Policeman and the cat

67 - Conspiracy

A wisp brought them to a medium-sized room in the guild, then disappeared. Wei had exchanged messages with Grisham via a wisp and this is where he directed them, saying that it was fine to come with all of them, dragons included, the room had been insulated to block out their presence enough to only slightly bother other visitors.

Grisham's eyes sparkled as he looked them all over. The room had a carpet and bookshelves around, but nothing else.

Wei coughed since Grisham said nothing.

"Ah-- Welcome back!" Grisham said, then turned around to push on one book cover. The shelf slid in, opening a path to a staircase leading down and they all followed downstairs. 

There was a 50x50 meter room with dungeon cores placed just in the same way how Bermont had drawn in Wei's notebook. The shelf above closed in on itself and there were two familiar faces waiting downstairs - Kenneth and Knox. Kenneth now, too, had the perfected appearance of an owner of a legendary grade skill, and the bracelets these two had were platinum ones.

And before they knew it-- Ian, Nelly and Chilli had all tackled Kenneth and Knox. They both scented as delicious as always, no, perhaps even more - like a nostalgic something that got more tempting as time passed. "I missed you two so much!"

Kenneth barely held them back from toppling them over.

"We know," Knox said, snorting. He sounded greatly amused.

"We really do know," Kenneth said with a sigh. But he didn't seem too unhappy with the three of them snuggling up to them either.

"You can have us later," Knox said--

"Knox-- talk for yourself," Kenneth said.

Yet Ian got the cue and the three of them let them go for now, but they did all look at Knox with thumbs up, they'll be having him later and he smiled in a seductive way, his eyes saying 'bring it on!'

The journey had been fun, but Ian was sure happy to be back! He wanted to ask what had happened, why were the two of them now platinum ranks and all kinds of things, but--

"Is this correct?" Grisham asked Bermont.

"Good work," Bermont replied and then she told Grisham, Kenneth and Knox everything they had talked over back then - that something would likely happen forty years from now on and that Urea's core was setting things up to protect itself from perishing. She explained that it was trying to set her and Uriah up as sacrifices this time and about the last two times this had happened, which was new information for all of them.

The story was always the same - Ceruleum destroyed a town to kill a future branch, that caused a resonance for Gaius to bring in people from the dying future, this time it was a set of dark elf hero children related to August.

Some dragons were set up by fate to fall for some humans so completely they would sacrifice themselves to save the planet. If Bermont was picked, then it meant one threat would be from space, she could move at light speed, there would be something she would need to collide with - possibly a beam of some sort that would be out to either severely damage or destroy Urea's isolation barrier.

If Uriah was picked, then there would be an inside danger as well. Likely something would cause the planet's magnetic field to fail and Uriah would need to take its place - that was something only he could do.

And if Purple was being tempted, a detail Bermont had not mentioned, but-- fiance-- right, he had one, then the danger would likely be interdimensional. Purple was already going at full force to open a possibility for a united front.

And another yet unmentioned detail, Roy was picked as well. The guy was "an idiot for his kids" and core had pushed eight on him already without his own awareness right now. But in the case of Roy, the core was after the kids, not Roy himself, because they said Roy was useless, his might was there in his role as a king of salamanders, he guided, led, taught, and equipped salamanders, but his battle ability was surprisingly low.