70th chapter : waiting for the moment .

As the first challenge or rather what someone would call a game ended, most of the holders were having their fullest time, enjoying their lives. However, not all of them had the luxury of enjoying some fun times, as the councilors had the responsibility of overlooking things and that was their unfortunate time to perish.

An hour earlier,

“Sigh, It seems that Layla sama had settled on staying around that boy, anyway” said Olivia.

Olivia was looking at the security cameras after Layla left the office in pursuit of Marco and Carla, most of the councilors in Layla’s team were interested in how she was acting around him, so they were too watching the live footage with Olivia.

“Don’t be that jealous, Olivia. She’s still young after all and also she has this habit of protecting the young ones too” interjected with a silly laugh at the end, said Bruno.

Despite what they had in mind about Marco’s status within the euro society and this whole ordeal, they really cherished their time with Layla with or without his existence in her life. So Layla’s decisions were like a line they would never oppose no matter what as she was like their savior.

Her team is well known in the council’s headquarters as the wings of liberty, a platoon that works independently based on what work Layla brings in.

“Well, I’m still worried about Marco’s influence on her. I’m sure that he’ll make her more rebel-ish” Lise spoke as she was looking at the documents for a final check up.

Everyone in the office nodded at her as they saw some true facts within her words, therefore instead they didn’t actually want to disturb Layla’s time.

“It’s not like that, so don’t put the light on some things that Layla sama would never have! To begin with, she’s still stronger than him!” Sampson said as he patted Lise’s head, smiling softly.

Seeing him acting like that as Sampson was the vice captain of the platoon, Lise couldn’t just argue with his words, however she had her own plans too.

“Sorry for that! but I have a feeling that this will happen I guess, I’m heading out first!!” said Lise in a rush. She finished her work as quickly as she could, leaving her post open for the others.

Unlike the other members, Lise was still a new recruit that Layla found when searching for talents so her attachment was rather strong against her sense of duty, that’s what had her moving along the feelings she had in her.

“Wait!! Don’t leave work in the middle of the shift!!” Bruno yelled at her as she was wearing her jacket, ready to leave at the given moment.

“Huh?! I did all the work rather swiftly! Plus !! I’m sure that you guys will have enough hands for the rest of the work without me!! So see y’all later!! I’ll make sure to get more info about that Marco kun for everyone to see that my hunch isn’t at fault!!” Lise answered.

Lise’s words added more heaviness to her acts then instantly went outside the office running towards her personal task.

Olivia sighed at that scene then giggled a little before leaning down on her desk, softly smiling, as the light of sunset reached the roof of the office. Everyone felt the brief calm of the moment.

“I guess she’s the one who loves Layla sama the most here so leave her be, Bruno” Olivia pleaded, waving her hand around for him to sit down.

Bruno sighed as he saw the rest smiling too, he just couldn’t argue anymore, returning back to his seat.

To them, Lise was just the newest member of the team of the fourth ranked. A girl in her mid twenties saved by Layla from losing her life in an investigation job back then, so such developed love for the one who everyone considers as an angel of peace wasn’t a foreign feeling for them either.

After seeing that everyone had a little smile of grief, they returned to work, focusing on analyzing most of the data that is left on their desks.

Based on what Layla had seen during the first game using her serment, she had given them a lot of things to work on, so her supervision was needed. However, most of her team was adapted to work on her serment’s data. In that aspect, Bruno sighed and was mostly satisfied to see that Lise, the newest recruit, was the fastest one to match the pace and finish her part of the work swiftly.

“She’s really the fastest in this kind of work, huh, man I feel like I'm being left behind at this point!!” Sampson said, shouting as he checked some papers from Lise’s office.

Eventually, Sampson sighed.

That sigh was followed by a sudden unfamiliar voice for them.

“So there’s two essentially out of the game, huh, I’m not that greedy so you guys are enough for me to do so for now” said a mysterious guy.

The guy’s appearance was a total mystery, a long jacket and kabuki mask hiding his face and all of his aura around. Not a single one of them were able to sense him or see him until he appeared, sitting on Lise’s chair.

