God does not place much attention on maintaining things that already exist, and instead cares more about nurturing new life.
A sense of enlightenment flashed through Michael's mind. After turning into a weak life form like a maggot, having been through a period of time to adapt himself, his thinking ability had returned. The various understanding of Life as a whole was able to stimulate Michael's internal world.
A rotten, obsolete, and non-developing lifeform is not worthy of being maintained.
Michael was continuously exerting his mental power to interfere with Landier's thoughts, this was his only method of seeking further survival for himself who had turned into a maggot.
Furthermore, Michael couldn't even do it too blatantly since Landier needed nothing more than a cotton swab to kill the current him if Landier realized his existence. This feeling of being an extremely feeble and weak lifeform that could die at any moment had allowed Michael to look clearly at Life more and more.
The weak will follow the firm resolution and will of a leader, and Landier with his clear weakness is 'the weak'.
During his time becoming a parasite in Landier's ear, Michael had been able to read Landier's mental waves and learn of one of his secrets.
Landier was a loyal good friend to Roger because he loved Roger.
Although in the Uppers circle, it wasn't uncommon for men to play around with men on a whim, it must be kept to the level of 'playing', meaning that one of the men must be nothing more than a toy. If 'playing around' resulted in actual romantic feelings, that would be nothing less than the greatest shame to one's family.
It was even more forbidden for two men to join one another and become a family, so Landier had no choice but to bury his feelings and act as Roger's brother from another mother, accompanying him in doing dumb things.
This is Landier's weakness.
Michael excitedly thought.
As long as a person has a clear weakness to take advantage of, he would always be the weak; and the weak have no choice but to obey the strong, which is me in this case.
However, before he could carefully ponder how to take advantage of Landier's weakness, horrible news had already spread through the entire campus: The demon apostle Roger would be purified in execution by fire.
When he heard this news, Landier froze up briefly, then immediately started rushing towards the scene of the execution.
This idiot! With how close his relationship with Roger was, running straight to the scene to save Roger would only cause everyone to think that they were accomplices and be executed together.
While Michael's body had been turned into that of a maggot, after he became accustomed to his current state and began to use only his soul to think, he managed to regain the sharp mind he had in his youth.
Michael was easily able to see through the schemes behind this entire matter. Roger was being used as a scapegoat, and the one who took his life would very quickly be able to take his everything else.
[If you want to save Roger, you have to do as I tell you]
As Michael continued to influence Landier while sitting inside his ear, he finally managed to convince Landier not to rush straight to the main square of the institute. In the end, this young man with an abnormal sexual orientation was still only a normal human who had yet to face the cruelty of society.
Since Roger was the one who usually made all the planning and arrangements for him to carry out, he was obviously panicking without instructions from Roger, so he instinctively began to obey the eerie voice whispering into his ear.
[In this situation, you need to inform the people of the House of Mages. Those greedy bastards will not sit still to see someone with mana being burnt alive] Michael continued to feed him orders.
For those from the House of Mages, every mage was a precious resource, providing power when they were alive and a fresh corpse when they were dead.
While Roger was nothing but an amateur, he had indeed gotten into contact with mana and had learnt magic. Even if he was truly guilty, he wouldn't be left to be judged by a bunch of normal people, nor would he be wastefully burnt alive.
Of course, under normal circumstances, as the Dean of the institute, Michael had the authority to simply order him to be burnt if he wished, but these weren't normal circumstances.
Even if that person has stolen my identity, at this crucial point in time, there would definitely be probing from various factions of the House of Mages.
As long as I provide the House of Mages an excuse, they would naturally use that excuse to probe that person.
Michael perfectly understood the moral scales of the House of Mages. If his current form were to be exposed, what would arrive wouldn't be support from the House of Mages, but instead their ecstatic experimentations. Regardless of whether his reincarnation ritual had failed or succeeded, he would still face scrutiny from everyone else.
Perhaps the reincarnation ritual might have succeeded but resulted in him losing a large portion of his power, or perhaps the ritual had failed and he had also been heavily injured. In consideration of Michael's dignity in life, everyone would naturally have to examine the situation and decide whether they should burn a stick of incense for him or spit on him.
After all, Michael used to hold a lot of resources in his hands. As soon as they found that Michael was powerless to keep those resources, the people of the House of Mages would grandly declare them to be his allies and openly take over Michael's benefits. Such were the rules of upper-class society.
Having no other choice, Landier could only contact the House of Mages and file his complaint through Michael's instructions.
…
As expected, there were quite a few people in the House of Mages who were just waiting for an appropriate chance. The public enforcers of the Academic City were swiftly dispatched, arriving at the scene of the execution with proper paperwork in their hands, declaring that they wanted to take Roger away to investigate the demon situation at the institute from start to finish.
"We received a report that Roger Cleves had gotten involved in a certain malicious incident, he must be thoroughly interrogated and investigated, please hand him over to us"
Standing in front of his subordinates, Brewer displayed the city public enforcer's certification for everyone to see and declared to the executioner.
Despite that, the enforcers' gazes were still sticking closely to 'Negary', the supposedly rejuvenated Michael. Everyone at the scene fully understood that while their official job was to investigate Roger, their real job was actually to scrutinize 'Negary'.
If possible, Brewer didn't want to accept this troublesome job and continue living a peaceful life. But smaller people like him never really had any freedom, if he refused the job, he might as well have just quit his job as the enforcer captain.
〖 More probing? 〗
〖 So Quirl alone wasn't enough to push them away; I've really underestimated their greed 〗
'Negary' was easily able to see through the various intricacies of this little interaction, the hex that he previously placed on Quirl the spy was meant to display his might. However, those guys' minds were either not as clarified as he had thought, or the might he had displayed was not quite enough for them to discard their greed.
〖 Roger Cleves is a student of our Mobis Institute, so our institute should have the deciding say on how to deal with him 〗'Negary' stood up and walked up to Roger. At this point, Roger still had the same ashen pale expression on his face without any bit of will to seek survival.
"Because of that, I hope that you'll cooperate" Brewer firmly said. Since the scrutiny had already begun, there was no option to gloss things over and call it a day, otherwise, there would be no good outcome for both sides involved.
〖 I'm naturally willing to cooperate. However, Roger's involvement with the demon has allowed him to gain demonic powers; it took our people quite a bit of effort in order to catch and restrain him, so if any unnecessary incidents were caused by your involvement, you had better be ready to hold accountability 〗 'Negary' went up to Roger and undid his restraints, at which point a wave of vitality mana also flowed into Roger's body through 'Negary's' hand.
"That is naturally none of sir 'Negary's' concerns" Brewer profoundly stared at 'Negary', then gestured with his hand for his subordinates to restrain Roger again and bring him away.
…
Right at this very moment in a certain classroom of the institute, Field suddenly appeared from the ceiling, his gaze seemingly able to see through the room and other obstructions to directly look at the restrained Roger.
「 Could it be a trap? 」Field hesitated briefly before deciding to take this bait.
