Vincent's eyes remained on his parents. It looked as if he was trying to engrave their picture in his mind. Although well above their forties, his parents had no signs of aging on their faces. They looked as young, handsome, dashing, and beautiful as the last time he saw them.
"Wife, it had already started recording us."
After noticing that the device shaped like an orb had already started recording them, Vincent's mother blushed.
"Should we edit out the embarrassing part?"
Vincent heard his mother saying those words while blushing a little.
"What's wrong with letting our son see how much we love each other?" Like a true man, his handsome father placed a kiss on his mother's cheeks and added, "Let's just keep it, ah!"
"Stop being naughty."
When his father's somewhat cracked and thin lips landed on his mother, her entire face turned red. Maybe it was due to embarrassment. Anyway, Vincent saw her pinching his father's waist, causing him to yelp out in pain.
"Haha."
The love between his parents hadn't faded even a little bit. Although they were rolling in the army, going to different planets, and fighting back the invasion of the creatures of hell, especially the seraphs who led them in the attack, they were still able to act happily. Though, they were not here anymore. Nonetheless, Vincent was glad to see the smile on their face.
The camera zoomed in on his mother, who said, "My son, mother hopes that you will be in safe hands and good health when you see this recording. I hope you will forgive us for not being there for you."
Sadness was vivid in her voice. Vincent's eyes narrowed as he found several things suspicious. His parents were wearing the latest uniform that came into circulation only two years ago. According to the way they dressed, Vincent concluded that they made this video six to 24 months ago. And from her words, his mother seemed sure that something terrible was going to happen.
"Why does it seems like she is going to cry?"
After saying those words, tears welled up in the eyes of Vincent's mother. He wasn't able to understand her sadness. But as a son, he wanted to wipe his mother's tears and make her happy. Sadly, he couldn't do that.
His father patted his mother and buried her face in his chest, saving her from the embarrassment of letting her son see how she shed her tears. "Come on, don't make our last parting overly sentimental."
Aaron's words caused Vincent's eyes to widen. He was shocked, surprised, and confused as he discovered another piece of information. His father mentioned that this was going to be their last parting, which meant that they were already aware that they would encounter trouble on their mission. And this new information helped Vincent shorten the time when his parents recorded the video to days or weeks before they set out to Westford, a kingdom found on planet Moutanean.
It was close to the border between the realm of the living and the Hell realm, so it was easy for the creatures of hell to open Hell's paradise on this planet.
And it had happened several months ago.
The federation ordered his father to go and close Hell's paradise before the dimensional path stabilizes and allows the creature of hell to invade the planet. This planet was too precious. As it was close to the border, the army desired to first completely colonize it by killing beasts and other mindless creatures that they found impossible to reason with, and then they wanted to set up armories and commissaries there for multiple reasons.
First off, many skirmishes were taking place near the border, forcing the federation to use teleportation technology repeatedly. Whenever there was a shortage of a weapon, food, and on, the federation ultimately utilized teleportation to send things to the border. However, it was too costly. Teleportation needed a tremendous amount of energy. The larger the distance, the higher the cost. Taxpayers' money wasn't enough to cover it. In the end, they decided to solve the solution by colonizing planets near the border.
Of course, when they started doing that, the news reached the other side, and they started invading these planets to mess up the plan of their enemies.
Secondly, the federation wanted to lower the usage of teleportation for their own benefit.
With colonized planets having many armories and stuff, the soldiers near the border could use their spaceships to go to these planets, pick up what they need, restock, and then head out to battle. New could also get trained in these planets. This way, the use of teleportation to provide reinforcement would be little to none.
His father knew that, and as he had received orders to go to one such planet, he took his battalion and went there. On his way, though, several enemy warships managed to somehow secretly breach the border security with the speed of lightning and sneaked attacked them.
Yet, now Vincent was finding out that his parents had already predicted it!
"If they already knew that they would get ambushed, why did they still enter the enemy's trap? Just what were they thinking before taking such a risk? Why father? Why?"
These thoughts had just popped up in his mind when his father stared at the camera, the very reason why he left behind this mission which was none other than the matters related to the crimson one. His father had managed to soothe his mother, and now he was looking straight at him through the camera.
"Since you're seeing this recording, I believe you've traced your identity back to your origin, discovered the world we came from, a place where reside the rest of our kind—the vampire—and undergone the right of passage and unearthed our ancestral hall, or the crimson one had managed to somehow come out of the nine seals. If it's the former, well, what I am about to say, you already know. Better just shut the recording and move away. If it's the former, I hope you're still you."