Chapter 91: Who is That?
A voice called out to the white-haired woman from down the hall.
"Madam Agiel! I thought I lost you for a moment there! The meeting room is this way!"
The guild leader of the Panthers guild was a man named Patrick. He was a tall, lanky man with brown hair and kind black eyes. He walked up to the white-haired woman quickly and tried to direct her in the opposite direction! Patrick hadn’t expected anyone from the SMD to visit them this suddenly, so he was trying to make sure he did everything to make her comfortable.
Agiel’s face immediately fell back into her stoic expression once she heard her name being called, and she turned around and began to walk without regarding the guild leader at all.
Patrick coughed into his hand and began to follow behind Madam Agiel with a nervousness that almost made him look like a rabbit standing beside a lion.
"W-We weren’t expecting to be visited by the SMD today. W-We hope there aren’t any issues. If you want to take a look at our records, then I won’t mind providing everything that you need. I can assure you that everything is perfectly clean! In fact, there hasn’t been a single failed audit since—"
"Quiet."
Patrick’s mouth immediately clamped shut as he felt Madam Agiel’s piercing gaze fix itself on him. He could feel his heart race pick up as her eyes remained on him for a few seconds, and if not for the fact that he couldn’t feel any mana in the room, he would have sworn that she was trying to crush him with her power!
Madam Agiel clicked her tongue in irritation at the weak display from the man before she turned away from the meeting room and began to walk to the exit.
’Fucking sheep.’
——
[New York Subway]
’I probably look like a kidnapper.’
This thought passed through Jason’s mind as he sat on a bench a few paces away from the New York subway. The bench was hidden behind a wall so that the people coming out from the subway wouldn’t see him, but there was no way to completely hide from the crowd, so one or two people who passed the corridor would see Jason sitting there.
Jason was wearing his facecap with his head lowered, and beside him, the Dragonborn princess was sitting with her head on his shoulder. There was a mask on her face that prevented anyone from seeing the scales on her cheek, and anyone who was just glancing at them would think that she was simply sleeping on his shoulder. But Jason couldn’t help but think that one or two people would suspect him as a kidnapper and call the police.
The Dragonborn princess was a living person, so there was no way Jason could put her in his Alternate Dimension, which meant he had to bring her to Earth the way she was. Jason was just grateful that he bought the mask earlier. He had no idea how people would react if they knew that this woman was not from this world.
But even though Jason was a bit tense about the whole situation, he shouldn’t have been worried since no one around was paying much mind. The people of New York were always busy, especially those moving through the subway, and they had seen much weirder stuff than a woman resting her head on a man’s shoulder.
In fact, the people around were so nonchalant about the things that were happening around them that all of them were ignoring the three men who were lying on the ground and sleeping with newspapers covering their heads. Jason turned to those men curiously and he felt a complicated smile spread on his face.
Jason had never seen something like this while in Riverdale, so this was just a bit shocking to him. The amount of drunk or unconscious people he had run into in the past few minutes alone was more than what he had seen in Riverdale all month. It was almost like the people of New York were just perpetually drunk.
Jason chuckled at that analogy before he relaxed back in his seat to try and get some rest. Jason didn’t know it, but the reason why he was being left alone wasn’t just because the people of New York were nonchalant. But there was a sort of aura that he was releasing now that he had finally become an S rank. This aura was unrecognizable for regular humans, but it was more than enough to make them feel like they were in danger and keep them away.
If any superhumans saw Jason sitting there, they would immediately be able to tell that they were looking at someone who was far stronger than the average superhuman. Even though he wasn’t releasing any of his mana, Jason was incapable of hiding just how much power he had residing inside him.
Jason had gotten a call from Gina a few minutes ago saying that she was close already, so he simply pulled his cap down to cover his face and decided that he would just relax till then.
A few miles away from Jason, up on a building overlooking the New York cityscape, the agent who had been following Jason earlier in the day was watching him through a pair of binoculars with wide, shocked eyes. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing here.
The agent still remembered how Jason’s aura was before he disappeared into the subway. It was obvious that Jason had been strong then, but it wasn’t enough to make her feel like she was in danger. But now, the agent felt like getting any closer to Jason would put her in serious danger! Jason’s aura was completely different from what it felt like before!
’What in the world happened to him?’
The agent had gone through a lot since Jason disappeared six hours ago. Her superior was unbelievably angry at her for losing Jason, and she had been stuck at this subway going around in circles to try and catch any signs of him.
But after more than three hours of not finding anything while searching on the ground, she finally decided to take to the rooftops and try to see if she could pick him out in the crowd. But even with her added elevation, she still wasn’t able to find him anywhere! If not for the fact that there was another agent watching Jason’s house back in Riverdale, then she would have thought that Jason had gone back home without her knowing!
It was when she was actually about to give up and report back that there was no sign of him at all, that she saw Jason coming out from the subway and holding a girl in his hands. It was shocking for her to suddenly see him come out so nonchalantly, especially since she had scoured the length and breadth of that subway more than ten times without any sight of him!
But the agent released a small sigh as she decided not to allow her shocking events to get to her. She calibrated her binoculars and looked closer to try and see who the girl in his hands was. The agent couldn’t see the girl’s face since she was wearing a face mask, but the girl didn’t look like Jason’s girlfriend. Was Jason cheating on his girlfriend? Is that why he came to New York?
’No, that didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t have come to the subway to cheat on his girlfriend. He’d go to a hotel.’
But if he wasn’t seeing this other girl, then who was she?
The agent was obviously curious, and she tried to see if she could pick out anything about the woman’s identity by zooming in on her face. And it was only because of the fact that she zoomed in so much that the agent was able to pick out the scales that the woman had on her cheeks and hand when Jason shifted slightly. The agent’s brow furrowed in shock as she pulled back from her binoculars! She blinked in surprise before she leaned forward again to get another look only to see that the scales were still there!
The agent immediately realized that the woman Jason was carrying wasn’t human at all! She was an inter-world traveler!