Ethan decided to take another look around on the next day in the arena since he had a feeling that he was eventually going to find something there. Still, pretty early in the morning, Emily and Hana stopped him.
"I didn't think that you would be interested in helping out… what changed your mind?" Emily asked while frowning.
"I see. You guys thought of the same thing. That is why you were coming to the arena pretty often," Ethan nodded to himself. "That you were trying to find kids making out in the seats."
"Answer the question, please… and don't bring such weird topics to the conversation," Emily sighed.
"I am not interested in helping, but I didn't check the arenas until now and then ended up getting sidetracked," Ethan explained. "Anyway, did you find anyone suspicious yet?"
"No, I don't think that we will learn anything new anytime soon… all of us should have been under watch already," Hana explained. "I am thankful for the help, though. You look like the type of person who wants to avoid problems but always gets dragged by the situation in one way or the other, huh."
"The story of my life…" Ethan shrugged. "Anyway, good luck with your job. Time to hit the simulator again."
In the end, Ethan spent the morning on the simulators and then the afternoon making mana potions. Their quality had improved quite a bit since the last time he made them, so he was getting skilled, and the skill level was increasing. In the end, Ethan headed home feeling pretty satisfied.
Once he returned home, Ethan filled the amulet that he gave to Milo with mana potions. He had been doing that diligently for the past few days and spending ten thousand dollars basically every day. When it comes to the protection of his family, Ethan couldn't slack off, after all. In any case, Ethan went to bed around ten, but when he was about to fall asleep, he received a message from Ian.
(Put the amulet on, we need to talk about something.)
It was a direct and clear message, which was rare for Ian to use or send… if anything, he truly liked to waste people's time, but Ethan could tell that he was being serious about a change.
"What now?" Ethan asked once he had equipped the amulet on.
"It looks like you two are connected now… well, I have some bad news for you all," Ian said after taking a deep sigh. "Three students vanished from the school around four hours ago, and people found signs of teleportation magic being used on school grounds."
Ian was annoying, but he sure was quick to gather intel that fast, and he didn't hesitate to share them with Ethan and Emily… Nevertheless, they could think about that later. The real problem of the question was the issue of timing. They disappeared a few days after Hana and Kei showed up… and that will put them in a weird light since no one could say if the students were kidnapped or vanished by themselves.
"What do you know about those three?" Emily asked.
"Nothing aside from their names and ranks, their names don't matter now, but they all belonged to the C rank," Ian explained. "Until now, no signs of other magic types were used, but things are still under investigation."
"... What do you think, Ethan?" Emily asked.
"I think that Ian has some steel balls for sharing this kind of information so readily," Ethan replied. "He probably will hear someone knocking on his door soon while shouting: FBI! Open Up!"
"Please, be serious…" Emily said and then sighed. "I don't think that those two are involved in this, and I am not sure if those three were kidnapped. Even A-rank heroes would have a hard time sending rank C heroes to who knows where without causing a commotion, and I don't think that we have people of S rank in the whole world yet."
"Makes sense… there is the possibility that those three disappeared out of their own volition to make Hana and Kei stay in a bad spotlight," Ethan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Still, we can't be certain. We need to gather a lot more Intel before reaching any conclusion. Do you know how things are with Dante and Aline? I wonder if the same thing happened in other places if that isn't the case…"
"Getting information about them is hard, but I don't think that anything like this has happened in any place of the world… at least it didn't cross my network yet," Ian explained. "Also, I think you guys aren't considering this, but they disappeared in the school grounds, and that is basically a government facility… they will have to make some drastic moves to make the population understand that they are working hard to avoid losing their support. Rank C heroes are way more valuable than tactical missiles since they can be used over and over again, and we just lost three of them out of nowhere…"
"You are saying that getting involved with them now would make us look suspicious as well… as If I care about that," Emily raised her voice. "Your sister can use teleport magic, right, Ethan? Do you think that they will use her to investigate the scene?"
"I sure hope so. I can't imagine her disclosing any information about it to me, though," Ethan replied. "This situation is different than the others since everyone knows that it might start an international incident… still, the higher-ups should have considered this, and they also know that the real enemies might have planned all this… we'll just have to wait and see."
Ethan also thought that Hana and Kei's movements would be limited thanks to that, and the enemies might have planned all that with that in mind. Still, he wasn't certain if he should voice that possibility.
The next day, Ethan went to school, and then he immediately found Hana, Kei, Emily, and Ian sitting on one of the benches in the nearby plaza. Hana forced a smile when Ethan looked at them, but he didn't react at all and just went to his way.
"... It seems that he is up to something already," Emily stroked her chin thoughtfully.
"You can tell?" Ian asked. "If he is planning to help, he is looking in the wrong direction."
Ian apparently knew where the accident happened, but he didn't share that information with anyone yet. Regardless, Ethan wasn't naive enough to do any investigation as soon as he arrived. Still, he did a bit just by looking at Hana and Kei. Most of the people that interacted with them in the previous days were ignoring them now… they didn't like the possibility that they might disappear again.
"Despite what happened, the school didn't send any messages to the students, but all of them were already aware of what happened," Ethan thought while looking around. "The number of students is smaller than yesterday. They won't come until they learn what truly happened and feel safe… in the meantime, the government won't do anything that will cause more problems, like telling us to stay at home."
In any case, Ethan only had a single class to attend to that morning, and instead of paying attention to it, he focused on listening to the whispers of his classmate. Some of them were particularly good at that and even could use mana to muffle the sound of their voices in order not to let the instructor hear them.
"The direction and the government have no idea what happened, and that is clear since they didn't make any announcements."
"They are treating us like idiots… they think that we survived countless battles in other worlds without using our brains. I should have known that this partnership wouldn't work."
"What do you think that we can do in this situation?"
"... I would rather not say anything now since it will cause more problems than solve it."
It looked like a lot of students were unsatisfied with the situation. Ethan could understand them, but he was the type who wouldn't care or wait for others to solve such problems for him, so he wasn't having any real drastic thoughts.
Ethan heard some other things while he was walking around the school grounds, but he did it slowly, and at the same time, he used Mana Tracking in a certain area around him. In the end, it didn't take long for him to find some traces of a powerful magic near one of the arenas. It looked like those three ranked C kids were together when the thing happened… at the same time, Ethan only felt the undulations caused by a single spell.
"It was a powerful one… It sucked them in without giving them a chance to resist," Ethan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Still, is this enough to confirm that the students weren't part of the problem?"
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