Exposed?

When Brian saw the crystal case, he already knew what it was: It was the very first photograph he had taken with the other Brightforce members. He saw himself, the other faculty members, the dean, and a middle-aged woman.

A woman he had no recollection of. Brian was puzzled. How could he not remember the members of the Brightforce? There must be a mistake with this photo, or maybe his memory. Could it have been doctored?

"So? What are you attempting to tell me? That there's an unknown woman with the Brightforce?" Brian said, obviously not seeing the problem.

"Brian, let me ask you, how many are we in the team?"

"Isn't that obvious? We have 12 members, and I am ranked 10th, 3rd to the last. Our members are the Dean and you guys."

Silence.

The other members in the room looked grim, a sharp contrast to Brian's confused, "I-am-not-sure-what's-the-problem" look he had been giving to the other members. It was the woman who showed Brian the photo that spoke up, her voice calm, yet it was with this calm, neutral voice that spoke words Brian could not bear to understand completely.

"Brian... we are 13 in the group. That middle-aged woman you see in the photo is part of Brightforce."

Brian paled as if being affected by something, causing his face to produce such a pallid appearance.

"N-no! You're lying! You're just saying that to deny my request!" he shouted at them, causing one of the members, number 5, to get pissed off.

Number 5 moved his hand and pinned Brian to the wall, before saying,

"You idiot! That IS the reason why we are rejecting the request! Do you know what the Dean said to us earlier? Huh? Do you? 'The vice dean... ceased to exist.' and we were all confused and were wondering who the vice dean was. In our lives, we never knew there was a vice-dean on campus!

The vice-dean is that middle-aged woman you see in the photograph! Her existence was wiped out, not a trace remaining in this universe! You should know what power the Dean specializes in."

Brian's eyes momentarily glazed, before gaining clarity.

"Karma! Karmic elements. Existence, fate, karma... all our threads connecting to her were forcibly destroyed?" Brian said, causing number 5 to release his grip on Brian, causing him to fall face-first on the ground.

The Dean of the school was one of the rare magicians who managed to surpass the gap of fate-based magicians in Eteria. That was due to him, according to sources, receiving an inheritance that allowed him to utilize his Karma primary elements to grow to his current stage, which was currently a Demigod, allowing him a stable position as the Dean of one of the prestigious universities in the country.

Of course, many people had once attempted to claim hold to this inheritance, but later on disappeared, with the Dean emerging with little to no injuries. However, because of his status as not being part of any powerful group, he is generally excluded in world-government level meetings.

Everyone in the group has sworn a bond, allowing the Dean to share information about his abilities, the same with everyone in the group. The other members of Brightforce have been introduced towards this power, with the Dean teaching them methods to detect if their karmic relationships have been modified or tampered with, leading to a tampered existence of their day-to-day lives.

From the basics of karma modification, there are few things that can resist the complete erosion of karma in the material world. Once it has been modified, anything that is not "with" the current karmic structure will be deleted, modified, or even replaced with someone else to hold the karma lost.

"Good job! See, I told you we should have done this, Eight. Wasting our time, sheesh." Number 5 said at the woman who handed Brian the crystal case. Number 8 rolled her eyes and said,

"I was planning to let him know gently, now I have to use my magic to calm him down. Ugh." Number 8 waved her hands, causing a calming aura to radiate towards Brian, who visibly relaxed and became clear-headed. After a few minutes, Brian spoke.

"Thanks, 8. It's ok now." Brian thanked number 8, who stopped the domain.

"So, someone who is an expert on karma... why didn't this middle-aged woman, or you say, our vice-dean, react to the magic spell? Wasn't she supposed to have an item that can help us detect if someone attempts to attack us through our life essence dolls, an item made by the Dean?"

Brian was quite confused about this part; all of them had a first-line defense against karmic manipulation. Not only would it be enough time for the Dean to react, the others who are affected can use their magic energy to stall for time through protecting their life essence dolls with magic energy.

Number 8, however, shook her head.

"The dean's item actually disintegrated, and even the dean only had a few words to say before he also forgot the vice dean's existence entirely.

He only feels like something was forcibly removed from him, modifying his life essence doll in an abrupt way, but it was done by a higher force that even he could not discern where it was coming from, or stop at all. All it did was alert him that someone or something caused his karmic connections to be modified."

After saying all this, it was Number 5 who continued to inform Brian the chain of events that led to the current situation.

"He had tried to reach out to the husband of the vice dean, who was a demigod, that was listed in the emergency contact in the document placed inside the artifact, concerning the matter, but was notified that he was in critical condition.

The dean compared the moment that he had felt the violation of his life essence doll and the time the husband before he reached critical condition; it had matched.

He concluded that the unknown vice dean and the woman in the crystal case were connected to one another." Number 8 said gently, drinking the tea that was placed on the table that had turned cold already.

"What does this have to do with the test? Doesn't it mean she was targeted by an outside force?" Brian asked puzzledly, causing Number 5 to roll his eyes again.

"Look, Brian, the time the vice dean disappeared, and the time we all lost our memories coincided with that fact. We cannot recall anything about the woman except through this photo and the emergency contact details within the container. In other documents, the emergency contact owner has been replaced with another identity, as well as the designated emergency contact. We have 2 running hypotheses on the situation:

1. It was an outside force. They targeted the vice-dean, the second strongest in command. It was merely a coincidence that they struck after the Midterm exam made for Xander Cloverfield.

