YGTWHV [135]

T/N: Please make sure you are reading on ruby maybe translations. Thank you.

* * *

“What the, where the heck is she?”

That night, Siren also noticed that Yuri was missing.

Siren had recently started using a bird to spy on Yuri again at the coffeehouse or at home. She was sure Yuri had noticed but, it seemed Yuri didn’t care much about it anymore.

Actually, the reason Yuri didn’t say anything even though Siren was snooping around again was because Lakis was no longer at home, but Siren had no idea. Anyway, because of that, Siren noticed that Yuri didn’t come to the coffeehouse today.

‘Did something happen to Arachne?’

Siren knew how diligent Arachne was so her undeclared absence today was very suspicious. She sent a bird to snoop around the house three times now, but she couldn’t sense anyone inside. The same thing happened when she tried searching around the area.

In the end, the bird didn’t even find a single strand of Yuri’s hair then it was released from Siren’s control and took off into the night sky again.

‘Maybe she got a long-term request?’ ^[1]

Right now, that was the only thing she could think of that would make Yuri disappear so suddenly.

“But she didn’t seem like she was taking any new requests lately, did she change her mind?”

Siren pouted, thinking Yuri should’ve at least told her about it if that was the case.

Swish!

She spread her wings and flew over the broken pillars outside the monastery. Now fully recovered, her beautiful, lustrous wings shook in the wing alongside her blue hair.

As she was soaking in the night breeze, Siren suddenly remembered what Yuri said some time ago. That they were going to start hunting mutants in the East.

~
‘Well…we should be okay as long as we hide ourselves well, right? For now, we still don’t know how elaborate the search will be, so I think I will use a bird to watch the situation for a while then we can decide.’

It seemed they were yet to start a full-scale search for mutants since then but just like Yuri said, the east seemed a little disturbed. Then in a corner of her mind, a thought suddenly occurred to her.

‘Don’t tell me Arachne…those eastern bastards didn’t find out she was a mutant and catch her, right?’

She thought there was no way but the doubt in the corner of her mind did not go away.

“Hey, watchdog!”

Siren flew back into the monastery.

Leo, who was sleeping in a corner with his body curled up, pricked up his ears. But he seemed to have no intention of getting up and crumpled his face then he buried himself deeper into the wall.

But when Siren continued to draw near and raise a racket next to him, Leo eventually had no choice but to open his eyes.

“Watchdog, do you happen to know where Arachne is right now?”

Perhaps Leo was annoyed due to his interrupted sleep because he irritatedly rapped his tail on the floor. And when Siren once again asked if he knew where Yuri was, Leo replied while still annoyed:

“Yuri…is at home. Night, she had to sleep at night.”

“Are you an idiot? I’m asking you because she’s not at home.”

“Krreung!”

When he got a ridiculing gaze after telling her all that he knew, Leo grew angrier and barred his teeth.

Siren realized Leo didn’t know anything either and left the monastery again.

‘I have to look for her myself!’

The sudden uncertainty about Yuri’s whereabouts began to make her feel uneasy. In a sense, you could say that her animal instincts that had been sleeping for a while were awakened.

Although she didn’t expect that her first outing after recovery would be to look for Yuri, Siren spread her wings and flew into the sky.

* * *

It was a dark night.

Genos was inside a shabby abandoned building. ^[2] It was one of the crime scene buildings where Yuri secretly followed Kalian to some time ago.

Genos stared at the black stain left in the room then he went out into the hallway.

“Lord Sheldon, do you need anything?”

“No. I just feel a little stuffy and I want some air; what about Kalian? Is he still being called by the central council?”

“I think so.”

Another member of the search team answered Genos’ question. As a matter of fact, Kalian was in the middle of following the tracker’s signal, but the people here didn’t know that.

Genos separated from the search team and headed down the hallway. Since there were no extra lights, the hallways were pitch-dark. There was still some stench from the rooms so the windows of the hallway where Genos was in right now were wide open.

Genos went to the window at the farthest corner to get some air. His mind was swamped the entire day.

The scene he saw when he touched the thread on Kalian’s body at the exhibition lingered before his eyes again. At the time, what Genos saw with his foresight ability was a woman.

She had flowing black hair that hung below her shoulders. As the woman looked back, her red eyes akin to ruby jewels shone clearly between flowing dark hair.

