A dark figure walked out of the shadows into candlelight, and Jim jumped up from where he stood about to scream.

“Shush! You wanna wake the whole house?” Kairos whispered urgently.

“Whoa! Captain, you scared me. How did you appear in my room without any notice?”

“Duhhhh!! Jim, you didn’t use your Soul Perception at all?”

“Unnnnn, I thought it might be a ghost so…. I didn’t want to …”

*Smack*

“Oww!”

“Alright I’m here now, what did you want me for?”

“Oh yeah! Captain, you need to help my mother. Come!” Jim pulled at Kairos’ arm and dragged him over to the bed. On it lies his mother with a pale face and troubled breathing.

“She looks bad. No wonder you sent me such a serious letter. Let me guess, your father does not intend to help?”

“Yeah, it is like he abandoned us. Not like he was any different from before,” what the boy said is the cold and unsettling truth. If Jim’s father wanted to groom him, the boy would be able to get massive amounts of training resources and would never have landed in the same group as Kairos from the start.

“Did you try using your Soul Perception on her?”

“I did, but except for a weak constitution, there was nothing I found.”

“Here, let me try.”

Kairos placed his hand on the wrist of Jim’s mother and sent a strand of Origin Energy into her meridian channels. Almost at once, he realised that the older lady isn’t sleeping. She was unconscious.

“Hmm… that’s odd, her condition felt rather serious, but I couldn’t put my finger on what is wrong with her either. Have you any idea?”

“Captain, my mother has been this way since I came home. It just got worse every day, even though I had been infusing as much life force as she could take.”

“We have to bring her to see Helena. Are you able to bring her to the Capital?”

“We’re actually grounded right now,” Jim gave a helpless look at Kairos.

Kairos’ face stiffened.

He had guessed that Jim wasn’t able to leave. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a need to send him a letter asking for help. But seeing the condition that Jim’s mother is in, he could not understand why they are still locked up. Does a person’s life carry no value?

Even Kairos, who is an outsider, is worried whether she could make it if a doctor does not see to her soon.

“I don’t think we can smuggle her out and judge from how this place is guarded, it looks like we need to find another way. Your father wasn’t happy when I came to visit today, so I came over. You know anything about this, or have you seen anything odd recently?”

There are just too many suspicious things going on in the mansion currently. When Kairos asked, Jim started going through everything that was even a little different from usual. And during this, the boy spoke about a large but concealed shipment that he accidentally chanced upon with Soul Perception.

“I have an idea to get both of you out. Do you have a map of the mansion?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“No, but I can draw it.”

Kairos nodded, and the two started discussing a feasible plan.

At this moment, on another floor of the mansion, an old man slowly climbed out of bed to use the loo. He sat up from his bed for a moment, trying to dismiss his dreams and wake his lazy bones before his bladder bursts.

Scratching his behind, he lazily placed his feet in his fluff slippers and made his way to the bathroom.

Unlike most of the occupants, this man has a private bathroom and do not have to worry about sharing. For his status, this is nothing strange either, since he is the old ancestor of the Hope family.

For the past five hundred years, he had been the pillar of the great Hope enterprise, and having a little benefit is nothing.

Suddenly, his eyebrows raised.

Hmmm? It seems there is a rat in the house. Now now now, how many years has it been since someone dared to make a mess in my home?

He slowly went towards another floor, making his way like a stealthy panther as he erased his presence nearly perfectly. Even though it is dead in the night, and the crystalised light in the night lamps for this entire floor has been turned off as he preferred, he could still see like it was during dusk.

Back in Jim’s room, in the middle of their discussion, Kairos suddenly hushed. Jim, who was still talking also stilled himself and looked at Kairos.

The young saboteur sent out his Soul Perception as much as he could but did not pick up anything.

“Is something wrong, Captain?”

“There is movement in the air. Above us.”

“How many levels above us?”

“Four floors.”

Jim started counting, the level they are in is the servants’ quarters. Above them is the great hall, and then the rooms for the other family members, followed by his father’s bedroom and study. And then it is the floor where the grand patriarch is said to stay.

“That’s where my grand patriarch is living! Quick, you’ve got to leave! He’s a Double S ranker!

“Already on the third floor! He is coming rather quickly.”

The room where Jim is in is far at the corner of the servants’ quarters and will require a bit of effort to go out of the building. The Hope mansion is the exact architecture design popular this century, where the servants and masters of the house can have minimum contact to feed the house owner’s sense of superiority. The building has an ornate spiral stairway placed outside the house that allows family members to exit without ever needing to enter the ground floor where the servants are. Although there is a connecting way, it will require the Grand Patriarch to make a short detour to reach Jim’s room.

“Captain, you must leave now. I will find a way to delay him.”

“No, Jim, go back to sleep. You must not let him know I am here. See you in a few days.”

Just as mysteriously as the boy appeared, he stepped back into the darkness of the room and disappeared.

As he exits Jim’s room, the swarm of tiny dragons hiding in his robe’s inner pocket, flew out and encircled him.

“Go, find your masters, and let them know to prepare the escape route.”

Despite all the preparation for a safe exit, things are no longer as certain with a double S ranker on his tail.

The dragonlings disappeared one after another. Although each of those tiny fellows is so weak that they aren’t even considered F ranking creatures, they are natural fliers with a top speed that could easily outstrip top rankers.

This may sound rather unbelievable after all the triple S rankers could also achieve limited-flight, but that is not enough to compare with the Ancestor Dragons that are not a mortal race, even their infants. This is a race that belongs to the realm higher than where immortals live.

The tiny dragons quickly reached where the fifteen disciples are waiting, and with their souls resonating with their human masters, the information is quickly passed over.

“A Double S ranker? My goodness. Everyone activate the shadow seals now!”

The others were already moving before instructions were given, knowing the gravity of the situation.

The leader in their group is, Ah Pui, the very same person that talked to Kairos and the others at the creek, and the very same person who fought Jones.

Back then, he was only at Peak B rank, but after practising the new martial arts that Kairos had imparted him, and also because of the powerful life energy from the cubic fruit he consumed, he has become one of the five A rankers in the group.

Becoming the leader of the group is not due to his martial talents but because he has a way to safely extract his team.

If a person thinks about it, they will be amazed by his achievements, considering that it has been years since the group was assigned as death warriors and take up the dirty jobs of the Devilheart family, yet they managed to survive all this time.

Not only that, until now, they had minimal failure rates, and even managed to handle S ranked opponents like the Saint Cadets Academy’s dorm matron.

They had several close encounters with S ranked opponents in their previous missions. However, this time around, Ah Pui’s mettle will be sorely tested. Not only is this the first time they are facing a double S ranker, but their mission is also to save their Martial Teacher who is only at Peak D rank.

The difficulty of a rescue mission far exceeds even an assassination. After all, any covert actions that end up with the enemy on your tail is already a failure. And this time, they have no room to spare.