Grigori smiled softly watching as all her guests returned from the brief recess she granted them all. Gashan soon joined them all once again. After everyone got settled, Grigori stood up and addressed everyone.
“Now then… let's continue with the next part of this record.”
There were questioning looks from several people, but none of them spoke up when her gaze swept the room. Grigori was unable to fathom why they didn't ask what they wanted to know, but then just wrote it off as humans being strange and turned her gaze to the two Ron who came from the two timelines.
“Would you like to see the beginning of the return of the Molan Household now…” She offered with an innocent smile – as if her question wouldn’t get the most obvious answer from the TBOAH!World Molan duo.
<Chapter 362: No, Then Whatever (4)>
Beacrox’s gaze headed toward his father Ron and Cale. Cale stood up and started to speak.
“Then will they come in about ten, no, five minutes now?”
“Hehe, to be specific, they won’t be able to charge into this area. They will be guarding the shack with the tunnel entrance or be stationed above this location. That is what I told the chiefs to do in the past.”
Everyone in the room were mildly surprised to see how maturely the usually comedic TCF!Bud was behaving on the Palantír. It made them briefly recall that moment when he'd been captured by Queen Jopis and had heard that his mercenary squad had gone missing – it was rather strange for the youngest individuals in the room to connect the comical Bud who flopped around like a dying fish, or bemoaned his existences and the unfairness of Cale's treatment of him to this side of himself where he acted in his capacity as the Mercenary King.
To be more specific, most of the Mercenaries Guild members will be heading toward the first guild branch building. They would purposely lead the Arm members there. As for the remaining members… The strongest individuals at the central headquarters other than the Mercenary King and the highest-grade mage will avoid the Arm members and stealthily head to the shack with the tunnel entrance.
It was also quite helpful for them to know the locations of where the enemies would assemble – the information was very convenient for everyone present within the Directory – however no one present in the Palantír could make use of this information so they found it easy to discard.
“Wonderful.” Ron put on a satisfied smile.
He walked over to Bud, who was laying on the ground next to his bottle of alcohol, and offered his hand.
“Don’t worry about it and just leave it to me.”
Bud grabbed Ron’s arm and stood up. He heard a voice as warm as the wind during the sunset on a spring day at that moment.
“I will destroy it properly.”
TBOAH!Cage and TCF!Cage realized they'd been wrong to wish that Cale had left the Directory untouched. They both shared a look and then glanced conspiringly at each other before looking at Taylor pitying him. They felt bad for getting his hopes up. However their thoughts were cut short when the record continued to with the sound of a wailing alarm coming from above.
The ceiling. Everybody looked up. The sound was not coming from the library. The alarm was coming from above the thick ceiling. That alarm slowly spread into the library.
“They’re here.”
Everybody focused their gazes on Bud.
“It looks like the guild members are here.”
There was no way that the alarm would go off when the Mercenaries Guild members had arrived.
Everyone in the Palantír Hall thought the same as well, however their incorrect assumption was quickly corrected by the next line on the record.
“An alarm goes off and it notifies this location if there are people entering the area around the wooden building without permission.”
Entering without permission. There was only one answer.
“Looks like the guild members properly brought the Arm members here.”
Arm. It meant that Arm came with the guild members Bud started to smile. His smile became the signal.
“Hey Cale, this time you're planning to let Ron and Beacrox play with Arm, right?”
“Of course, they wanted to give those bastards a taster of what's to come.”
“Urgh… that word… please don't use that word!”
“What? 'Taster'?”
“Yeah…”
“Why?” Cale questioned with a frown. As far as he knew no more unranked 'taster' monsters came since back then.
“It makes me think of the old records… I was reading through them in order to help me niece learn more about monsters and that damn word triggered your memories from before you awakened your ability…”
“Oh!! You mean you saw…”
“Yeah, the shelters collapsing…” Rok Soo shuddered and Cale sighed softly.
“Sit tight, I’ll ask Grigori-noona to show you something that will help ease your trauma from those memories… Who knows you might even learn something cool from it.” Cale mutters with a sneaky grin. Rok Soo gets a bad feeling, but his curiosity far outweighs his reservation and so he nods and agrees wait until after everyone’s dissonance is healed.
Cale tried to push Alberu’s last words to a corner of his mind.
“Rude, Dongsaeng!” TCF!Alberu chided Cale and Cale frowned as if he were being wrongly accused of something.
“Hyung, back then you were talking about how the central nobles were crawling back up and about doing some cleaning because of it. While I was about to oversee Ron and Beacrox smacking Arm in the back on their first mission as the representatives of the Molan Household… I needed to concentrate.”
