Chapter 66: Someone In the room
The leader scratched his head and then shrugged. "Very well, we'll check. Step back."
Severin stepped away from the door, his hand on his sword.
One of the guards stood in front of the door while the others leaned fast against the wall.
The one facing the wall nodded, and then, with a quick jerk, he kicked the door open swiftly. The wooden door slammed wide with little resistance, splinters of wood flying everywhere.
The first guard was covered in blue shield as he rushed into the room.
Swissh! Swissh!
They rushed into the room, a collective shield covering all of them as one.
But there was no one there.
Almost as Severin expected.
The room was empty and clean, just like Severin left it. There was not a single thing out of place that Severin could tell.
He was left stunned.
He was sure that there would be someone on the other side, or at the very least, his room would be out of place.
'...Did my perception thought wrong...? But that's almost impossible... Then... just what is happening?...'
The only thing Severin could think of was that there must be some kind of skill or technique that allows the culprits to pull it off, because even as he was standing in the room, he could still feel the same sense of wrongness that he felt earlier.
"Well, it seems this was a wrong call, House leader," the team leader said.
Severin nodded, not falling for the tone of the team leader. "So it seems. One cannot be too careful though these days..."
Severin was trying to make some small talk to keep them there because he wanted them to search the room. Since his senses couldn't pick up the specific wrongness in the room, that meant the culprit might still be hiding in the room.
But suddenly, he smelled something.
It was faint, something that smelled of rusting copper.
Severin frowned. "Blood."
"What?" one of the guards asked.
"I can smell blood," Severin thought, and then his gaze went towards the bed. There was a space under it that a fully grown person could squeeze through.
It was the only place someone could hide in the room.
The team leader followed his gaze, and he gestured for one of the members to check it out.
Severin's right hand was on the sword while the other was in his pocket, touching the teleportation cards.
The guard stood by the bed, body covered in flowing light of blue as he bent down.
Everyone held their breath as they tensed.
The man looked under the bed.
There was nothing.
The tension erased in the room immediately.
The team leader turned to him, and Severin could hear the grimace in his voice. "Student Severin...!"
He didn't finish it.
All of them, at the same time, heard a drip sound of a drop of water hitting the ground.
It was a small sound, something that they would all ignore on a normal day. But in the already tense, silent room, the sound was like a drop of gunshot.
They all turned towards the bathroom that also contained the toilet.
It was directly facing the room, and since it was open and small enough, they could all see it was empty.
Drip! Tap!
The sound came again, and this time, they all focused their attention on the small room.
Almost as if he had been ignoring something terrible and then was forced to look at it all of a sudden, his hair raised, and goosebumps covered his body like fleshy pebbles.
Something was terribly wrong with the bathroom.
And he wasn't the only one who could feel it.
The team leader gestured with his hand, and they all formed around him. Their shield swelled to cover all of them, including Severin, as they walked towards the bathroom door.
Drip! Tap!
This time, they saw the liquid fall.
A black blood.
It fell to the ground in a small splatter. frёeωebɳovel.com
Blood.
In Severin's bathroom.
He felt all the security guards tense as one. The carefree aura around them changed to one of hostility and bloodlust that wasn't necessarily directed at him, but Severin knew he wouldn't be sleeping that night.
They looked up.
Right there in the ceiling was an art made of human flesh.
A naked woman that had been mostly drained of blood—her chest to her stomach had been split open and the inside washed, and then, like a butterfly, the chest was spread open and then pinned to the ceiling with the rest of the body.
Her jaws were torn open, forced into a strange laughter of death.
"Ah... fuck!" one of the guards said, and he began to dry heave.
Their faces turned green.
And Severin, as always when faced with a difficult situation, his eyes turned even more flat and his face darkened.
One thing he could use to describe the situation was... trouble.
Big trouble.
He felt pity for the student that was used, but he knew he had just become the number one suspect in the kidnapping investigation. Because the first student that was kidnapped was the one currently smiling at them from the ceiling.
Now, the shield that the security guards were using felt like a rope around him.
But even then, his eyes searched every available inch of the girl's body to see if there would be anything that could help him.
He understood then—the situation had changed.
He was being pointed at.
He thought that the kidnapping case was none of his business, but how wrong he was!
He was being targeted, but in a very unexpected way.
Looking at the body sparked something in his memory, and he frowned. He'd seen something like that in a book?
But before he could think more, the leader had turned to him, eyes searching. "It seems there was someone in here all along."
Sometimes Severin hated that he got calm as situations got worse, especially a situation that he didn't plan for. He wanted to summon his acting skills, but he was getting angry.
His territory had just been invaded.
And he didn't intend to forgive the invader.
He ignored the leader and focused on searching the body with his eyes. Then he frowned as he saw something small peeking from her clenched right fist.
He pointed it out.
"Get it from her hand. Be careful not to mess with the body. We need it for investigation."
With careful methods, they got it down.
There was only a single word written on it.
Celia.