Transcendent Gene
Chapter 133: Farewell [1]

Chapter 133: Farewell [1]

The meeting the next day came soon enough. Gio felt like he didn’t have to wait much at all before they were all gathered in the main area of the zephyr again.

If there was one difference this time, it was that Alice wasn’t present.

Instead, Mirei was present with a smile on her face. She was much more active than she was when Gio first met her.

After all, even if she was not controlling their body, she was able to perceive Alice’s actions to an extent. She could at least understand what Gio had been doing with the team for the past year.

"So you’re that kid, huh? Gio, right? I remembered it because Natalia asked me to. What kind of person are you? Are you strong? I heard you were talented. Want to spar?"

Her words flowed without end until Natalia eventually forced her mouth shut and dragged her away from Gio.

It was a brief respite that was more than necessary. Gio looked over at Raymond with pleading eyes, but he was enjoying the moment too much.

Realistically, the meeting could have started five minutes ago, but it was a lot more fun to watch Gio squirm under Mirei’s aggressive questioning.

But, now that Natalia had moved, he didn’t have much of a choice.

"Now then, about yesterday’s raid...there’s a lot we have to share amongst ourselves."

As of now, only Raymond and Natalia had a full understanding of everything, as they’d recorded reports from all the other members.

However, the purpose of this meeting was to fill everyone in and start discussing paths forward.

Raymond gave Jax the stage first.

"I ended up finding two people. The first was the woman who took Gio. I investigated her after he tipped me off, and I highly suspect that she’s a link to the Apocalypse Church. She’s currently being held in Interrogation Room B. As for the other one..."

Jax shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, he came from Bloodrend. I guess. I don’t think he was here for any important purpose. I think our visit just happened to coincide with his. He tried to run more than he tried to fight, but when he gave up, he went wild. I ended up having to kill him."

It would have been a shame otherwise, but the circumstances led them to the conclusion that the Bloodrend representative wouldn’t have been able to provide much anyway. As such, nobody blamed him for killing a capture rather.

"I checked around and there wasn’t much to loot or explore. Here, I’ll show you the best stuff I got. These people were super poor."

He put his hand in his Storage Hole and grabbed a few things. The first two were books, and the last was a metallic cube of some sort.

Raymond signaled Natalia, who picked them up and moved to the side of the room. She was going to do a quick analysis to see if there was anything dangerous hidden within the mysterious objects."

"I’m sure we don’t need to fill in Natalia’s part since everyone was there.."

Even as he said it, Raymond still gave a quick overview of the battle and the thoughts Natalia told him afterward.

"Gio spotted and brought us this thing after the battle ended. We brought it back after killing it to analyze its body makeup, but we haven’t given it over to Research yet."

"What is that thing?" Jax asked as he approached with a look of disgust on his face.

"It’s not a beast. It just died, but I can’t feel any soul from it. There’s nothing for me to connect to."

"That’s correct," Raymond replied with a nod.

"After some discussion, we’ve decided that we’re almost certain of our original conjectures. Mother Baba was an Asura rather than a djinn."

It was a big enough blow. Asuras rarely liked mingling into the societies of those they viewed as lesser. To hear of one of such beings was freely and openly doing so shattered the worldview of the other team members.

"How did she...?"

"I don’t know, but if you think about it, more stuff gets explained than confused. A lot of confusing facts about Mother Baba become obvious to see, not that it matters when she’s dead on the table in front of us."

"Oh!"

Jax suddenly exclaimed and clapped his hands together.

As all eyes turned to him, awaiting his explanation, he suddenly backed away and rubbed his forehead.

"So, basically, I get it, but I don’t know how to explain it. Pretty wacky, right?"

Was Jax messing with them? In the first place, none of them were confused about what had been said. They were confused about why Jax was suddenly confused.

"Uh, putting that aside...?" Raymond said, regaining the team’s attention.

"There’s one last thing we found through this mission, and it’s perhaps the most important fact of them all. Gio?"

Just like Jax, he got his turn to speak. He lived the memory of the night before for the third time, but his emotions were much more controlled now.

After resting for some time, his mind felt clearer. It became much easier to push away the negative thoughts when they tried to take over his mind.

"...and that’s when Captain showed up. She ran away when she sensed him, I’m assuming. It’s a bit of a shame, but we just have to hope leaving her alive doesn’t cause too much damage."

Gio almost didn’t know why he chose to focus on his interaction with the Draconian girl. Everyone stopped listening at the first mention of VNGRD.

Their gazes shot towards Raymond and locked him in place, demanding an answer.

"He’s telling the truth."

Raymond shook his head with a sigh.

"Gio’s reasoning was a little interesting. I never doubted his conclusion, but I couldn’t trust his recollection of events without seeing it myself. Unfortunately, though, it’s confirmed."

He opened a hologram on the main table that showed an image extracted from the zephyr’s camera feeds.

It was barely able to catch sight of the girl as she ran away from the scene. On the back of her cloak, reflecting in the moonlight, one could just barely make out a certain symbol.

It meant nothing by itself, but after Gio already said she was a Draconian and a member of VNGRD, it gained an entirely new meaning.

"That’s the symbol those guys had on their cloaks," Amaya observed.

"Right. You remember it back then? That was our worst confrontation with VNGRD, and back then, the only clue we could find was that symbol."

Raymond confirmed her thoughts about where they’d seen it before.

"VNGRD, the Apocalypse Church, Bloodrend, and Asuras..."

Now, the same picture existed in all of their heads.

"The reason I called everyone here was mainly so we could all reach the same understanding of the circumstances. From here, there’s a lot we need to do to figure out how we’re supposed to do something about it. However, those conversations can happen later."

In fact, the true reason they gathered wasn’t mission-related at all.

Raymond looked over at Gio.

"It’s been a year since we accepted our little intern, and no matter how much I want to keep him, it’s getting too dangerous for him to stay."

Even if Gio didn’t want to leave, Raymond was kicking him out for being weak.

He wheeled himself over to Gio with a smile and rustled his hair, enjoying the sour look on his face.

"It’ll take us a little to return to Haven to drop him off, so I figured we could have a little farewell party. For a true honorary member of our team, that much is a necessity."

Gio was thinking about it as well before the mission started, but it was really happening like that.

Regardless of whether he wanted to stay or not, regardless of his desire to see how the situation panned out; the time had come for him to depart.

He found it hard to control the hollow feeling in his chest.