บท 150: Mortal World 16
Outside and inside the building of the base, all exorcists hurriedly scurried around, waiting for their leader to return.
As Yano and Lia come back, Mil, Skyla, Holn and Lu have already assembled in the meeting room. Their faces showed grave expressions.
"What's the problem?" Yano could immediately see that a huge issue arose.
Several documents laid on the table and a presentation was projected onto the screen wall. As Lia sat down next to Yano, she curiously watched the bright screen.
Subconsciously she held out her hand over the lens of the projector and was shocked when the picture disappeared.
"I- sorry," Lia didn't know what to do, she thought she deleted the image but then Yano's hand took hers away from the lens. The screen reappeared. Lia sighed in relief and embarrassment as chuckles appeared.
The serious and tense atmosphere considerably lightened.
"Sorry," Lia meekly added. Her usual dignified elegance vanished in a poof and a shy maiden came out. Something was wrong here. All eyes fell on Yano and condemned him. What did he do to Lia?
However, Yano didn't notice it because Lia was too cute and his bright eyes watched her flustered form.
Yet the actual truth wasn't that Yano did something to Lia nor did she become like this because of him. In reality, Lia noticed a major discovery and that was, despite living in the Mortal World for 2 weeks now, she still was wet behind the ears when it came to technology and inventions.
Lia prided herself as someone who learnt fast and could grasp anything within seconds but this stupid projector shattered her own image of herself.
"Back to topic," Skyla quickly stirred the attention to serious matters, "We've investigated the talisman and yes, they're from the Immortal World."
"Has anyone apart from… Kim arrived?"
"No," Mil shook his head, "That's the thing, we can't know if someone might have sneakily come here, because, using Kim as an example, if she didn't come to us, we wouldn't know."
Yano sighed, "I should've kept track of everything."
"Actually there's another possibility I want to raise," Skyla swung her hair back and her fierce eyes swept across the documents, "A traitor, and they might've been here for a long time."
"See," Skyla turned to the presentation, "We've drawn back on our previous areas, and the first time the talisman appeared was actually a year ago- it was a single one and hidden. One of the other exorcists saw it and thought it's only a mortal prop, but now it turned out it's the same as the ones we're recently discovering."
"So, they've already been testing," Lia joined the discussion after quickly figuring out what was going on.
"Exactly, we haven't noticed yet and the worst case has happened," Skyla clicked on another slide, "A massive influx of vengeful ghosts in the Mortal World, noticeable around these areas."
A map was now shown and with the cursor, Skyla pointed at all the places. Upon seeing the red areas, a heavy silence fell.
"A whole country," Yano mumbled, "And potentially many traitors."
"Yes."
Lia immediately knew it was Min's doing but couldn't say it, after all, they all worked under him.
"Yano, we're too understaffed to purge a whole country, at this rate mortals fall to hell and come crawling back as slimy ghosts," Holn was serious for once.
But there was a bigger problem Lia feared. If Min decided to harm the Mortal World this fast then-
Something's happened in the Immortal World or else Min wouldn't retort to unfinished and desperate measures like this.
Lia needed to head back as quickly as possible.
"They're using the whole country as a guinea pig," Lu's lazy voice appeared, he barely had his eyes open and sunk against his chair. For some reason, since Lia came here, Lu has gotten more lazy.
"And we have no way to counter it, we have to ask exorcists in other countries," Mil urged Yano to make a decision.
"They'll have their own load to hold," Yano's mind was working to think of a solution.
"There are exorcists in other countries?" this surprised Lia.
"Of course, you didn't know?" Holn found an opportunity to tease. His mischievous expression said it all.
"We'll deal with it ourselves, also we can't trust them, we can't even trust our people either if there's really a spy," finally Yano made a decision.
With this Lia realised something, it seemed like the five of them knew who the one perpetuating this all was.. most of all, they weren't surprised, only anxious at this arising situation.
"You know who's behind this?" this burning question fought to make it out of Lia's mouth.
"You too," Yano turned to Lia.
Wait, Lia didn't understand, what was going on here? Weren't they all working for Min, so why-
"Min?" Lia asked cautiously.
"Did I hear right? You call the Ghost King by his name? You got guts," Holn gave Lia his thumbs up while Yano looked displeased.
"Exactly."
"But aren't you-"
"I'll explain later," Yano's warm smile made Lia stop questioning them. There was something going on, Lia didn't understand. They were hiding something.
If they knew it was Min, then what was their purpose?
"We do it like this, we divide the country up into 5 areas, each of us will lead a team to-"
"Are you insane?" Holn interrupted Yano, "You might be crazy good and can take care of it but this earth's huge, what the hell? You can't expect us to take this all alone?"
For the first time, Holn felt anxious. His power wasn't weak but it was really too much to ask of them to purge a whole country with only 5 of them.
"No rejection. You choose the ones you trust or your team and then we'll head out as soon as possible," Yano's sharp voice left no room for refusal. Holn could only comply.
"Afterwards we'll lure out the traitor. Kim and I will be a team, us two's enough."
Lia widened her eyes, she alone with Yano?
"How's the situation? How severe?"
"Pretty bad," Skyla answered briefly, "They have even started to report mysterious deaths."
"Then we head out now, we'll take this area. I can get here in an instant," Yano pointed at the map's area the farthest away from where they are.
"Ok, take care," Mil sent them off as Yano strode out with Lia in pursuit.
"My power-"
"It's alright," Yano didn't turn around to look at Lia, "I'll protect you. Go and get some stuff you need. In 10 minutes, I'll pick you up from your room."
With that Yano vanished inside his room. This was going too fast. An abundance of ghosts have appeared to the point that mortals are starting to die at a rapid speed.
The worst part was they didn't even notice it.
Outside the base, the cities in the country were on standby. Mass panic spread as people started to drop dead anywhere. On the streets, in restaurants, in schools and at work, even in their own houses.
Where was safe? Nowhere to be found? Those mysterious deaths and victims were randomly targeted. People believed it was a disease spreading, others believed in conspiracy theories such as this finally being the work of the government eradicating humanity.
However, this phenomenon only appeared in this country, while the rest of the Mortal World was as normal as always. Yet, once the ghosts feasted enough, they'd spread across the whole world.
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