CHAPTER 369: LOOKING FOR ME?

"Oh?" Lane lifted his brows. "You were looking for me?"

"Mn," Nyla nodded her head.

Well, perhaps that shouldn’t be too surprising. Nyla wasn’t close with Ava or anything, and Ava was focused on research rather than any equipment development, so unless it was related to Lane, there was unlikely to be any reason for Nyla to seek out Ava specifically. But...

"Why didn’t you text me, then?" Lane asked.

Ava was his bestie, yes, but it’s not like he was used to hanging out in her lab every day... In fact, if he had even attempted to do so, then Ava would probably have tried strangling him or poisoning his coffee a long time ago. After all, Ava was here to WORK, and she was serious about her research... And Lane couldn’t be of much help with it, aside from providing various samples from time to time. More often than not, he would be more of a distraction and an obstacle...

Besides, Lane himself was also a busy person. As he had been working for the Association for a very long time now (with breaks between his possessions, and then latest due to the lack of license), his schedule was quite packed. He couldn’t come bother Ava so often, even if he wanted to.

"Well," Nyla fiddled with her hands. "I thought it was better not to arrange any meetings through calls or messages... In case our parents are tracking my phone."

That... was a good point. Lane’s phone was safe, but when it came to Nyla, who was still living with the Allens... There was a chance her phone might be bugged. It most certainly seemed like something their dearest parents might do.

It was far easier to explain her visit to ManaTech. Even if she wasn’t so lucky as to run into Lane, she could arrange a secret meeting with Ava’s help.

"You’re right. Let’s keep doing it that way," Lane agreed. "So, what’s up now? Come, join us," he gestured at the empty chair by the table.

Nyla nodded her head, and took a seat. She was still quite nervous, though... Well, after all, it was only her second private meeting with Lane since they had made up. It was only natural that the atmosphere between them was still awkward and tense.

Ava glanced between the two of them, before letting a sigh. "Should I leave you alone?"

"You can go to my office, I mean. Lane has a pass," she quickly added, before Nyla could say anything. She wasn’t going to actually LEAVE them alone, not where they were - not because she didn’t trust Lane to behave (he might have broken a desk, a chair, and a wall in a meeting room at ManaTech before... But surely he wouldn’t be so reckless in her lab, right? Right?), but because she had to watch over her experiments!

Nyla glanced at Lane. "Uh, it’s about a report we have received from Ethan..."

"Ethan?" Ava quirked her brows. It sounded... oddly familiar? She felt as if she had heard this name before...

"He’s that Guide with whom I used to be paired up, back in our teens," Lane briefly explained. "He’s in the Association now... As a spy from the Allen Guild."

"Oh... Oh?"

Lane waved his hand dismissively, which meant, ’I’ll explain later.’ He had a lot to say about Ethan... But he wasn’t going to complain about it in front of Nyla. It just felt a bit... odd to do it, and besides, Nyla probably didn’t have much time.

"Anyway, it’s fine to talk here. Ava knows everything anyway," he turned to Nyla.

"Oh, alright then." Nyla hesitated for a moment longer, but eventually said, "Just as you said, he is our spy... He is meant to spy on you and Team Leader Lennox, and report everything that happens with the two of you..."

"Mn, I can guess that much. So, I assume you have received his latest report from our time in that reactivated C-rank dungeon, right? And he had mentioned something weird, is that it?"

"Yes, that’s right..." Nyla took a deep breath to calm down. Talking with Lane was still unusual to her, after all those years of no contact, but seeing that Lane treated her normally, she slowly started to adjust as well. "He has reported that you appear to be a competent scout... That it was you and Clara Moore, an A-rank Esper without much experience, specializing in offense, who had conducted the scouting mission of the reactivated dungeon, and that the two of you had drawn a detailed map of the expanded dungeon, although it appears that Miss Moore was the one to lead the mission. He had also mentioned that you played a big role in defending against monster attacks, especially when it came to the flying monsters."

Lane slowly nodded his head, listening to everything that Nyla was saying. "And then?"

"Well... Our parents find your expertise a bit suspicious... They suspect that you might have been secretly involved in the Awakened matters even before ending the deal that you had with them. They think that you have either joined a Guild under a different name, or more likely, had been living in a Forbidden Zone at some point..."

They were not wrong. It was true that Lane had been active as an Esper this whole time, one way or another. And he had expected them to figure out this much. He himself was to blame for getting too carried away during the recent incident, even when he knew that there was the Allens’ spy right by his side. But...

"Is that all?"

Nyla blinked, confused. "Uh... They also suspect that Grandmother Diana might have trained you..."

"No, not this. I mean Ethan’s report." Lane furrowed his brows. How could Nyla have missed the most important part? "Didn’t he say anything about the hypnosis?"

"The hypnosis?" Nyla and Ava asked at the same time.

Right, he hadn’t gotten to that point just yet, so Ava was also unaware...

"Do you mean the hypnotic ability of the monsters from the Lapis Lake?" Nyla asked again. "Did something happen with them?"

Since she was asking... And judging by how surprised she was... Could it be that she really didn’t know? Did Ethan not report that part?

But... Why?