"So... Everlearn Snowfall, is it?"
She asked once more as Everlearn sat opposite her.
She was currently scrolling through her device with a finger.
"Yes?" he said, taking a seat on the opposite chair.
"According to what I have here, you’re described as a... child prodigy, finishing SSC at 12 and graduating from TIM at 15?" she said, with creased eyebrows.
Graduating from a Mech Knowledge School at 15 was quite remarkable.
"Your excellent achievement earned you the notice of the Mechara Organization, and you were drafted into a special program...Completion of which would earn you a chance to move to Kiora City to further your studies, which are all about Mech Designs."
"I don’t think that was ever published on the Nvternet..." he mused beneath his breath.
She placed the device onto the glass table, drew a cigarette, lit it up, and took a slight inhale.
Staring silently at him for a long while, she signaled with her neck, pointing to the device.
"Pick it up," she said to Everlearn, who turned to the phone on the table.
His hands reached for it, but halfway through, they paused when his gaze landed upon the image:
A destroyed lab, with blood and chemicals poured all over.
"Your status is marked as deceased due to a fatal lab incident that killed all of the scientists assigned to the project."
"And you also seem to have been the big cause of this failure, as Mechara left a regretful note of having taken you in."
She said, and none of it was false.
They were all over her screen, along with the news.
The news of regret in taking a child prodigy in.
’A Child Prodigy... Still a Child.’
’I gave success to the project and they repaid with death and tarnished my name,’
Everlearn thought silently, but his expression remained calm as he sat back in his seat, never picking up the phone.
"How did you survive?" She asked, visibly perplexed.
"Mechara won’t make the naive mistake of labeling someone alive as dead."
"If they said you’re dead, then you must be 101% dead."
"So how did you survive?"
She asked, this time with a serious glint in her eyes.
A young man of 17 possessing a bit of superhuman strength without being a Corer was understandable.
She had seen a few anomalies like him before, some even greater, nurtured from childhood to be physically resilient.
The Heirs of the Big Mech Families were like that.
But one returning from the dead!?
Now, that wasn’t something she could blink over.
"How I survived..." Everlearn said, continuing "It’s part of my secrets. And you said you weren’t interested in them."
"So, I won’t be saying a word about it."
"I am interested now..." she said.
"I get to keep my secret safe from the world, including you."
"Those were your terms and the reason why I am sitting here at all," he said, this time his voice firmer.
"If I reveal them to you, that’s already against the terms of keeping my secrets safe."
"You said you have a way for both of us to prove we’re worthy of what we claim, yet here you are already trying to go back on your own deal."
"Are you already trying to claim how worthy you are then?" Everlearn asked, as her brows creased.
"If you are, then you’re doing quite a bad job."
He finished, watching her take an inhale of the cigarette before she turned off the lights, on a smoke plate by the side.
"You know of the Nakros race, don’t you?" she suddenly asked, as Everlearn nodded slowly.
Though he struggled to piece together what that had to do with what they were talking about.
"Nakros are different from us," she began. "They lack empathy and have killed billions of Nvidians."
"Until eternity comes, only us or them shall remain; that is the end of the Planetary Anthem," she said, each word ringing clearly through the night sky.
"The ability to come back from the dead is an attribute impossible for any human, even with the current grade of technologies we have."
"The only explanation that can be given if such an occurrence were to happen is Arcane, the power that the Nakros wield."
"It has done truly miraculous things beyond all reason, and death back to life, though never recorded, could potentially be one."
Now Everlearn understood what she was hinting at.
"Are you trying to say I am associated with the Nakros?"
"I am trying to say, if this secret of yours has any sort of association with the Nakros whatsoever, then all our agreements, now or eventually in the future, are void."
"Forget about the world learning your secret."
"If I find out that you control Arcane in some way or you have struck a deal with a Nakros, in the past or in the future, I’ll be the first to slice off your head."
"Do we have that term clear?" she said, the crimson glint in her eyes faintly casting out the halo of light, and Everlearn nodded.
"Yes, we do." ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝⚫𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖⚫𝕟𝕖𝕥
The Nakros were the adversary of humanity, and this wasn’t some senseless fight that higher-ups set up to gain profit.
It was a brutal, merciless war between the two sides, with humanity now forced onto the defensive.
According to reports, 99% of Corers never die of natural causes.
They all died on the battlefield against a Nakros.
Millions of human lives have been wasted away in the war with the invading race.
One with an association with the Nakros was an enemy to humanity and naturally deserved the treatment of the Nakros: Instant death.
Everlearn knew he had no association with the Nakros.
The power he controlled was bestowed by the system, not the Nakros’ Arcane energy.
So he wasn’t worried at all about whatever consequences came for something he would never do.
After the agreement, the woman picked up her device from the table, scrolling through once more.
"That’s almost all the information about you."
"But... your parental information is missing. That’s weird."
"What’s weird is how you even got all of this in the first place..." Everlearn murmured.
"There are ways to get information, and with enough status and power, nothing is hidden from you."
"The Nvternet is but one way to get information. The ones made for the common and statusless... like you."
"A pity it’s all most of you ever know."