"I can clearly see you have wings, but what I don’t understand is where you want me to hop on," Felix spoke up, deliberately observing the demoness’s slim stature that might not hold him up if he were to cling to her back.
He wanted to make her understand she didn’t have wings on her feet, which made it impossible to maintain a flat position for Felix to lean on her back, and his weight—though he didn’t really have much—was sure to offset the balance and could lead to either him hanging from her neck for the rest of way or even an unfavorable death—his death—from that height.
"C’mon, just hop on," Lilith said with her signature evil smirk that wasn’t really helping the matter.
Felix stepped closer and hugged her neck from behind in uncertainty, when Lilith suddenly dived down from the balcony, free-falling till they were just a few meters away from hitting the floor and before Felix could curse out, they were already up above the high-rise hotel building and Felix was no longer clinging onto Lilith’s neck, but the wide neck of a massive scaled creature as dark as the night. A dragon.
"What the..." Felix paused to double-take the bizarre transformation, as he was smart enough to know the Dragon was no other than Lilith. And though it was cool to be riding an actual legendary dragon, Felix wasn’t really comfortable with it as it was a dark creature that could plunge the entire city in chaos if it were to be spotted, and they’d have to deal with the entire Sages coming down to take it out, which would boost their levels by at least 3 for a Lv10+ Sage.
This made Felix start to wonder how many levels he might top if he were to stab the dragon in the neck at that moment.
"I might have to throw you off my back if you keep entertaining those thoughts," Lilith’s voice suddenly pierced his thoughts.
"Relax. It’s called intrusive thoughts. The same ones you had when you thought it’d be funny to make me a woman—" Felix was saying when the dragon—Lilith—suddenly dipped down.
Felix was about to curse out at her for taking things personally when he spotted the familiar neighborhood below and couldn’t help but be stunned.
This might have taken him several minutes to get here on his sword mobile, but Lilith had arrived in mere seconds. And he didn’t even tell her where he was going.
Just as Lilith closed in on the ground from the clouds, she flipped herself to throw off Felix from her back, who was caught off guard—and though the height was now safe for landing—Felix quickly caught himself with the [Telekinesis] skill and slowly levitated himself to the floor.
Lilith landed beside him now in her human form and her wings magically retracted into her spine.
Felix wasn’t interested in her now as his attention was caught by the state of the neighborhood he’d grown up in and held so many memories from his childhood up to just a few weeks before he left for Vastoria, now devoid of life and abandoned like people had left in a hurry.
"I guess this calls for a quest," Lilith suddenly commented with her signature smirk.
[Chain Quest]: Investigate the Bongo neighborhood.
Felix was stunned as a quest notification suddenly flashed his vision.
"W—what? You can do that?" Felix turned to stare at Lilith in surprise and awe.
"Don’t thank me yet," Lilith simply replied.
Felix’s expression turned serious as he took the hint that this wasn’t any random information gathering quest, but he still nodded at her in gratitude, as with or without the quest, Felix would still have to investigate it to its roots without reward.
Just as he was about to take a step forward, he noticed the glass shards beneath his feet crumble under his weight and looked down to see what looked to be an eviction notice of paper laying carelessly on the trashed floor.
He bent to pick it up for closer inspection, and saw it was actually an eviction notice paper which looked all normal, till he saw the company that signed the papers.
It wasn’t from a landlord, or even a real estate firm that might’ve owned the project. It was signed by the organization, Titan Capital.
And if Felix could remember correctly, Titan Capital was not a legal, but in fact an illegal organization. A loan shark organization.
Felix stared at the paper for a while longer, before neatly folding the paper and slipping it into his hoodie pockets for later investigation.
He pulled his hood tighter around his face and began tracing his steps to the café from his memories.
It didn’t take Felix long to arrive before the cafe as it wasn’t hidden and proudly stood at an intersection, except now it was rundown with all its glass shattered and the doors pulled off their hinges.
Felix’s heart skipped a beat as he saw the devastating state of the café, but proceeded to go in to see the interior no different from its exterior. Tables turned, chairs broken, glass shards and dirt scattered across the place, and a shoe.
Felix approached the shoe and slowly picked it up, quickly recognizing it to be his mother’s. There was only that one leg.
Felix’s eyes turned red in anger, but he chose not to say anything and looked more into the place.
Then he came across another item, a purse. But he didn’t recognize it to be his mother’s like the shoe.
The black purse wasn’t scrap though. He could feel the shape of the items stored in it before its owner lost it.
He opened it to see a bunch of miscellaneous items such as a lipstick, a powder kit, a piece of note. But most importantly, it contained a driver’s license that belonged to the 34-year-old woman on the card. Get full chapters from novel•fire.net
Felix looked at the body of the purse again to see a faint footprint, and he instantly concluded that whatever had happened in the café had happened during the daytime while his mother and a few customers were in it.
At that moment, his phone pinged in his pockets and he pulled it out to check. It was a message notification from Elizabeth informing him of the location of her reservation.
Without clicking to fully open the message, Felix slipped the phone back into his pockets, as there was still ample time before the agreed time.
He hadn’t found what he was looking for in the café.
It had clear signs of damages and destruction made by people and not from a dungeon outbreak. But so far there were no signs that it had been done by Titan Capital.