After a hearty meal, the team split into two groups: Josephine Wong would bring Jianmen and Garret Peyton along to her meeting with Headmasters Randall Collins and Barnes, and Headmistress Dorothea Clarkson as well as Glenda Grimes and Professor Kapur, Josephine Wong’s mentor for many years; while all four of the students would take a short break, before they would start to take their finals.

Aside from the pretense of their meeting - that they were visiting as concerned tutors and “primary trainers” of these students and would like to communicate to the headmasters and headmistress regarding the students’ grades and training results, the place they will be meeting was quite unconventional as well - as they would be meeting in the hospital room of Professor Kapur, since the professor was still in recovery after being attacked by the two spies that infiltrated the academy and masqueraded as investigative agents for almost a full semester.

“Greetings.” Jianmen waved his hand at everyone in the hospital room when he came in behind Josephine Wong: “It’s been a while, and sorry that our reunion after all this time would be under such depressing circumstances. And just like I told our guide, I know a contractor that’s willing to do some good work fixing the place up for some very fair prices and a promise not to over charge on anything.”

“Thank you Mr. Yu, but I’m afraid at this stage any changes to our budgetary plans would require a lot of procedural work and would be a painful process for anyone.” Headmistress Dorothea Clarkson cut everyone else off before they could respond: “Let’s get right into it, shall we?”

“She’s right, the academy’s budgeting and funding process is not the friendliest procedure in the world, not to mention the fact that they’re missing some really important funding committee members, along with more than half of the emergency energy stone reserves.” Josephine Wong looked at Jianmen and shrugged.

“Alright, alright, it’s no time for this kind of argument.” Professor Kapur shook her head: “Josephine, Mr. Yu, and Garret, thank you for coming. Everyone in this room has read through the report you gave us. But still, we have some questions for you, and be assured that the information you shared with us will not leave this room.”

“Good, happy to answer anything. I’ll try to provide the answer in the fullest detail to my knowledge.”

“And I’m here for moral support and add to anything you’d like.” Jianmen gave a thumbs up to everyone.

“Okay, here’s my first concern - from all we know about defilers - how would you know that they would be coming at us, targeting us at our timeline and not some other places, and perhaps in the past?” Professor Dorothea Clarkson asked.

“We have no idea on what will happen if they targeted a time that’s in our past, and if they did, there’s nothing we can do about it.” Josephine Wong shook her head: “And - this is our speculation, targeting a time that was in our past would cost them a lot of extra energy, considering it is already extremely difficult for them to travel through worlds and planes, so it would be most convenient for them to target our realm, with our current timeline.”

“And this is judging from the fact that you encountered one such defiler somehow buried under the Clearwater Municipal Hospital?” Professor Randall Collins asked: “For all we know, Defilers just don’t have a very definitive pattern of behavior, well, aside from being accompanied by destruction, darkness and despair. But that’s only correlation.”

“But we do know that in most of the records about their appearances and their doing, they act in hordes.” Josephine Wong snapped her fingers, and a hologram of some ancient records and images appeared in the air in front of her: “And after checking through the records we have, we have come to the conclusion that the one that we encountered was a scout - something that will lead to a greater invasion of Defilers. And - I’m just gonna say this without any offense or disrespect by spilling weighted knowledge flat like this, we have a firm belief that they tend to exploit travesties that are so terrible, that they disturbed the basic order of the world, which would explain the correlation with great horrors of the world. Very condensed clustered malice, like what we’ve found under the municipal hospital, could be a reason that Defiler was there. Which means there was a hole in the order of the world where the hospital is, and the day we fought it, it force opened a portal, which means there is another new wound on top of the old one.”

“... which means the rest of the horde will come following the scout and targeting the wounds.” Professor Randall Collins said: “This makes sense. And I think I can agree with you on your theory about the wounds to the order of the world. But I do have this question, and I mean it in the most respectful way possible: is the recent theft of the piece of Stone of Negation from the keep of the Division gonna make things worse and timeline more urgent?”

The hospital room immediately went completely silent, and almost everyone’s eyes fixated on Josephine Wong.

“So, word travels fast.” Josephine Wong smiled and shook her head: “Yes, it is. And I’m not going to deny or defend it. It’s a shit situation, and it’s nobody else’s fault but the Divisions. But we do have a problem at hand, and we have very limited resources and manpower, which is why I am here.”

“Alright, good, as long as we’re being honest.” Professor Randall Collins exchanged looks with both Professor Barnes and Professor Dorothea Clarkson.

“What, do you have something you wanna tell me?” Josephine Wong took a look at the three heads of the three houses of the academy.

Professor Barnes tried to explain: “It’s probably nothing, but - ”

“From the intelligence you gave us, we looked into every remaining member of the academy faculty.” Professor Dorothea Clarkson stepped forward and said: “One of my assistant professors went AWOL. Due to our being at an incredibly sensitive time, we did a full check on his history and profiles. And yes, Assistant Professor Vyn is a member of the Vyn crime syndicate, and as anyone could see, very possibly a remaining member of the Hellinger family.”