Chapter 23: Meeting the Pamangkins

Topher asked the kids, "Where is Stephanie? I thought you were all going to get here together. She said that she informed you all about her surgery being a success and wanted to party with all of you." The kids said that the last time they saw her was yesterday at Zack’s Beach House, Zack is the son of Dianne. Trevor, the son of Julian, replied with "We do know about her successful surgery. We partied yesterday at the beach house, Tiffany showed her a few moves, but then she said that she was tired and wanted to catch some sleep at home and left early." Two people interjected the words of Trevor, a teenage boy with a buff physique and a teenage girl with short hair who is also pretty fit. "Stephanie called last night and said that she came here, to her promised home and wanted to pull a prank on Paul, her uncle who stole this house from her," said the girl. "And then, she said that there was an accident. She said that she kicked Paul too hard and accidentally killed him. Then, we heard her scream loudly and our communication was cut off. We tried calling her back, but we could not reach her," the boy added.

Joyce then tried to contact Stephanie multiple times but to no avail. The adults all looked at me, and I just stood there idly and speechless. It took me seconds to think of what to say and finally, I managed to say, "Wait, wait. I didn’t do anything. She screamed because she was shocked upon seeing me stand up after she thought that I was dead. After that, I sent her home and even told Max to escort her out. Isn’t that right, Max?” Max then manipulated the wind so that he could tell us what he had to say. His message reads, “She said she wanted to clean up, so I left her and continued on with my nap.” This got me worried. How would I know that Max wouldn’t listen to me? I mean, we are pretty safe now, so it's fine if Max is pretty lax but this situation is making me look bad.

An idea popped into my mind, “That’s right! We can look at the –“ I was then cut off by a young girl, around 12-13 years old, with her red hair tied in pigtails, “Who are you to comment on the situation right now?! If anything, you're the one who's suspicious! You suddenly come back from the dead one day and then healed Stephanie, and now she’s missing?!” Jolly stepped in and said, "That's not very polite, Joan. At higher levels, you can recognize the souls you have interacted with and I can say with confidence that

he is our friend Paul Knight." Joan then looked a bit flustered and said, “So? That doesn’t prove anything, Mom! He is still very suspicious. Stephanie was last seen here, in this place with him. Even his familiar said that he didn’t actually send her off!” Max flew right in front of Joan and said, “Who are you calling a familiar?” trying to look imposing, but then Joan jumped and took palm-sized Max and embraced him. “Now that you're away from the bad man, do you wanna be my familiar? I can treat you to a nice blue flame!" Joan raised her finger up and showed a perfectly round blue fireball. Max looked like he saw a very tasty dish and sucked up the flame.

Topher activated a bit of his conqueror’s aura and shouted, “Enough!” The adults did not even flinch while I, along with the kids fell back down, and Max struggled to stay afloat. I thought to myself, "Man, this is embarrassing, I’m not even strong enough to withstand even just a single word of his." Topher then instructed us to look at the house tapes. My rights to the house do not include me having access to the tapes. It is with Joyce's authority that the tapes were shown to us. We all headed to the living room and I was surprised to see that the broken wall last night was fixed now. The wall turned into a screen and after activated through voice command, it displayed the footage of the living room from last night. Everyone saw the fight that took place, the kids were surprised by the speed of the movement art that I used. But what shocked them the most is the blood that spewed everywhere. Joyce touched my back to see if there was any hidden trauma and found none. When I left after thinking that Stephanie was escorted by Max out, I saw that Stephanie went back and cleaned up all the mess and ordered the AI to repair the wall. With all the stuff I wanted to do today, I actually forgot to clean up. No wonder Joyce and the others didn’t complain at the scene in the living room in the morning.  

Son then said that if she is within the kingdom, we can track her down easily and if she did leave the kingdom, we should have been notified by her soul imprint in her room that would send us alert of her departure. As we were waiting for Son to do his tracking, Tiffany asked if she could duel me. I decisively refused not because she is a girl, but because this is only the fourth or fifth day of my life after the apocalypse. Fighting is something that I want to avoid as much as possible. Before Tiffany can pester me some more, Son finished tracking Stephanie and said that the data shows that she’s not inside the kingdom. Topher checked and said, "That's odd. There is no record of her leaving the borders of the kingdom." I then suggested tracking her using the Library. I asked the nanobots to hand me a map of the kingdom. I draw random arrows that signify random directions and tagged it as the way to Stephanie's current location. Everyone eyed me with doubt. Since they aren’t sensing any mana fluctuations on me, they think that I’m not using anything magical to track Stephanie. I just told them that since we established karmic ties with each other after the fight, I can sense her faintly. The Library immediately pointed out the flaws of the directions I drew.

We all went outside to search for Stephanie. We followed the directions that the library was pointing to. The arrows made us go around a pretty long distance and we even went past the other side of the mountain where the Living Stone resides. Right when we reached a nearby cave, we hit a dead end. Zack then furiously shouted at me for wasting time on this goose chase, but I still hold my ground and believe that the Library brought us to the right place. Dianne said that she can sense that there’s something behind the wall we’re stuck in. I blew a punch to the wall but all it did was crack by a little bit and hurt my hand. Joyce offered to heal me but laughed at me first before doing so. I then touched the stone to see where the structural weakness is, but I guess there is no longer a need for that. Julian powered up and unleashed his golden-haired glory which now grew up to his back. Just by a single blow, everything in the cave shook and collapsed. To ensure our safety, Dianne waved her hand and multiple magical circles popped out that made everything stable. What we saw behind the wall was an inky black portal. We all have no idea where it leads. Suddenly, we heard Son say, “So that’s what happened!”