Chapter 467: Already Stage 1 [Random Bonus]
Evan dismissed the magic mere moments before Rachel returned to meet Arthur playing with a small whirlwind in his palm.
"I sensed wind magic and was curious but to think it was just you playing around..."
Arthur’s little trick had succeeded in making Rachel mistake the source of the magic she sensed earlier, so she didn’t question it further and sat down on the couch before asking a different question.
"Mind telling me why you came over now?"
"Huh? Couldn’t I have just come to hang out?"
"If that was your aim, then you wouldn’t have brought a stranger along with you."
Rachel gestured to Evan as she replied, and hearing her, Arthur couldn’t help but agree.
"True. I wouldn’t have."
"So out with your reason already."
Arthur sighed softly before putting his hand into a small pouch on his waist and retrieving some pictures as he began.
"So, Ms Sergeant..."
"It’s Master Sergeant to you there."
Hearing the change in her rank, Arthur raised a brow in light surprise as he questioned.
"You got a double promotion?"
"Yeah. The last raid went well and there was a mass promotion.
Though mine’s less because of what I did and more because the Generals are trying to fast-track me."
The second half of her statement was a mutter under her breath, but Arthur’s superhuman ears heard it loud and clear.
"Fast track you? Why?"
"Probably because of my family. Cassowar is a High Noble Family."
Rachel shrugged nonchalantly as she gave a false answer, knowing fully well that Arthur wouldn’t care too much about it.
"That so? Anyway, back to why I came here."
As she expected, Arthur casually redirected the conversation back to the main topic. He placed the pictures of the woman responsible for the murders of 20 Demon Soldiers on the table.
Seeing them, Rachel looked at him with question marks floating over her head.
"I need your help putting a name to this face."
"Arthur, I’m a soldier, not a Private Investigator."
Arthur chuckled lightly upon hearing her reply, before placing two more pictures on the table. One was off the tattoo on the woman’s hand and the other was that of the dog tag she had.
"Huh? Why does she have that? Is she a soldier?"
Rachel instantly recognized the dog tag, which was expected considering she had one with the same insignia on it.
"I don’t know.
I was hired to help find her recently. I noticed the tattoo and remembered it was the same as the one on your Uniform so I came to ask if you could help."
"..."
The girl alternated her gaze between the Starlight Fortress Insignia in the picture and Arthur for a few moments before sighing.
"Exactly what do you want me to do?"
"The number on the dog tag. Can you run it through your database so we can at least find out who owns it?
From the angle the photo was taken, all we can see is the Insignia and the Identification number."
Since it was hanging from her waist and halfway into her pocket, the portion where the name was written was obscured from view.
"What is she being looked for? Did she go missing or something?"
"Well...she killed someone."
"What?"
"Yeah, and now that person’s boss wants me to find her."
"..."
Arthur gave Rachel a very summarised version of the story and the girl blinked at him in silence.
"You wanna see the picture of the corpse? Was quite nasty."
"Spare me the sight. I’m going to eat after this."
Rachel waved him off before pressing her fingers against her forehead and sighing.
"Fine. It’d take a while though. And I’m not sure I can help you fully."
"Just let me know whatever you find."
Upon hearing Arthur’s reply, the girl nodded before getting to her feet and taking away the empty glasses on the table.
As she disappeared into the kitchen, Arthur got up and went after her, leaving a time echo of his presence in the living room to trick the girl’s senses.
Evan did a doubletake as he could sense Arthur’s presence on the couch beside him, yet his eyes could see the boy was moving towards the kitchen.
He concealed his presence and snuck up behind her as she was putting the glasses back into the cupboard.
"Boo!"
"?!"
*SHATTER!
Rachel’s reflexive reaction was to grab the nearest kitchen knife and stab at ’whatever’ had suddenly spawned behind her. In the process, she had dropped the glass she was holding and it shattered to a million pieces upon contact with the ground.
Seeing that it was just Arthur, her brows furrowed and her expression morphed into one of anger.
"Arthur, what the fuck?!"
"I just wanted to mess with you a bit, didn’t expect to almost get stabbed, though..."
Arthur replied as he lowered his palms which he had used to catch the blade, retracting the tiny bit of aura around them.
"Not funny, Arthur."
Clearly, Rachel didn’t seem to like his idea of a joke. Her gaze moved to the shattered glass on the floor as she thought of how to deal with the mess when Arthur held out his hand and conjured a Tier 3 Magic circle.
"Rewind."
"?!"
Rachel received an even greater shock than before when she saw the glass fragments move on Arthur’s command, floating up and joining back together to reform the glass cup that had fallen.
