Sylas didn’t move and focused on that region. This experience of having to enter Cassarae’s childhood home and risk himself taught him that there was definitely much more he needed to learn about controlling his visualization. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it.
“… Can’t give this up without doing anything!”
“Calm down. There are some extremely powerful animals on the other side of that gate. If we’re too casual about it, we can die. The organization isn’t going to allow that sort of thing. Our top priority is—.”
The man stopped talking, shaking his head. He couldn’t say something like that out loud no matter how safe the situation seemed.
“Let’s finish putting up the defensive perimeter and call it a day.”
The group moved, carrying battering rams with them. They stood before a house, aimed it toward a corner of its foundation, and then rammed it forward.
Sylas’ expression flickered. The entire house crumbled as though they had set up an on-site detonation.
‘How is that possible?’
He had seen a lot of stuff in this world already. But much like he had said earlier, he had yet to see anything capable of this level of destruction. Was the battering ram they carried really so powerful? Or was there something that he was missing?
If such power hit him, he wouldn’t even have a corpse left.
The only saving grace was that all four of them had to use it together, they had to synchronize their movements, and it was laborious to move from place to place. They often took breaks in between, and considering what Sylas assumed about their stats, that battering ram had to be at least 500 pounds or more for the four of them to struggle like this.
What he was most disappointed in was their caution. After the first near slip up, they hadn’t said anything else interesting. But they were coming closer.
‘They’ll be knocking down this house after this one. I don’t have much time…’
Sylas stopped hesitating and entered Cassarae’s room. He didn’t stalk around; he had too much pride for that. Instead, he focused completely on finding the clues he needed.
Whether subconsciously or not, he had avoided news about Cassarae. He had no idea what she was doing in her life, and he was the last type of person to have social media so he didn’t keep tabs on her there either.
But, he had been in her room before, and it seemed that nothing much had changed. The only difference was that instead of metal rock boy bands being copied and pasted into every corner, she had toned down a bit.
The room was quite elegant and clean, though definitely more so thanks to Cassarae’s mother than her, that was for sure. Unless Cassarae had changed, he bet whichever room she lived in now had a pile of used underwear in one corner at the very least.
One might expect this pile of underwear to at least be girlish, but nope. The last time Sylas had been here there had been ten boxer briefs for every one set of panties.
Sylas found himself smiling beside himself.
It wasn’t that Cassarae didn’t like to dress like a woman. She certainly did. It was just that she only put in that effort on very rare occasions. Otherwise, she might as well have been a boy poorly cosplaying as a beautiful woman. She certainly had the beautiful part down, but she was lacking in the… womanly aspects.
Surprisingly, Sylas found what he needed after a few seconds.
On a pin-up board over her bed, there was an acceptance letter to York University. It was a bit odd because the acceptance letter had a dagger through it rather than the usual push pin. But that was quite like Cassarae.
‘York University, huh…?’
York University might not have been Veridian, but it was still a top 30 university in the country, and top 200 in the world. One could certainly get an excellent education from there and Sylas had once guest lectured on their campus as well.
‘She should have graduated already. It’s doubtful she had the patience to get a Masters… but the odds that she would have settled down in a place near there is high. Cassarae should also be quite focused on recruiting as well, and there’s no better place to do so than her old stomping grounds. There will certainly be elites in York University.
‘If her parents were evacuated earlier, then they would meet up with her there as well.’
Sylas made his deductions and chose to leave.
It was hard to tell how much advanced notice the family had, especially since the carnage the beasts that had snuck in had left. Sylas wasn’t a tracking expert, so he had no method of judging exactly what happened. But there was only one car in their garage and that was a good sign.
If they had only evacuated after the Portal descended, there was no way that their car would still work with how close by it was.
‘Time to go.’
The group had already finished with the second house and were on their way here. Sylas still wasn’t sure about exactly what they were doing, but he knew that he would need to do something about it.
If he wanted to freely use this portal, then whatever these people were up to was definitely a detriment to him. And the information they had was even more important to him.
He just had to strike when they were the most tired.
Cassarae’s room’s window faced the backyard. He slid it open and grabbed above him, scaling to the roof.
The house was quite large, so this particular mini-mansion had three peaks and several valleys on the roof alone. They were more than enough for him to hide from sight.
Sylas crept forward until he was as close to the group of four as he could be.
His gaze sharpened the moment they began to swing their battering ram.