“Who’re you!?!” Bruno roared the question as he was about to release his serment, in an attempt to apprehend the guy.

“Huh?! oh right I’m putting on this mask for the first time. it can’t be helped, you guys are essential for my other plan so you will die here”.

The guy rose to his feet from Lise’s chair, then he held his arm straight looking at the others trying to release their serments, a snickering sound passed as a giggle into the ears of everyone.

The confused expressions were stitched on the face of each one of them as they heard the giggle.

“It’s useless! Futile! And in vain!! No one!! Not even your angel will be able to defeat me!!” The guy said as he instantly dodged a kick from Sampson.

Moving around was easy as everyone was trained enough for close combat without their serments, however that didn’t apply to fighting against someone who has a serment.

“Huh?”.

A little to no reaction from Bruno who had the kabuki guy piercing his chest easily and barehanded, left him completely unaware of his certain death.

“Bruno!!”.

The roar followed after Olivia tried to pull the kabuki guy back, therefore he jumped away, using Bruno’s body as a shield.

“You bastard!!” Sampson was filled with rage whereas his euro levels got into its extreme, causing his aura to leak furiously, however it soon faded as he couldn’t release neither of the euro particles within his reserves nor his serment.

“I told you it’s futile! Not even Layla Leigh can do a thing here and so you will perish!”.

As he finished his words, the kabuki guy let go of Bruno’s corpse for a feint then he snapped his fingers, the moment he leapt to the back. Next thing, everyone realized what happened the second they found themselves caught in a big explosion that burned most of their astral bodies instead of their physical ones, although it did deal a fatal damage to their bodies in general.

The explosion was seen from outside by a lot of people who instantly called others for help, unfortunate enough for those who were caught up by the explosion the help didn’t arrive any time soon.

“Huh, huff? I can’t feel my lower body…”

Olivia was scattered next to her office, her body gushing out a lot of blood. The blood loss gave her a hazy vision as she faintly saw the kabuki guy piercing the hearts of the rest of her team.

She instantly regained consciousness, feeling that rush of pain gouging out her nerves, therefore, she thought that she mustn’t scream or let out a single voice. A bleak effort of her own lasting life that has yet to perish into the void of this incident.

A final task to do as a revenge for her life and the lives of her teammates. Olivia crawled silently towards her office and barely caught her phone that wasn’t touched by the explosion, a rather fortunate thing amidst the tragedy that is happening. The desperate call was pressed only to find the kabuki guy standing behind her.

The kabuki guy let out a sigh as he took the phone from her persistent and fragilly trembling hand. He crushed the phone after peeking at who she called.

“Such a pushy punk you are. To call for help in a situation like this, is indeed a surely great thing to do!!” said the kabuki guy.

His laughter noises would be heard as a deafening phobic noise to Olivia who got her heart gouged out, although he kept her on life support somehow as her mind and whatever was left of her body was still functioning rather stiffly. He took all of their serments then made her see the last thing that he did.

Olivia’s last memory was the Kabuki guy using Sampson’s arm to write with his blood on the walls, the last message that left her in tears. Seeing how she suffered, it didn’t take a lot of time after that for the help to arrive.

About ten minutes later, Dalian and some other councilors arrived on scene and saw what happened. Everyone was looking around until one of them told Dalian to look at the walls. The second he noticed, a small burning cigarette on Bruno’s desk ignited an unpredicted witchcraft.

“Bwahahaha!! man such fireworks!! I didn’t expect him to fall for this one!!” the Kabuki guy roared in joy, clapping his hands at the massive explosion he was witnessing, “well, time to go-”.

the kabuki guy said as he instantly blocked a hit by Dalian, just to disappear in his face after that. Dalian was searching tirelessly around but nothing to be found about that kabuki guy that had the council in a complete shock.

Shortly after that, Layla arrived to find that her team was wiped out in a terrorist attack. The grief reached its peak the moment that Layla appeared, although she was in a good shape, however that wasn’t what she had in mind unlike the others.

Layla felt deep despair in that moment, blaming herself about what happened.

