92 Before The Meetup 1

The shock that crossed Sofony's face could only be described as immense. He saw her laboriously taking a deep breath, her eyes telling him she expected something like this to happen yet she was still caught off-guard.

She even absentmindedly said, "I... why did she want to involve you? No... I already made your information hidden!" A second later she looked down, then began mumbling again as if she realized something, "Wait... I see... In the end, your people and companies can't move. This... I should have known...."

The girl shut her eyes. When she opened them again, she had already taken a few more deep breaths. Then she nervously and apprehensively asked, "Did she say anything else?"

Gio took in her worrying eyes. Of course, the voice message mentioned other things. But since he has no plan to tell her that, he only shook his head and replied, "No. She only wants you to come. And I can come along if I want."

"No!!!"

To this sudden outburst, Gio merely batted his eyes once but he showed no hint of being surprised. However, he frowned a little when a crazed expression appeared on Sofony's face.

'Fear?' he asked himself as he analyzed the emotion that could be seen from her eyes.

He disliked it. It was not hard to see that she doesn't want him to meet another person like her. But why? Was his girl not confident she would be able to deal with the other? If so, was she also not confident in him, thinking he was a useless and powerless man?

Doesn't she know that harboring the same mentality as her peers won't do her any good? He narrowed his eyes, displeased that Sofony was seemingly thinking no normal person could go against people like that Guzman surnamed woman.

"No! You're not coming with me! Please! Y-you don't know what she can do!" she pleaded, her eyes still widened.

"You told me last time she possesses some mind control abilities," he calmly said as he held her hand and pulled her into the car.

To this answer, Sofony shook her head, "I-I don't know her other abilities! I don't know what else she has, what else she can do, and who she can control! I can't allow you to see her! W-what if she manipulates you into doing something you don't want! What if she also has items or abilities that can hurt you! No! You're not allowed to see her!"

The girl tried to show protest by not entering the passenger seat. However, Gio simply tugged her in, her lesser strength did not pose any resistance against his puzzlingly high strength.

"Ouch," she whimpered when her head bumped into the headboard.

"Sorry," he blinked and said. He then pulled her gently to his embrace and inspected her forehead. "What are you saying earlier again?"

Sofony's hands covered the slightly aching part, shielding it to his prying gaze while also rubbing it. She then went back to shaking her head after remembering the pressing issue.

"No! I'm saying you're not coming with me! You don't know, but compared to me that woman is much stronger," she paused a bit to think of the appropriate word then added, "and more resourceful!"

Sofony remembered how a casual move against her best friend almost drove her mad just to think of countermeasure.

What if that Clarissa could also mind-control multiple people at the same time? Sofony doesn't know the specifics because the system was as useless as ever. But precisely due to this, she has to be extra careful. She doesn't dare expose this person before her to any danger because when she tried to picture him getting hurt, a sharp pain assaulted her heart.

And it was just from picturing this in her imagination...

Sofony madly shook her head again. When she stopped, she intentionally met his gaze. "Actually, we don't need to meet her, right? If so, then we should just go home..."

Gio stared at her for a fairly long time. He actually saw her eyes flickering and all he wanted to do was tell her that his experience in the military raised his resistance against hypnosis to a very high degree. When he went after the blind her at the dim park, the reason he remained calm facing her was this. He had enough confidence that no hypnosis would work on him.

Only, he didn't know if the girl was aware of it.

But even if she was not... Does too much agitation cause her to forget that she gave him a ring which she said could resist mind attacks?

He could only sigh.

What else could he do when his girl was being brainless like this?

After shaking his head, while she was busy chanting commands that had no effect on him, he removed the hand covering her forehead and gently kissed it.

Afterward, he ignored her stiffened expression and whispered to her left ear. "Baby, reserved that to your enemies. Don't use that to me even for practice. You know it won't work on me. And we're coming. Because I already prepared something for that annoying woman."

....

....

....

Same Saturday, a few hours ago...

On Clarissa's side.

