The Slughorn Scandal came out in the open in a few days.
Eventually, everybody had come to know that Sienna Slughorn was involved in a grim cultist incident as a victim. There were also some rumours of two more LA female students involved but their names weren't much known or discussed. Because Sienna hogged all their attention.
The entire incident was now blamed on Edward Jener. Rumours about him being involved in cultist activities had already been spread by Eren's berserker goons. Plus, the way Eren handled the whole thing while shapeshifting Edward strengthened those rumours even further.
The Slughorn household was incensed. It had found Sienna in a poor state just outside the city of Nilaami. They tried to suppress the news in the fear of their name getting tarnished. The extensive content Eren recorded on that day eventually ensured that one of the most prominent business tycoon houses of the kingdom wouldn't be able to keep things under wraps for long.
LA had also tried to suppress the incident, lest it gets blamed for neglecting the students' safety. But the captured content started getting circulated within known and hidden ranking communities and that's when all the hell broke loose.
The Slughorn household tried to change the identity of that person captured in the content to someone else. But the various experts in the field came out in secret saying that the content wasn't doctored and it was indeed Sienna.
The Slughorn household refused to confirm the mass suspicion, still insisting that it was Sienna's lookalike. However, it also blamed LA for being careless about Vivi and Luna, who until now were hardly known by the masses despite being victims of the same incident.
LA had tried to play it cool at first. But after hearing Slughorn House's accusations, it stopped doing it. It came clean with everything that it had found out about the case so far.
As per the academy's investigation, Edward Jener had defected to the cult while serving as a lab-in-charge. The academy apologized for this "fact" openly and assured the masses that the mistake won't be repeated.
But LA didn't stop there. Since it had admitted to Edward being a cultist, it had no qualms about saying what it had found out about him so far. The report concluded that the guy had been receiving bribes from students.
LA also stated that Edward Jener was bribed by Sienna Slughorn to alter her lab tests. She along with Vivi, Luna and a bunch of other rich students had been gathered by LA's rogue lab-in-charge to get bribes from them. And all of them had travelled to the city of Nilaami voluntarily to participate in that "fundraiser".
This news sparked a huge storm in the kingdom. The Slguhorns regretted blaming everything on LA. But the deed had been done. Slipping back from their stance was not beneficial. Thus, they continued to maintain their facade.
This act affected the Slughorns' business heavily. But in their defence, the incident was going to affect their business anyway. They just made it more difficult by trying to pick a bone with LA.
Edward Jener and Ron Damien were declared as the most-wanted criminals by the Edinburgh kingdom. Both were declared to be closely linked with each other, working in the shadows for the Beast Bloods.
As a result, Beast Bloods also emerged as one of the most talked-about cultist organizations within the kingdom. But Slughorns weren't happy with just that. Both of Eren's aliases were designated for separate anonymous bounty payouts.
The Slughorns had also activated their underground channels to know more about anything related to the two guys, Beast Bloods, and anything linked with the Slughorn Scandal.
Slughorns eventually started zeroing in on the degenerate participants who had taken part in the incident. The famous potioneering house couldn't officially declare the bounty on these characters as they had decided to stay firm on their stance that the girl in the recorded footage wasn't Sienna.
So just like what they did with Edward and Ronny's cases, they declared big bounties on the degenerates anonymously.
The kingdom-spanning manhunts began in every direction. A lot of adventurer's guilds, famous parties, and private mercenaries had been roped in eventually. It became difficult for the degenerate rankers to stay in the shadows and save their hides.
They all blamed only one person: Ron Damien AKA Ronny. They used their organizations to start pursuing leads on Ronny so that they could catch him first before rankers and whip his ass.
Ronny had fuc*ked with both the rankers and the cultists. So his name, appearance, and other subtle details recorded by the eyewitnesses quickly got well-known.
Being pursued by so many people at once had to produce some results. The masses soon found out that Edward Jener was seen at Grand Hiyat some days back. He had been a patron of the place for a night and he had shown up here with a girl that had no background.
The rankers suspected that the girl was the point of contact between Edward Jener and Ronny, which resulted in Reen's Elena-like alias getting known to the public as well.
It took only a few days before another news reached peoples' ears that one of the degenerate rankers who was involved in the Slughorn Scandal had been hunted. The unknown bounty hunters had made a "blood eagle" out of him to make a statement, as suggested by the Slughorns.
And this was only the beginning. Soon more of these stories started popping up. The crime rate in the kingdom also increased because rankers started using the Slughorn Scandal incident as an excuse to do their dirty work. They would kill the person that they had wanted to kill and blame it on the bounty hunters who were out for the degenerate cultists.
The Edinburgh kingdom observed that the increased crime rate was related to Slughorns blowing things out of proportion. This was due to the crazy money they had started to pump into their underground channels. So it decided to suppress the house by raising taxes on its potion production under some silly economical excuse.
As a result, the Slughorns had to increase their prices of potions by a small margin.. But it was still enough for people to badmouth the house for its greedy nature despite the problems it was facing.