Present time,

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After that sudden ambush and Dalian’s call for action, all of the guild masters called for their most experienced navigators, or in other words their main navigators, since the council was lacking in numbers, looking that Dalian ordered his daughter to take a rest because of that.

“So, why am I here again?” Alex asked Emilis who was having her hear the briefing.

“If she’s alone then I guess she won’t be a good help!! Just let her go back!! A useless navigator like her won’t be producing any results anyway!! Send her back!!”.

Most of the other navigators complained with no shame to their actions, all of them knew each other and had worked together before in joint missions, aside from being from the royal branch families or main fourteen royal families, ultimately, even their words had reasons as Alex was the type that lazes around back then during the trial training missions where she got paired with some of them.

The council tends to let all of the guilds’ new awakened navigators train under the council for six months, those trials were more like a college session to understand all the ethics of work within the council. Several dozen of the ten guilds’ navigators had gone from that trial to leave the guilds and join the council ranks just like what happened with Elise, in that aspect, even the ten guilds masters had their own complaints after some time but never managed to stop this ordeal from happening either.

“Don’t listen to them Van san! I’m sure that you’ll be a great help so please have your time, working and analyzing the stuff around all together or alone, make yourself comfortable. That man is a threat and with all of your help, everyone, we will get a hold of him” Dalian said as he had the other navigators quite startled by his stand on Alex’s side.

Alex remained calm, walking around and didn’t participate in the analysis process, she just was looking around and picking any sign of euro particles she thinks is interesting within the room and the area in particular.

“Seems like they didn’t find anything interesting around there too, y’know” Cedric said as he returned from looking at what the other navigators were doing.

“I know, the guild masters are just waiting for orders and supervising things…sigh, I just left my bed for a work that master Emilis can do just by picking some euro particles from the blood directly” Alex responded slowly as she was looking at the letter on the wall.

The letter said that,

-I have the key and you have the door, however you are just dumb to pretend that no one knows about it, fear that darkness, the deep fear that will be carved in your hearts the moment you see it, the true revolution will come ahead of your acts-.

Alex inspected the words with a careful eye, checking anything she had in mind for this incident, but the only thing that came to her mind was Marco’s curse mode. However, looking at the current situation, Marco doesn’t have a reason to do all that and to Layla’s platoon nonetheless, let alone the fact of how Alex herself is part of a greater thing than what she used to be now. She just heaved a deep breath in exasperation at what Cedric told her.

“By the way Alex, haven’t you been getting a little lazy recently? We’re not doing any training but it’s better to show them that you’re superior now!! You must’ve sure noticed by now that the dead bodies have something in their astral bodies” said Cedric.

Cedric scolded her the same way Marco does when they argue, she looked at him with a blank reaction of mixed feelings then she turned around madly before approaching the bodies.

“How far have you reached so far now?” Alex asked the navigators who were in charge of checking the bodies.

“Tsk, I’m not responding, you provided nothing for this collective search…but I’m obliged to give reports so I’ll tell you out of pity. Only the hearts and few limbs were taken off, nothing else than that seems to be done either, the bodies returned to their original form afterwards, like a regenerative healing witchcraft, other than this nothing else was placed on the corpses” The navigator of the sage tortoise responded with a displeased face.

Alex looked at him, feeling that displeasure reaching the depth of his heart as she heard him click his tongue several times now. She just ignored the hatred and kept checking the bodies again.

“In the first place!! what are you going to do with all of this information if you just sat around there!?!” Another said harshly as they looked at her, having a relaxed smile of relief.

Hearing them was just an order from Cedric, therefore she approached Dalian on her own. Alex calmly smiled at the rest of the guild masters whilst approaching them. They asked what she wanted.

“Dalian san, most of the navigators here didn’t really give me any good info or rather they didn’t fetch any good so I came to ask you instead” said Alex, smiling confidently.

Alex’s words have shown the confidence she had as the councilors exploded angrily at her for it, but Dalian told them it’s ok due to them needing any help they could get.

