Chapter 168 – But why?

The “well-behaved” and “obedient” husband, Astar Levi, noticed his darling’s worry, thus he immediately jumped to console him. His hand flew to gently rub his baby’s waist, and his voice softened, “It could also be that Asan is avoiding the peacekeepers because he has something to hide. He might be holed up somewhere right now, perfectly fine.”

The light touch left Noah feeling ticklish. His cheeks flushed pink, and he quickly covered the naughty hand with his to prevent it from further movement.

The sight of all this made Fynn’s teeth ache, hence, he abruptly interrupted the lovey-dovey scene with “Aris, how about you two go back home, and we talk about the rest through a video call?”

Baby Noah didn’t have mind-reading powers, thus, he turned to Fynn to blankly stare with his head tilted to the side, “…why???”

Seeing a confused ginger kitty with wide amber eyes, Fynn almost blurted out, ‘Why??? Because even if I close my eyes, your sugary intents are still giving me diabetes!!!’ ○|￣|_

Only at the last second did he change his words into, “I’m sure you have a lot on your plate right now, with the wedding and all…” ‘Also, I do, too, and I am much more productive when I am not being force-fed dog food!!!’  ○|￣|_

Noah paused for a moment but didn’t seem to be entirely convinced by the argument. Sure the two of them had a long to-do list, but they were already here, why go back to talk through a video call?

Noticing the doubt in his eyes, inspector Fynn, the astute, promptly changed tactics, “You will be safer at home. And it is a good idea to personally oversee the security measures for the wedding to prevent any possibility of it being crashed by the terrorists.”

This reason succeeded in hooking both Noah’s and Levi’s attention, “You think the terrorists will attempt to crash the wedding?”

Fynn shook his head, “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know whether they intend to crash the wedding, but in lieu of recent findings, I’m convinced that their target from start to finish had been you, Aris.”

Those words immediately ruffled Levi’s feathers. He even forgot to glare at the curious onlookers and, instead, unconsciously tightened his hold on his precious darling and focused his sharp gaze onto Fynn urging him to explain himself.

Noah’s eyebrows furrowed, and he reassuringly gripped Levi’s hand that was yet to remove itself from his waist, “But why?”

Fynn leaned back in his seat and closed his bloodshot eyes for a moment, “I’ve kept a close eye on the media these days. There are signs of someone manipulating the public opinion from behind the scenes.”

Levi had noticed the same thing, “Many voices are speaking against high-ranked power users and advocating that they should be contained because they are a danger to society,” But… “What does this have to do with my baby?”

Both Noah and Fynn flinched at that form of address, the former feeling like his ears were on fire and the latter feeling as if he had swallowed something corrosive down his throat and now speaking brought upon a burning pain. How fluently had that “baby” rolled off the scoundrel’s tongue! For how long had he been referring to Aris as such inside his head?!?

“The end goal of the terrorists should be to directly eliminate high-ranked users or to force authorities to keep them on a tight leash,” Fynn pinched the bridge of his nose, attempting to recollect his state of mind. ‘See no evil, hear no evil…’ (⇀_⇀)

“You think they targeted me because I am the rarest SS-rank, and they fear my reverse soothing?” Noah’s frown deepened, “But that doesn’t seem right… why would they especially fear my soothing of all the other things they could be afraid of, like burning or disintegrating? And to even exclusively focus on me? If fear and chaos were what they were after, wouldn’t it be more effective to use all the available bullets to cause widespread panic everywhere, targeting all the well-known high-ranked power users? Why just target me?”

Fynn swiped his hand over the light screen in front of him, “They certainly have grand plans of chaos and terror, which is exactly why their step one is to get rid of you. What they fear…” Fynn looked up from his screen to lock eyes with Noah, “…isn’t your attack power but your potential of ruining their plans.”

With a loud ding, Noah’s and Levi’s communicators received several long documents.

“Look at what we found,” Fynn motioned towards the text-filled screens in front of him, “Records of the drug trials and the effects of Druxa’s mental power drug. They were researching it as a bio-weapon and, as such, ran various tests on it. They tried the effects of different quantities and concentrations of the substance, as well as the extent of the damage it caused. They even looked into healing or preventing the damage. According to these,” Fynn tapped on a specific section of the text, highlighted with a neon yellow color, “whoever is injected with the foreign mental power ends up suffering mental damage that either kills them off immediately or leads to a power rampage and coma.”

Both Levi’s and Noah’s faces fell, but Fynn continued speaking in his placid tone, “And guess what? They found that the only thing capable of neutralizing the effects of these bullets, as well as healing the caused damage, is a powerful soothing. Or rather, a soothing with a mental power concentration higher than the mental power concentration of the bullet.”

Noah suddenly understood where this was going, and the hand that was on his knee clenched into a fist.

Fynn swiped the screen, and it scrolled down to a circled chart, “They extrapolated the data and theorized that if they used the highest concentration bullets that they were capable of producing, the only power user that could neutralize their bullets in the entire city of Concordia…”

“…would be just me,” Noah finished Fynn’s words.

“Exactly.”

“So if they wish to run rampant in this city, with no one able to stop them, they needed to first get rid of this one single obstacle,” Noah’s usually clear eyes turned stormy. So Aris’ death wasn’t an accident, and he had been targeted and plotted against. Such a nice and bright young man with endless future prospects disappeared from this world just because he had awakened a power that could stand in the way of someone’s ambition.

“It’s more than that,” Fynn continued scrolling, “They were afraid that after we realized what their bullets were made out of, we’d start producing soothing bullets to counter them. And no matter how limited our production of soothing bullets might be, it would certainly be several orders of magnitude larger than their production of black bullets.”

Noah nodded, “An SS-rank like me has a much larger quantity of mental power than their S-ranked Fluxer, and unlike him who has to reserve the majority of his power to become the bullet, the Fluxers from our side would be expending all their mental power only on condensing mine.”

“And that’s not even the end of it – there is a limited number of high-ranked power users to begin with. As long as each one received a single soothing bullet to keep by their side, it would be enough to save them from an attack.”

“I see,” Both Noah’s voice and facial expression were uncharacteristically unreadable, “If all of their targets suddenly had the antidote, how would they continue with their plans to poison them? And even if they did succeed in incapacitating some high-power users, what’s the use of it when they can just be healed back to perfect health with a bit of SS-rank soothing? Wouldn’t they be expanding all that effort for nothing?”