Jason hummed, and he decided that the limitation on [Time Dilation] wasn’t so bad. Five seconds was still a long time in the middle of a fight, and if it meant the difference between life and death, then five seconds might as well be a lifetime. Even though Evon’s talent hadn’t been a magical skill, but rather an innate skill that she was born with, Jason was glad that the system was capable of replicating it using mana.
But the most disturbing thing that Jason got from Evon after her resurrection were her memories. Or rather, her lack of memories. After she was brought back to life, Jason immediately tried going through all of Evon’s memories to figure out why she attacked him. He saw her early life as a demon, her training and her trials in battle, her husband and child who were murdered in the Raksha war. How she fought against the Avaran with fury, but ended up being captured at the end, and then Jason saw her sitting on a rock and staring at a river in a distant world known as Ropal. Jason had been shocked when he realised that there was a huge gap in Evon’s memories that he couldn’t access at all. It wasn’t as if the gap had been caused by the madness from the [Land of Lost Shadows]. Jason was still able to access Evon’s memories from when she attacked him. It was just that Evon’s memories from before she appeared on Ropal were simply nonexistent. It was like a large part of her memories had been simply torn off, and nothing Jason did could bring back those memories.
The only thing that Jason was able to pick out from before Evon appeared in Ropal was a blurry image of a hooded man who was hunched over like a mouse.
’The man dropped Evon on Ropal without any instructions or missions. It’s like he knew that Evon’s Arcane Attribute would push her to look for the other Attributes, so he was certain that she was going to go after me. He either did this so that Evon would gain the second Attribute for the Shadows Arcane Art, or he just sent her to die.’
Jason said this to Gina through their mental link, and he saw Gina’s face darken as she thought about what he said. Jason knew that they could think about this forever without being able to figure out what the hell was happening behind the scenes. If they wanted to figure out what was happening, they needed to find Evon’s lost memories.
’I spoke to Juliet earlier and asked her to help find someone who could do a deeper mental search. So just relax for now.’
Jason said this to Gina while putting his hand around her shoulder and pulling her to his chest, and Gina let out a deep sigh as she wrapped her hand around Jason’s waist and put her head on his shoulder. Gina had been extremely tense ever since the battle earlier. Gina already knew that Earth was getting put in the spotlight far too often these days, but she also knew that the only reason why so many people were interested in Earth was because they wanted to get to Jason. Whoever sent Evon had done it to try to kill Jason, and Gina was terrified, because for the first time in her life, she had watched Jason struggle to fight something that she couldn’t do anything to help him against. Gina had never felt more useless than she did at that moment, and it terrified her that she could only stand there and watch Jason fighting alone in his head! Gina didn’t want Jason to have to go through something like that again! And the only way they could make sure it didn’t happen was to kill whoever was trying to target Jason once and for all!
Gina spoke softly.
’If there’s anything I can do, just let me know. I have some connections in the superhuman world. I can try contacting some superhumans with mental-based Gifts—’
’You don’t need to worry—’
"Don’t say that!"
Jason blinked as Gina suddenly sat up with a frown, and Gina put a hand over her mouth when she realised that she had spoken out loud. Jason smiled at her and put his hand out towards her for a hug, and Gina immediately dove into his arms and pressed her face into the crook of his neck while taking a shuddering breath. Gina’s outburst had drawn everyone’s attention, and Mira asked Jason if everything was alright, but Jason just nodded and said it was fine. No one really believed Jason when he said this since Gina’s outburst had been very real, but they knew it was something personal between Jason and Gina, so they didn’t try to dig too deep into it. Well, at least Mira and Janet didn’t try to dig into it! Maya was immediately on her feet as she rushed towards Jason and spoke with an excited smile!
"Don’t worry, onii-chan! If you break up, then I’ll take care of you—"
Smack!
Mira hit Maya over the head, and Maya screamed in pain as she was dragged away so she wouldn’t get between Jason and Gina. Jason ignored his sister’s pained cry as he spoke to Gina through their mental link.
’Gina, we already know it won’t be easy to find the missing parts of Evon’s memory. If my powers can’t fix the memories, then I don’t think anyone on Earth will be able to do it either. Azrael is working on something, and Juliet is also trying to find an S-Rank mentalist. So just relax and trust me, alright?’
Gina nodded into Jason’s shoulder, and her hand tightened around him.
’Thank you. I’m sorry I shouted, I was... I was just so scared. When I watched you struggling alone to beat the madness, and I couldn’t do anything at all to help out, I was so scared I’d lose you.’
Jason rubbed Gina’s shoulder and kissed the top of her head before telling her that everything would be alright. Jason didn’t want Gina to dwell on their problems for now. They were with their family, so they couldn’t allow an unknown enemy halfway across the Primordial Expanse to ruin the moment. So for now, Jason didn’t bring up the matter anymore, and he watched with a smile as Maya, Janet, and Mira slowly pulled Gina into their conversation about how Maya wanted to get more tattoos later.
....
The two weeks following the attack from Evon passed rather quickly. Jason spent that time either looking into the information that he got from Evon’s memories, training his different powers, or taking care of the matters that came up with the guild. As it turned out, there had been a lot of submissions from popular superhumans and guilds around the world that wanted to join the Monarch guild, and Juliet had been so swamped with work that she had started sleeping in the office like some sort of corporate slave! It became so bad that Juliet just started passing all the proposals from guilds to Jason for him to take a look at them! Jason had given the documents to one of the superhumans in his Legion and told him to look through them instead, and after looking through them, Jason decided to first collaborate with the Panthers guild that Gina had once been part of, as well as the Hornets guild that was led by Madam Rose. The collaboration just meant that their guild members would go into some gates together, so Jason left the decision of who would go into the gate for Juliet to handle.