“Fine… fair enough!” TCF!Alberu conceded with a heavy sigh after seeing Cale's innocent expression and also recognized the outfit he'd been wearing back then which had lead to him consequently telling Cale exactly that. TCF!Alberu once again agreed that Cale even without his record ability had a terrifying memory and talent for recalling conversations.
There were people who walked past him as he did that. They were Ron and Beacrox.
“Father.”
Ron turned toward his son after hearing his voice. His son Beacrox who had come to the Western continent at a young age had not learned any assassin skills from him. Ron had not taught them to Beacrox on purpose. This had been the case in the Eastern continent before the massacre of the Molan household. He should have taught his son assassin skills right away if he planned on passing the Molan household over to him, however, Ron had told his son that training his body came first and taught him greatsword arts.
TBOAH!Beacrox gulped and looked down at his own hands – they felt slick and sticky and although they were perfectly clean as always, TBOAH!Beacrox felt like he could see all the blood he had spilt after losing his father marring his hands. TBOAH!Beacrox glanced toward his counterpart and pressed his lips into a thin line while roughly clenching his teeth. Even though he knew and maturely accepted that what his counterpart had got was all a reward for the hardships he'd faced, TBOAH!Beacrox still couldn’t completely crush the envy that clasped like a fist around his heart.
‘I must have known.’
Ron thought that he had finally figured out why he had acted that way. He didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to pass on the assassin household to his son. Now, his son used his greatsword arts more than his assassin skills or torture skills, but he cooked more than anything else. Ron was thinking that was a relief.
This time it was TBOAH!Ron's turn to be surprised, in his timeline in the TBOAH!World he had not lived long enough to even get to this point in order to contemplate or realize such things. He envied his counterpart for getting to do these things that he had always longed to do with his son by his side. TBOAH!Ron glanced toward Cale Henituse and Kim Rok Soo who were sitting quietly side by side watching the record on the Palantír. After a few more seconds of contemplation, TBOAH!Ron returned his gaze to the Palantír, wisdom born from age and experience helping him keep his envious emotions in check even in this situation.
That was why Ron looked at his son who was a healthy young man unlike his old self with concern and started to speak.
“These days, it would be good to have a bad guy who only beats up bad guys.”
Beacrox started to smile.
“I think it is fitting. It is fitting for the Molan household.”
Both of their tones and smiles seemed similar. That was why they were family.
“Raon-nim.” Ron called out to Raon and pointed to the ceiling.
That was the beginning.
The ensuing chaos that followed left everyone slack-jawed in shock and disbelief – the Palantír showed the guests of the goddess' hall the record from Cale's enemies perspective . While it was true that Cale held incredible amounts of power, his subordinates were no less skilled than him and compared to the Molan father and son duo, the mercenaries gathered here seemed pitiful.
The ground was shaking. And the cause of that shaking was…?!
“Damn it!” The leader could see the three-story wooden building. He started to shout. “Everybody move back!”
Underneath the wooden building. The Directory was stored tens of meters underground. He was certain that the shaking was starting from there. However, that shaking was coming through that large distance and causing the ground to shake?
“Move away right now!” The leader shouted at the top of his lungs and pulled back two subordinates right next to him. He was not the only one to do this.
“Dodge it!” There were people in black outfits running out of the wooden building. These were the Arm members who had followed the Mercenaries Guild’s core members and stealthily hid inside the building. The Mercenaries Guild and Arm. It happened as both groups of people started to run for their lives.
“That latter part this is an oddly beautiful sound and sight to my ears and eyes!” TBOAH!Zed muttered and TBOAH!Alberu nodded with a short chuckle at his father's words. The comment was so out of character for his father that TBOAH!Alberu couldn’t help but be shocked. TBOAH!Alberu was getting to see all kinds of new sides of his father since coming here – it was the same for TCF!Alberu who despite taking plenty time to tease and annoy Cale, was also closely watching his father, in order to guess what he might or might not be getting up to with the information they were gaining here.
A large explosion shook the area. Then they saw it. They saw two people shooting up from the ground and nimbly landing on the crumbling wooden building’s roof. It was a man with white hair and a man with a large greatsword in his hand.
“Ohhh… Gentle Beacrox, you look quite cool here!” Raon comments and his counterpart glances between the TBOAH!Beacrox, TCF!Beacrox and then at their replica on the Palantir. It took him barely any time at all to decide that he agreed with Raon, so he began to nod enthusiastically as well.
"Thank you Raon-nim, Black Dragon-nim!" TCF!Beacrox replied with a slight bow of his head toward them.
<Chapter 363: When Night Comes (1)>
“Who are they?” The people around the first Mercenaries Guild building were confused by the people suddenly shooting up from underground. However, the reaction from the Mercenaries Guild’s core members was different than the others.
“N, no!”
“How can this be! How could something like this happen?!”
