Toonka and Harol followed Grigori when she returned to the Palantír Hall. Cale was still missing along with the kids, but this time Grigori took the time to update everyone on his condition – reassuring them all that he was resting and would take the rest of the day off from watching records.
“So then… let's move onto someone else.” She declared with a bright smile as she motioned for everyone to return to their seats.
She then turned to the Palantír and took a moment to stare at the blank Palantír for a moment and then nodded her head – she was obviously reviewing something on it that everyone else could not see. Returning her gaze to the guests of her hall, her eyes settled upon TCF!Rex and TBOAH!Rex.
“Well then… Naur take over…” She announced to her apostle.
“Yes Goddess-nim!” Naur answered from overhead.
<Chapter 164: Somehow Once Again (4)>
Billos had told Rex the location of his secret residence. No, he had locked Rex up in his secret residence.
TCF!Rex flinched and TBOAH!Rex frowned corking his clueless head to one side.
“Uhmm… when is this?” TBOAH!Rex asked.
“This is before you died.” Grigori answered. “You died without being able to achieve what you wanted…” Grigori's voice sounded cold and unforgiving, but TBOAH!Rex could only gulp and nod singularly before he glanced toward his counterpart – already knowing that his counterpart had far succeeded where he had not been able to.
“Good… let's continue.” Grigori praised the older red cat from the Fog Cat Tribe for not being stubborn and trying to resist the truth before turning her gaze back to the Palantír as it continued to play the record.
Billos’s gaze turned toward Choi Han as he thought about the chaotic moments of last night. Choi Han smiled gently at him as they made eye contact. However, the statement Choi Han had made after stealthily evacuating Rex’s friends and family and then locking Rex up in the secret residence remained on his mind.
TBOAH!Choi Han blinked and corked his head curiously, he didn't know that Billos was this useful. At least he hadn't been close enough to Billos to use him like this nor did he trust Billos enough to make use of his assets in this way either.
Rex had wanted to be together with his family and the other members of the organization. However, Billos had determined that this would not be possible. The other organization members would be fine in the secret paths and unknown caves of the slums because the Empire did not know of their identities, however, someone like Rex, whose identity was completely known, needed to be somewhere where he could be safe from magic.
TBOAH!Rex did not deny that for him escaping the soldiers from the Empire was impossible so it was obvious that he had been caught and ‘dealt with’, however what the record on the Palantír was showing was the reality of his counterpart and he was desperate for this information.
Billos’s secret residence was somewhere with a shield that defended against all magic because it was somewhere that Billos’s uncle Odeus, the ruler of the Roan Kingdom’s northwestern underworld, had created for any emergency situations when he was in the Empire.
TBOAH!Alberu flinched and his eyes went wide, his head immediately turned to look toward Taylor and TBOAH!Cage and TCF!Cage for their explanation, however Taylor merely shrugged and TCF!Cage smiled mischievously.
“Young Master Cale said that it was better to have him who could be reasoned with than someone who lacked morals. Odeus Flynn is actually quite a competent business man and he respects the rules of the deal we established.” Taylor benignly informed the TBOAH!Alberu. TCF!Alberu ignored the twitch at the corner of his lips as it pulled upward into an arrogant semblance of a scammy smile – that Raon would have said looked just like Cale’s scammer smile.
Billos recalled what Choi Han had told Rex as he put him in there.
‘You are a dangerous bomb. If you go off, you will not kill just yourself. You will kill everybody involved with this incident. So quietly stay here like a dead rat.’
TCF!Choi Han recalled telling TCF!Rex this and nodded to himself – he firmly believed he'd said the right thing back then and did not at all regret giving him that harsh order. TBOAH!Choi Han scowled because he couldn’t understand why his counterpart was bothering to stop this stupid fool who wanted to get caught and die.
He never expected such words to come from Choi Han whom he thought was the pure and silent type.
“Right… why is he bothering with it?” TBOAH!Choi Han asked himself and then he turned his head and spotted the TCF!Rex and blinked for a moment not even recognizing him. His red hair was bright and his freckles seemed even clearer than his counterpart's. His entire demeanour and aura was also different compared to his counterpart as well.
‘’You might be fine with other people getting hurt for the greater good, but I will put my family, something that took me so long to get, first.’
