“… What?” Jin looked at the picture. This person did not really look like the one he remembered having met. Obviously, if the timeline were correct, she would have to be at least an adult already. Yet, this baffled him a lot. How can a dream match with reality?
“It could be just a dream, you know? Why are you putting so much weight to it?” Jin asked Kraft with all seriousness. The bellator grinned before he quietly asked Jin to take a seat.
“Well, first of all, the person in your dream was hard to find. So much so that even I can’t call it anything but difficult. Aside from that. You are not the first to have lucid dreams, which may not have been dreams… Its a little hard to explain.”
“Past System Users have dreamt of similar things before, and we have ignored them in those instances. Suffice to say, we shouldn’t have.” Kraft replied with a rare solemn voice as if implying that it had personally happened to him.
“Really? So it became precognition or a forewarning like of situation?” Jin asked, and Kraft shook his head vehemently and provided him with a little background story.
“There was a System User who had inherited the powers of Time from the System. Nothing too fancy, just being able to slow down or accelerate it. You can imagine how useful such an ability could be in a fight.”
“It made it seem as if the User was able to appear at two places at one time. But as her powers grew, so did her skills in predicting the future. At first, it was predicting what her opponent would do in a few seconds, but in time it grew. It turned to minutes and later hours. “
“Because of this, her headaches got worse and worse. One time she had overexerted herself and fell unconscious. When she woke up, the User told us that she could foresee problems even when unconscious. Surprisingly, being unconscious allowed her to peek further into the future, but at one point, it was endless.”
“And then Poof, all she could see was blackness. Given her prior condition, we dismissed it as just wild dreams. Only when the incident happened, did we realise her powers of prediction had indeed become too powerful? But that was also when she lost her life permanently.”
“How…could she lost her life permanently? A Banned Emperor Assassin?” Jin asked. As far as he knew they were the only cultivators who discovered the means to prevent cultivators from being resurrected.
Else, it shouldn’t be hard to revive, especially with the System’s help. Kraft looked at Jin and sighed heavily. He knew that his answer would not be satisfactory.
“A black hole of some sort opened up and swallowed her whole. The System was unable to find her signal afterwards. Perhaps she was teleported to another world, another time or she was dismantled into nothing but atoms.” Kraft answered and later gave a stifled laugh.
“Anyways, your guess is as good as mine! Getting back to the topic. Maybe I was just too bored and wanted to try my luck infiltrating the government.” Kraft twirled his chair around once, and his sly smile came back in an instant.
“But how did you do it?” Jin asked the most awaited question which Kraft had been waiting to answer. There, the bellator bragged on how the System and him managed to create the Foxy Virus.
“Considering how deep Foxy had to infiltrate, the moment it found this series of pictures, I had programmed it to self destruct immediately after sending them back to us. Leaving no trace behind as quickly as possible. Did not expect the programme to work this long to get the results but thankfully it did.” Kraft replied.
“But could it not have waited until the Grand Feast was over? What was the urgency?” Jin asked as he only saw the portrait of the blue haired lady.
“Now, see this.” Kraft then pressed a button, and behind that portrait, a collage of pictures exploded into the screen. She was no longer fashioning that blue hair in those pictures and instead had disguised herself.
Without knowing any better, it would be impossible to tell that those pictures were of the same person. Not to mention, there were symbols imprinted on the top edge of the photo, which indicated that they were sourced from multiple intelligence agencies from all over the world.
“I’m sorry, I’m only getting more confused.” Jin was just overwhelmed by the amount of information that was presented to him.
“In short, the lady that you somehow seem to have interacted with, might playing with very dangerous people. The most likely answer is that she is one of them too.” Kraft explained stating that she might be a possible spy for the Chinese intelligence, or worse. A double agent.
“Buuuttt, the most important reason why I called you here just now… was this particular picture.” Kraft said as he pulled the image out from the myriad of images and expanded it for Jin to see.
At first, he did not know what he was looking at until he scrutinised the picture a little more and noticed there was one very familiar person within the whole picture.
Mr Know-It-All.
“I tried to dig through all the classified junk that Foxy had collected and collated but to my surprise… I cannot find him within all that data.” Kraft said and even iterated that the System’s registered database of customers was no help at all.
“I tried to cross check the details of this guy, but it was undeniable that he was using an alias. To have a master spy within our midst… Oh, man. This is like calling me to take the challenge to unveil his identity.” Kraft mentioned with a scary look on his face.
“Maybe Ke Loong know something about him? I can casually ask about him since they seem to be best friends of some sort?” Jin asked, and Kraft shrugged his shoulders.
“The CEO could possibly be one of the contacts that this Mr Know-It-All had. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to him. I’ve noticed that he never made an appearance ever since I sent Foxy out to scout for information.” Kraft tried to piece the information up, and it puzzled Jin a while.
“Though, to be honest, there is nothing much you can do about it now. Since you have already escaped the Grand Feast, go and have a proper rest. Perhaps even take a day off.”
“I guess I shall take the former…A day off is impossible with the pressing issues at hand.” Jin thanked Kraft for the information and wished him a happy Christmas.
In the meantime, Kraft was not taking things as it is. The old fox always knew that Mr Know-It-All had some sort of elusive presence. At first, he had not bothered too much with it. The middle aged guy always mixed himself with a public presence so at most Kraft thought him to be a competitor spy out to unveil Jin’s secrets.
Only now Kraft did realise that hiding in plain sight was truly Mr Know-it-All’s real speciality and it made the original Bellator a little perturbed that as Jin’s personal self proclaimed spymaster, he had allowed such an individual to do what he pleased so long.
Separately, the System advised Kraft to calm down. “Knowing that Mr Know-It-All is a possible spy won’t do much harm to User Jin. It shows that people are watching, and that is what the System wants. For more people to know more about User’s shop.”
“Oh…So your take is that we should see them as a customer base rather than a threat?” Kraft stared into space for a moment and chuckled to himself.
“I guess… that is fine by me. Tsk, you are fine as long as they bring you more cash, after all, it’s us who are going to deal with him if he becomes a problem.”
“Still, that does not mean we should not be prepared. Even if we are just assuming the worst or Mr Know-it-all could possibly be just a normal person being photographed at that point of time, it’s time to get those uppity rebels to enjoy some special Christmas training to burn those fats from the feast.” Kraft replied as if he had some sinister training plan for all his foxes (including the elves.)
