Chapter 69 - The Short Version

'Oh my, he has an annihilation already, it's frighteningly similar to mine too.'

From the traces of residual energy left by Arthur's last attack, Cattleya was able to deduce what he utilized in that attack.

The bloodline ability of the devilian royal family; Annihilation.

The Annihilation possessed by each of the members of the royal family was subtly different. Creusery's annihilation gave him the ability to burn almost anything, corporeal and incorporeal.

Cattleya's annihilation was just pure unrestrained destruction. Arthur's 'extreme Nothingness' was an application of his annihilation.

'But it's not awakened completely huh? Well that's all I can tell'

She stood up once again and deactivated her bloodline ability, alongside the authority that she used, one that did not fit her personality.

The low rank authority of wisdom. That was what enabled her to read the traces of energy and deduce the abilities that Arthur might have used.

'Let's go see how my little rascal is doing now. Maybe give him a few knocks on the head for fighting something far more powerful than he is.'

She thought this while chuckling to herself, the next moment, she had vanished from the area.

◇　◇　◇

After Arthur was briefed on the happenings of the past few days, he took a moment to collect his thoughts before coming up with a scheme.

He had planned to defeat the true mastermind secretly but after seeing all the attention he had garnered he decided to make use of it.

Looking at his watch, he saw that he could still challenge another student for a rank deciding battle and decided to use that.

'Unlike Zach, this guy isn't monsterized visibly so attacking him normally would be a breach of school rules. I can't break the rules too much or it'd be more difficult for me to threat-, persuade the directors to let me do whatever I want later.'

In other words, Arthur was going to provoke the mastermind, then challenge them, before beating them to the point where they have no choice but to reveal their trump card.

And that was exactly what he was aiming for.

Lute said that the press clubs of the various school years had been wanting to interview him for a while now, so he was going to begin taunting the culprit with that.

He dressed up lightly and left the room, ignoring Layla's earlier words completely.

Using his all access permit card, he entered the nearest teleportation gate and went over to his class block cafeteria.

'I should probably order an extra large serving of....everything? Nahh that'd be too much, just half the menu.'

While thinking of how he was going to order a ridiculous amount of food to eat, the teleportation was completed and he arrived at the cafeteria.

Upon arrival, he bumped into a student who was about to use the gate he was coming out of. She shrieked and fell on the floor when she collided with Arthur.

She was about to curse loudly at the one who pushed her, however, seeing Arthur's face, she held her tongue as her face became pale with fright?

Noticing this, Arthur raised an eyebrow in question but decided to help her up first.

"Here."

"Huh? Oh!"

He held out a hand towards her, although she was initially confused, she remembered she was still on the floor and grabbed his hand with a red face.

Pulling her up, he was about to ask why she looked scared at the sight of him, however he was interrupted by a scream, one that came from another girl who was nearby.

"Ahh!"

Her high pitched scream attracted the attention of a few more students who turned to look in her direction.

Upon seeing Arthur who had let go of the girl's hand, more screams erupted across the hall. Arthur was initially confused, wondering why they were screaming.

'They're not screaming in fear but in joy? And it's mostly girls, it's kinda like how they'd look at an idol. And their gazes are directed at....'

He looked to see if there was anyone around him that would warrant such a reaction from many girls, however there was no one beside or behind him.

'Then they're looking at me?'

It finally dawned upon him that he was the one their feverish gazes were directed at. 

"Bro! You're finally awake!"

Edward's loud voice brought him out of his stupor, and a few other of Arthur's acquaintances walked over with Edward.

"Umm...why?"

Arthur asked Edward, gesturing to the girls who were not so secretly taking photos of him and probably posting them on various social media.

Edward however, just laughed and patted Arthur's back, saying.

"It's a long story, let's go sit down first shall we?"

Arthur nodded and was led over to his usual spot by Edward, calling the waiter, he ordered a quarter of the Menu, half what he originally planned.

This was due to the fact that he could hardly eat with all the states boring into him.

'I'd probably have most of it packed up so I can take it to my room.'

"That's a lot, you gonna finish that?"

One of the boys seated at the table with him asked, Arthur nodded in affirmation before taking a moment to look around.

The girls were looking at him like they would look at their favourite idol, most of the boys were staring at him in a similar manner.

He could see the pure untainted admiration in their eyes.

He looked back at Edward, ignoring the small argument going on between a few girls about who he locked eyes with and asked once again.

"Umm...why?"

Seeing the look of pure confusion with a tinge of curiosity on Arthur's face, brought about a few laughs from the guys around him.

"Well, although I said it's a long story, it can be shortened a bit. 

So do you want the long version or the short version?"

"The short version."

Arthur replied to Edward's question almost immediately causing the latter to chuckle a bit before replying.

"That's cool with me too, so where do I start now?"

"From three days ago on Saturday, this is probably related to that right?"

Arthur replied, gesturing to the number of students staring at him which seemed to have nearly tripled within the few moments he had been sitting.

Edward began narrating the story, this included parts that Lute didn't tell him about because Lute saw them as irrelevant.

While Arthur was busy dealing with Zach, a few other second year students, alongside some third and fourth years arrived on the scene of the original attack.

The summoning circles that Zach left were powered by one of his runes so they were not disabled even though he was not in the Area.

The monsters spat out by the circles increased gradually, another thing was that the magic circles were not stationary and moved around on the ground.

In the event that two or more circles crossed paths, they combined and became stronger and spat out far more powerful monsters.

In order to prevent the monsters from escaping, a fourth year student that's specialized in barrier and restraining magic created a barrier around the area.

He was attacked by the monsters because they somehow instinctively sensed he was the one keeping them enclosed and preventing them from running out to devour the weaker students who were running away.

Layla assigned some students to protect him while effortlessly slaughtering monsters in the inferior stages of the grandmaster realm. 

As for the higher ones, she left it to the fourth year students who were there.

Naturally, not everyone who saw the scene participated in the battle, they had various reasons for doing this. 

Some said that it wasn't their business so they would not participate. Some came over to watch the show just for the fun of it.

There were even those who looked at the abilities displayed by high ranked members in their school year in order to develop countermeasures for these abilities in the event that they challenged them.

There were also those who felt that participating in the battle was a waste of time and energy and would only move if they were attacked.

A few even snatched some monster corpses for experiments and other unknown purposes, leaving shortly afterwards.

Then there were the press club members.

In the Royal academy, there were hundreds, if not thousands of extra curricular activities that students could participate in.

Clubs were one of them.

There were various clubs of various genres and departments. One of the most popular groups of clubs, was the Press club.

As their name implies, the press clubs were responsible for spreading information of activities that occurred in the academy.

One of the former press club heads even created a school forum for the sake of spreading various news.

In the academy, they are undoubtedly the group of clubs with the most members, most of which were influential figures with lots of connections.