“Good job Choi Han!” TCF!Ron spoke up, his voice was as quiet as a blade as it slid through the air between everyone. TCF!Ron had obviously been updated about what scene this was entailing by TCF!Eruhaben who was staring at the Palantír with narrowed eyes and a stubborn expression on his face. After hearing TCF!Choi Han's words, TBOAH!Choi Han couldn’t help feeling ashamed of his thoughts from moments ago – he could understand now why his counterpart was trying to reason with the hopeless and foolish TCF!Rex.
No one else dared to comment or attempt to placate the assassin, as they were fearing for their own lives right now. TCF!Rex wisely bowed his head and accepted the glares he was receiving while whispering to his counterpart that since he had endangered Cale, this was getting off lightly. TBOAH!Rex sighed heavily and decided to forget about his counterpart and instead focus on the records.
Billos also didn’t expect Choi Han to have such thoughts. Choi Han did not have any family to Billos’s knowledge. No, he had no blood relatives.
‘So Choi Han’s family must be ……’
Cale bluntly asked Billos, who turned away from Choi Han and was now staring at him.
“What the hell are you looking at?”
“…It is nothing.”
Billos pushed aside the thoughts in his mind.
“Hmm…” TCF!Alberu frowned slightly and then shook his head. He didn't know exactly how close Billos and Cale were, but he knew that Billos was a business man and as such he would have probably paid handsomely in order to get information and a background check on Choi Han because Choi Han was Cale’s Guardian Knight and a prominent figure in Roan. However, something about this bothered him, but he decided to ignore it.
“Maybe I'll ask Cale later…” TCF!Alberu shrugged it off and watched as Grigori raised her hand and elegantly swipe her fingertips through the air – causing the scene on the Palantír to change to a different record.
<Chapter 154: Rolling in By the Vine (1)>
A moment later, a person wearing a robe headed out through the window.
– Human, the person tailing you is still at the entrance of the residence!
Cale nodded his head and stealthily left the building using the Sound of the Wind. He headed to a place that existed everywhere, just like the underworld. The slums. He was walking toward the slums. Cale’s hair that was sticking out of the robe was white.
“This occurred the day before… it's the first meeting between Rei Stecker and Cale-hyung.” Grigori informed them with another gentle smile. A few more people were becoming a little nervous whenever she smiled so gently today – however they weren't given much time to dwell on it because the record continued and they had to focus on it in order to keep up with the incoming information.
A person knocked on the door of a house that looked like it was about to break down. It was in the corner of the slums where no light shined down from the sun. These buildings that even the people in the slums avoided served as a resting place for animals or people escaping from the rain. This house was located around those broken buildings.
The Palantír allowed the loud banging to be heard throughout the hall. Simply so that everyone would know that Cale was actually being rather polite. TCF!Rei looked ashamed, scratching his cheek with a sheepish grin on his face. He was also vastly different from his counterpart – almost completely unrecognizable. There wasn’t a single trace of the guilt and shame that marred the features and stained the aura of his TBOAH!World counterpart.
However, there was no response even after knocking for a while. The person who was knocking on the door let out a sigh before starting to knock a bit louder.
“My goodness! Why can’t you just go away?”
The sound of someone grumbling inside could be heard before the old door slowly opened.
“Cale's much more polite than me… I would have already kicked the door down by then…”
“Well considering his disguise, he has to play his role…” TCF!Alberu reasoned with Kim Rok Soo, ignoring how casually the transmigrated Korean was talking about violence.
A tired middle-aged man appeared through the open door. The man slightly flinched before starting to speak.
“… Who are you?”
The man who had been knocking on the door respectfully bowed his head. That action made the man inside the house start to speak with a stoic expression.
“…Why did a priest-nim come all the way here?”
The man that was called a priest. The man with the long white hair was wearing a white priest robe with no crest on it.
“As always, Oraboni looks good in his priest disguise…” TCF!Lily whispered to her counterpart who was seated beside her. TBOAH!Lily nodded eagerly and then leaned closer to TCF!Lily to whisper back to her.
“He really does look holy in white…” TBOAH!Lily said, reminding TBOAH!Basen and TCF!Basen of how TCF!Jack had told Cale in a few records earlier that white was a ‘holy’ colour when Cale was getting into his disguise on his way to help the Whipper Kingdom. The two of them could not deny it, so they didn't hush or discredit their younger sisters’ opinions.
That man, Cale, smiled gently and started to speak. Raon spoke in his mind.
– There is nobody around.
Cale started to speak as well, “I came because I wanted to destroy the Bell Tower.”
The expression of the man in the house, the Alchemist, quickly changed.
