'I see.'
Those two words resonated inside Atticus's head continuously like a loud drum echoing in a silent cave.
The sound of Isabella speaking in the room became a muted symphony as Atticus entered a state of deep contemplation.
He had just come to an important conclusion, an answer that would put a stop to everything that was currently happening.
Atticus was currently inside the classroom in his usual seat between Zoey and Kael. As one would have expected, class was currently ongoing with Isabella teaching the students about the zorvans.
This had been what he had been doing earlier, listening attentively in class. And this had been until he had suddenly received a notification on his artifact.
Upon subtly checking the notification, Atticus had been plenty surprised to see that it was about a particular alert he had set more than two weeks ago.
Many would wonder, what alert?
And to answer that question, one would have to go back to a few weeks ago, on the same exact day that Atticus had first lost 100% of his points.
On that day, after finding out that someone had enslaved 100 members of his division, Atticus had knocked out each of the youths and without them knowing, he had taken each of them into the forest.
No one, not even the Ravenstein youth, knew what Atticus had done inside that forest. He had stealthily carried the 100 youths into the forest and came back to the camp after a few minutes.
What Atticus had done in the forest had been three things.
He unleashed a massacre in the forest, even going as far as to use the Katana art for speed, in order to gain a massive amount of points.
And after that, Atticus had paid a visit to the academy store. Then, after a few seconds of browsing through the items in the store at fast speeds, Atticus's gaze abruptly stopped, locking in on one of the items.
Whisperstrand.
The WhisperStrand was an ingenious Advanced- rank artifact designed to seamlessly merge with the strands of an individual's hair, making it virtually undetectable.
When activated, the WhisperStrand emitted nanobots that covertly weaved themselves into the hair follicles, integrating with the hair's structure at a molecular level.
This integration is so subtle that individuals below the Advanced rank would not even be aware of their presence.
Once merged with the hair, the WhisperStrand would function as a sophisticated monitoring device, silently monitoring and storing every aspect of the wearer's experiences and interactions.
It was an advanced technology that ensured it remained operational regardless of the wearer's activities, including bathing or even styling their hair.
And then the most important feature: Atticus could remotely access the device from his artifact, allowing him to see whatever the bugged youths were seeing.
Of course, these weren't foolproof. It was an Advanced- level artifact, and although subtle, each of them emitted faint amounts of mana that would be easily detected by an Advanced rank individual.
But unfortunately for Lark and the other Alverian youths that had addressed them, they had each been below the Advanced rank.
Each Whisperstrand had been priced at 18 thousand academy points, and after unleashing his full power in the forest, he was able to gather enough points to buy a certain number of them and plant them on many of the hundred youths.
As soon as Atticus had found out about the enslaved 100 youths, this had been his plan from the outset.
Many would believe that Atticus had chosen to be passive because he didn't know what to do, but then they would be wrong.
Atticus's plan had been to make it seem as though he didn't know what to do, as though he didn't have any plan at all. He allowed each of the 100 youths to attend classes just for this reason.
And this was all so that anytime they approached any one of the youths, his artifact would alert him, and he would be able to know and see his attackers.
Some more perceptive people would ask, it was an obvious strategy, could the attackers be so dumb as to not take any measures for this?
And well, the answer was quite simple. Each of the youths had signed an academy contract. They couldn't divulge any information about the attacker to Atticus, and Atticus could bet a fortune that they were also mandated not to betray them in any way.
Knowingly wearing a monitoring device was obviously breaching that rule. And this had been exactly the reason Atticus had done this without them or anyone knowing about it.
The second precaution was them covering their whole form in order not to get recognized. This would have, of course, worked, but with an intelligence as large as Atticus's, it was nothing.
Everything had eventually paid off as he had baited the perpetrators, and most importantly, he had seen them.
If he had to be honest, he had completely leaned on Seraphin or his brother being the mastermind of his current situation. Never would he have thought that he hadn't been even close.
Yes, each of them had been completely covered, but even if Atticus wasn't a people person and wasn't really good at stuff involving politics, if there was one thing Atticus could proudly boast about with his high intelligence, it was his perfect memory retention.
No matter how long ago or how brief, even a simple glance was enough. Atticus would never forget.
Although Atticus hadn't been able to see their faces, he had been able to hear them speak, he had seen every nuance of their movements, their figures, their gestures, and posture. Atticus saw them all.
The one who had given the 100 students the command was the same youth who had been speaking with Lila back then when each of the 15-year-olds of the human domain gathered at the expanse in front of the academy.
He had remembered the same annoying tone when he spoke. Atticus hadn't cared enough to learn the youths name, but that wasn't the important thing in this situation. There was only one thing Atticus was focused on.
He had finally found out the mastermind behind all of this attack on him, the Alverian family.