Chapter 1419 (2/2)

It was something of a relief to be able to stroll quietly through the dark hall, with the reverberating grunts of exertion and shouts bouncing off the metal walls form the ambiance of a gym. Randidly walked into the training pavilion with a strange sense of contentment As he did so, a woman who had been slouching against the table in front of her immediately sat bolt upright and used her hands to press herself into standing. “M-m-m-mr. Ghosthound! I didn’t realize… err I… what are you doing-?”

Randidly opened his mouth to answer when the table that the woman was leaning against collapsed underneath the force of the woman’s hands. In a rather ungainly pile of limbs, the woman fell forward and slammed her head against the ground. Randidly’s mouth twitch. “Just… stopping by. You must be Hydie Mordath, right? The Hexwitch.”

“Ah… heh… yea…” Rubbing her forehead, Hydie stood. She furtively glanced at Randidly and then adjusted her glasses. She stood up straight, too, looking more at the ceiling than at Randidly directly. “You… why are you here to see me…?”

Randidly took a glance at Hydie. It was only for a brief second, but Randidly’s training in regards to both images and Nether had been proceeding very steadily over the past several days. Combined with his already high base image, the amount of weight that he could create with a casual look equivalent to some current Earthlings full strength image.

For a brief moment, that weight was on Hydie and she flinched.

Now why would you assume that I am here for you…? Randidly thought idly. He had seen Naffur’s report regarding the suspicious points regarding this woman, but he had ultimately left the decision over how to address it in Naffur’s hands. But having her so obviously draw his attention right now, Randidly let a flicker of purple-black revelation energy swirl around his left eye. Considering this behavior, you really aren’t suited to be a spy…

But considering that an Order Ducis member died due to a strange accident… can’t hurt to check.

The threads of causality spun outward from Hydie’s back, dragging her past along behind her as she existed in the current moment. With the information Randidly had been given, it was enough to peer backward in time. Those same threads also rolled forward, and Randidly watched as they grew increasingly entangled with the fate of Kharon. A frown emerged on his face.

Congratulations! Your Skill Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 303!

But then Randidly looked away and the weight was gone. The energy vanished from around his eye. He had peered as well as he could with the inferences available to him, and it didn’t appear that Hydie was responsible for that death. Because Randidly also knew of the preparations that Tatiana had been making recently in regards to problems like this, he wouldn’t bother to pry into this woman’s backer as of yet.

But had she been responsible…

Heh. Randidly shook himself gently right as his emotions caused his image in the surrounding area to intensify. Truly, his control over his image wasn’t as steady as he had thought. The shouting of the applicants outside the building immediately fell silent; Randidly could sense their throats had been frozen before his aura. Their eyes bulged. He felt a flash of guilt. These are innocent parties. And people that Kharon is trying to recruit. No reason to bear my fangs here…

“I’m actually not here for you,” Randidly said, giving Hydie what he believed to be a winning smile. From her pale expression, it was clear she didn’t believe him; it seemed his cutting off of his chilled anger was a single beat too late. His smile faded to a small grin. “I’d like to talk with one of the applicants here. One… Gertrude Collins. Can you bring her into the tent please?”

For several seconds Hydie was motionless as she coped with her fear. Gradually, her hands began to twitch. Randidly was content to wait. She soon dethawed enough to pull at the edge of her collar. “Ah… I wish I could help you Mr. G-g-ghosthound, but… Miss Collins isn’t here. She completed the image challenge yesterday and has sixteen hours' worth of training off.”

Randidly frowned. “... I thought the challenges were purposefully designed to be almost impossible to pass.”

“They were. Even Ajax was surprised when she did it,” Hydie explained nervously. “She’s the first person to ever do it. Besides never being willing to spar, she’s probably the most capable image user in all the applicants. So I’m sorry but-”

“No, that’s fine,” Randidly said. Inwardly, he was sighing. He hadn’t bothered to check for Gertrude Collins’ location because he believed that he knew where she would be. Now, finding out that wasn’t correct… it felt like a certain kind of karma.

So as to not subject himself to anymore stammering or touch upon Tatiana’s scheme further, Randidly produced the Philosopher’s Key and directly portaled out of Kharon’s interior. From high up on his island, Randidly’s Grim Intuition spread outward to cover the whole of Kharon. Then, when he had located Gertrude Collins, he descended quietly from the sky and landed nearby in the sprawling park in which he found her.

Randidly watched Gertrude Collins for a long time. She was younger than he had expected, probably very close to Randidly’s age. Her long, dark hair was in a heavy braid down her back and she was dressed in jeans and a grey button-up shirt. In addition, she was pretty in a way that suddenly made Derek Moss’s vehemence about her talent make a certain sort of sense. But more than the details of her person, Randidly watched her as she tested out of Kharon’s examination in order to come to these parks and gather a group of unruly children.

She was reading them a children’s story. Toward the beginning, the older kids rolled their eyes but as the story went on, they began to gather in larger and larger numbers. First twenty, then fifty, then a hundred. As more people came over to figure out what was happening, they asked the people already there what was going on and were quickly shushed.

In addition to simply reading her story, she used illusions to draw out what was happening above her head so more children could see. But to put it mildly… her illusions were quite bad.

The characters were blocky and somehow vague. Rather than facial features, she relied mostly on each character’s signature color to distinguish them.

Or at least that’s what Randidly thought at first. But as he watched her continue through her story, Randidly realized that it wasn’t color that made him so sure of what he was looking at: it was because Gertrude Collins’ characters practically sung with their own images and motivation.

Slowly, Randidly nodded. So this is the woman that Derek Moss thinks is the greatest teacher in the world. Good. Still… the question now is why she didn’t come forward when the Order Ducis inquired about individuals with teaching experience…