought that there was a rule that people from your plain realm aren't meant to break?" Argus questioned.

"The rule remains, if someone breaks that rule then that person will be apprehended and taken away. Let me ask the old steward." Just before he could ask the steward, he received a reply from the steward.

"I couldn't sense anything too. I checked several times. It was like the world decided to do that on its own. But I do believe that there was a catalyst as to why it chose to do that." The steward informed the two of them.

"So the young mistress is still safe?" Argus asked.

"Yes, for now. If she wasn't, I would have taken her somewhere else." The steward nodded and made his way back into the guest inn with Xiao En walking beside him.

"Vincent, we should compensate the families of the deceased. I want you to represent the academy and compensate their families." Argus said.

This made Vincent angrier, Tsukishima was given the job of investigating the murder, while he was left with the measly job of compensating the family of the deceased.

He felt insulted and he had no one to but the blame on, no one but Tsukishima. He glared at him as he tried his best not to release his killing intent.

-Whoosh.

Vincent left the area…