Meeting

"Tring!"

"Tring!"

The sound of an alarm broke the silence in the room.

A hand slipped out of the blanket and reached for the alarm, stopping it.

A few seconds later, the blanket rose as a stunning beauty emerged from underneath it.

The beauty was none other than the blond girl whom Max had collided into.

Elly Lorenz.

She got up from the bed in her cute night dress with a bunch of kitty paw marks on it.

'Huff..' She let out a sigh.

'What is wrong with me?'

The scene from yesterday kept appearing before her eyes.

After thinking a lot, she felt that his eyes kind of resembled hers.

'Did he go through the same things which I had to go through?'Elly muttered inwardly.

But on second thought, how can there be such a coincidence in this world?

'I must have just seen my reflection in his eyes.'

She closed her eyes as some painful memories which she had always been hiding inside her appeared before her eyes.

"Knock!''

"Knock!"

"Elly, are you up? If you don't get up right now, don't blame me for leaving you behind."

"And you better not forget your promise of going shopping with me today. Besides, a new mall has recently opened. I heard they have great deals."

Lisa's cheerful voice pulled her out of her thoughts, and she walked towards the door.

…

Max went back to his dorms after his morning training with his body drenched in sweat.

As he entered his dorm, he found Wilson coming out of the bathroom with his toothbrush.

As their eyes met, he froze for some reason and his eyes didn't leave Max's body.

Feeling awkward at his gaze and the silence, he greeted him.

"Good morning."

Listening to Max, Wilson returned to his senses. But his greeting was a bit different then Max expected it to be.

"Hmmn, I can't believe you like to work out with that temperament of yours."

Hearing him, Max's eyebrows twitched.

'Who in hell would do this, if it wasn't for the system being unreasonable?'

Seeing his expression, Wilson smiled before continuing.

"You can't blame me for that. Anyone would be unable to judge you based on first impressions. Looking at you, I had assumed you were more like Axle's type. But you really do like giving surprises."

"At least he isn't creating trouble like a certain someone,"

A voice interrupted their conversation.

Turning around, Max found August, his new dorm mate, walking towards him.

"You really don't get it, do you? I thought yesterday's lesson was enough for you." Wilson turned towards August as he spoke, with a mocking smile on his face.

"But it looks like I was wrong," Wilson further added with that smirk on his face as lightning started to crackle around him.

Max saw August's face twitched in anger for a while before he turned calm and replied with a smile on his face.

When Max thought that August would back out, he immediately struck back.

"Looks like I hit you too hard last night. You don't even remember who got his ass handed over."

And with that, a black flame lit up on his hand.

'Holy shit!'

'Ass?'

'Did that guy just cursed?'

It was definitely Wilson's fault for destroying August's hero-like personality.

'Why the hell am I worried about such things right now?' Max suddenly was hit with the realization.

He should run while he had the chance if he didn't want to end like Kevin.

It was already dangerous for him to get in between the fights of mages. Not to mention those two freaks were variants.

As he prepared to run, Max felt a chill run down his spine and all the hairs on his body rose.

Turning around, he found the door to Axle's room slightly opened, and two red eyes were staring at them lifelessly from the darkness.

Not only he froze, even Wilson and August stopped for some reason.

Feeling an ominous foreboding, Max decided to stop those two.

'If those two ended up breaking Axle's precious action figure once again, he didn't knew what kind of calamity would fall on them.'

"OMG! It's already 8, you two better put this aside for now, or you will be late today."

Max spoke with pleading eyes.

And thankfully, August backed down and left before saying, "I will have my eyes on you."

"It doesn't make me the least bit happy to have a guy's eyes on me." Wilson retorted before leaving with his reply and Max finally let out a sigh of relief, wiping the sweat off of his forehead.

At that moment, Kevin walked out of his room, still covered in bandages.

Looking at Max's expression, he asked.

"Is something wrong?"

"No. I am happy."...'that I didn't end up like you.'

Obviously, the latter part was not spoken.

....

After 3 hours.

Finally, both his classes on Extraction and Synthesis had ended.

And with that, he got a notification, too.

«Reporting to Host, Host's understanding of Extraction and Synthesis has increased»

Extraction: 45%

Synthesis: 40%

«Host can perform these skills when Host's understanding reaches 100%»

'System, I thought that I could perform these with the Blacksmithing skill.'

«Reporting to Host, these skills are performable as long as Host's understanding reaches 100%»

Closing the notification, Max left his classroom.

"Let's go to the cafeteria, I am very hungry."

Hearing fatty's pitiful voice, he turned around and gave him a disdainful look.

'How much can you eat?'

'This guy just ate 3 people's worth of food a few hours back. And now look at him.'

And that doesn't even matter the most. How could he forget about that incident in the cafeteria so easily?

"You can go, I have some matters to attend to. And stay away from those guys,"

Max spoke before getting up to leave.

"You too? Even Axle is busy these days. You better come early, I don't feel at ease with only those two around in the dorms," Kevin said with fear in his eyes. He must have suffered a trauma after the even last night.

Max could totally get him. But he had no plan to listen to him. After all, only Axle could stop them. Even if he stayed in the dorms, that would just increase the number of dead bodies.

So, Max lied with a smile.

"Don't worry I will be back soon."

…

Leaving the Academy, he took a cab to the Southern District of Arcane.

He had scheduled a meeting with his client in a coffee shop.

After a while, Max reached his destination.

He asked the driver to park near an alleyway before he got out and paid him.

The cab driver gave him a strange look, observing the lonely alleyway before leaving.

Turning around, Max checked for anyone's presence before putting on his mask and cloak.

With that, he got out of the alleyway and headed towards the coffee shop.

…

Entering the shop, Max found a man with black hair, who appeared to be in his mid 30s, waving at him. He seemed pretty fit and had an average height.

Max approached the man and took the seat in front of him.

"Hello, I am Hiron Rozen," He spoke formally.

"How did you recognise me?" Max couldn't help but ask.

'I mean there was no way he had seen me before, right?'

"Umn.. It's in your profile pic," The man replied with an awkward smile.

'Damn it, when did they take a picture of me? I didn't even realise it.' Max really had no idea about it.

"So, can you explain how it all happened," He tried to change the topic, and that worked.

"It was last Wednesday, when me and my wife along with my daughter went out to have fun at the Amusement park," The man said as sadness covered his features.

"Everything was going well. We had a lot of fun and as we were on our way back, my wife asked the driver to stop near a recently inaugurated shopping mall. She remembered some good offers being given at the mall. So, on her request, we decided to take a look."

As he got to that point tears started to fill his eyes.

"After we completed our shopping, we returned to our car but she was missing."

Finally, the tears he had been holding back slid out of his eyes.

"P-Please....please f-find my d-daughter!"

Hearing his desperate plea, Max couldn't help but feel a sadness washed over him.

Was his fatherly love affecting him?

Max had no idea about that, since most of his childhood was spent away from his parents. He hadn't expected his parents love properly.

Maybe for this reason, he felt a strong urge to help this man.

"I will help you in finding your Daughter."

Since he had already decided to do it, there was no turning back now.

There were times when one felt that he/she couldn't back down.

And this was that time for Max...

Maybe it was blood within him which couldn't see something wrong happening, it was his mother's teaching as well...

"Huh? Will you really help me?" The man asked in tears with his trembling voice.

Looking in his eyes through his mask, Max held onto his trembling hand before speaking in a determined tone.

"Yes, I will."

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