CHAPTER 201: BACK TO NORMAL.

Phil’s death came like a cold blow to Alex; it was as if a bucket of cold water had been dropped on him. He had only gotten to know Phil after entering the group. The man was an easy-going person and always looked out for him whenever they went out on missions or raids. He treated Alex like a little brother and Alex had a good impression of him.

Although he had only known Phil for less than two weeks, hearing about his death made Alex feel sad. According to the members of the group, no one knew how Phil had died, they only found his body after everything was over.

Alex then asked about Joan, he didn’t need anyone’s help to know that Joan and Phil had something special between them. She must have been devastated by the news.

As expected, he learned that Joan had locked herself in her room since yesterday and wouldn’t stop crying; Alex felt bad for her and even sad that he couldn’t save Phil.

If only he had paid more attention, he might have been able to prevent their deaths.

Shortly after, Selena and Mia came down to the living room.

"Let’s go, we have work to do," Mia said and walked toward the door. She didn’t joke around like she usually did and had a serious expression.

Someone asked if it was all right to leave Joan alone in the base.

"She needs some time to herself, let her be," Selena answered before walking after Mia.

The others didn’t say anything else and they all went out as well.

They arrived at the outskirts some time later and got busy with the clearing, other explorers also arrived and joined them.

....

Time went by quickly. Around the afternoon, news that everyone at the Malcolms’ family mansion had gone missing spread throughout Balon City.

No one was able to guess what had happened, and it looked like everyone present at the mansion that night had simply disappeared without a trace.

It was said that the mansion had been put on lockdown and the Union was investigating the cause of their disappearance.

When Alex heard of this, he couldn’t help remembering what happened last night.

After he killed Malcolm and used a space vortex to get rid of all the bodies and cleaned up the scene, a rough-looking Laura walked into the room and saw him.

Alex originally planned on leaving after just taking care of Malcolm and the mages but since someone had seen him, he couldn’t leave a witness behind.

Moreover, it was as if the girl had gone mad after seeing Alex and had immediately tried to attack him.

The look in her eyes clearly showed that she wanted to kill him. So, left with no other option, Alex tossed her into a space vortex as well.

He had then checked the mansion, but didn’t find anyone else.

Either the Malcolm family didn’t have any other family members living in that mansion or they were not in Balon City. Either way, Alex had left the place after cleaning up, so it looked like everyone had left instead of a Wipeout.

Back to the present.

Alex stared at the truck that was used to collect the corpses of mages from the ruins of yesterday’s fight, he couldn’t help but ask Simon what the Union was going to do with all of the corpses.

Simon answered and said that a funeral would be held for all of them at the same time, including Phil and the other two from the Rising Wave explorer group.

And some compensation would probably be offered to their families.

Alex nodded, feeling that it was the right thing to do.

Nothing special happened for the rest of the day; they just continued working till evening, and it was time for everyone to return home.

Mia dropped Alex in front of their new mansion before returning to the RWGB with Simon and a few others of the group while he went into the mansion.

Getting home, dinner was already set and he was asked to go wash up and come join them.

Entering his room, Alex found several bags of high-quality clothes that his mother had gotten for him while she went shopping.

He picked a simple brown sweatshirt and a blue shirt after washing up before going downstairs, he would put his new clothes into the wardrobe later.

During dinner, Zoran announced to everyone that he had enrolled in a driving class and was planning to get a car soon after he was done learning.

Everyone approved of this, getting a car would help the family move around more easily.

They talked about how each other’s day went over the rest minutes that dinner lasted. After dinner, everyone went to their rooms to relax after a long day.

....

Days passed quickly and in the blink of an eye, it had been a few months since the incident of the cracks. Balon City had almost recovered completely and everyone was back to their normal lives.

However, some people still carried deep scars from the incident in their hearts; scars that would take a very long time to heal or, in other cases, never heal.

As for Alex, he had already moved on with life and was back to farming exp outside Balon City almost every day.

The clearing of the outskirts had taken three weeks for them to completely wash away the marks that were left behind by the battle, after which Alex had immediately resumed farming exp so that he could craft a Saint rank spell as soon as possible.

Explorer groups had also resumed taking missions and going on raids after the clearing was done, same was for the members of the Rising Wave group.

With Mia and the others communicating with her every day, Joan was slowly starting to open up again, but everyone knew that the loss of Phil would forever remain her dark cloud in her heart, even though she tried to hide it.

As for the tournament, it ended on the very day the cracks appeared, and there wasn’t a continuation or a conclusion.

After all, with so many students and teachers of the various academies dead, who would still be in any mood to continue a tournament? Not to mention the many mages who had originally come from outside Balon City to watch, they were part of the many corpses that the city held a public funeral for.

The other visitors had also returned to their respective cities, academies, and Magic universities. This included Julius and Ellie.

They had left after making one last contact with Alex and reminding him that the next period admission was the first month of the following year so he should come on time to avoid any complications.

Because even though he had a recommendation letter, the university would not tolerate tardiness.

Alex promised to keep this in mind before they left. As they could not get in touch with Mr Chen, they had asked Clint to help them pass some words to him on their behalf before leaving.

Alex had gotten those words when he went to the Union building to sell beast corpses the next day.

They had basically told Clint to help them remind Alex about his position as an honorary instructor at the Brandvel Magic University and that they would be expecting him soon.

William from the capital city had also left too, the City was back to its original population when Alex had transmigrated.

Well, not quite the population, but everyone who had come for one reason or another after his transmigration had left.

Schools had also resumed. Zoran and Freda had decided to put Alice in Emily’s school, the two girls were in the same class and were always together.

After they returned from school, they would join the couple at the shop.

Alex was fine with this development. His parents had the trinity bracelets that he had gotten for them and changed into necklaces for their protection while Alicia could be his sister’s bodyguard at all times.

Besides, Alicia had gotten very comfortable around his family and was now acting very human-like; Alex even sometimes wondered if she had forgotten her identity as a Divine rank magic beast.

Another thing that happened over the past few months as well was that Alex had received a notification from the system.

The notification was that he had successfully come in first place in the All Academy Star Tournament! The rewards from the system were some exp points and a new skill.

....

ALMIGHTY PATH SYSTEM (error)

Host: Alex Zoran

Level: 44

Exp for next level:307,235 /100(error)

Rank: Peak stage, Saint rank

Elements: Space. Lightning

SPECIAL ABILITIES:

Dual-element body: The host can use two elements.

Mana regeneration: Constantly regenerate mana for the host.

Void walk...

....

To the current Alex, this skill was pretty useless since he was rarely short of mana. However, he was looking forward to the secret rewards that he would get from the other missions that he had received when he first got the system.

That’s if they had any secret rewards.