“It certainly was the best way to get my attention…” TCF!Rei conceded with a soft sigh and a resigned expression on his face.
“Seriously… that's all it took for you to let him in? What if he'd been a spy for the Empire or that bastard Adin?” TBOAH!Rei demanded logical answers from his counterpart.
At his accusations, TCF!Rei sighed heavily and gestured toward the Palantír.
“Keep watching, I think you'll see why…” He recommended and TBOAH!Rei relented and returned his gaze to the Palantír as the record continued.
<Chapter 155: Rolling in By the Vine (2)>
Cale looked toward the stiff alchemist and started to speak, “May I come in?”
The alchemist opened and closed his mouth a few times before verifying that nobody else was around and then moving to the side.
“Come, haaaa, come in for now.”
Cale immediately walked in. He was walking with a relaxed pace, as if he was going into his own living room.
“He does do that part correctly though…” Kim Rok Soo mumbled with a sneaky grin of amusement and pride.
“Which part?” TCF!Choi Han asked, he wanted to argue that Cale did many things correctly, but he also was curious about why Rok Soo was seemingly nit-picking everything about Cale now that he was not here.
“Walk like he's claiming territory.” Kim Rok Soo casually threw a bomb of his own into the hall.
The Palantír Hall fell silent as everyone went rigid and then their eyes became wide as it hit them that Cale really did do that – he always moved around confidently and there was no better way to describe it than to do so by saying he walked like he was ‘claiming territory'.
Cale looked toward the table with broken corners in front of him. There was a round bowl sitting there.
“There is only cold water in the house. I do not know what kind of priest-nim you are, but please drink this cold water and then get on your way!”
The alchemist filled the bowl with cold water and pushed it toward Cale. Cale did not even look at the bowl. His gaze was focused on the alcohol bottles in the room amongst the alchemy tools.
TCF!Rei cringed at his past behaviour and brushed his face with his hand, covering his eyes and trying to pray for this record to end sooner so he would be spared the embarrassment from his past foolishness and shameful behaviour.
“What are you looking at? Aigoo, just what?!” The middle-aged alchemist saw that Cale’s gaze was on the alcohol bottles and kicked them to one side.
“Ah, damn.”
The alcohol bottles made loud noises as they ran into the alchemy tools. The mess made the middle-aged man start to frown. He heard the priest’s voice at that time.
“Alcoholic fake alchemist. Makes poison and small bombs for underworld organizations to use when they fight against each other.”
On the other hand, TBOAH!Rei felt that TCF!Rei’s behaviour was similar to his own – especially for the him from around that time period. So, he could at least understand how his counterpart must have felt to have this stranger coming in and saying things like this right on the eve of the assassination attempt Rex and the others were trying.
“Unfortunately for us… we did not succeed and from the look on their faces they didn't either…” TBOAH!Rei reasoned and then turned his gaze to the Palantír again to continue receiving this invaluable information.
“I heard that you would make anything as long as you got paid. Am I wrong?”
Cale did not know the man’s name yet. There were only a few things he knew about him. This man was someone who had not appeared in the first five volumes of, ‘The Birth of a Hero,’ and Billos had only brought a small amount of information about him.
“Amazing… so he found me on his own like this…” TCF!Rei gasped in mild surprise and amused relief.
“Right… Supreme Commander Cale-nim is really incredible!” TCF!Rex added with a fond and bright smile on his face.
The old man chuckled to himself and nodded, “That's good… I'm glad he found me. I got to be a part of something incredible because I chose to ally myself with him!”
The Palantír than began to reveal the dark secrets of the Alchemists' Bell Tower of the Empire. The traces of amusement and gentleness vanished from everyone’s faces as horror and grim disgust began to appear. These emotions of hatred and anger were directed purely and entirely upon the old Mogoru that had allied itself with the White Star. That Mogoru was dead, everyone knew that, Cale had made sure to suffocate it and snuff it out of existence.
At that moment, the priest with blue eyes that were looking at him started to speak.
“15 years ago…”
The alchemist was finding it difficult to breathe.
“15 years ago, the Alchemists’ Bell Tower said that they wanted to contribute to the Empire and took in some orphans and children from the slums. They taught them and made them do menial chores. I think they said the age range was between 5 and 15?”
15 years ago. It was a substantial amount of time even for those of the TBOAH!World who had been fighting for 20 years against the White Star. It was a period of time that could certainly be felt by those who had survived until the very final battle, that is why they felt that this number had some significance and they all respectfully paid attention.
