Chapter 144 - 139. Maybe
In a small, highly secured conference room of Mortix Holding, nine people sat around a round table; three researchers, five espers, and one guide--this was the core member of the Deathzone Reclamation Project belonging to Mortix and Trinity.
Of course, there were more people who knew about this project, but the one who had significant voice and decision-making power within the project was the one seating around that table.
Of eight people besides himself, Zein was only familiar with four of them; Selena, Eugene, and two ’founders’ of Trinity. But he knew the other researcher was the one in charge of dissecting the Specter Core, and one of the other three espers was the Chief of Mortix’s intelligence and the boss of the shadow guards. The other esper, who looked like an average businessman, was Mortix’s Chief Secretary, and the last esper, as it turned out, was Bassena’s direct subordinate; a member of [Anzus].
Unlike other squads, the member of [Anzus] acted more like a special task force that only received missions directly from Bassena or Radia, and they were left to do whatever they wanted until the bosses called for them. Since they were scattered around the Federation, they didn’t even use the guild’s guide service, and just got cleansed wherever they ended up in. Thus, Zein hadn’t met anyone from [Anzus] so far.
And of course, the first thing the esper did when she met Zein was to stare. She stared at Zein--who coincidentally wasn’t wearing his mask due to the biometric identification needed to enter the room--and then at Bassena, and then back at Zein again. And the only thing she said after that was; "My condolences," before taking her seat.
Bassena refused to tell Zein her name after that.
"Alright," when Bassena was busy glaring at the esper, Radia tapped the table to turn their attention back to the agenda. "I don’t think I need to explain why we’re having this emergency meeting right now."
Emergency meeting. So urgent the matter was that Radia even pulled out an emergency summon to get that female esper--who Zein finally found out was called Kei--back in Althrea. So urgent it was that Bassena and Zein had to head there immediately before even having any time to rest after handling the outbreak.
Without wasting time, Radia gave a signal to the Chief of Intelligence, a man called Orion, and a screen came up from the projection in the middle of the table. Various recordings and news from the past few hours were on display there. The most notable one would be that of Althrea, with snippets of Bassena’s [Nightfall] and the cleaning process.
But they could also see news about various places in the Eastern Federation, all bearing the same headline; a sudden outbreak. Two green-zones, five yellow-zones, and six in orange-zones all over the region. All happened within the last eleven hours.
"I’m still waiting for reports from my red-zone’s informants," the female esper, Kei, added in. She was apparently in charge of surveilling and communicating with guilds and groups outside of Althrea, along with a small team of three other espers. "But looking at the trend, it probably happened as we thought."