Chapter 29:
Warpainter: From Office Workers to World Warriors
“How would that be possible?” Leo questions.
“I-I don’t know. It was just a theory I had.” She says.
“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be critical of you, but I’m more confused. Then how does that explain your parents?” He questions.
“He said they died in a car crash, but I’m not sure of that either. I never went to a funeral for them.” She says.
“You might’ve been too young.” Leo says.
“I remember my grandfather telling me this necklace was all that remained of them.” She says.
“Damn… I hate to do this to you, but we need to shift focus. We won’t be able to figure out how someone else made it in here. But we need to figure out why he’s doing what he’s doing.” Leo says.
“You’re right, sorry I got off topic there.” She says.
“Don’t be. We can pick it back up later. For now, let's focus on what’s in front of us.” He says.
“Right. We’ll need to work with Caius since he knows the symptoms better than anyone.” She says. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll come over.”
“Gotcha,” Leo says.
“Caius. You can’t do this alone.” Leo says. “We also want to help you figure out a way to stop this from happening.”
“Us?” Caius replied.
“My friend is on her way here now. There’s something strange happening here, and I think you might be able to help us find out what’s wrong.” Leo states.
“If it leads to me finding out how my brother died, I’d do anything.” He says.
A few minutes pass by, and Arte enters the room. Leo leads her over to her bed, where she sits down.
“Hi, I’m Astarte Firia, everyone calls me Arte.” She introduces.
“I’m Caius Grandam. Leo said you’d be helping us. I’ll fill you in.” Caius begins.
“Leo pretty much told me already. So if it’s alright with you, we can get to planning.” Arte says.
He looks over to Leo, who is leaning on the wall near the door. Leo grins and taps his temple with his index finger. Caius sees his reaction and looks even more confused.
“We don’t know who caused this mysterious illness, but we need to understand how to deal with it. Which is why I think we should kidnap them.” She suggests.
“You came out swinging already…” Leo nearly falls.
“The threat is dangerous enough that the person could potentially die within a certain period of time. Which means we need to act fast.” She states.
“I agree. We can’t afford to wait for things to get better; we need to be aggressive. If we could get them back to this room, I’d have a quiet place to get a sample and analyze it.” Caius suggests.
“The problem is, how do we keep them silent after extracting whatever from them? They’re not just gonna keep quiet about it.” Leo states.
“He’s right…” Caius states.
“Then we hold on to them until we have some way of curing them.” She says.
“Huh?” Leo and Caius say simultaneously.
“We can’t stop them from spilling the beans. At most, they’d be gone a few days.” She states.
“I’m not sure I could even come up with a cure.” Caius rubs his chin with his index finger and thumb.
“You work on the cure and I’ll work on something from my end.” Arte says.
“What are you planning?” Leo asks.
“I’m gonna try something my grandpa told me.” She says.
“Another thing… We’re going after the guy from today, right?” Leo asks.
“Yeah. I’ve been keeping track of his schedule.” Caius explains. “Avoiding the teachers is gonna be difficult with classes taking place in the arena tomorrow.”
“Don’t you worry about that.” Leo grinned and pointed at himself. “I have a plan.”
Arte felt a shiver down her spine.
“I don’t like the sound of this.” Arte sighed.
“It’s simple, what guy like him can resist a beauty like Arte?” Leo questions.
“B-beauty?” She repeated. “D-damn it, Leo…”
She leaned back onto his bed and covered her face with his pillow.
“Knowing how he is… He means it for real…” She thought.
Following their evening of planning, they rested, and the next day came. Leo and Caius were standing around the back of the arena. Directly behind them was a wall of hedges and some dense bushes before it. Caius slicked his mid-length green hair back and tied it in a tiny ponytail. Before hopping into the bush with Leo.
“Are you sure this plan to draw him out is gonna work?” Caius says.
“The student is Trent Landers, right?” Leo asks.
“Yeah.”
“Then this plan will not fail,” Leo says. “He is quite literally the horniest guy on campus.”
“The… Horniest…?” Caius questions. “I was wondering where he’d vanish off to in the dead of night…”
“I guarantee, if you were a woman, you’d have succeeded in examining him,” Leo says.
“Is this all he does?” He asks.
“Yeah, Underclassmen, upperclassmen, teachers, classmates’ mothers, everything is within his strike zone.” Leo shivers. “He’s a scumbag.”
“Wow. I don’t know what’s more impressive, that you know all this or that he’s still admitted here…”
“Either way, we’ve got a foolproof plan,” Leo smirked.
“I just hope this works.” Caius murmurs.
“When dealing with mice, bring cheese.” Leo wags his finger.
In the arena, Arte was standing with the rest of her class during their training. She was pouting the entire time.
“Even if he called me a beauty… I won’t forgive him for this plan!” She says.
While several other students were sparring, she slipped away from her class and looked around at some of the other classes that were training.
“They said he uses the whip-sword…” She thought. “Where are they training…?”
She spots a pair of students brawling from a distance. Their elongated blades clashed, creating sparks as the blades flew through the air. Arte walked over to them, scoping out the crowd of students. She spots him through the crowd, his height betraying him, allowing her to slip in behind the group and poke him in the arm. He turns to face her as she looks up at him and blushes.
“C-can I talk to you in private?” She asks.
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