Alma 51 The Return Back Home

Reed's tome suddenly winked into life as soon the warship emerged out of the spatial tear, notifying him that he'd been connected to FLEETNET, the Mulian military network for high-ranking officers. A single message had been sent to his inbox.

Get your asses in the goddamned ship NOW, before I come to get you all myself. ESPECIALLY YOU, REED.

—Axtorius Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.

3 Hours Later——

"How are you feeling, buddy? Where'd you get that cloak? Pick it up in the city? Looks nice on you. Oh, right. Do you have any injuries you'd like me to examine? No need to be shy. You've been through a lot, well, for a trainee, you know…" said a young doctor. He curiously observed the specimen in front of him as if it were some rare, mythical creature from a forgotten time as he scribbled on an old notebook.

Reed simply smiled and kept quiet, only answering if he had to. He quickly caught on that the doctor was an incredible chatter-mouth, and that anything he'd say would end up fueling the inquisitive man's obsession for talking. He'd been stuck in the medical section of the Longinus for the last hour because of the damned physician in front of him. The weird, unkempt doctor kept getting lost in his own tangential rants about scientific concepts that sounded far too abstract for him to understand.

Doctor Sephinus seemed far too interested in Reed, even if he was a medical professional. The way he observed him reminded of him the way cats would stare at mice, as if he were an interesting new toy for him to play around with. Reed sighed. It looked like he'd have to put up with it for a while longer until the bastard was finally satisfied…

A frigid voice suddenly said, "That's enough of your nonsense, Sephinus. Don't even think for a second that I don't know what you're thinking. Find something else to keep yourself occupied." Axtorius strolled into the room and grabbed Reed by the collar of his uniform as if he were a rag doll and said, "Playtime's over, brat. We're leaving. Boy oh boy, do we have a lot to talk about. "

Axtorius dragged him across the ship's halls until they arrived in an extremely dark room that only had a single, dim light inside. It looked like an interrogation room from a bygone era when men used to verbally threaten suspects for answers. Reed chuckled in amusement and said, "I knew you were old, but I didn't know you were that old . Come on, now." Needless to say, Axtorius ignored Reed's nonsense and threw him inside and locked the door behind them.

"Take a seat, kid, because this is going to take a while. We're lucky that I was the first to get here, or else we'd both be fucked to hell and back, I reckon, given what you've done today. Even still…" Axtorius sighed deeply; he knew that'd this time it'd be much, much harder to hide what actually happened today. It wouldn't be like before. The entire test had been under military supervision from the start, unlike the other tests that the trainees had done.

"Listen closely, you fool. This entire city has been under the military's watch from the start, so anything that happened out there during your test has already been recorded. As soon as we entered the city, the automated surveillance network we have here has been sending us everything it has picked up in the last seventy-two hours. Do you understand? The reports that I've been getting are… highly unsettling ."

From the start?! Fuck. That means…. he knows everything I've done! Ahhhhh!!! It's over, I'm finished….

A cold sweat formed on Reed and he said, "Look, I can explain, I swear! It's not what it looks, trust me! I just…" As much as he wanted to rattle off an excuse, Axtorius's hawk-like gaze would not permit him. Reed knew then and there that if he tried weaseling his way out this time, he'd suffer a grim fate. The old goat wasn't playing around this time. He was dead serious.

"Hmm? Oh, so you were going to tell me that you and Maya disappeared from the entire surveillance network for approximately four seconds? Even though it should be completely impossible for anything with an Anima signature to hide from our multi-trillion credit, state-of-the-art, surveillance network? Or what, the part where you singlehandedly killed a Class-A Extrdimensional Entity? Or were you talking about the part where we detected a sudden ten-thousand fold increase in Anima density around you for approximately seven minutes? "

"..........Yeah, all of that," mumbled Reed as he looked around the darkroom as he tried his best to avoid Axtorius's deadly sharp gaze.

Axtorius slowly said, "What do you have to say for yourself? Do you even have anything to say in your defense? "

"....I-I was obviously going to tell you about everything, honest! Look, it's not my fault! I don't actively look for trouble, I mean it! More than often, trouble comes to find me! You know I'm right; you've seen what usually happens to me on any given day! I'm the victim here!"

"There's only so much I can do until things get out of hand, you know," said Axtorius as he brought up a small, but detailed hologram of the city. "The most I can do is edit some of the timestamps on the recordings and overwrite some of the more…. pressing recordings in the network before other ships start arriving. Even now as we speak, the Longinus is at work on cleaning up the corpse of the Class-B+ you killed." The tiny hologram displayed a miniature version of the Longinus as it hovered above the corpse of the Lesser Nightmare."

"…Class-B+? Is that what you call them? Sounds rather informal, to be honest," said Reed as he stared at the hologram. It seemed that the Lesser Nightmare was being torn to pieces in order for it to be transported in the Longinus itself. As to why the corpse was being stored was beyond Reed's imagination. He personally found it disgusting that they wanted to take the damn thing, no matter the reason.

