Blood Queen Reborn

Chaos ensued within the upper staff of Military Base 2.

Faye was using her ability to speed walk through the halls, causing any students who happened to be nearby to get blasted with a rush of wind. Her face consumed by fury, an expression of her singular mission as she raced towards her destination. When she flung open the door to his office, papers flew about the room.

"Hey, I was nearly done with that!" Nathan complained.

Since Nathan was the head of the first years, he was a busy guy. He was in charge of looking into the backgrounds of all of the new students, as it was important to know what student belonged to what family.

"The portals have been used!" Faye shouted, "Two students were registered to have gone through them."

"Is that all? Well, why don’t you just go and get them back?" Nathan stated, picking up the scattered papers.

"I’m afraid it’s because they have gone through a red portal, sir," Faye told him.

"What—!? How did this happen? Weren’t there meant to be guards stationed at the portal?" Nathan said as he dropped everything.

Faye crossed her arms, "Apparently, there was a scheduling conflict. When the guards changed shifts, their replacements never arrived."

Nathan leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes, "Stupid parents... This is why I said we should have cameras installed in the school. It was hard enough getting them to allow us to put trackers on them..."

Even though there was a mandatory draft to put every kid by the age of 16 to go to military school, the Originals were powerful people, so the military couldn’t force them to comply with their demands. As a result, the military didn’t have a lot of great opinions on the Original families.

It also meant there weren’t any cameras in the military bases as the Originals feared the military would learn their family’s secrets.

Nathan picked up his coffee and sipped it, "Do we know which students have gone through the portal?"

"The first one is a student by the name of Erin Heley."

After the incident with the second years, Nathan had searched into Erin Heley’s family background. At first he was worried that if she came from a prestigious family, as the name of "Heley" sounded familiar, and if they were powerful, they might’ve retaliated. However, when doing research, he found that he didn’t have anything to worry about.

Erin used to be part of a family owned company that worked on an orange portal planet, and was paid handsomely by one of the big four members. Disaster struck when the company’s planet was attacked by the dalki a few years prior. As a result, they were likely unable to recuperate their losses as they ceased to exist afterwards.

The only other reason he could’ve guessed why Heley sounded so familiar was likely because one of his coworker’s name was Hayley, but that was just a coincidence.

"And the second one is Fex Sanguinis."

"Hmm."

When doing research into Fex, Nathan wasn’t able to find much about him. Despite his ability coming from an Original family, as it was the first time he had ever heard about a string ability user, the boy had even less backing than Erin. It was almost like he just popped up out of nowhere.

Faye gave him a foul look.

Nathan sighed, and pinched the space between his eyebrows, "Look, it’s going to be hard to convince the staff to do a rescue mission into a red portal planet. I can try, but you know that unless there was a big reason to, a lot of them would rather not risk it."

—

Quinn managed to get some sleep that night. When he woke up, he turned to Fex’s empty bed. It really was sinking in what happened last night. Peter had yet to wake up, so he made sure to stay silent.

"He hasn’t come back yet..." He whispered to himself.

Usually, Fex was the kind of guy to make his presence known in a room, but it was strangely quiet in the dorm without him there. He missed Fex already, and, unlike Erin, there was no sign that Fex was still alive.

’He was confident he’d survive,’ Quinn reminded himself, ’I have to trust him.’

When looking at his system, he could see that Erin’s tab stated she was now a level 8, and that there was something within the inventory tab. When he opened it, he saw a palewalker crystal and 10 rattaclaw crystals.

’Are these the same beasts that Erin killed yesterday?’ Quinn thought. He remembered seeing a few notifications about this.

Selecting the rattaclaw crystal, a small white opaque crystal the size of a golf ball materialized in his hands. Quinn considered taking this crystal for himself, and selling it, but it didn’t feel right to steal something that Erin earned.

Putting it back in the storage, Peter shuffled in his bed, and woke up.

He didn’t look as bad as yesterday right after the red portal was activated, but it was clear that something was on his mind. When he looked at Quinn, the boy glanced away, ashamed of himself.

’Peter mentioned that there was someone who had forced him into doing this,’ Quinn said in his mind, ’Not only that, but he blurted out the name of someone close to him. Who was she?’

Throughout the entire morning, Peter kept nervously glancing in Quinn’s direction, looking sorry for what he had done. There was that feeling of something missing, a constant reminder of what Peter had done, and his guilt hung thickly in the air.

Although Quinn was being nice now, he couldn’t fully forgive Peter, not yet anyways. He knew Erin was fine now, but with a red portal planet, it could always change.

Right as they were about to leave, Quinn decided to ask the question that had been lingering on his mind since last night.

"Peter, can you tell me the one who did that to you?"

His roommate stopped right in the middle of cleaning his glasses.

"What are you talking about?" Peter mumbled with a forced smile.

"Peter, don’t play dumb. I’m talking about the people who hurt you," Quinn replied as non-threateningly as possible.

Peter paused, and looked at Quinn. He wasn’t quite sure how to respond. If he told Quinn, he would get further involved in all of this, and his roommate was only a single level above him. If Erin, a level 5 student, wasn’t safe from the second years, then who knows what they would do to him. The last thing he wanted was for Quinn to get hurt because of him.

"Quinn... I know you, I saw how you were at the assembly hall. If I tell you, then you’re going to do something reckless."

Quinn didn’t want to force the information out of him, but if he didn’t do something, then Peter was just going to get tortured again.

"You’re right," Quinn put on a forced smile as he headed out, "I would do something reckless."