“Thanks. So about my question, have you checked the astral bodies? The regeneration witchcraft was originally placed on them, I guess by Layla san as a measure of healing when they’ve gone into a dangerous mission, that’s what I got by looking at the bodies, however that didn’t work with their hearts this time, regeneration is somewhat related to the astral body too but there’s hardly any navigators that are well knowledgeable about the astral body and it’s component either”.

Alex’s explanation had the guild masters and the other navigators, really speechless since they didn’t see her releasing her serment at all, not even a single time either, so her words struck them as a mockery in its own sense.

“After what you said, yeah, my daughter places the healing witchcraft on them the moment they start to work under her command, we can have master Annie’s seal of approval about it too. However, we didn’t check on the astral bodies, no one asked about that matter, and unfortunately as you said, there’s little to no holders of the navigator type that are well versed in the astral body rules” Dalian answered calmly, looking at the bodies from afar.

“I see, well, I’ll have my time in checking them this time. Master, you won’t mind that, right?” Alex interjected as she asked Emilis after that.

Emilis looked like he was spacing away totally calm, however the question snapped him back to reality.

“Huh? Are you asking me?” Emilis answered, rather puzzled about it.

Everyone looked at him as his calm clamor made them more furious than ever.

“My bad! I forgot that you came here for nothing, in the first place you don’t mind anything I do unless it was about payment so I’ll proceed with work as usual. I hope all of you can back down” Alex smiled calmly at everyone.

“Hein!?”.

furious reactions were expected until Henry smiled at her, responding to the mockery they all felt from her.

“All of you, don’t mind her please. I’m sure that she’s talking big and I’m sure that it’s just mockery, she’ll find nothing and she’ll just embarrass herself more or less, so take a seat to enjoy the show.” Henry said deviously.

The furious reaction soon turned into giggles and low sounds of laughter on that camping night. All of them left the stage for Alex to work on her own.

“You really got adapted to this picky attitude of ours, thus Marco tends to not do it a lot unlike Arthur, work thoroughly and check each speck” Cedric was praising her.

Alex just smiled accepting his praises then stood in front of the building where the bodies were deployed down. Alex calmly released her serment, then instead of the usual window viewer witchcraft, she used a euro circle method to analyze the bodies subtly quicker.

“As I thought that’s why no one had found a hint about it” Alex spoke, getting their attention.

“What do you mean?!” Layla asked hurriedly.

“There’s a seal on the bodies that made it look like only some limbs were torn badly, sigh”.

Alex exhaled her breaths as everyone felt a cold vibe in the area. Within that cold vibe, everyone stayed speechless as they witnessed Alex releasing another stage of release. Alex released her second release in front of everyone for the first time.

The holographic one eyed glasses of her first release form turned into a mystic eye of purple and gold alongside six golden arms that are calibrated by an armament attached to her back. Speaking only about its specs, the heavy pressure that everyone in the area felt was enough of a proof that Alex right now is definitely a monstrous genius.

“I’ll be starting the proper work now” Alex calmly said as she took a seat on the ground crossing her legs.

“Impossible!! There’s no other stage other than the first release to the navigators!!” The backlash of her achievement wasn’t gonna be bottled up either way.

“However I achieved it and found what you couldn’t find with mere blinks and this brings us here. Now shut these mouths of yours and let me do my work” Alex interjected leaving them more speechless while she showed her true latent ability.

She took a few seconds to release more euro circles from the golden arms and five minutes to let some window viewers around everyone to get the information seen by them.

Alex smiled confidently during that moment of truth.

After releasing these window viewers, Alex stood approaching them whilst the golden arms had the work proceeding smoothly.

“This is a ritual. No serments around to be found, most likely the stolen hearts are in a good shape too but despite what I found I failed to locate them in the premises of the island so I presume that most of the loot that this kabuki guy had taken is hidden away. However, the astral bodies were the ones which got fatally damaged then being slipped out of the physical bodies during death time,” Alex explained briefly then showed them through the window viewers, a simulation about the bodies.

A lot of the navigators dissed her silently, as they had no response to what Alex said and had showcased now. Alex felt their grueling anger as she accepted with an enthusiastic cheeky grin then calmly continued explaining what she had gained of info,

“This ritual is something that the council has never seen before and I’m sure of it. Thus, I wanted to keep this for myself but this is not the case now. I’ll show you the last memories of this woman called Olivia. She’s most likely the last one who died before the man who harassed them disappeared from the scene” Alex said as she was looking at Layla.

