With that, Talon and Hyun-Jae left the cell and went back to the conference room.
"What do you think, Talon?" On the way, Hyun-Jae asked him with a serious look on her face.
"It's going to be a problem in the future. If what he said is true, then we will have to change parts of the plan."
"Yeah, I already figured. We need to go Busan, no?"
"Yes, it's a huge detour but I need to see for myself how hard it could be to cross the ocean in its current condition. The woman had said that they were going to reach Tsushima and then wait for Hyun-Ki's side to make its move and reach Tsushima too. We can use that fact to our advantage." As he spoke, Talon's eyes flashed with a weird glint.
"What are you going to do?"
"Not now. Let me think about it. But, I can see what we should do." He nodded his head. "We are going to destroy them."
Saying those words, Talon clenched his fists. Whether it was sooner or later, he knew that a war was bound to happen, a war on a scale far bigger than anything he had ever imagined. So, when that time came, he had to be ready for it.
***
For the rest of the day, Talon was drowned in work. After not working for two days, naturally, things piled up. Especially concerning the matter of going back to Seoul. He had to spend a while with the scouting team to create a map with the potentially dangerous areas they might face along the way back.
Now that monsters are back after the Shadow Crawlers disappeared, the trip home wasn't going to be a smooth sailing like the first one.
He made sure to pinpoint the best route they could take. Then, he organized a team for himself that he was going to take on the way to clear the route. With his pace, he felt like he could easily clear a good chunk of the path in one day.
With that done, he spent the rest of his time till evening organizing the matters of the base. Since there were thousands of people living there, they naturally needed someone to handle their issues.
During that time, Talon realized that this base had multiple problems that needed instant care. One of them was a glaring shortage of food and supplies. With how many people lived there, feeding everyone was going to be a hard task.
Luckily, since they were in Gwangju, the food supply was huge enough to sustain everyone there for a month or two. But, Talon knew a while from now, they would face a famine problem. So, he made a few other groups leave the base to collect supplies from nearby towns and get them back.
When he was done with that, it was already late in the evening. He was sitting in a small office as he read through a long pile of paper. Running his hand through his hair, Talon sighed.
"All of these numbers are hurting my head." He murmured as he rested his back against the chair and looked up at the ceiling.
"With how fast you're working, you've already done most of the work in a few hours. You should leave some for later." Acrypha replied as she looked at him. She had been sitting on the desk the entire time, watching the window.
"You think so?"
"Paperwork is annoying, I would rather see you kill some monsters."
"I do too. I feel like I haven't increased my strength in ages. Where are the strong enemies when I need them, tsk?" He murmured as he opened his status window and checked his current progress.
So far, his stats were in the range of 120-140 mark with the Aetheris on a level of its own at a staggering 215 points. It was still ridiculous for someone to reach this level in only two months but Talon didn't feel that it was enough.
He wanted more, far more than that. He wanted to break through again.
"I'm sure she will be happy to hear that." He nodded his head. Looking up, he closed his eyes for a second to calm the turbulence within him before he exhaled a small breath.
"Ok, let's go now."
"Where?"
"My dad wants to have dinner and you're invited. Do you have something else to do?"
"What? No! Of course not! I'm free!" She replied in a hurry as she walked after Talon.
"Good, he would be happy to see you."
As the two left the building, they noticed that the entire city was growing dark and the light on the streets started illuminating. Seeing that, Talon felt rather happy. Before the integration, things like street lights were something very normal. Yet, now that everything was destroyed, restoring something as simple as this was a huge achievement that he felt proud of.
'Appreciating small things like this is really good. Small steps create a big leap with time.' He thought to himself as the two walked through the streets of the city.
People were still outside so it wasn't completely empty. At first, Sophie thought they were heading to one of the restaurants in the city that had reopened recently. But, shockingly, they suddenly took a detour in a different direction.
"Hm, where are we going?"
"To meet Hyun-Jae." He replied. "She's also invited."
"What?" Sophie blurted out without realizing it. "Why is she invited?"
"My dad wanted to thank her for helping him a few days ago."
'Dammit, I thought it was a dinner with Talon and Mr Lucas alone! Tsk, how did she find a way to get in too?' Clenching her teeth in frustration, she tried to act normally as she walked after Talon. 'Calm, Sophie! Calm! I can't let this annoy me! It's going to be a nice dinner!
That's all!'
Taking a few moments to regain her composure, she spoke. "Well, that's fine too."
Deep down, however, she was rather annoyed that Hyun-Jae had somehow made Lucas like her almost instantly. She thought that she had an advantage since she knew Talon's father for years but Hyun-Jae was already taking huge steps when she didn't realize it.
Her rival was doing the work and she didn't want that.
'I can't let her take the limelight for herself. She better back away!' With a fiery determination, she decided to finally start taking decisive steps. Her goal was very simple: Make Talon hers and hers alone again.
This time, it was going to be forever.
'Nobody else would take him from me... No matter who they are.' She sword in her head.
Unbeknownst to her, an otherworldly beauty was watching her reactions with an amused look on her face.
"Humans are so amusing."
A//N: If you enjoyed reading, don't forget to support the book with GT and PS. Thank you!