"These organisms do not belong to any known tree of life that we know about, even amongst the thousands of races that inhabit Mulia. We also know, at the very least, that these… entities are not native to this universe as we understand it. Multiple in-depth studies have proven that these foreign entities are made up of particles that should not be present in the universe, according to our comprehensive understanding of physics. These entities do not even possess the concept of a soul . We rank these extrdimensional entities from E to + in terms of their threat potential to Mulia as a whole."

"So, what are we going to do? After you scrub the evidence, are we going to leave? I'd prefer to not stay any here longer than here than required," said Reed. He wanted to head back into Mulia and relax a bit, give himself time to reflect on what he'd learned and what he'd do next….

"After we recover the corpse of the Class-B+, we'll be heading back, hopefully, before anyone gets here to question us. Then, I'll grant you and the rest of the group full access to SHADOWEYE , a private intelligence network designed for contenders and conquerors. The next day, I'll officially register you all into our central database, giving you the status of fully-fledged contenders," said Axtorius. His eyes narrowed like a hawk's when he finished his sentence; it gave Reed the impression that he had more than to say, but he remained quiet.

"You do know that as soon as you graduate, I won't be able to cover you nearly as much before, right? That, and the fact that you'll likely be bombarded with invitations by numerous interested parties and organizations the moment you leave the Spire, yes? Whether you like it or not, your life is about to become much more complicated than you realize. Though I suspect, you'll be running into the fire yourself before long… "

Reed shrugged his shoulders and said, " No way that'll ever happen. Can't I just hide in some remote place and let things pass by? The Four Sovereigns seem to be able to do it. I'm not interested in power struggles and the political ambitions that plague the continent."

Axtorius bitterly laughed and said, "Is that so, kid. You might think that you're untouchable and unrelated to the strife in Mulia, but before long, you'll end up embroiled in it all the same. I guarantee it. After all, misery loves company and you, my boy, are beloved by misery.

The ship suddenly trembled and groaned in protest, shaking the pitiful light in the room and Axtorius smirked. "Looks like we've won this time. Hear that? That's the sound of the ship entering subspace, which means that we've already left. My last worry has passed with this, so we'll be able to breathe easily from now on." He walked over, opened the room's door and said, "Go get some rest; we'll be back home in a couple of hours."

The Longinus amassed a gross amount of Anima and its engines sputtered into life, tearing a hole in space-time with incredible brutality. And so, the ship forced itself into the beyond and left the ruined city in a single instant. A massive wake of Anima rippled across the city and beyond when it left, breaking an enormous hole in the endless cloud wall that enshrouded the planet.

The heavens above did not glitter or shine in the slightest when the clouds were parted… in fact, nothing at all could be seen. There was only darkness. Pure, unfiltered darkness. Not a single star shone in the sky. Not a single ray of light could be seen. It would simpler to say, that the sun had disappeared from the heavens.

If one peered into the blackened sky closely, three immense silhouettes could be seen faintly. They hovered above the planet in the sea of darkness, waiting for the promised time when they would shine once more… as they observed the Longinus flee back into the Heavenly Aegis.

Suddenly, space rumbled quietly and a silver ship silently exited from subspace into real-space. It silently hovered above the city, where the Longinus had been only moments ago. It bore the name Carnwennan . Inside the ship's command center, sat a young man no older than Reed himself on the captain's chair.

He absent-mindedly focused on reading an old leather book until one of his crewmen informed him that they had arrived. His long silver hair, sharp golden eyes, and beautiful face gave one the impression that he'd been born as the son of goddess rather than by mortal men. Even the aura that came off him felt regal and holy, making lesser, weaker men nervous in his presence.

"Master Kanosis, we've detected an Anima wake in the vicinity. It's signature matches that of the Longinus , the personal warship of Lord Axtorius."

The young man indifferently said, "Check the records on the surveillance network and send all the archived data for the last seventy-two hours." He checked the information on the quickly realized that it had been tampered with as he had suspected. He snorted and murmured, "Trying to hide the truth from me, old man?"

"Use my father's access and search the privileged surveillance records for the last seventy-two hours instead. The public records have been compromised. Make sure to erase all the records for the last week after you finish downloading everything. Both public and private."

It was slightly different this time when he searched through the records. Even so, the private records had also been tampered with to some extent. The young man had a small smile on his face when he finally found what he wanted. A tiny hologram of a cloaked boy faintly glimmered as he walked around the abandoned city alone. He looked somewhat cautious as he traversed the ruined streets of an empty neighborhood.

The young man stared at the hologram as he contemplated what he'd do when he finally met him. He'd been waiting a very long time for him to finally arrive. Not only him. His siblings had also waited long enough for him.

"You've finally arrived, dear brother. I hope you're ready to meet us…. because we're all dying to meet you. "

The Carnwennan's engines winked on and it quietly slipped into subspace, leaving no trace that it had ever even been there...

Chapter end