Chapter 1349 (2/2)

Lyra’s years of working as an actress kept it so none of her emotions showed on her face, but her heart was twisting itself with worry. ...is it possible that my status in his eyes is so low that he didn’t take my warning seriously? Or that he really didn’t notice anything off about what I said? If so and he just walked into a trap that I was the bait for-

“Heh, to think it would be this easy… wait...dammit.” Kaan whispered. He whistled and the barrier around them dissipated like it had never existed. He took a step and seemed to pass directly through the distance to appear in front of the Dungeon entrance. When he arrived, he waved his hand and Lyra could feel the Special Investigator examining the Aether constructs around the Dungeon with his bright silver eyes.

Lyra quickly proceeded to stand next to Kaan Swacc, feeling slightly nonplussed. “Isn’t this what you wanted? To trap him within a Dungeon?”

Kaan cast Lyra an irritated glance but seeing the expression on her face forced a small smirk across his bronze features. “Where did you get that impression? Am I the type to avoid a fight?”

And it was times like this that Lyra detested the influence that the authority sigil held over her. “You tricked me into believing you were bringing him here to trap him within a Dungeon. But you are right, you really aren’t the type to avoid a fight… you want to fight Randidly. So then what you are trying to do here-”

“-is give yourself justification to act as a Special Investigator. Isn’t that right?”

Even Kaan was shocked when Randidly once again stepped out of a rip in the air and stood behind the duo. His emerald eyes were bright and sharp. And this time, Lyra noticed, he was holding the lance form of Acri and wore the slate-grey Sulfur.

Always one to respond quickly, Kaan grinned at Randidly and made no attempt to hide the way that he scanned Randidly from head to toe. He even released a fistful of concentrated Aether to cover Randidly, although Randidly just as quickly conjured a flow of his own Aether that knocked the more in-depth scan away. “Well, well, well… so you are Randidly Ghosthound. Was the other one a decoy…? An effective one, if I fell for it. But I really only have one question you need to answer: Did you kill Ileot Swacc?”

The last question that was spoken in a completely different tone of the other. Kaan’s musicality seemed to reverberate outward from his toothless mouth with a ringing harshness. Resonance rippled outward and applied pressure to Randidly. Just as easily as Randidly had dealt with the prod with Aether, Randidly disposed of this sound by conjuring his new image into existence. After a shuddering moment, a black egg appeared above Randidly’s head.

The surrounding space seemed to freeze.

It was almost strange, Lyra reflected, that she immediately thought egg as she looked toward the image. But the longer her eyes stayed on the black orb, the more she felt like something terrible was growing in its depths.

The inky black egg devoured Kaan’s musical voice without comment.

Kaan’s toothless smile stretched even wider. “Do you think that I don’t have ways to force you to answer me?”

“I think you don’t,” Randidly replied, quite confident. “That’s exactly why you used Lyra to try and apply pressure so I would go into a Dungeon ahead of time. Although I was worried for a bit, Octavius was right; you won’t move until I give you justification. You need proof that I’m an unstable element.”

All the glee vanished from Kaan’s face. “So you choose to delay? I don’t know how you fooled everyone on the frontlines, but I know that you are a Nether spy. I’m ready for your Nether tricks-”

Suddenly, Kaan’s words stopped as he saw a flash of shock and panic across Randidly’s face. For a split second, Lyra entertained the possibility that Kaan was right; that Randidly was truly a Nether spy and that was the reason he was so powerful.

Kaan began to laugh maniacally. “Oh, I didn’t think you would reveal yourself so easily! No worries, I’ll still wait for proof, but I really just need to wait until the Epic Danger Zone is revealed… then I’ll be able to conduct a more… thorough investigation of this planet to root out unstable elements.

“Believe me when I say… you will give me an answer for the death of Ileot Swacc on that day, Randidly Ghosthound.”