Chapter 59 Volume II – Chapter 25: First and Last Warning

Slowly and confidently, I entered the building called ‘Mana Research Laboratories’ and was greeted at the reception desk by the same woman as the first time I came here, nostalgically.

“What are you here for?”

She didn’t recognize me…

“I’m going to Professor Ulka’s laboratory.”

The woman raised her eyebrows for a moment and looked at me.

“Professor Ulka DeLaor?”

It must have been surprising to meet someone wanting to see a maniac who had never had visitors before, who had completely locked himself in his laboratory and focused only on his research…

“If you let him know, he’ll give his approval.”

The woman eyed me skeptically, typing something on the screen in front of her without taking her eyes off me. After a few seconds, her face became even more puzzled, like a rabbit in headlights.

“W- wait a moment please…”

“Sure.”

The woman continued to do some things on the screen in front of her. Then I noticed a team of four security guards approaching us.

“Please follow them, we need to pay full attention to security, especially with the things that have happened recently…”

I involuntarily rolled my eyes.

It’s not that I think what they’re doing is ridiculous, but the irony… It’s almost funny.

“Okay.”

The four-man team surrounded me at a distance, then coordinated their way to the wide staircase to our right.

I went down a total of three floors with them, they specifically searched me and put me through three different scanners, and then, finally, I entered the floor where the laboratories were.

In a long corridor, almost gigantic, there were large and seemingly solid locked doors with a considerable distance between them. Each of these rooms were laboratories reserved for special professors and I was about to enter one of them.

We walked with the security guards for about half a minute and then stopped in front of a door marked ‘Prof. Ulka DeLaor’.

The guards were about to reach the door and press the button that would probably ring the doorbell, but before they could do so, the door opened and a man in a white coat with golden eyes and dark blue hair appeared in front of us.

“You can go, he is my direct guest.”

The attendants nodded without questioning him one bit and the three of them, except for one, quietly left the corridor. The one who didn’t leave continued to stand here to keep me company when I left the lab.

“Come in.”

The professor stepped aside and welcomed me in. I followed him and entered the lab without breaking my posture in the slightest.

The lab, just as I remembered it from the game, was a really large place, full of devices that I wasn’t quite sure what they were. Apart from that, there were some very comfortable-looking chairs to the left of us, and the professor had already settled into one of them without saying anything to me.

“Aren’t you going to sit down?”

“No, I don’t have much to say. I will leave early.”

After what I said I saw a sparkle in the professor’s eyes, he must have thought I was going to give him a theory; he was excited.

“Professor… No, Ulka.”

The sparkle in the professor’s eyes faded as I changed the way I addressed him.

“I didn’t come to give you a theory today.”

There was a look of surprise, then curiosity on the face of this normally calm man, but after only a few seconds the room suddenly felt heavy.

“So? What are you after then?”

He wore a cold expression, though it was not his usual one. It was directed straight at me, it was meant to put pressure on me.

I squinted, not avoiding his gaze, looking directly into his golden eyes, which reflected the light perfectly and seemed to glow slightly.

“We made a deal, Ulka, whereby I would take a thirty-five percent share of every theory I gave you and you would keep my identity secret. If you broke the agreement, you would be punished.”

“You haven’t given me any theories yet, so I can’t do anything against the agreement even if I wanted to.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

I took a step forward, keeping my composure.

“Do you think I’m stupid, Ulka?”

The atmosphere grew heavier, and Ulka was still quieter.

“Did you think that just because we made that contract I would never think that you could do something behind my back?”

“Loo-”

He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off before he could speak.

“The assassin in the cemetery.”

Ulka paused as if speechless, clearly not expecting those two words to come out of my mouth.

“He followed my sister and me for no reason and tried to kill us. At first, I thought it was because he was trying to eliminate witnesses, but no… He deliberately missed the dagger that was thrown at the very beginning because he didn’t intend to kill me in the first place.”

I thought back to that moment, how he couldn’t kill me in one move when I was still a weakling…

I was so full of adrenaline to think that I had actually beaten him, I was stupid.

“Now, when I think about it, not once during the whole fight did he target my lethal points. He only tried to seriously wound me so that when I was hospitalized you could heal me and strengthen our bond.”

It was pure speculation, though Ulka’s expression, growing colder by the second, confirmed it.

“Even if you had no direct connection to them, you knew they would target Celine Potenbea, so you paid them to give you an extra target. You were going to help me afterward, but the Potenbea family beat you to it. Ignoring that, you were also the one who paid for the special treatment after the preliminary. You were going to reveal it later and try to look humble.”