It had already been four days since the mayor 'agreed' to help Clarissa corner the teleporter 'stalker'.

The fat Abenson guy commissioned a group comprised of terrific hackers to comb out the city for the target. He also threw an order to the whole Alina City Police to kill or detain this malefic juvenile criminal once spotted. Of course, most officers didn't know what this kid did to anger the government since his profile was labeled 'highly classified information'. However, since it was an order from above, they had no choice but to comply. The tragic thing was, they even had to compete or cooperate with the underworld people to look for the target.

Yet unfortunately, none of them ever saw the kid. Or even they saw him, he always managed to easily slip away.

This made Clarissa think that the last four days had been very stressful and unpleasant. She lost count of how many times her temper exploded ever since. She suspected that the enemy host's follow up missions had something to do with angering her to death because he never stopped sending him weird things and messages.

This morning, he even mind-controlled Aljur's subordinates, she didn't even know how and when he did. She just came to know when the mafia men just suddenly faced a wall at their hideout and started shooting out bullets on it until the said wall had holes and marks forming letters on it.

The message showed, "Dear Clarissa, Howdy? I am currently feeding sharks at Ocean Paradise. It's really fun here! They're big and bit aggressive! It's really amazing and I feel like I should not enjoy this by myself. So how about you join me here? You can help me by being my bait, oops, I mean feeds, hahaha!"

When she received this message, she was already level-headed, thus, she did not flip out as she did on the first day. For the past few days that she never failed to get hateful messages like this, she already developed a bit of tolerance. It was only a bit, but at least she no longer threw tantrums and punched the wall out of anger... just as much as she did last Tuesday.

But of course, since she was given clues on the hateful brat's whereabouts, she brought a few of her men to Ocean Paradise, hell-bent on capturing the kid in order to personally torture and kill him.

Clarissa was a conceited woman. When dealing with enemies, she preferred to be the one with the upper hand. She also preferred to amuse herself first before killing off her enemies. She was the type of person who liked seeing her opponents dying of fear and agitation while she was up there, laughing in amusement.

However, precisely because Clarissa was egotistic that she could easily get provoked once her weakness was discovered by others. Obviously, she was someone who hated being attacked and having a weakness discovered meant being prone to someone else attacks.

And no, she wouldn't accept that! She was a person who usually does the striking, not the other way around!

So what if the other was a host a level or two higher than her? She would teach him that she was someone who never took a beating one-sidedly! She would show him that even a Level 4 Secondary Host could defeat a Level 5 or 6 Official Host!

After declaring this in mind, she started imagining every torture she would do to the kid once he fell into her hands.

Unfortunately an hour later, her fantasies shattered when their group did not even catch sight of the opponent's shadow.

She even received a notification about one of their casinos getting bombed! Also, it was not just any other casino, but her biggest and most profitable one!

The anger she felt back then clouded her reasoning, driving her to think that she could do everything just to get even with her attacker. In the end, she thought of the other host in the city who was related to a powerful non-host demon tycoon. Clarissa was so desperate for quick revenge that she considered maybe if she teams up with Sofony Mendez, they would be able to force that damnable kid to his death.

Hence, she sent that message.

In her mind, she never considered Sofony Mendez' not agreeing to her terms. After all, she had a bargaining chip the other would never be able to ignore. Whether Sofony Mendez wanted to or not, she would have no choice but team up with her and do her best to assist her in killing that annoying juvenile monster. Otherwise, Sofony would see what she least wanted.

About Sofony's non-host supporter, Clarissa also never considered him not getting confused by the latter half of her voice message. Since she had already done this to another host before, and that host's main supporter immediately reacted just as she expected, she thought that Gio Albarez would also do the same.

As long as the seed of doubts sprouted it would always be there, silently growing. In fact, even if it doesn't grow, it would still take root.

Then in case it fully blooms, that was when she's going to eliminate Sofony Mendez from their game. Of course, that would be after destroying the teleporter host.

And so she waited for the designated time.

Unfortunately, two hours before the meetup...