Talon didn't look at Hyun-Jae as he stood up and started searching around the place with his eyes, trying to locate the girl that he saw earlier. In a matter of seconds, he analyzed dozens of faces as he tried to identify the girl.
But, no matter where he looked, there was no trace of her.
"Where is she? Did she not hear my call?" He murmured with a frown as he felt a cold sensation well up in his chest. A very uneasy feeling filled his consciousness for so reason that he couldn't understand.
"Talon, can you explain what's going on here?" Hyun-Jae asked.
Talon's eyes that were focused on the crowd finally turned toward her as he said in a serious tone. "The girl that told about the abnormality. I can't find her."
"Girl? Who is she?" Hyun-Jae asked with a confused look.
"I don't know, she seed like a new face to . But, since I didn't have much contact with the food and supply group, I thought she was just one of the students there." Talon replied.
The reason he had no idea who worked in that group was that Hyun-Jae was the one responsible for it. So, Talon didn't have many chances to interact with that group. If anything, all of his interactions with them were through Hyun-Jae and the information she relies on him.
On the other hand, Talon knew more about the weaponry group, the first line of fighting students and other groups than that group.
Hyun-Jae noticed the uncertainty in Talon's eyes and finally shifted her gaze to the ten students in front of her.
"Hey, everyone from the Food and Supply group, step forward, please." She declared.
A few seconds later, a few dozen more students stepped forward. With her eyes, Hyun-Jae counted their numbers carefully. In the end, she turned to Talon.
"That's the entire group. There isn't a single person missing. Can you see her with them?" She asked.
Talon gave them a glance as he scanned their faces with his eyes before he shook his head. "No, she isn't between them..."
At this point, Talon was questioning whether the girl he saw was real or not. It was ssing with his head how she suddenly vanished as if she never existed.
"You saw her too, didn't you, Acrypha?" He turned to his trusted companion.
"I sure did."
"Then how did she suddenly vanish... What the hell is going on?" Talon's eyes looked down as he tried to recall the girl's features, what she said, and the entire interaction from start to finish.
'Now that I think about it... Her entire attitude was odd... If anything, how did she know that I was outside? I never told anyone that I was leaving. Then, there is the timing of the entire thing. It's already 2 am in the morning now. How did she completely forget to feed them and then decide to do it now of all tis? No normal student would think that it was a perfect ti to finish their tasks.'
Slowly, Talon started discovering things that were very off. Things that he would've not realized had he not looked at the interaction again.
'Then, there is the fact that she isn't a part of the food and supply team.' Talon frowned even harder. Everything he discovered so far was very odd, but he couldn't find an explanation for it.
"New face... New face..." He murmured to himself as suddenly, his eyes widened. A weird glint flashed through his eyes for a split second before his eyes regained their calmness.
Slowly, he lifted his hand to his face and covered it as a smile ford on his lips.
"You got to be fucking kidding ..."
"Talon?"
"Hahaha, they got ... They absolutely got ." He said in a cold tone.
Hyun-Jae stared at him confusedly. Talon's behavior had changed suddenly from confusion to amusent.
"Hyun-Jae, follow for a second, I want to check sothing out." He said, snapping her out of her daze.
She opened her mouth intending to speak, or at least ask questions. But, when she noticed that Talon started walking, she could only sigh. 'He really confuses sotis.' She thought to herself as she walked after him.
The two left the gymnasium and moved a little bit far away from it. Talon looked around him, searching for sothing before he noticed a building in the distance, so, he approached it.
"Why are we here?"
"To check sothing out," Talon replied mysteriously as he leaped in the air, landing on the fragile rooftop of the building.
Hyun-Jae followed him as she casually asked. "I don't know what's going on here. But, I know you aren't here for sothing insignificant, are you?"
"Hmm, who knows?"
Talon said as he put his hand over his eyes as if he were trying to look into the distance. His sharp vision peered through the darkness in a particular direction. Not even the lack of light stopped him from seeing what he wanted to see.
Far into the distance, precisely the forest around the research center. The chaotic ss of monsters that surrounded that place 24/7 was still there, as savage and as alive as ever. Each one of the monsters there was howling and crying every now and then in a wild lody of terror.
However, Talon noticed sothing odd about that horde at that mont. Sothing, as terrifying as it was, still made him smile coldly for so reason.
Right in the heart of that chaotic group of monsters, they seed to have created an empty path that cut through the forest. The path was too precise to be a coincidence and Talon wasn't there to even debate that idea as he already knew what was going on.
The monsters were creating a path for sothing or soone to move through to the research center. It was as clear as day. Hundreds or perhaps even thousands of monsters were moving in unison like an organized army or a hivemind, ready to follow orders at a mont's notice
Then, Talon's eyes fell on the heart of that path where he could see a loneso figure walking slowly deeper into the forest. He couldn't see how they looked exactly, but he didn't need that either as he knew who it was.
It was that girl. The sa girl that talked to him a few minutes ago. She was heading to the research center without being attacked.
As she moved farther and farther away, Talon watched her silently. Nobody knew what was going through his head at that mont.
But, as the girl was about to disappear from his vision completely, she suddenly halted her steps and slowly turned her head around. Without hesitation, her eyes stared directly at Talon as if she knew that he was there the entire ti.
The two stared at each other, peering through each other's eyes. For a split second, Talon could see her black eyes flash with a blue hue. Then, she turned around and completely vanished behind the thick trees.
"You bastard..." He murmured to himself.
"Talon? What was that?" Hyun-Jae asked, her voice as grave as it could be. She seen a glimpse of the girl too.
"It seems our little friend here isn't as simple as we thought. That girl... She's the laughing monster." He said.
"What?! That girl?"
"Yeah, and she completely tricked . She had infiltrated the gymnasium pretending to be a human. Then, she infected Ji-Seok and Rim Kyung as a trap to make get infected too. After that, she left the gymnasium after ensuing all of that chaos." He explained in a cold tone.
All it took Talon to realize all of this was a small conversation he had with Acrypha a while ago. A conversation about the true identity of the monster. He already knew that it had possibly appeared before the actual Integration even started. That naturally put to question its origin if it wasn't the Core Dinsion's gate.
That was when Acrypha told him about the possibility of the monster arriving from another dinsion through a scientifically created gate. A gate that didn't need the Core Dinsion's influence to be opened.
That idea, as ridiculous as it sounded, made Talon realize that the enemy he was dealing with, wasn't a simple beast or a mindless abomination... He could very well be dealing with an intelligent entity... An entity that can actually think like humans.
An entity that sohow could understand and adapt to its environnt and learn how to live in it.
"I guess this confirms our theory, Talon," Acrypha comnted as she floated silently in the air. "We have ourselves a little sneaking rat that escaped the Core Dinsion's eyes. If this isn't really interesting..."
'This perhaps could shake the entire Core Dinsion if the information got to them...' She frowned slightly.
The Core Dinsion wasn't the only thing they had to worry about either. More than that, the entities that would want to put their hands on this technology are the real threat.
"If they even as much as sll a whiff of it on earth... It won't end peacefully..."
(A//N: Thanks to everyone who supports the book with power stones and golden tickets, you guys are the best:) )
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