Their eyes started to fill with astonishment and chaos. It was breaking down. The secret location of the Directory, the most precious cultural heritage in the Mercenaries Guild, no, possibly the entire Eastern continent, that important location was breaking down.
TCF!Bud sighed heavily and rested his head onto the cold table, he reminded himself that this was something that needed to be done and it could not have been avoided unless he really intended to be White Star's next meal or the one who ousted some unsuspecting Ancient Power users and ended up being the reason they disappear.
“Leader!” The leader of the Mercenaries Guild’s core members could not react to his subordinate who was desperately calling for him.
‘…Does this make any sense?’ It was because of the question in his mind. ‘They’re destroying this place?’ They had rushed here knowing that people had infiltrated the location. However, they never expected someone to destroy this place. There was a simple reason for it.
“…They’re going to bury the Directory like this? They’re going to get rid of it? These people?”
‘Why?’
Had TBOAH!Bud and everyone else not known why Cale's Molan duo were destroying the Directory, they too would have thought the same of Ron and Beacrox, as the people panicking within the Palantír. However the emotional damage caused to them all after seeing this happening was terrible enough to leave everyone speechless.
The Directory was a cultural heritage with significant value, something that could give anyone in possession of it a large amount of power and influence. The Mercenaries Guild was always wary of someone aiming for the Directory. In fact, there were many people who wanted to steal it. However, they had never worried about it being lost. What kind of crazy lunatic would destroy close to 1,000 years of records? And all of it at that?
"Obviously, because a crazy lunatic created the bloody thing in the first place!" TBOAH!Bud exclaimed with a venomous hiss. Cale wisely chose not to intervene when he saw the way TCF!Ron's eyes narrowed dangerously as he looked in TBOAH!Bud's direction.
“…Leader! The Directory, is the Directory going to disappear?”
But crazy lunatics like that had appeared.
“No.” The Assistant Leader vigorously shook his head. However, his eyes pupils were shaking in fear as he did that. “I, I’m certain they moved them to a different location before destroying the building.”
The Assistant Leader’s gaze headed toward the Leader.
“R, right?”
However, the response came from someone else.
“It would take at least half a year, no, a full year to carefully move all of those books!”
They really were losing their minds over whether or not what they were seeing was actually happening. However, for the TBOAH!World and the TCF!World audience, a new thought occurred to them.
“So you did actually move the books, right? Where did you move them to?” TCF!Zed asked, surprising everyone when no one answered – those who knew and were about to suddenly found that they could not open their mouths.
Although only the Mercenary King knew the path to the Directory, the leaders of the Mercenaries Guild had some vague knowledge of the location and pathway there. The Mercenaries Guild was somewhere where strength equalled influence. The core members were part of the leadership.
“…Either that or they moved it with magic. However, we only detected four spells being cast. There is nobody in this world who can teleport or move all of those books into a spatial dimension with just four spells!”
Cale was mildly surprised that the goddess was so actively prohibiting everyone’s curiosity and stopping them from discussing the whereabouts or even the exist of the Directory books. Those who knew the truth glanced toward Grigori wondering why she silenced them, but Grigori didn't even look at them, she only continued staring at the Palantír and watching the record with rapt attentiveness – as if this was the first time she'd watched it. They soon gave up on getting answers from her and assumed it was for everyone's own good that they were not permitted to speak about these books.
That was the thought on the minds of all of the core members here. That was why their eyes were full of astonishment and chaos. The Mercenaries Guild’s people were not the only ones in a state of chaos.
“…Squad Leader-nim, shouldn’t we figure out what is going on?” A member of Arm’s Second Battle Brigade cautiously asked his superior, Atures Poeff.
TBOAH!Glenn and TCF!Glenn flinched and then scowled hatefully when they saw that bastard's familiar face appear upon the Palantír. How could he not react like this when he was being forced to see the face of the person responsible for him losing his entire family. Malicious hatred toward Atures Poeff simmered within him and if not for TBOAH!Bud and TCF!Bud suddenly placing their hands upon both Glenn's respectively they were able to calm down and maintain their composure.
The squad member moved away from the Mercenaries Guild’s forces while observing the area nonstop.
‘…The first Mercenaries Guild building is crumbling.’
He was looking at the Mercenaries Guild members who were looking at the crumbling building with astonishment and disbelief with an odd gaze. Both the core members and the mercenaries who came later all stopped and blankly stared at the building that had been a symbol of their organization.
“Sit tight, you bastards… that's only the beginning! Patriarch-nim is coming for each and every one one of you!!” TCF!Bud hissed hatefully.
“That’s right! To atone for all the innocent blood we allowed the Directory's existence to lead to, we will repay it with your blood!” TCF!Glenn venomously added, and their counterparts watched the two of them, mildly surprise by how angry TCF!Bud and TCF!Glenn were. Not that they blamed them either because they were angry too.