After the museum, we visited a few more places and finally we went to a shopping mall. Although I didn’t buy much, the others... strangely enough, bought quite a lot.
A few electronic gadgets, things that might be useful for the academy, even clothes...
"How about this?"
We were a bit scattered in the mall because everyone had their own needs, and I... went into a clothing store with Sue.
I liked shopping normally, actually. I liked to buy things for myself, for people I knew.
Now, though... my reason for being here had changed a little bit.
Because...
"Pretty good..."
Sue was too beautiful.
Every dress she tried on sparkled with perfection.
No matter what it was.
She was simply srizing.
When I saw a passerby of our age staring open-mouthed at her, an involuntary smile appeared on my face as I realized that it was not only ... but the whole store was staring at her.
What, you find her too charming...?
Heh... she’s my girlfriend.
Look all you want, all you can do is look anyway...
"Ah, wouldn’t you look good in that suit over there?"
I paused, snapped out of my thoughts, and turned to where she was looking.
Not far from us, in the n’s section of the store, there was a gray suit.
It was quite similar to my eye color. The design was also stylish.
"Let try on so clothes then..."
And I did.
The suit was fine. Sue... liked it more than she should have.
What choice did I have not to buy it?
So... our clothes shop adventure went on a little longer than it should have, from Sue buying things to buying things.
*******
When we paid for everything we bought and finally t up again... it was about an hour before sunset.
We had literally been wandering around since the morning, passing the ti.
And... it had been quite enjoyable.
I had definitely found the refreshnt I was looking for.
I had even found... more.
And, surprisingly enough, Alysia hadn’t done anything.
It seems she really ca because she was actually bored.
Still, I’d better start paying real attention to her now. I had waited until now because I wanted to catch her in the act and get so evidence I could use... but it would be better to take care of her before she causes sothing bad.
I made a ntal note of that thought. But then... since I was still with my friends, I put it on the back burner. It was sothing I would think about after we left the city and went our separate ways.
So, we continued on our way to our car.
Amidst the sounds of the city’s traffic, the sun slowly coloring the sky orange because it was about to set, the countless buildings of the city that seed to reach for the sky... we walked in silence.
Except for one person, we all had a smile on our faces.
And then...
The whole sky suddenly turned green.
Employees leaving their jobs and going ho, young people hanging out with their friends, families out for a walk, cars in traffic...
The whole city suddenly stopped.
As if... a trigger had been pulled.
I couldn’t hear a sound, I couldn’t even speak.
The green light that had been covering the sky suddenly beca dazzling after that, covering everything.
I was trying to reach for Sue. But the last thing I saw... was Alysia holding Adrian’s arm.
And then... the light filled my vision and everything fell apart.
*******
"Ugh..."
I made a great effort to try to get up from the ground. I don’t know why, but... my body was extrely tired. It ached as if I had run for miles and miles with my crippled body without stopping.
I closed and opened my eyes a few tis. The blurriness was slowly clearing, though it seed like it would take so effort for it to go away completely.
"W- what... happened..."
I looked for my cane and found it not far from .
I used it to support as I forced myself to stand up. When I finally managed to get up on both feet, I looked around .
And what I saw... made stiffen.
"What the...?"
There were a few people around ... but their expressions were full of fear and confusion.
It was like they didn’t know where they were.
And... soon, I realized that I didn’t know where I was either.
This... was not where I was standing a few seconds ago. I was sowhere else.
But then Sith, reading my mind, found an answer to my question before I did.
’You teleported, forcefully.’
He paused, looked at the people around us, and then corrected himself.
’More precisely... everyone in the city was forcibly teleported to a random location within the city borders.’
"Oh..."
Teleport everyone... to a random place?
What kind of benefit can anyone get from that...?
I was going to fly using the wind to get a sense of where I was... but that’s when I paused. Right in the middle of the road, I saw a corpse that looked like it had been run over by a car. Then, suddenly, a reality dawned on .
If everyone was forcibly teleported... the people inside the cars were also teleported. If the teleportation location was truly random, so people could have been hit by the cars that were still moving.
No, that’s the least of the problems.
Much bigger things could happen...
This...
~boom!
"Huh? Explosion?"
The ground suddenly shook. People around scread and scread, collapsed on the ground, or started running away.
But this was only the beginning.
~boom!
Because just a second later, there was another explosion.
~ka- ~boom!
And then another one...
~BOOM!
Buildings started collapsing one after the other, the fires engulfed the whole city quite quickly.
And I finally realized exactly what was happening.
A... terrorist attack was taking place now.
And the target was Wiathen!
"Saligia... it must be Saligia..."
I frowned, squinted, opened my watch as fast as I could, and initiated a call.
But... my watch refused to make the call.
I let out a deep sigh.
Communication was blocked, basically.
But there had to be a limit, right? Besides... it would be good to keep an eye on the situation in the city in general.
So I used my mana to fly up quickly, higher and higher... high enough to get a bird’s eye view of the city.
And what I finally saw was...
It was literally a ss.
It was chaos.
But I was not terrified this ti, as I had been in the past. I didn’t let the fear take over my whole body.
On the contrary, while straining my mory, I initiated a call again, just as I had just done. And this ti, it went through without any communication barriers.
In the ga... the closest terrorist attack to this date takes place a month later.
And... it takes place almost on the other side of Cevilian. It has nothing to do with Wiathen and the CDA.
So why did they decide to carry out such an attack here and now?
Who knows...
I’ve long since stopped blindly believing what I knew from the ga. From the very beginning, I was preparing myself for sothing unexpected to happen.
Sothing happened again. Sohow, Saligia decided to attack early and change the attack location.
But it doesn’t matter.
My calls were answered at this very mont. And this ti... I found four people in front of .
The usual trio, Prince Lucas, lany Quie, Ronald Potenbea... and a new person that none of them expected.
Jonathan Virhen.
When they noticed the fourth person on the call, they must have been really surprised because their expressions were a little... strange. But they didn’t care too much, and neither did I.
"There is an attack on Wiathen by Saligia. Let’s quickly activate all the things we have set up for the ergency."
I’ve been preparing for this since the first day I beca a noble and started actively using my connections...
So that nothing I would regret would ever happen again.
All four of the four on the call nodded at the sa ti, and then the call went off. I... took a deep breath and looked at the city below .
For so reason, I rembered the miniature model I had seen in the Museum of the First Years. The situation now wasn’t as bad as that. But... it could have been if we didn’t act fast.
The attack was on an extrely large scale.
Even in the ga, there had never been an attack this big before.
’Sith...’
But I have my priorities.
Neither the city nor any of its inhabitants...
I don’t care about a single one of them.
"Search everywhere, tell the mont you find any of my friends.
I just... need to find my friends and Sue.
"Please, guys... sohow try to hold on until I find you."
Then I quickly flew off and dived into a random street in the city.
*******
*(A/N: I will upload three chapters tomorrow. Sorry for the delay.)*
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