"...when did you learn that?"
"A long time ago."
"A Long time? So, you’ve been capable of using Time Magic all this while?"
"Yeah."
Arthur replied calmly as he placed the rewound glass into the cupboard, before bringing his hand down and placing it on the countertop.
He placed his other hand on the counter as well, effectively trapping Rachel between him and the kitchen equipment.
"Arthur...?"
Rachel gave him a confused look, wondering what he was getting at this time but the boy just stared at her in silence for nearly half a minute before raising his right hand and poking her in the chest.
His finger was dangerously close to touching restricted areas, and his sudden action earned him a frown from the girl.
"Arthur, don’t make my favourability for you start decreasing in real-time..."
"If that’s what it costs to warn you about something affecting your life, then it’s worth it."
"What ar-?!"
Rachel’s question was cut short as she felt a pulse of magic power enter her chest from Arthur’s finger, bypassing her mana resistance and washing over her heart.
She reflexively grabbed his hand and moved it away, but Arthur had already gotten the information he wanted.
"What did you do?!"
"Your life force is weaker than before."
"..."
The girl went silent when Arthur spoke, instantly realising that the reason he had done what he did was so he could scan her faster than she could react.
’Tsk...I didn’t want him to find out.’
"What did you get into, Rachel?"
Barring the fact that he was affiliated with the Demons and had also been responsible for the deaths of some of her childhood friends, Arthur was genuinely concerned about Rachel now.
"...it’s the aftermath of a curse.
Fought a curse user in the last battle, after all."
Rachel averted her gaze as she replied, trying to avoid the look in Arthur’s eyes that showed he didn’t believe her one bit.
However, even though he did not believe her, he didn’t press her for any more answers.
"Okay. I hope you get better soon."
Taking a step back, he continued.
"Evan and I would be in Sloklens for a while. Please help us find out who that woman is."
"...I’d try."
Arthur nodded before turning around and leaving the kitchen, heading to the living room where he gathered the pictures on the table into a pile before telling Evan it was time to leave.
Right before he opened the door, Rachel’s voice rang out once more.
"Arthur..."
"Yeah?"
He turned around and saw her slowly walking towards him as she spoke.
"No scanning my body without permission again."
"I wouldn’t do it if you stopped getting yourself into something dangerous that could potentially kill you."
Arthur replied with an eerily calm voice as he opened the door and walked out, before saying one last line.
"It’s not worth it for that extra power..."
The boy didn’t turn back to see Rachel’s expression when he said that, which was why he missed the look of surprise that appeared on her face at that moment.
He pulled out his phone and began scrolling through as he descended the stairs, with Evan trailing behind.
As for Rachel, the girl’s lips had curled downwards and she remained in the same spot until she sensed Arthur’s presence exiting the building.
She walked out to the balcony and watched the boy exit the compound along with Evan, waving back at him when he turned around and gave her a light wave.
After this, she re-entered her apartment and closed the door behind her.
Leaning back against the door, she slowly slid down to the ground and cupped her face with her palms, hiding the tint of red that spread on her fair cheeks.
"Decreasing favourability my foot..."
She muttered under her breath, her voice barely more than a whisper in the quiet room. Slowly, she lifted her gaze, her eyes catching on the pile of photographs left behind by Arthur.
"Did Arthur realise something?
But it’s supposed to be ’Top Secret’...how could he possibly know?
Maybe...Ger told him? He was involved, after all..."
She voiced her questions, the silence of her apartment offering no answers, only the persistent tick-tock of the timepiece.
◇ ◇ ◇
"Dude, what happened back there?"
Evan questioned Arthur about the sudden shift in tension between him and Rachel during the last moments before they left the girl’s abode.
’What happened when he went into the kitchen?’
Arthur had also been silent all the way, only speaking when it was time for them to book rooms in a nearby hotel to stay in.
As they entered their rooms and the attendant left, Evan finally could not hold back his curiosity and asked.
"What happened, huh?"
Arthur muttered as he sighed and looked out the window. The boy never thought he’d be in a situation where he wished he was ignorant about certain things.
’But I’m not, and that’s precisely why it bugs me.’
He retrieved a folder from his subspace and tossed it towards Evan, before explaining what it was.
"That’s something I got from Duskhand. From the Researcher leading the Fake Divine experiments..."
Evan flipped through the files in the folder, glancing at the illustrations on some pages with bookmarks as Arthur continued.
"Creating a ’Fake Divine’ is a 3 stage Process.
And would you believe I just discovered, that Rachel’s done with Stage 1 already?"
