219 Chapter 219: Piecing Together (2/2)
”That's for us to take care of,” Henry assured them. ”If possible, I would like the both of you to try and rebuild the project. I'm so sorry to ask this of you, and of course I'll give you some time off to recover from the shock and trauma…but your strengths are clear. You both are incredibly intelligent and talented. Don't recklessly throw your lives away in combat.”
”Uh, that's not what I meant.” Rebecca looked embarrassed. ”I mean…we can't let her use our technology for whatever it is that she is plotting. We have to develop a countermeasure for whatever we were researching on.”
”How far have you progressed on your research?” Shun Yin asked, astonished. ”Didn't you say you still haven't found a way to summon a spirit to this world and manifest it concretely yet?”
”And we still haven't. But we were very close. This close.” Rebecca spaced her thumb and forefinger less than a centimeter apart.
”If what you said is true, it won't take Lady Angelica much time and effort to finish up the work we have done so far on the project.” Gabriel looked grim. ”Especially if she already found a way to seal spirits into weapons – that's something beyond even our capabilities.”
”That's not necessarily true. Tenshi did manage to succeed in that. But the fluctuation was deemed too unstable and dangerous, so she scrapped that part of the project. The spirit in the weapon would contaminate and possess the wielder, altering him or her psychologically and spiritually.” Rebecca shook her head thoughtfully.
”What did you say? Tenshi did what?”
Something stirred inside Shun Yin's mind, a faint memory of what Angelica said during their duel earlier.
”Hmm? I said Tenshi found a way to manifest a spirit inside a weapon, but it was too dangerous, so she shut that aspect of the project down. She originally didn't want to tell you this because she knew you would take the risk anyway and put your own soul and body in danger.”
”The both of us agreed with that,” Gabriel put in hastily, as if he was afraid that Shun Yin would fly into a rage.
However, Shun Yin was far from furious. He was thinking very hard, trying to piece together what Angelica said with the current conversation.
”When did that happen? When did Tenshi discover a way to manifest spirits inside weapons?”
”Eh? About…a month ago? Maybe three weeks?”
”Did Angelica perhaps visit you then…?”
”Hmm? Now that you mention it…” Gabriel thought for a bit. ”A day or two after Tenshi shuttered the project, Lady Angelica dropped by and asked us if she could look at our data.”
It was during the time when Shun Yin was spending more time training at Miyamoto dojo than coming to the lab, so he missed her. Or perhaps Angelica came precisely because she was confident she wouldn't run into him there.
”Tenshi had a big argument with her back then. She refused to show Lady Angelica the data, and was asking her why she knew about the spirit weapon. But of course Lady Angelica used her authority as the heiress of the Porter clan…”
”They were arguing about the deleted data, right?” Gabriel cut in before Rebecca could finish her sentence. ”Something about restoring the deleted data. Tenshi refused to, but Lady Angelica overrode her and hacked our computer terminal to forcibly restore the deleted data and make a copy of it.”
”In the end, Tenshi just gave in, because we reasoned that Lady Angelica can't do much with the data since she wasn't a researcher. We didn't think that she would have her own personal group of researchers working under her…”
”Nobody did,” Shun Yin affirmed, realizing how little he knew about the girl he was formerly in love with.
”I also thought they were arguing over you.” Rebecca couldn't help but smile mischievously, but the gravity of the situation wiped away all traces of humor in a second. ”Tenshi saying that she doesn't want to put you in danger, but Lady Angelica insisting that she was doing this for your sake.”
”Yeah. I don't get it.” Gabriel scratched his head in frustration before he shrugged in resignation. ”Women.”
Whatever the case, Shun Yin was sure of one thing. His memory vividly played back a single sentence in his mind over and over again.
”It cost us a lot of resources and lives, but we eventually implemented a working system for sealing the spirits into the weapons and making them safe enough to use.”
Angelica said those very words to him. And he responded by demanding to know how many lives she sacrificed to achieve that.
”Angelica used Tenshi's research…she used Tenshi's deleted data and continued with the experiments, heedless of people's lives or safety…and finally developed a spirit weapon.”
”What?” Gabriel and Rebecca stared at him, but Henry nodded thoughtfully.
”That makes sense. And after she reached the limits of her research, she came to check if we had made any progress of our own. So she came to steal the data from you guys, to merge it with her own research data and experiments.”
”But there's still something strange.” Glen raised his hand. ”Why would Angelica kill Tenshi? I mean, she left the rest of the research students alive. She spared these two. And Tenshi has no ties to the Porter family, right?”
”None that I know of,” Henry confirmed.
”Then…why?”
Gabriel and Rebecca glanced at each other, and then shook their heads.
”We don't know either.”
”She never said anything. She just came in and killed Tenshi without a single word.”
Even as the others debated and pondered over it, Shun Yin found to his horror that he probably knew the reason. He could still recall the conversation from yesterday as vividly as if it had just happened a few seconds ago.
”…Seinagi Tenshi, was she? The two of you seem awfully close.”
”I'm not talking about the research division or the team. I'm talking about Seinagi Tenshi in particular.”
Shun Yin did not pay much attention to Angelica's tone at that time, but now, as he played the conversation back in his head, he realized that she sounded jealous.
It was entirely possible that Angelica had killed Tenshi out of jealousy and because she viewed her as a potential threat…a love rival.
However, there was no way he could tell the rest that.
Swallowing his horror, he closed his eyes and lowered his head, discreetly pulling himself away from the conversation.