2. It was done because the vice dean triggered a delayed spell, or curse, by varying situations, or even thoughts, or flow of energy in the body. Since we have daily scans, it can't be done by an outside force; it must have been placed on the day itself. It might have been placed by Xander Cloverfield, or a guardian that protected Xander Cloverfield, or that mysterious person, Homer Simpson.

So right now, anything related to Xander Cloverfield is off, and all our efforts are focused on looking for clues and traces of the spell."

Upon hearing this, Brian had calmed down to his cool, collected self. He also nodded in agreement with what Number 5 said. But it puzzles him how a photo could survive such a powerful spell.

Number 5 laughed and nudged to the guy beside him, Number 3.

"Hey 3. Tell him what the crystal case is made of."

"It's made from the skin of a Sage-class being. This being is capable of cutting up space, and at its peak, it was able to isolate a small pocket space. It basically isolates anything inside from everything outside, including elements beyond the physical realm," Number 3 said quietly, causing Brian to have a look of understanding.

"Ok, so what do we do now?" Brian said, focusing on the task at hand. Looking at him, everyone nodded at his ability and began their discussion.

Pity, someone was watching them, allowing that person to realize that the situation was not resolved as he had thought.

…

…

…

15 minutes had passed, and Xander opened his eyes, twinkling with knowledge. Xander had just finished his spatial viewing of the space where Brian was in; although there weren't any sounds, he could deduce the conversation by their lips.

A sage rank artifact... and a man-made one at that. He should get rid of the photograph if possible. The problem is, he didn't have any records of sage rank artifacts in the database of the world council.

In fact, no artifacts above Demigod were recorded digitally. Maybe it was just written and not stored digitally, Xander mused. He began to think of a way to target this without physically coming into contact with the case.

After a while, Xander's eyes twinkled as an idea came in. Instead of stealing the case and triggering any sort of traps placed there, he could target the photograph when they attempt to trace the karmic thread present there to me.

After all, if they want to trace the thread, they have to bring it out of the isolation case. The problem is if they could find the thread immediately. The moment it appears, a karmic thread would appear in my life essence body, albeit faintly, and I can begin tracing.

If they begin tracing as well, I would instantly notice a transmission and do a reverse trace, destroying the photo's evidence of Mrs. Carliste, removing everyone's memory of her once and for all.

"Hmm, why bother with the complexity," Xander murmured. With a twist of his fingers, casting a predetermined spell, [Thread of Karma]. This was the spell that was borne from the research on soul contracts and his exploration of the LEO dimension, as well as the short identification and cursory exploration of the LIBRA dimension.

[Thread of Karma]: Karma elements are like Weaver's threads. A bundle of life, experience, and death accompanies a project, before ultimately being recycled and restored to its base structures. A versatile skill. This spell allows the caster to passively or actively set predetermined actions, or even manipulate the life essence threads of others in the LEO and LIBRA dimension. The spell allows the caster to check for malicious intent or forced karmic connection with other beings. The limitation of the spell's complexity is the user's mental computing power. The spell is powered by either magic energy or elemental energy, or the karmic elements themselves. The spell cannot be cracked forcefully, or it will cause a ripple effect, collapsing all nearby threads in the area of the disturber.

The spell was rapidly completed, appearing to the viewers as a quick flash of red light, before disappearing in a split second, with no magical fluctuations detected. Of course, that was the case for Xander; if other fate-attuned magicians used such a spell, it would have caused a large magical fluctuation. With Xander's case, however, his control over the space-time element allowed this fluctuation to disappear completely.

In front of the king and queen, all can simply bow down and respect their dignity.

No one noticed anything wrong or problematic with the situation.

Xander looked at the two girls who were coming out of their enlightenments. They both rose by one level, with Maryann now Elite-7, and Valerie an Elite-8. He smiled at them and stood up when he saw them wake up.

"Ok, since you have a general idea of how conscious control is done, let's attempt subconscious control. This is a good way to stabilize your powers as you have both ranked up, and a great way to test out your comprehension. Let's begin the fight, then." Xander smiled, before approaching them quickly.

"I'll be using physical enhancement magic and pseudo-spells only, ok? Get ready!" Xander immediately launched a punch towards Valerie's stomach twice, and then moved towards Maryann's position, who was still flustering. She hadn't even propped her magic barrier up in that split moment.

Xander was inwardly shaking his head as he used his palm to smash Maryann's body to the ground, causing it to shake a bit, before he began moving away from their positions.

"Come on girls, you can do better than-" Xander wasn't able to finish his sentence as he was interrupted by a guttural growl coming from Valerie, who immediately cast 3 pseudo-spells simultaneously. It wasn't bad but it was just too slow; she still had to say a part of the incantation, rather than skip that and do the magic visualization instantly.

It took her 3 seconds to finish casting, but Xander had already approached her and slapped her in the back, causing her focus to loosen, leading to the spells to backfiring, causing her to cough out blood.

"First lesson: Don't expect your enemies to let you prepare for your spells. Learn how to instantly cast or shorten the spells to a syllable and also, always have your magic barrier up when you know you are going into a fight." Xander spoke softly, but his voice was echoing in the momentarily silent classroom, with his classmates staring at the trio, dumbfounded.