Chapter 453 Hardened

Dyon carved his way down the street. With his soul level, there was not even the smallest of detail out of his control. But, Clara didn’t know that.

“As soon as we get out of here, I’m gonna kill you!” Clara glared at Dyon, gripping her seat tightly as the car took over and swerved from lane to lane.

Clara didn’t even have the heart to look at the speedometer, but if she had, she would have noticed them nearing 190 miles per hour. More than 300 kilometers per hour!

“What do you mean?” Dyon grinned. “I’m only helping. DC is three hours from Princeton. If we don’t hurry, won’t G man just be suffering for longer?”

“If we die first, why would that matter?!”

The annoying and blaring honks of cars serenaded them as they carved down the highway. It seemed Clara wasn’t the only one mad with Dyon’s driving. But, he was having the time of his life.

Dyon knew fully well he had fought at speeds that far exceeded this speed before, but there was something different about riding in a sport car. A feeling his legs couldn’t give him.

“Let’s go faster!” Dyon grinned under Clara’s shrieking, pushing down on the pedal and shifting to the last gear.

**

“You!” Clara’s small fists pounded into Dyon’s chest. “Idiot! If tomorrow morning the news picks up on the fact it was my car driving like that, you’ve put my dad in another media shit storm!”

Dyon chuckled as Clara pounded away. The truth was that he had used array alchemy to change the license plate and stop people from seeing into the windows, but he found this version of Clara much more funny.

Clara and Dyon had already made it into the White House, having been let in through back entrances. So, seeing their normally quiet and cold first daughter show the most amount of emotion they had seen in years brought smiles to the faces of the white house staff.

“Come on. I’d like to introduce you to them.” Dyon smiled.

“Good. I need to make sure they know what they’ve gotten themselves into. Maybe then they can turn back before they make a mistake they regret.” Clara huffed, storming away.

Dyon and Clara soon made their way to President Gallagher’s office and were greeted with sounds of light giggling. But, it was then proceeded by a hoarse cough that was so grating on the ears that Clara froze at the door.

“Uncle!”

Dyon immediately recognized Ri and Madeleine’s voices.

“It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s no big deal.”

“Uncle, you should tell us what’s wrong. I’m sure Dyon has a solution.” Ri said.

“Ah, don’t bother that kid with my problems. He’s too sensitive to things like this.”

Suddenly, Dyon and Clara were snapped out of their eaves dropping because of the growing sound of approaching feet.

Turning his gaze down the hallway, Dyon’s eyes narrowed as he noticed General Mace’s approaching figure. Their eyes locked and Dyon took note of Mace’s smirk.

“Sorry Mace. Don’t have a lot of time for you today.” Dyon abruptly opened the oval office door. It was technically locked, but he forced his way in, lightly pushing Clara in and locking the door behind him.

With a wave of his hand, the area was locked down.

“Dyon?” President Gallagher looked up. But, when he noticed Clara, he immediately tried to hide the blood-stained handkerchief in his hand. “Clara? Shouldn’t you two still be at the school?”

?[0)??? “You know I could never stay in school for too long, G man.” Dyon grinned. “For the record. You have a few people coming to bother you. General Mace doesn’t look particularly friendly. But, the main issue is that the people around him have something they shouldn’t…”

“What?” Clara looked confused. She had seen many of those people before. But what really had her in a daze were Ri and Madeleine. She had never seen anyone so beautiful…

“Ah yes. This is Ri.” Dyon smiled, taking Ri and Madeleine by the hand and leading them to Clara. “And this is Madeleine.”

“And, of course.” Dyon grinned at Clara. “This is Clara.”

Ri and Madeleine smiled.

Clara had long since lost the sharp coldness in her eyes. Right now, their pale greys looked serious, but didn’t have that same distant feeling they had before.

“Forget him.” Clara said, pushing Dyon away. “I have secrets.”

At first, Ri and Madeleine had been a bit put off by Clara’s gaze. But, hearing her words, they couldn’t help but laugh as Clara brought them to the couch.

“Goddammit…” Dyon looked at this scene with a bitter sweet feeling.

What they didn’t know was that there was a current banging at the door. But, with Dyon’s arrays, they were completely isolated from the sound.

President Gallagher, though, was in a trance. He knew fully well that Clara had seen the bloodied handkerchief, but, she didn’t say anything…

“Can you two do that concealment array thingy Dyon does? This is top secret information.” Clara sent a glance at Dyon.

Ri leaned forward and whispered into Clara’s ear. “He can do that?! Isn’t that cheating?!” Clara glared at Dyon as though he had done something wrong.

Madeleine giggled. “He’s better at array alchemy than most people. So, if he really wants to, he can bypass ours.”

Seeing three pairs of beautiful eyes looking at him, Dyon didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Don’t think of peeking.” Ri gave Dyon an ‘I’m watching you’ look as her eyes flashed a striking black.

Dyon found this color change interesting. It seemed that Ri’s soul color had changed when she fully awakened her faith seed from blue to black with the smallest hints of dark gold… He hadn’t been paying enough attention to notice that before.

Clara gave Dyon a victorious glance, extremely pleased that Dyon’s wives had so much power over him.

“G man. Do you see how they treat me? Life is so hard.” Dyon slumped into chair across from the tired president.

“Listen to yourself. Not even 20 and already complaining about married life.”

“I have a lot to complain about when people I see as family try and hide things from me, hm?” Dyon gave him a glance.

“Dyon.” President Gallagher sighed. “You’re someone who cut off ties to everyone because you thought that would help them move on. You’re childish, your decision making is shallow, and worst yet, you don’t respect your elders.”

Dyon winced. “You don’t have to layer it on so thick, I got it, I got it.”

“Knowing all that, why would I tell you about my illness? You’d probably do something stupid like dedicating your life to finding a cure like my silly daughter has.”

“Speaking of Clara. Will you let me take her to the martial world?”

President Gallagher froze before wiping his lips out of habit to ensure there was no blood.

“You aren’t stupid, Dyon. I know you. Which means if you believe in your ability to protect my daughter enough for you to ask, then it’s likely you’ve had success on a level that we’re not aware of, hm?” President Gallagher looked toward Dyon, a sudden pressure he hadn’t been exuding before filling the room.

Dyon smiled to himself. “You really were made to be president, G man. Your mind still works on a level most can’t reach.”

“I practically raised you too, Dyon. Your mind should be better and faster than anyone else’s, but you let stupid things weigh it down.”

Dyon nodded. He respected the opinion of this man. He saw President Gallagher as his adoptive uncle and took the words spoken by him as meaningful.

“I also warned you a long time ago to let things associated with General Mace go. There’s a lot of things you don’t know about and probably shouldn’t know about. But, that was my analysis of things when I thought that your progression in the martial world would be minimal. You know how I felt about you going.”

“I know G man. But, you also know I had to go. That said, you can rest assured that I’m probably doing better than you think.”

“I can tell. By any metric, my lovely nieces are much too beautiful, intelligent and kind for you. So, you must have tricked their young hearts with something too flashy for them to ignore.”

“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t make it out to seem like I’m some kind of predator.” Dyon practically pouted.

President Gallagher laughed. “Don’t you think we’ve ignored those fools outside for long enough? What exactly do they have that they shouldn’t?”

Dyon’s expression hardened. “Cultivation.”