"I shall purge the heretics who commit such crimes in the holy academy grounds. Do not worry, Professor Emma," Edward said, making his hand into a fist and placing it in the middle of his chest. When he saw the elderly woman nod thankfully, he turned his head toward Alec.

"Alec, I would like to ask you to mobilize the disciplinary committee and start investigating. Until this investigation is over, I will raise your authority to equal that of mine," Edward continued. With a serious expression plastered onto his face, Alec repeated the same gesture and slammed his fist onto his chest.

"Understood. I will start as soon as we get out of here," he said. He seemed confident on the outside but inside, Alec was about to shit himself.

'Holy fuck Pen! Are you trying to get me fucking killed!?' he shouted in his head, wiping his sweaty hands on his uniform. He didn't know what Edward would do to him if he was caught and didn't really want to learn either. 'No no... I can't blame the pen. I should have foreseen this. Fuck me! I just didn't think it would fucking use... Demons as an ingredient! Not to mention, why the fuck would it use demons of all things? Is it because it is more effective? Or..."

For some reason, Alec didn't want to continue thinking down that path. He felt his mind get cloudy for a moment before he refocused on the problem in front of him. Edward and Professor Emma started talking about a different topic, but Alec was too nervous to listen to them. His brain worked on overdrive, in tandem with the mana brain.

'What do I do now? We can't stop selling or he will understand that it's me... I can't even take any action like this! I could cause the information to leak anonymously but that might still come back to bite me. There is no way I can control it,' he eliminated option after option. After going through all the options, Alec realized that he only had one choice. He had to swallow a sigh before readying his resolve.

"Is there anything else?" he asked, cutting Edward and Professor Emma's conversation in half. Both turned toward him. Seeing the frown on his face, Edward shook his head.

"You can leave now. I trust you will not spare any effort to find the perpetrators," he said before returning to his conversation.

Alec opened the creaking door of the underground room and left. Taking a few steps, he leaned on a wall and felt the cold stone on his skin. It was a good way to relax. With a few deep breaths, he picked himself up and left the dubious underground section of the alchemy shop. Alyssa was waiting at the counter like before. Hearing Alec come out, she turned around and skipped to his side in excitement.

"Is everything okay? What did you all talk about?" she asked. Alec shook his head and responded.

"Ask nothing, know nothing. Speak with Professor Emma and she will decide on telling you more or not," he said with a monotone voice. He turned around and jumped over the counter with a sleek front flip, supporting himself with a single hand before exiting the alchemy shop; leaving a baffled Alyssa behind.

Unfortunately, he didn't have the time for her. Running at almost full speed, he scoured the academy grounds to find Evan. It took him more than twenty minutes before he finally found the red-haired CQC mage reading some stuff in the library.

"And I was wondering where you were," Alec said while walking up to Evan.

"Hey. I was read- what? What are you doing?" he asked, trying to resist Alec who had grabbed his wrist. "Come on, tell me what is going- Wait, at least let me get the bo- Never mind..."

Seeing the expression on Alec's face, Evan decided that it wasn't a good idea to resist him. Alec pulled him through the corridors of the library before locating the second-floor stairs. Almost running through the corridor, Alec pushed open the door in one motion and led Evan inside.

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"I don't know what is going on but it has to be really bad..." Evan muttered. In response, Alec took out a mental cleansing potion and shoved it into Evan's mouth. He had already used up an emergency one earlier and now used another. It seemed like he would have to write some more in the near future.

Once both of them drank the potion, Alec started pacing around the room, biting his nails.

"They found it. The authorities, they have it!" he said. Seeing Evan's raised brow, he remembered that he hadn't told him anything. "The potions, they found some."

"Oh shit... Are they onto us?" Evan asked. Alec shook his head.

"No. At least not yet. The good thing is, Edward put me up for the investigation," Alec said. When he saw Evan's face relax at the mention of that, he couldn't help but feel a little bit annoyed. "But the main problem is the... Is the ingredients."

"The ingredients?" Evan asked, his head slightly tilted. "What do you mean? What about them?"

Gulping loudly, Alec sighed and took a deep breath.

"Okay. Before I tell you anything further, I want you to know that I had no idea of the contents of our potions," he said.

"Wha- Okay okay..." Evan muttered while pinching his glabella. "I am not going to ask how that happened but still, how bad could it be? Illegal potion distribution is a heavy crime but at most, we will serve about half a year and pay a fine. It's not like we killed people, right?"

Seeing the clueless Evan, Alec facepalmed at the ridiculous situation.

"In fact, we are completely fucked. Totally, 100% fucked," he answered Evan's doubts. "The potions, they contained demonic substances. In large amounts at that."

"What!?" Evan shouted, kicking the chair he was sitting on in the meantime. He looked around to make sure no one was there, no matter how unnecessary it was. "You used demonic substances to make the potions!? Oh my– They are going to execute us if they find out Alec! What were you thinking!?"

"I said I didn't know!"

"What even happened? How did you learn of this?" Evan couldn't help but ask. Now that he was slowly calming down, he wanted to learn more about the details.

Without further ado, Alec explained the situation to him. When he was done, Evan was just sitting with his mouth open, completely dumbfounded.

"So Edward was actually stained in the demonic incursion, but because they are unaware of that, they think it's because of our potion?" he asked to confirm. Once Alec nodded; Evan, too, got up and started pacing around the room like a madman.

"So? What do we do?" he asked. With a deep sigh, Alec started explaining.

"There is only one way to resolve this problem. We can't escape from it, as Edward just included the entire disciplinary committee in the situation," he said. "We have to pull off a technique I once saw in a book."

"If it was anyone else saying that in this situation, I would have probably punched them in the face," Evan commented. Disregarding his words, Alec continued.

"I will have to separate my identities. First of all, no more going to the alchemy labs," he started explaining. "Whatever we do, we do it inside the library and under the effect of mental cleansing supplements. We have to be 100% in control of the situation."

"I agree," Evan said while nodding.

"Then, I will delete all of my memories about the whole potion-dealing ordeal. Completely," Alec said.

"What?"

"Just like you heard. I am going to extract the entire thing from my mind. You will be the only one who remembers it," he said. "If I don't know I am the criminal, I can't slip up and make a mistake. I will be genuinely chasing my own tail."

"And I assume we are going to keep dealing. If we stopped now, you would be the primary suspect..."

"Yep. Exactly," Alec snapped his finger. "I will somehow deal with the potion-brewing process using the mana brain. You will have to continue dealing. But be more careful than ever. We keep going for some time, let's say two weeks, and we stop dealing then. That way, we won't be implicated right away. Alright?"

Evan sighed in response, thoughtful. He was probably feeling guilty, even a little bit. He was the one to come up with the whole dr- potion empire deal after all.

"Alright, partner," he said, a bittersweet smile on his face. Hearing Evan's confirmation, Alec didn't wait any further. Closing his eyes, he started a thorough spring cleaning in his mind. In a short few minutes, Alec had forgotten all about the fact that they had distributed potions, a sizeable memory package stuffed away inside the mana brain.

"Anyway Evan. That's about the gist of it. I will ask you to start questioning people and keeping an eye out," he said.

Evan, on the other hand, didn't betray any emotions on his face and nodded.

"Sure, Alec. We will catch whoever is causing this..."