Stone Mage: Revenge of the Villain System

[On this week’s Confessional!

A skilled songstress has been using voice enhancers all along, and had an overdose causing her vocal cords to be destroyed during a failed performance! What karmic justice indeed!

Not only that, but said songstress was also allegedly having an affair with a prince despite having a lover! Several witnesses attest against her! ]

This week’s Truth Serum had sold like hotcakes due to these two bits in the Confessional section. The whole school knew exactly which songstress was being mentioned even without naming it.

This was how the Confessional work. Names were never shared, but Lovushka and his team makes sure everyone could tell who is who without it.

This way, they wouldn’t be easily accused of slander. After all, it was the readers that came up with conclusions, and further scandalized the topic.

“So Rabuka uses voice enhancers!? What a fraud! That must be why she vomited blood on the stage, serves her right!”

“She’s cheating on Pavone too? Is she crazy? The Blanc D’Argent family would destroy her once she’s found out!”

“Was it the Prince of Scirocco that she was hanging around lately?”_.

Majority of the people believed the Confessionals, and only very few of Rabuka’s fans defended her. Not to mention that due to her Cordial Surge, many students received minor injuries and came to dislike her even more.

Her reputation was permanently ruined.

“Is this what you had in mind when you sent Lovushka this paper?”

Councillor Verita was once more interrogating Prince Cermin Drychspiel. She had believed in this boy’s innocence, and did not expect another incident to be related to him so soon with one of his friends again.

“I didn’t give out this paper! This isn’t my handwriting!” Cermin insisted.

He looked even more distraught, more like the undead than a prince.

“But Lovushka’s troupe said that the one who handed it had golden skin, and one of his members can see through disguises very well.” Councillor Verita paced in her office sternly with her hands behind her back.

“Not to mention that Rabuka was very sure that it was you who handed her that vocal enhancer with acid in it. She had seen your face and heard your voice.”

Cermin was horrified by this insinuation. “It’s not me! I was in my dorm room and did not attend the Grand Festival, I swear!”

“Then that makes the statements all contradictory, Prince Drychspiel.” She sighed. “If you were impersonated, it should be a very powerful mage that may be on the same level as the Council itself. And no student can ever be like that.”

“On one hand, it was also possible that you have been….. manipulated.”

“Manipulated?” Cermin blinked.

“Your mind was controlled along with your body. Like a puppet. You just don’t remember it.”

He gulped. “Like… being possessed by demons?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Daemons have died many centuries ago. The daemons we have now are those who walk with us on the mortal realm, those who hide with good intentions and fake smiles.”

“You have the perfect motivation to commit crimes against your friends. The person who was manipulating you was aware of this, and used it to their advantage. Everyone can only believe that it was you who did it.”

“But even with what Volken and Rabuka did to me….. I would never hurt them this way! I can never!” He choked on sobs. “Why can’t things be normal like the old times again…. When we’re all just friends having fun…..”

The stern Councillor’s eyes softened, and she patted his back.

“I apologize, but there’s no way of your friendship going back to the way it was after these incidents.”

“Volken decided to be held back in his studied and would not be graduating until his injuries were healed, making him a repeater.”

“Rabuka’s voice is her Mage Focus, and with it being destroyed, as well as her reputation being tarnished….. She had to move to another Schoola for her own safety.”

Cermin continued to weep from these news. It was not just their bonds that were destroyed, both Volken and Rabuka’s lives were also destroyed.

“Please help me, Councillor….. Help me find who’s doing this. I don’t know what to do… I don’t know why someone would go as far to do this…”

Councillor Verita nodded. “We’ll do our best. In the meantime, you would have to be under probation and strict supervision for until your 2nd year is over. That way we may find out if you were truly being manipulated.”

—————————-

“Check. Check. Checkmate. I win again.”

Kai grumbled and just blew raspberries. “Why did you have me write the statement for the Confessional, by the way?”

“So they couldn’t link it to the person who wrote the note on Cermin’s antidote.” Ronin said while arranging the chessboard once again. “This will make them even more confused, think of many more possibilities.”

Kai nodded. “I see. They believe Cermin may have been possessed. They cannot detect your disguise thanks to your Fool’s Eye skill.”

“Good. Good. Let them make even wilder assumptions.”

“Rabuka is now being hated by everyone, including Pavone. She and everyone blame Cermin for it. Therefore, you gain 1,000 V-points.”

“I have a total of 2,500 now. Not bad.” Ronin twirled the white queen chess piece. “But it’s still 0.25% of the amount that I needed.”

“You want to reach the 1M consolation prize?” Kai asked. “What for?”

“Do you not remember anything from your past life, Kai? Your life before you became a system?” He asked.

“Nope.” Kai shook its head. “I do have this feeling that it must have been short, boring, and nothing out of the ordinary, though.”

“Well, I don’t remember mine like that. All I can vaguely remember was that I was bullied in high school….. and that the reason I died was that someone stabbed me in the stomach. “

“Leaving me to bleed to death. But I do not know who that person was. That’s why I wanted to gain that 1M points.”

He gripped the chess piece in his hand tightly. “I will wish to be in the world they were in, so I can get answers to why I deserve such death and also give them a taste of all the torture I experienced because of them.”

“Of the cruel fate I received just because of that one stab in a dark alley.”