Mystical Journey

"Do you know why seahorses are so slow?"

Garen looked back and asked Isaros a strange question.

Isaros thought for a bit, then shook her head. "I don’t know."

"Because seahorses are the smallest horse! Hahahahaha..." Jason started laughing out loud.

Isaros looked at him silently, the other two young ones were also speechlessly staring at him.

Out of the 4 people, he was the only one laughing.

"Hahaha... Err... Haha... Didn’t you guys find that funny?" Jason finally stopped laughing. Looking at the 3 cringing people before him, he realized how lame his joke was.

"Err... Alright... Alright, let me tell another joke."

******

As he slowly maneuvered his motorcycle into his garage, he noticed that no one else was here.

The house was completely empty, needless to say, Alma and Trish had both gone off to do their own research work.

After securing his bike, he opened the door to his house, took off his shoes, then swiftly shut the door.

He had no clue why, but his mind was still lingering on the strange feeling he got from the sisters, the soul seed wouldn’t have this kind of reaction for no reason.

The strange yet familiar feeling was exactly the same as when he was viewing the planet history in the Totem World.

Quickly moving to his room, he took out his laptop and connected to the web.

After browsing through the news about Grano, he found the first result was the Mika Bear. The appearance of the world’s largest bear species in this forest had attracted tourists not just to Grano, but also to multiple far-off small towns.

In other news, there were more articles on wild wolves attacking humans, leaving 1 dead and 1 wounded. Other than that, nothing much had happened.

Closing the laptop, Garen went into deep thought.

Crack!

A sudden crisp cracking could be heard from downstairs. If it was any other person, they would’ve probably thought that this was because some parts of the material of this wooden house had broke.

However, Garen regained his calm, silently stood up, walked towards the door and lightly pulled on it. The door opened smoothly and silently.

He slowly peered down from the railing of the 2nd-floor staircase.

There was a bald man in a black leather coat, calmly walking around the room without making a sound. He was looking left and right as if he was searching for something.

On his black leather coat, there was an image of a white phoenix stitched on the chest area. A muscular guy wearing a coat with a stitching of a white phoenix, it seemed weird. However, this person didn’t seem to care; his face was as emotionless as a piece of wood and his skin appeared like there was no blood circulating under it, as though he was wearing a mask.

Garen silently observed his movement around the building. Ignoring all other rooms, he walked straight towards Arisa’s bedroom. He reached his hand out the touch the bedroom door, then suddenly raised his head.

The second-floor common space was completely empty, not a soul in sight.

The baldie frowned, slightly pushed open the door to Vivien’s bedroom. However, he did not enter the room, he just stood in the doorway and sniffed a bit.

"Isaros’s scent isn’t present." He muttered in a soft voice, he spoke in Classical Arabic, which was written as Asia’s Quran Language.

Garen once spent half a year learning all of the major languages in the world. At his current skill level, he could completely understand what the man was saying.

Only then did he notice that the man was wearing a black earpiece.

"There were some traces over here, it must’ve been her." From the earpiece came a soft female voice.

"Looks like they’ve temporarily left the house to play, this time the mission is quite easy." The baldie said with a small grin.

"Don’t be too careless. Earlier, all my D-ranked men were wiped out, something must be up." The voice said.

"Don’t worry, I’m not like that D-ranked garbage." The baldie laughed lazily.

He quickly closed the door and retraced his steps back to where he originally came from. At the same time, he was holding a long pole with a fluffy circular cloth on one end, wiping away his footsteps as he left.

In no time, all traces of the baldie’s entrance had been removed, he then swiftly closed the door and left.

This entire time, he did not go up to the second floor, probably because he already knew there were people upstairs.

After the door closed, Garen’s silhouette emerged behind the door. Looking through the door viewer, seeing the baldie’s back as he walked off, he couldn’t help but let out a small grin on his face.

"The aura of potential..."

He lightly touched the places where the baldie had reached to touch, that tingling familiar aura turned his bad mood around completely.

"That baldie is probably from some organization hunting for Arisa and her sister, his body had remnants of potential aura... Looks like there is stuff with potential in this world after all. This is great news." Garen started smiling.

He suddenly remembered about the weird feeling he got from the sisters.

It was the same feeling he got off of Beckstone and Goth at the start. It was a special reaction of the soul, an indescribable feeling without a clear cause.

If one had to describe it, it would be that it felt influential.

