Chapter 164 - Arc 1 163 – What Do You Mean Third-rate?!?

Levi nearly crushed the armrest of his chair, “Teagan Peyton!!” He had already warned this vulgar mutt clearly, yet he still didn’t know what was good for him! Daring to smear his baby’s name!

He had thought that Peyton’s father would properly discipline him after the trade agreement between their cities fell through, but, apparently, he overestimated city lord Teagan!

Levi’s blue eyes turned stormy and dark. ‘You want to go against me till the end? Very good!’

To the right, one Astar Levi was fuming, while to the left, one Noah revealed a rather peculiar expression. ‘…So the guy came to cause trouble and made one of his bodyguards check in for him?’

Feeling Levi’s growing agitation, Noah gently nudged the other’s head on his shoulder with his own soft cheek, “This guy… isn’t he a bit… too incompetent?”

Levi tilted his head to both express his inner confusion and to grant his precious darling easier access to his own cheek.

After glancing upon Levi’s questioning look, baby Noah elaborated. “After all that time plotting his revenge, the best he could come up with was to pay your own hotel to send you strippers and have the media publish a few articles? And he even left his photo, so we know who to blame? What kind of a third-rate cannon fodder is this? I want a refund! Send this protagonist a proper cannon fodder, yo!”

And just like that, the fury corroding Levi’s insides came out in a puff of laughter.

How could his baby be so cute?! Ah, ah! With such a cute and lovable baby by his side, he couldn’t even stay mad!

Peyton, ‘What do you mean third-rate?!? (ꐦ °Д°) I even booked the room under someone else’s name and made sure to stand away from the reception to avoid being seen!! How was I supposed to know there were hidden cameras everywhere?!?’ (ﾉಥ益ಥ)ﾉ ┻━┻

While Levi was completely enchanted by the raw power of his baby’s cuteness, Fynn was not. Amused, yes, but his brain could still focus on the key points here, which were… "His revenge? What grudges are between you? Also, this Peyton’s time of arrival…"

Now that he brought it up, Noah suddenly noticed an issue with this point as well, “Isn't Peyton’s information network too good? We barely arrived, and he already knew where we were?”

Fynn tapped on the light screen interface in front of him, searching for news articles that had leaked the location of the bachelor party to the public. Checking the time stamp on the articles… “Indeed.” Fynn’s eyes narrowed, “Peyton had arrived here before our location had been leaked to the media.”

Noah and Fynn exchanged a look, “Could it be that it was him who leaked it to the media in the first place?”

“Regardless of whether it was him or not, the question remains – how did he find out your location before the media?” Fynn typed some notes out through his light screen, “This Peyton is indeed very suspicious. I'll have to look into him.”

Fynn finished adding this new task to his already massive to-do list and then turned to Noah, “What revenge? When I asked you whether you had any enemies, how come you didn't bring up this Peyton guy?”

Noah revealed a rather helpless look, “I didn't even know who he was a few days ago. Levi and I ran into him at the aquarium resort. The guy has a few screws loose, started spewing vulgarities at us for no reason. When he realized who Levi was, he suddenly turned tail and ran, promising to take revenge for… uh… I don’t know what exactly? Us not knowing who he was?”

Fynn pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long exhale of fatigue. What was this? A crazy anti-fan? Urgh… crazies were the hardest to deal with! How were normal people, like them, supposed to understand and predict the motives of someone whose brain worked in a totally different way??

Their investigation relied on logic, so how could they deduce the culprit if there was no logic in their actions?

Blackie, ‘Uh, sorry, but, who are you including among “normal” people here? My delusional host? Or his braindead husband?

‘Yeeeah, buddy, I hate to break it to you, but… you are the only normal one here…’ ╮(╯∀╰)╭

***

With their business in the mountain resort finished, Noah, Levi, and Fynn took a private ride back home to the city of Concordia.

On the way, Fynn submitted a warrant request for searching Druxa’s headquarters and received approval before they even arrived at Concordia. Thus, after safely locking Swiftrain in Concordia’s maximum-security jail, the first thing Fynn did was to take his team to turn Druxa upside down.

As the appointed supervisors of this case, Noah and Levi oversaw this raid remotely from the peacekeeper station.

Since the time of day was rather late, there were not many people left in the Druxa headquarters. It was mostly just security personnel and a couple of pitiful white-collar workers forced to work late hours. After kicking the white-collar workers out in the name of the official investigation, and forcing the security personnel to comply, the rest of the raid proceeded smoothly. Without a crowd of people in the way, their search was sped up significantly.

Fynn’s people used the mental power remnants left on the bullet case to trace it to a high-security lab.

Unfortunately, that’s where they were forced to stop because not even the security personnel had the clearance for entry into that specific area. However, peacekeepers’ IT specialists managed to access Druxa’s system to determine which personnel had clearance for entry and retrieve the entry logs for that particular lab.

Those entry logs were especially telling. Unsurprisingly, the person who had entered the lab most frequently was the owner of the traced mental power – the S-ranked Fluxer of Druxa. Fynn immediately retrieved his address from the personnel records and sent his men to bring him in.

Other than the obvious, the entry logs showed an unexpected, yet pleasant surprise. Among the logs, there were two unidentified communicator numbers that had no personnel ID attached to them. And one of those was a number Fynn had on file for this peculiar case.

After the second terrorist attack, a person whom they suspected to be a member of the terrorists had hired a Soother to reverse-soothe the rampaging Fluxer in attempts of orchestrating a devastating power explosion. The terrorist had hired the Soother from his company website, and Fynn had managed to get his hands on the communicator number used to access the website. Since the number was unregistered, they couldn’t find out its owner at the time. However, now, one of the two communicator numbers from the lab access log was exactly that number.

Upon further inquiry, Fynn found out that there were two ways to gain access to certain restricted areas of Druxa. Employees of Druxa had their employee IDs and communicator numbers on record so that they could easily be granted access to certain areas. However, there was another way to gain access to restricted areas. The method was usually used to give guests temporary access to certain areas, such as for inspections or demonstrations. When granting this temporary clearance, one just had to register their communicator number on the “allowed entry” list; there was no need to go through the entire registration process.

Therefore, they couldn’t get the names of the owners of those two communicators from Druxa’s computers because that information had never been registered. However, they did get the security footage of the hallway leading to this lab. They would have to go through it overnight to identify the two people.

Just when Fynn thought that this was it for today, CEO of Druxa showed up with her stiff face covered in a layer of frosty gloom. “What is the meaning of this?!” were the first words that left her mouth upon arriving at the scene.

Fynn had responded to her snappy tone with a genial smile, “Good timing. Come this way, madam. We need your communicator to open a locked door for us.”

- Author Note -

I just realized that the last chapter’s title was actually a teaser for this chapter. XD