Wicked Reincarnation

Chapter 161: Attack 2

In his usual black uniform, with his outer robe loosely hanging over his shoulders, his dead eyes bored into Lia.

"Commander," Lia greeted him and stood up, a mocking smile on her lips, yet her eyes were cold.

She has run into an enemy she never wanted to meet. Her luck was this bad. Without her power, Lia was no match against Timo, even with her power she couldn't kill him after all the commander was notorious for being the second strongest right after Min and Yano taking the top spot.

Lia also had no idea what his power was, so she had to proceed with caution. The other thing was that it wasn't clear what intention he had towards her, was he still suspicious of her or could he still have neutral or even possibly good feelings towards her?

"You should know by now, I don't like being called that," Timo sighed but his gaze was fixated on her, "Where were you? There was no trace of you."

"I went to explore the world, Timo," Lia turned her back to the eerie battlefield and instead faced a devil.

"In the middle of a semester?"

"Drop that," Lia didn't want to waste time with him, if she could, she wanted to settle this quickly and then find everyone, "You're suspicious of me, I get that but maybe you can say it was good luck that I was away while this broke out."

Lia pointed behind her.

"Might be," Timo remained unfazed. With his hands in his pockets, his gaze wandered past Lia on the plaza where the soldiers and all the corpses laid.

"Was that your intention?"

"I don't like killing people, at least not gruesomely, but at the same time," his gaze flickered back to Lia, "I don't care if they die, in fact, it's better if everyone's gone, don't you agree?"

Lia remembered what Yano said, that everyone in the private army agreed with Min's goal. They all wanted the destruction of both worlds to make space for ghosts, but Lia couldn't straight out ask him or else he really wouldn't let her go. But then again, what made Timo and everyone else, hate the worlds so much to the point they wanted to extinguish all lives?

"You're saying, you just came back?" seeing that Lia didn't say anything, Timo continued the conversation, he had no intention of letting her go, after all, Lia was very suspicious in his eyes. Who in their right mind would still stay in the capital after seeing this sight?

"I did."

"And you don't mind being exposed to this?"

"I got over the initial shock, I'm here to look for my friends."

"They won't be alive," Timo thought it'd be best to tell her the truth, "No one in the core's alive."

"What about the students?"

"Ha," this was the first time Lia saw Timo laughing mockingly, a small smile drew across his indifferent face and his dead eyes were magnified through it, "Teacher Kim cares about her students after randomly deciding to explore the world."

Mocking couldn't even begin to describe what undertone swung in Timo's voice yet Lia couldn't refute his words. If going by her excuse, then what he said was right. She abandoned her pupils and now pretended to care about them. How hypocritical.

"I can't deny that I've been wrong what happened to Zero?" Lia bit her lip as she asked this. She had a bad feeling. Timo just stared at her with the smile not leaving his face, to the point he looked glassy and like a wax figure. It gave her the creeps and nothing but the fire and the wind were present roaring in their ears.

The atmosphere was tense and rigid, suffocating and cold. Lia wanted to take a step back but didn't dare to as it could be seen as her faltering. But it was odd. Everything about this situation was odd.

Lia's brain commanded her to shout at Timo to say something but she kept returning his stare before Timo's smile grew wider. Something was very strange right now. Timo actually frightened Lia.

He had never shown emotions so bluntly but this couldn't be called as him being emotional, rather than that it looked like a puppet being forced to change its face, a wooden doll having an expression drawn on.

It was unnatural and haunting.

For a second, Lia sought to bash his head and run but then the plastic expression went away and Timo answered questioningly, "I have two theories, either he told the truth or he was protecting his dear teacher who abandoned him for her own spontaneous pleasures."

What was Timo talking about? What happened to Zero? Telling the truth? Protecting a teacher? Her?

"Your face says you have no idea what he did, that's weird," Timo tilted his head and once again, this odd feeling in Lia was reinforced.

"Just tell me."

"Why?"

"As a fellow teacher?"

"Do you regard me as a teacher? Just like you, I have abandoned my students."

"Stop it," there was no use, Timo was holding her words against her with the same thing over and over again. She was just trying to be cynical but it backfired.

"Well, he was your favourite. I'm kinda jealous by your bond, heh," this time Timo gave her a derogatory smile. Lia felt Timo wasn't himself at this moment, he just seemed too different.

"He's been imprisoned."

"For what?" Lia narrowed her eyes, why was Zero imprisoned? This didn't make sense.

"You guess, why else? He stole the possession of the Ghost King."

The Ghost King's possession? Lia froze and her mind needed a second to sort everything out. Did Timo by chance mean the ring? Then on that day, when Zero pushed her into the mortal gate and took away her ring, could it be-?

No way. Lia didn't want to believe it, Zero took the fall for her and even hid her knowing that the fate a thief met wasn't a good one, so he tried to bring her out of harm until the situation boiled down? Until they captured him as the thief?

Why would he do that? Was she so important to him? Did the time she spent on teaching and raising him made such a great impact on him? Even though at the beginning Lia had ulterior motives? If Zero knew that she was only trying to use him then how broken would he be?

Lia shook these bad thoughts away and Timo's voice entered her ears again, "You seem to be shocked, was my second theory right?"

Lia sneered and almost laughed, "Timo, you think you're so sly, but yes, you were right all along, I'm the thief," Lia held up her hand with the ring, "Zero is innocent, so let him go."

"I can't, once imprisoned they have to keep being imprisoned but isn't that better? At least he's out of harm's way," what Timo said wasn't wrong.

Right now, Zero was safe but she couldn't endure the thought of him being all alone in a prison cell who knew looked like what, every day for a whole month shouldering the blame for something he didn't do, maybe even hoping Lia would come and save him.

Lia would keep her promise. She would find him and not leave him. There was nothing worse, especially for someone like Zero, to have the promise they've been keeping dearly broken.

Lia's voice regained its icy coldness as if she was trying to freeze the whole capital into an iceland, "One chance, tell me where Zero is."

"In prison."

"I told you, don't think too highly of yourself, where's the prison?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell y-" without even waiting for Timo to finish his sentence, Lia grabbed the sword next to her and charged at Timo.

The edge of the sword barely graced his hair and the strands fell between them as Lia was only an inch away from him. Her sword in her hands next to her waist waited to lunge at Timo when the wind twirled around Lia and in the blink of an eye, Timo stood behind her.

Stopping her momentum by braking on the ground with the sole of her shoes coming off, Lia swung around and pulled the sword with her. Just at that moment, it clashed with a light blue one that let off electricity. Noticing the sparks crawling up the edge of his sword over to hers, Lia instantly jumped back and threw the sword out of her hand.

Timo stood there without moving. Lia stared at him. A distance of two metres between them.

Neither made a sound, neither made an approach to attack the other first. Instead, the time was used to size up the opponent. The long and thick sword Timo held was completely made out of his life force. It shimmered in a light blue, depending on the angle, it looked even transparent, which was a huge disadvantage for Lia.

An invisible sword. If she didn't put all of her focus on the sword it could disappear on her any moment and strike her at a lethal time. Even more so, the sparks that emitted from the sword stopped, meaning once the sword looked like it was invisible the sparks wouldn't give it away.

In other words, Timo could control when to use electricity and when not. Just a tiny spark trailing the blade of Lia's sword and accelerating at an unsuspected way, burnt Lia's palm halfway if she didn't throw the sword away.

"So, this is the power of the commander, I can't believe I'm seeing it in person," Lia sneered but her face was a thin layer of ice, smoke rising from it that could burn anyone who came under its gaze.