Similar to Beckstone and Goth, Arisa and her sister should be very influential trendsetters, like the first domino in a domino show. More accurately, they could be said to be the leading actors in a paradigm shift, like the butterflies in the butterfly effect, with just one flutter of their wings, it could start a chain reaction of small influences, adding up together creating even stronger forces, and eventually becoming a gigantic tornado.

Taking out his phone and checking the time, Garen sent a message to Raffaele.

In almost an instant, he got a reply.

"Already reached home, don’t worry, I’ll take care of myself"

"That’s good"

Garen didn’t want to cause trouble or damage on Raffaele’s side so he followed the vampire’s instructions, even though he did leave a bit earlier.

Softly opening the door, Garen observed his surroundings. It didn’t seem that there were any people from Raffaele tasked to protect him. The baldie was also nowhere to be seen.

He sniffed around for a bit, then walked out of his yard in a carefree manner, headed towards the byway on the left side of the road.

No one bothered about the actions of a 10+-year-old boy. It was noon and most people were at home eating lunch, and there were barely any cars on the road, nor were there any passersby. You could only hear some vague conversations from the houses.

The sun was shining brightly, baking the ground.

Garen was walking on a grassy field, Grano’s forests were different from a lot of other places, the grass here grew extremely tall, and could grow up to one’s knees, completely covering one’s shins.

Normally people had to pay attention to where they were walking due to the presence of poisonous bugs and snakes, but Garen was completely carefree about that, instead, he was completely focused on finding the baldie.

Slowly, the number of trees started increasing, from just a few trees scattered about into a condensed canopy blocking out all sunlight.

After a short while, in a small bush tucked between two trees, he saw two silhouettes in black leather coats. One of them was obviously the baldie who left his house just a moment ago, while the other was a black haired girl with a bombshell body.

"Are you guys crazy? Wearing black leather in this kind of weather." Garen laughed as he walked over.

"Who’s there!"

The baldie roared, looking towards his direction.

With the two’s alerted gazes on him, Garen slowly walked out of the bush, stepping on some tree roots protruding from the ground.

"The two of you just visited me a moment ago, how can you have forgotten the owner already?"

He laughed with his hands tucked into his pockets.

Baldie looked as if he saw a ghost, looking over to the lady next to him in uncertainty. She shook her head, stating that she didn’t know what was going on either.

"Who are you?"

His hand was gripping onto his suppressed handgun on his waist.

"What organization are the two of you from? Why did you sneak into my house?" Garen ignored their actions, though now changing his language, speaking fluently in Classical Arabic, shocking the two.

"Fire!"

The baldie did a combat roll and pulled out another black handgun. In a flash, he fired 3 bullets. Without even looking at the aftermath, he swiftly hid behind a tree.

The lady also did the same thing, except in the other direction.

6 bullets were fired spread out in the area Garen was standing. Even if Garen did not move, it would have hit him right in the forehead and at his heart.

However, right before they fired, Garen tensed his body up and leaped forward into the bush, almost as if a slithering cobra, he rushed towards the baldie. Out of the 6 bullets, none of them hit their mark.

He swiped his right arm forward.

Hiss.

His arm suddenly curved as if it was a noodle, going around the tree and pinning the hiding baldie to the tree.

His nails turned into sharp black claws, looking almost metallic, and pinned the baldie to the tree by his neck.

The lady on the other side looked as if she’d just seen a demon. Garen swiftly jumped in front of the baldie, his face still smiling.

"Now will you answer my question?"

"Y... Yes..." The baldie gulped and motioned for the lady to drop her gun. His face was completely pale and his heart was beating like crazy, one small movement and he was done for. Looking at his opponent’s black claws, he knew that this time he had kicked a hornet’s nest.

"What do you want to know sir? I swear we won’t hide anything from you, sir." He answered quickly without any resistance.

"Who are you guys? What business do you have over here?"

"We are from the Asian White Phoenix society, we were hired as mercenaries to come over to recover the escaped test subjects."

"Asian White Phoenix? What kind of organization is that?"

"It’s one of the main combat branches of the Primary Colors, as for the Primary Colors Organization you can probably find out a lot more about them online, sir."

"Then, what are you referring to when you say test subjects?"

"I really don’t know, sir. We are only external mercenaries, we have no clue about the backstory of the targets, as, sir, you may know, knowing too much isn’t always a good thing." The baldie answered sheepishly.

"So the test subjects are Arisa and Isaros?"

"Yes, sir. Our objective was to capture them alive and we were to only take action if we truly were unable to capture them alive."