Zavier had a lot of questions that he had no way of answering. He was stumbling his way forward going by the seat of his pants, not knowing where to even start looking.
The thing that currently worried him the most was his Uncle Val. If his Uncle Val was involved in the plot somehow, what were his reasons for turning on him.
Zavier didn't think that he was important enough for Uncle Val to have put in place such a big plan. Why bother bringing Zavier home in the first place if he only wanted to get rid of him?
He didn't know if his enemy was Uncle Val or not but he was sure about one thing; that Uncle Val knew what was happening and he didn't inform him or warn him in any way.
As it stood, it was too difficult for him to count Uncle Val as a helper or even a well-wisher.
He had to think of him as a potential enemy that was trying to kill him which made it all the worse.
After his parents died, it was his Uncle Val who had taken him in. That was the reason that Zavier wasn't sure what was Uncle Val's motive behind all this.
If something like this was a part of the curriculum of the school, it should have been announced earlier on and the students would have been briefed repetitively on their personal safety. But nothing of the sort happened.
All of this happened just when another attempt at his life failed and his Uncle Val came back home and tried to get information out of him through various means.
Since he couldn't find anything out, he needed to see for himself. Zavier suspected that Uncle Val was behind this mission scheme, that it was only authorized after approval from Uncle Val.
Zavier could be sure that there would be hidden dangers in this mission. It could also be that this mission itself was a trap for him so that he wouldn't be able to move away.
But most of all he was afraid of the monster that was inside Alissa. Even she wasn't aware of the monstrous presence in her mind.
Zavier was not very powerful since his powers were only developing but even that wasn't something just anyone could handle and yet the existence in her body had rendered him fearful and cautious in a single breath.
It had rendered Zavier unable to use even a little bit of his mental strength to free himself from its suppression. He felt like he was completely powerless in front of it and would have died had he not pulled back his consciousness out of her body in time.
Zavier felt that the reason behind Alissa not being able to sense any magic was because of the monster in her body. It must have been suppressing her magic sense just as it had directly cut off his mental and magical strength.
He had so many things to worry about but not many leads to follow in order to resolve those worries.
It was only through luck that he had come across the ally of the assassin that had killed his body and from him he had fortunately found out the name of the assassin; Pacer.
Just the name was a breakthrough in his otherwise empty world of lies and deception.
Before this, he had always addressed the assassin as Mr. Killer but now he had a name for him.
The name itself could turn out to be a hoax because Zavier couldn't be sure whether the name was his real name, nickname, or some code name that his assassin organization had given him so that all assassins could remain hidden while working even among themselves.
Whatever it was, it was at least something. It was something that he could work on instead of going about on his own like a headless fly.
While he was busy contemplating how to use this information to acquire new leads. Clone that had been practicing perception system all this while spoke out in his mind.
"I can try to find all information related to that name. The name is a little different and there must not be many with that name in the city. You need to enable the shared mode so I can also see through the information that you are hoarding about this person."
"System, enable sharing mode."
[Shared mode has been successfully enabled.]
[You are now connected to four other clones.]
A flood of information was transferred from the original to the clone having perception system. After he had successfully analyzed the memories, the clone was finally up to date with the situation.
The clone had the same suspicions as the original Zavier. He too thought that Uncle Val might be involved in the assassination attempt or at least had the knowledge about the attempts on his life. Therefore, the more complicated a thing was, the more carefully hidden it tended to be. So, the chances of dredging up any information regarding the name was very little especially when that mysterious man, who had unintentionally revealed the identity of the assassin, knew that Zavier had learned that name.
The clone that had been practicing the perception system in the clock tower had seen many things over the period of time. He knew many secret trades, underhanded deals, unfinished plans, information that could be used to find out more about Pacer.
He knew exactly which people to approach and how to go about it. He had observed countless people doing it.
The thing that he was looking for was the birth records or any extended family members of Pacer. As such the only way to know something was to talk to the person who he had seen selling such records to people on little bribes.
He approached the information broker with a face mask and a colorful costume draped around him. Therefore, it wasn't easy to figure out who was the person looking for information.
The clone gave him a bag of coins and said a single word that he and his cronies used as a check word for safe customers. After all, nobody knew when someone who intended to bust them came around. If he hadn't just said the safe word, the broker would have broken contact with him right there and then.
As he had known about the safe word beforehand, the information broker simply nodded and indicated for him to continue with his request.
"I want you to find any details regarding the man known as "Pacer". He is an assassin probably of high repute among the low to mid-level assassins."
There was not just one such information broker, and the clone decided to go to the most effective ones.
The result; there was no such assassin named Pacer in the city which was not believable at all.
He had used his Time Space Eye to note the behavior of the information brokers and was shocked to see that they really were telling the truth.
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