Everyone sat there speechless, not knowing what to say or even argue with her at this point. Eventually, someone spoke.

“Don’t do it!!” Layla suddenly interjected.

“As I thought, you wouldn’t like that, however I won’t be having any order from you or even Dalian san, I won’t apologize either” Alex responded as she saw Layla instantly releasing her serment with her hand facing Alex’s face, standing with the bodies behind her.

“What are you doing?” Alex asked coldly, filled with bloodlust towards Layla’s act right now.

“This is a violation of the dead ones’ dignity! You can’t have their bodies touched anymore than this , neither their bodies nor their memories!!” answered Layla.

Layla responded with the same cold bloodlust, but Alex wasn’t in the mood to talk back. Unfortunately for Layla, a sudden big enough window viewer broadcasted the last memories of Olivia’s mind.

Layla turned around hastily, as she wasn’t expecting that. She saw a golden arm going out from a small portal right on top of Olivia’s head.

Despite the scenes being really gory. Layla saw everything as so she also received the last words of Olivia which were stuck inside her deep mind.

Everyone saw how far Alex had gone in just a few minutes and they got a good look at the man, who is now announced as a war criminal around the globe, ordering all councilors to dispose of him, the moment they see him or even run away if they aren’t able to do it.

“I’m glad that you did all of this, but this is my fault for not expecting an incident to occur, honestly. We will continue from now on and I hope you can join us at the search party.” Dalian said as he saw that Alex sighed sadly at the state that Layla was in.

Alex heard him loud and clear but chose to look at Emilis’ reaction first.

“Sorry but I’ll decline. In the first place, the council still hates us red mermaid members. I’m a red mermaid member first and foremost, a navigator that everyone hates around would bring more casualties than results, that’s a given. I’ll leave the records at your office with master Emilis but I won’t be joining any search parties. I’ve also cleared the sealing away from the building and this part of the island, any further reporting isn’t gonna give anything good so have fun with the rest” Alex said as she bowed back to Dalian who showed his appreciation.

Everyone felt furiously crushed at how Alex was talking to Dalian, the elder of the council, however, None of them had the courage to speak after the humiliation she sent them through.

After that sudden release of the window viewer, Layla realized that Alex had seen these scenes, the moment she released her second release. More or less, the last message that Olivia had, was the reason that Layla got back on her feet, followed with Lise being found to be alive after what happened either. Layla embraced her tightly, crying a little as Lise couldn’t help but to pat her on the head gently. She took Alex’s report after that and read it thoroughly to understand what happened after.

The guild masters took their leave after that leaving the councilors who were staying behind to clean the building do their jobs. Dalian however, didn’t give up on talking with Alex about leading the search party, holding the two of Emilis and Alex from going back to the mansion.

“Papa, it’s ok. I’ll be the one to lead this search” Layla said suddenly.

“Huh?! What are you saying!?! Something might happen to you if you go after that man!! The guy is dangerous even for you!!” Dalian was an overprotective father.

“Papa, I’m fine now and I apologize for raising my serment against you, Alex san. I know that you did it for me to understand the suffering they passed through. I’m the angel of the council and if I’ve fallen then no one would have an ounce of belief in their hearts again” Layla said what she had in mind as Alex smiled at her a little, just to reply few words after,

“I’ll be annoyed by working with the council, so I’ll not officially join the search. Plus Marco would owe me one if I stayed behind looking after his girlfriend” Alex had a smug expression on her.

Emilis who stayed silent the whole time was searching around the island about the man too, as like every other holder the kabuki guy showed a different vibe to him. That vibe was slightly strange as if he was confident enough to match even the pace of Emilis, so that feeling ticked him off for a first.

“For now, We’ll tell you anything I get or she gets, also I hope you guys can work on having the games continue steadily.” Emilis grinned at Layla who returned the smile confidently saying that they will.

The bloody festival arc had begun.

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