"Thanks for your hard work."
The third unfamiliar face to come running over was also, so far, the only woman Fu Qian had seen from the Institute of Curses.
From her appearance alone, she even seemed more mature than Nepheli.
She looked over with some uncertainty. Presumably, they had split up to search, and she had only noticed the commotion here a little later, then hurried over.
Fu Qian merely gave her a slight nod before walking past.
"The snow doesn't need to stop."
He called out to the people behind him as well.
The snow did not stop.
The demigod's prestige, mentioned earlier, was once again on full display. Even when they reached Professor A Kai's office, they could still feel the chill of flakes drifting down.
The instructors who had followed them all the way also raised no questions whatsoever about why he had made this request.
"We did our best to leave everything as it was, but we haven't found anything."
When Fu Qian stopped once more before the traces A Kai had left behind, Boyd offered a quiet explanation in the manner of a technical specialist.
"Even that special contamination effect showed no unusual signs here?"
It was not as if nothing had changed. For instance, the spider silk mentioned earlier looked as if it had been singed, slightly scorched.
But considering the intensity of the instructors' tests, that was already remarkable. Fu Qian gave a slight nod and continued asking questions.
"Yes. To be precise, there's nothing here to distinguish it from anywhere else in the academy."
Boyd's tone turned certain, and he offered an even less optimistic assessment.
"We can't even determine whether something went wrong during A Kai's miracle test, or whether he left here afterward and encountered something. That includes these