51 The Return Back Home (1/2)
A menacing, giant slab of titanium and steel emerged out of void after the spatial tear had stabilized. It roughly intruded into real-space, forcibly breaking through subspace with enormous amounts of energy, resulting in the horrifying noise that Reed had heard earlier. The Longinus had arrived.
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 clickfor 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.
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 Extra-dimensional 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.