After escaping from that ill-fated plain, it took Edward two days to stumble upon the road, get to the nearest town, find a sound transmitter and call his acquaintances, since for some reason his grandfather was unavailable.
When he was told that some insane investigator named Dick Baker had destroyed an underground auction together with everyone present, the guy refused to believe what he had heard. But due to the fact that his grandfather did not answer calls all day, he had to believe in the cruel truth involuntarily.
To say that Edward fell into a state of the deepest shock would be a significant understatement. The last days in general seemed to him a feverish delirium: first, a monstrous beauty kidnapped him, then he almost lost the battle with a practitioner of the superior phase, and the death of his grandfather was the last nail in the coffin. This week couldn't be worse!