Chapter 45：George

"Scarlet Explosion!"

"Boom!" A huge explosion filled the air, but the person inside the cave didn't hear a single sound because of Kai's Sound Insulation Room.

And by the time he realized he couldn't find the exit, he would need to know which direction he came from, or he might need to blow the entire cave up. But, it might prove to be difficult since the cave was enormous considering how deep he needed to walk to reach the end of the cave.

Although he couldn't hear the explosion, it was different for other people who were around them, including the teachers that were killing the magical beasts nearby. They immediately heard that explosion, and Shirotsuka Sanae was forced to move toward its direction.

Noticing her, Kai turned his head.

"?!" Ayaka was confused by the sudden action, so she also tried to see it. She saw Shirotsuka Sanae's figure slowly appear in her eyes. Her wet uniform wrapped her body tightly because of the rain. She looked very sexy, since unlike Ayaka's developing body, she had a fully-endowed body.

"Kai Carter, Kudo Ayaka." Shirotsuka Sanae frowned the moment she only saw two of them. She remembered there were two dead bodies, which were Fujino Chitose and Carmina Elvera's bodies, their teammates. "Why are you here? What about the explosion?"

"Ayaka blew up the cave over there," Kai said while pointing at the cave with its entrance sealed by a pile of rubbles.

She frowned as she couldn't understand why they would want to blow up the cave. But there was another important matter that she needed to ask, "Your teammates were killed by magical beasts."

Ayaka's body shook a bit. As for Kai, he already expected something like that, since the man inside the cave already spoke about it.

Shirotsuka Sanae didn't miss Ayaka's reaction. She immediately knew something was going on. "So, care to explain? I don't care if this is a personal matter or whatever. I'm your teacher, so I'm the one responsible to protect you in this practice test, so I have the right to know. If you don't want to talk, then I'll have to force you to."

Kai immediately explained the situation. "They were coming for me. But I don't know who the enemy is. We blew the cave up because there's a man who seems to be the one who brought the magical beasts to this place from the China border."

Shirotsuka Sanae wanted to immediately dig into the cave and face that man to get information, but she knew she couldn't. After all, the students should be her priority.

"Tch, we're going back to the stadium first. I expect some explanation from you two after we get there," Sanae said. "Follow me. I'll lead you to safety."

Kai and Ayaka nodded. Shirotsuka Sanae grabbed Kai's waist and flew toward the stadium. When Ayaka saw this, she didn't know why, but she felt a bit jealous. After calming down her rage, she finally came back to her former self, so when she saw this, there was an uneasy feeling inside her heart.

Sadly, she didn't know how to face Kai after this. She was talking to him before because she needed to hear his order to trap the enemy, but she did not have anything now. If she talked to Kai, she would always remember those words she spat at Kai.

Because of that, she didn't object to seeing Kai become that close to Shirotsuka Sanae. She just followed them from behind while sighing continuously.

After a minute of flying, Shirotsuka Sanae abruptly stopped in mid-air. Kai and Ayaka didn't know why she stopped.

"The smell of blood… and not from an animal, " Shirotsuka Sanae said. She had her own skill alone, and with her wind element, she was more focused on scouting. She usually controlled the flow of the wind to bring smells toward her or to know if there was an object over there sometimes.

But as one would expect from a veteran, she even noticed something like this even in this rain, even though the rain should have swept away the smell.

The moment they landed, they could see a blue-haired woman lying on the ground. Color was still on her face, which showed that she was most likely killed recently. There was only a stab wound right on her heart, which seemed to have killed her instantly. Other than that, they couldn't see anything wrong.

Kai absolutely recognized who she was. After all, Kai just warned this girl's partner a few days ago, George. He immediately had a bad feeling about this.

At the same time, Ayaka suddenly shouted, "Ah!"