Silence.

Ulka didn’t break it, he just continued to stand where he was and stare into my eyes.

It made me hate him, but I knew I needed him.

“Still, I ignored it because you were doing nothing but helping me, Ulka. You crossed the line by making a deal with those who threatened me with my sister.”

Ulka was close to those men, even if he was not directly involved with them. He must have given them information about me so that they could find me in a very straightforward way.

Ulka finally broke his silence and spoke as if his infinite confidence had never been shaken.

“So what, Aiden? Do you think I’m going to back down because you said those things?”

Ulka didn’t stand up. Instead, his eyes filled with contempt and began to glow, as if he were standing on an ant that he could crush at any time.

As the glow in his golden eyes increased, I felt a pressure slowly building up on me.

It wasn’t a physical pressure. It was all about breaking my will… and that was exactly why it was useless.

I ignored the pressure like it was nothing, smiling wryly.

“This will be my first and last warning to you, so listen carefully, Ulka.”

I put special emphasis on the word ‘warning’, I wanted to imprint in his mind that if he ever planned anything against me again, I would not react in such a calm manner, I would take direct action.

“I know everything about you, I know your secrets that even you don’t know. All the illegal things you’ve done, your ties to the Elhair Republic, your involvement with that organization that controls more than half of the academy, how you’ve been working with enemy guilds at the same time to extort money from them, and so much more…”

It was from the game, of course, information that Ulka had always been sure that no one else knew…

“I know ‘everything’ you have done, down to the last detail, and that includes the Malus Family, including your nephew. Wouldn’t it be bad if all this stuff I know, along with the evidence, was one day published in the media?”

Ulka’s glittering eyes suddenly dimmed, and the heavy atmosphere in the room quickly returned.

The Absolute Mind… was certainly a frightening skill, it was entirely thanks to it that I was able to continue standing despite the pressure Ulka had just released.

This skill… even I, as its owner, was afraid of it, but truth be told, it was also useful.

“If you keep doing what I’m about to say, I’m going to pretend I didn’t see or hear any of this.”

I paused for a second and looked at Ulka’s expression, still calm but thoughtful, listening to me but not focused on me.

This man, the embodiment of calmness and coldness, had become absent-minded in front of me. It was a sign that he was taking the situation seriously. Otherwise, he would just stare at me.

“First of all, my share of the research will no longer be thirty-five percent, but sixty. Second, from now on you will devote as much of your resources as you can to protecting my sister, and do the best you can, and never take a cursory approach.”

That way I can stop worrying about Clara, at least she will be safe to a certain extent.

“Third and last, you will strongly warn your nephew not to mess with me or my sister. I know what he is like, if you simply tell him to stay away from me it will backfire. So you will do it sternly.”

He nodded with every word I said. He had already accepted his situation, he was not stupid and knew what not to do as well as what to do.

“If I catch you having a hand in anything, especially something involving my sister, then there won’t be a trace of the DeLaor or Malus family on the continent. I will erase them all with my own hands, even indirectly, and all you can do is watch from afar. I think you know the value of knowledge better than anyone, Ulka.”

With that, I turned away and headed for the door as if nothing had happened.

“Cut all ties with that organization as well, or you may experience things in the future that are much worse than what I have told you, and I will not be the reason for it.”

I opened the door and was about to go out, but then I was interrupted by a notification from my watch.

When I picked it up to see what it was, I stared at the screen blankly.

<<——————————

Hey, Aiden! Remember that girl you saved last time? I was thinking about how I should deal with you and I had a perfect idea! How about we give her and a couple of other weaklings a good beating, blame it on you and replace all the rumors about you with bad ones? Really bad ones…

Now, if you don’t want to deal with punishments far more severe than expulsion from the academy, come to the location I’ve given you. We have something to talk about.

-Justin Malus

——————————>>

When I saw the message, I turned around and looked at Ulka.

He hadn’t changed his expression, he was just staring at the floor and thinking.

Ah… Damn, so they already had a conversation…

I took a deep breath and turned around again.

Well, okay, fine. I’m not going to say anything about this, it would be better to intimidate Justin personally so that he doesn’t mess with me.

I walked out of the room without saying anything and turned to the security guard who had been waiting for me outside until now.

“I’ll be leaving.”

The guard simply nodded and turned in the direction we had come from. I simply followed him out and after a simple thank you, I breathed plenty of fresh air into my lungs.

What a troublesome day this has been…

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