An unknown amount of time had passed before Timmy opened his eyes again. Before he could even come to his senses, he screamed, "There’s a monster!"
"A monster? What are you talking about?" Leo’s calm and composed voice came from next to him.
"The skeleton monster! Wait, where did it go?! How are we back on my ship?"
Timmy looked all around him, but he couldn’t find any skeletons. There were no unfamiliar aliens. Instead, he was inside his ship, sitting in the pilot’s seat.
"It must be a fun dream for you to be so into it."
Leo chuckled, resting one leg over the other as he arched his back against the chair to get more comfortable.
"A dream? How can it be a dream? We were kidnapped, and you were hurt! That’s right, your arm!"
Timmy quickly stood up and reached out his hand to grab Leo’s arm, pulling up his sleeve.
"Huh? Where did the wound go? You were hurt by the lasers! How can there be no wound? And why isn’t your sleeve torn? I clearly remember you stopping the bleeding by tearing your sleeve off!"
Timmy sat back in his chair in disbelief, grabbing his head. Was it really a dream? Could a dream really be so realistic?
"It looks like you haven’t been getting much rest. Not only did you fall asleep while escorting me, but you’ve been sleeping for so long. What will your boss say if he finds that out?"
Leo looked just like he did when he was picked up from Earth. Even his clothes were still the same, making it clear that they hadn’t been changed. There was no blood on them.
It made Timmy really doubt everything that he had seen. Was he really dreaming about everything?
If the boss found out that he had fallen asleep, wouldn’t he be in deep trouble? Even though the job wasn’t ideal, it wasn’t as if he was able to find anything better with his qualifications.
"It’s a good thing that this ship has autopilot features, despite being so old. Otherwise, we would’ve crashed into some asteroid by now."
Timmy scratched the back of his head, still remembering the few glimpses of the dream extremely clearly.
His heart was telling him that it was real, but his brain and the current situation made it evident that it was a dream.
"Unfortunately, this ship is still junk. Even the autopilot made a mistake, and we were lost in a wormhole along the way. Only I know how I managed to get us back on track with the help of Galactic Net guides."
"A wormhole?" Timmy frowned deeply. In that case, it really could’ve been dangerous. Fortunately, Leo was there.
"I tried to wake you up so many times, but you were in such a deep sleep..." Leo truly looked like he was still distressed, remembering that situation.
"If we were lost in a wormhole, that means the flow of time in the outside world would have been much faster. How much time has passed..."
Timmy checked the date in the system and sighed deeply. It was true, a lot of time had passed.
"It looks like I am really going to get fired."
"Don’t worry. I am not a petty person. I won’t tell your boss about this."
"Even if you don’t tell him what happened, I still have to explain our long delay." Timmy started panicking.
"Can’t we just lie to him?" Leo innocently hinted.
"A lie?"
"Yeah, let’s just say I asked you to take a little detour which delayed us. He won’t blame you since you were just following orders."
"I... I don’t know how to thank you!" Timmy grabbed Leo’s hands, growing teary-eyed. "I thought you were a jinx, but you... cough, I meant thank you!"
In his heart, he was relieved that everything he had seen was just a bad dream. Moreover, Leo wasn’t blaming him for falling asleep. He was even trying to lie to help him.
All these overwhelming emotions came out at once.
Timmy didn’t know that Leo had told a similar yet different story to Glitzy’s owner, Marque.
In the past, Leo had already sent a message to Marque for help, and now he couldn’t just pretend that it was a dream.
That’s why he had to use a weaker excuse. Before leaving Necropolis, he had sent Marque another message, telling him that it was just a joke. He told him not to contact the authorities.
Marque was initially furious after finding out that it was a joke, but he couldn’t scold their biggest investor.
Although it caused a small crack in the goodwill between Leo and Marque, it was better than letting the world find out about his relationship with Necropolis.
It was fortunate that Leo hadn’t told Marque about the giant skeletons in his initial message, only telling him that he was kidnapped by some unknown people. He had asked Marque to ask the authorities to find them by tracking his device.
Fortunately, Leo was fast. After gaining the friendship of Necropolis, he still managed to stop Marque just as he reached the authorities.
Only Leo knew how much mental gymnastics he had to do to handle the mess he had created in his eagerness to call for help.
Fortunately, although it was a little troublesome, he had handled it.
Now, Timmy thought that it was a dream. He wouldn’t talk to Marque about this. He would only tell that man the stories he had been fed by Leo. Marque also wasn’t going to question this much since they were returning.
As for why Leo had to jump through so many hoops to hide his relationship with Necropolis, it was to protect his future.
He had come to the realization that Necropolis was a very powerful civilization, with nothing he had seen being comparable to them.
If the other civilizations found out about that relationship, what was going to happen? Those who wanted to get close to Necropolis would’ve tried to invest in his company’s products.
Even if he came up with the stupidest of products, they would’ve bought them at ridiculous prices just to show their goodwill. It was a huge problem for someone who wanted to lose money.
That was still not the biggest problem either.
The bigger problem was that he still didn’t know if Necropolis had any enemies. If there were enemies, or there were those who were jealous of his proximity to Necropolis, his life itself would be in danger.
Even though he had Necropolis behind him, they couldn’t always protect him, could they?
He wanted to hide his individual relationship with Necropolis as insurance for his safety.
It was easier to just threaten Marque and Timmy to keep it a secret, but what if they blurted it out somewhere accidentally? The truly safe option was to not let them know about it in the first place.
As for being the envoy of Necropolis tasked with searching for the Prince, he had already thought of a solution.
He was going to make sure that the envoy’s identity was different from the Leo the world knew.
In that case, even if he made enemies of the universe as the envoy of Necropolis, he could always hide as the innocent businessman Leo who had nothing to do with it.
If Leo was on the financial side of things, then the envoy was the politics and power side of things. The two could never come together as one!
To ensure that identity separation, he had to ensure that no one else could link the two. It was why he made Timmy believe that everything had been a dream.
Everything was planned, and he tried to reduce as many variables as possible. He was even personally going to Glitzy’s headquarters to sign the contract and to show that everything was fine.
Timmy thanked Leo profusely and took control of the ship. He didn’t realize that there was something following them that even the most advanced ships of the universe would’ve found hard to detect.
A giant ship, as large as a planet, was following behind Timmy’s junk ship. It was hidden in the darkness of space, using stealth.
Only one person knew about the ship following them, and that was Leo. After all, it was the ship sent by Necropolis to escort him to his final destination.
....
Meanwhile, on earth, a ship had entered earth’s atmosphere. Blaze had returned to earth after failing to find the Elven Princess.
Blaze still had no idea what had happened on earth in his absence.