Kai looked at her, who was shocked by what she saw. Kai couldn't see it since his line of sight was blocked by a tree, so he decided to come toward her. Sanae was busy examining the corpse, so she decided to check the body for a bit before moving toward them. She already felt it with the wind that there was another one, so she just warned them, "Don't touch the body."

Kai couldn't hear her because he was dumbfounded when he saw that George was dead leaning on a big stone. One of his arms was missing, and when he looked around, he saw the arm lying on the ground.

He tried to check his body without moving it. He didn't have any wound other than his missing arm and the wound on his chest. It looked like both of them were stabbed right in the chest, but George lost one of his arms because of his resistance.

Suddenly, he saw a clue. It was already blurred because of the rain, but he could see two characters. He immediately tried to find something in his memory to see if there was anything related to this. He couldn't help but murmur, "1H…"

"Kai?" Ayaka heard his murmur as she saw him look so focused, and when she shifted her body a bit, she saw '1H' written with blood. She saw George's index finger was covered with blood, so George must have written this before he died.

Not long after, Shirotsuka Sanae also came to them to examine George's body. But she couldn't find anything other than '1H', so she was perplexed.

"Kudo Ayaka, Kai Carter, do you know anything about this?" Shirotsuka Sanae immediately asked. It was normal to suspect them, since Kai said that the incident of the magical beasts was because of him.

However, Kai and Ayaka were completely clueless about this. They shook their heads at the same time.

"I don't know anything about this one." Kai shook his head.

Shirotsuka Sanae frowned as she remembered something. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." Kai nodded with a serious expression, indirectly telling her that he didn't lie.

"I don't know why, but they have the same wounds as Fujino Chitose and Carmina Elvera did. All of them died with a single thrust to their hearts," Shirotsuka Sanae said while narrowing her eyes.

"!!!" Ayaka gasped. Kai pondered for a bit before he said, "I truly don't know about this. My speculation is Katsuragi Takaki. But that's all only speculation, as I don't have any proof for it."

"..." Shirotsuka Sanae sighed. "I expect you to say everything you know after this."

"I'll tell you anything I can," Kai said. Although he knew that Shirotsuka Sanae was a neutral party, he couldn't be sure. After all, he just found out that Carmina, who seemed to be a normal teammate, turned out to be a spy. If he hadn't realized it at that time, he might have already died.

"... Fine by me. I'm too lazy to deal with this to begin with. And it really sucks to be a teacher, since I'll get a pay cut after this incident." Shirotsuka Sanae was back to her usual self, complaining.

Before she became a teacher, she was an elite in the front lines, so she was confident in making Kai open his mouth. But she was a teacher now, so she didn't care about this anymore. She would just record it down and be done with it.

She was similar to Kai. She only wanted to survive and live peacefully in this cruel world, so she wanted to extract the information from Kai to make sure she had enough information in case something like this happened again.

As for the report for the school, she would use whatever he said about the magical beasts. However, she was a bit curious about the clue that George left behind.

"Does '1H' ring the bell in your mind?" Shirotsuka Sanae asked.

Both Kai and Ayaka shook their heads. Ayaka then said, "Is it something like 1 hour or something?"

"No, it shouldn't be. It should have been only around a few minutes since they were killed… maybe ten to fifteen minutes," Sanae estimated.

"How about a name? Maybe someone whose name starts with H…" Kai said while trying to come up with a name that started with H. Sadly, in their class, none of the students' names started with H.

"Anyway, I need to take you back to the stadium first before cleaning this up. You can clean your body or whatever in the stadium. I'll visit you to ask a couple of questions later." Sanae shrugged nonchalantly. It was like she wasn't bothered by the death of her students.

"Teacher, you don't care about this?" Ayaka asked. 

"You shouldn't think about this too deeply, since incidents like this often happen in the front lines. You should expect something like losing your comrade. If you delve deeper into this matter, you'll also endanger the lives of your other comrades." Sanae shrugged. "Anyway, I need to take you back."