“The citizens of the Empire sent tributes to the Alchemists’ Bell Tower that they had considered to be terrible and now, the personal disciple of the Tower Head, is a child from the slums.”
Some orphans and slum children had shown different levels of success.
“Then the Alchemists’ Bell Tower announced that they had sent the remaining children to the Alchemy Towers across the Empire.”
People had believed them because successful children from the slums had delivered the news. Cale smiled while looking at the pale middle-aged man.
“However, they stopped doing that shit about 10 years ago.”
Shit. Cale was calling that praised action, ‘shit.’
Cale threw a few pages of paper onto the table.
“This was because 10 years ago was when they started to conspire with the Empire’s royal family in order to kidnap the citizens and use them for experiments.”
Toonka and Harol's faces twisted with disgust and anger, but they calmed themselves and did not break the tension in the room by disturbing it with their angry protests. Naur continued the record quickly so that no one else would do so in their stead.
Cale tapped on the documents that described this situation as he continued to speak.
“They no longer needed the children that they could kill without worrying about any consequences.”
Cale was no longer speaking formally. Although they were both sitting down, Cale was looking at the man as if he was looking down at him. The pale middle-aged man barely managed to get a few words out.
“S, stop-”
However, Cale was not someone who would stop just like that. He continued to speak to this pitiful man.
“And you appeared in these slums 10 years ago.”
“Wow… Your Young Master sure does like to dig—” TBOAH!Rei grit his teeth, however he was unable to finish his insult because Grigori's pitying gaze settled upon him and his tongue suddenly turned numb in his mouth. TBOAH!Rei wisely did not challenge the Goddess and instead bowed his head submissively.
TBOAH!Rei realized a moment later that the Goddess had merely done this to him to spare him from becoming the target of the vicious family and friends who followed Cale from the TCF!World. Grigori was worried that their unified hostility would kill him and she would thus be forced to use her power to revive him. It was bothersome and she did not want the old alchemist to go through something like that, so she stepped in and used her power to silence him instead.
Regardless of this, Naur continued the record forcing everyone else in the Palantír Hall to follow the record being shown. The record continued the meeting between Cale and the old alchemist of the TCF!World. It included the declaration that Cale made about him “definitely” going to destroy the Alchemists' Bell Tower. It eventually revealed Rei's story about how he was placed as a trainee and put in charge of the children from the slums for one month.
It told the story of how he had found out the truth of the experiments one month later and how he’d been poisoned by dead mana. The Palantír even showed the hand Rei had put inn the jar and kept all those years – it's mere existence revealed TCF!Rei’s determination to have his guilt and shame resolved.
TBOAH!Rei had always felt the same. Unfortunately he had been killed before he had the chance and unlike his counterpart there was no Cale Henituse who came looking for him to hire him and give him the order to follow him regardless of where it may lead.
Cale could see that guilt and anger was burning in Rei’s eyes. Cale started to speak.
“Wait for me. I will return with a contract.”
“I do not need money. Please help me resolve my guilt.”
Cale stopped for a moment before getting up. He looked toward Rei, who was looking at him intently, and started to speak.
“If that is what you want in return, that is what we will do.”
Although Cale looked calm, Rei started to frown. The corners of his lips were shaking. Cale said one last thing to him before he left the shabby house.
“Drink the cold water and return to your senses. I don’t care much for alcoholics.”
“Hmm… that sounds so strange coming from the Young Master-nim.” TCF!Lock said curiously tilting his head and then sharply turning to look at his hyung when TCF!Choi Han let out a weary sigh.
“Hyung? What's wrong? Are you tired?”
“No, that's not it…” TCF!Choi Han replied and tried hard not to think about the child he'd met during the Indignity Test he had faced within the Sealed God's Temple.
“Then? What is it?”
“I’m. Just. Thinking. About. Something. Else. Something. Irrelevant.”
TBOAH!Choi Han slapped a hand to his forehead and then wished the floor would open up so he could fling his counterpart into it.
“Everyone please focus here, we need to continue…” Grigori calmly announced with a serene expression upon her face. TCF!Choi Han wisely avoided her gaze and everyone decided to leave interrogating TCF!Choi Han to TCF!Alberu.
TCF!Alberu who was eyeing TCF!Choi Han contemplatively had a thoughtful glow in his eyes. That glow foretold promises of new truths which would be uncovered by the time he was done interrogating TCF!Choi Han.