The woman was definitely the coffeehouse’s Yuri, someone that Genos knew quite well.

However, in that scene, someone whom he couldn’t see loudly called out to her, and the name she was called was different from what Genos knew.

‘This way, Arachne…!’

The next moment, Yuri moved her hand.
Right after, tightly woven white spider webs covered Genos’ sight and a loud noise rang out.

The foresight scene that Genos saw ended there.

‘Those webs…they look exactly like the one I saw at the incident.’

Furthermore, they had definitely come out of Yuri.

Genos, who had already recalled this scene several times, had a somewhat hardened expression on his face. At first, he was just confused so he didn’t say anything but even now, he was still reluctant to tell Kalian and the others what he had seen.

Of course, Genos didn’t know exactly what was happening in the scene he saw with his foresight. However, doubt began to sprout in a corner of his heart.

‘Don’t tell me Ms. Yuri is the heretic involved in this incident…’

Moreover, the fact that Yuri’s whereabouts were uncertain ever since the incident yesterday kindled Genos’ suspicion.

It was because of this suspicion that Genos stopped Anne-Marie and Gilbert from going to the guards because they were worried about Yuri’s sudden absence.

If his suspicion was true, then maybe Yuri’s disappearance right now was to avoid Kalian’s pursuit or maybe it was because she was with her other heretic partners.

So if the guards got involved, she might be in even more of an awkward position…

Of course, from Genos’ standpoint, if Yuri was truly a heretic, he should report her to the central council and have her arrested. But he couldn’t even open his mouth.

Even if Yuri was a heretic, Genos didn’t want to see her caught and treated terribly. Moreover, if Yuri was the heretic that Kalian chased after meeting at the exhibition yesterday, she was in a very difficult situation right now.

However, thankfully the tracker Kalian had seemed to be defective since it wasn’t getting any signal.

Of course, Kalian’s tracker had started getting signal again, but Genos did not know that.

Flap!

Right when Genos was lost in worry, a certain sound suddenly came from outside the window. It sounded like a huge bird fiercely flapping its wings.

Genos’ gaze moved to where the sound came from.

The nearby buildings were empty, so the surroundings were dark. Hence the first thing that came into Genos’ sight was the pure-white feathers rustling in the dark night sky.

Long blue hair, slightly lighter than Damon Salvatore’s, fluttered before Genos’ eyes like a flowing wave. And in the midst of it, was a distinctive flapping presence that seemed to be a huge…

“Wing?”

“Huh?”

Perhaps hearing Genos’ dazed mutter, the winged woman flying across the window stopped and turned to him.

It was Siren, who was searching all over the East for Yuri.

Genos and Siren’s eyes clashed in mid-air.
The situation was so unexpected that at that moment, the both of them flinched and froze.

* * *

Yuri looked down at her dangling wrist with displeasure. She figured she couldn’t just sit there, spacing out so she used her ruin’s power again, just to check and see. But the result was a failure like before.

The chains did not come off no matter what she did, and her wrists and ankles which had reattached after some time were broken again.

Clang! Clang!

Yuri hit the shackles on the iron bars next to her. This was because she felt the gem in the middle of the chains was made with alchemy, giving it an unusual effect. She tried to hit it with more impact this time but as expected, the gem had no defect.

And like before, no one came to stop Yuri.

‘It’s quite loud, they should be able to hear it from outside or do they not care?’

Maybe they believed she wouldn’t be able to break the chains and iron bars and escape with only this much smacking around.

‘If I had something sharper, I think I can break it.’

However, right now, the only thing around Yuri was dust. From the looks of things, she would have to ask Odin to get the things she needed from outside when he got back.

Of course, if he found a key or something like that, it would make things much easier.

Yuri lifted her head and stared at where Odin disappeared into. Given her usual recovery ability from the ruin’s power, she could tell it had taken about half a day for her broken wrists and ankles to reattach.

With that, she was able to roughly guess how much time had passed since Odin left.

Clatter.

Right then, she heard a small noise.

Translator’s Corner:

^[1] This is referring to the commissions Yuri used to do.

^[2] It says a shabby, empty building but Genos is inside. It can’t be empty…right? I think that’s how it works.

PS: I started working on a new novel. You can check it out if you like 🙂

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