ccnovels Chapter 169: Cassias’ Parents
Chapter 169: Cassias’ Parents
Cassias fell silent for a moment. "He went back to his base. Something happened."She narrowed her eyes and clicked her tongue. "What happened? It must have been Henry making trouble, right?"
"The situation is still unclear," Cassias answered. "Darren didn’t tell us."o help him instead of joining her elder brother’s group to take a mission.
Looking at her serious face, Cassias couldn’t help his hand. He reached out to her silky black hair, messing it a little, which earned her angry scowl as she swatted his evil paw away.
He suddenly missed her fox form after three months without seeing it.
"I will tell you in the future," Cassias muttered seriously. "I thought it was a simple matter at first; I just needed to find where my third uncle was, but it turned out that they also got my parents when I wasn’t around."
Thinking about it, if he had taken her with him, she wouldn’t have fallen off a cliff and gotten lost in the forest. Unfortunately, there was no medicine for regret in this world.
His forehead was marred with a frown. She could sense his deep unhappiness. Cassias’ relationship with his parents was quite complicated.
She could tell he cared about them, but he also wasn’t close to them.
Actually, she found it quite weird. The Virethorn family members were quite closely knit with each other, with little conflict among themselves.
His parents cared a lot about him, sometimes strict and other times they spoiled him. She remembered he used to be close with his parents before the apocalypse began. He often lived at the Virethorn family’s mansion, but now he was at Evan’s place more often.
Yet, now when he talked about them, it was as if there was a little distance between them. A vague sense of alienation. Like the things he did for them were mostly out of obligation instead of careful consideration.
What had actually happened?
A strange suspicion became a seed in her heart. She had planted it a long time ago, and now it was sprouting. Of course, her suspicion regarding him wasn’t in a bad way.
She suspected that instead of him merely regressing to repeat the apocalypse, there was something deeper to that.
"Miss, which path should we take?" She snapped back to her senses when she heard Lieutenant Colonel Dalton’s question. Leaving Cassias’ side, she went to him to discuss the next route.
"I am not sure if people from the Research Institute had come here already to ambush them." She told Lieutenant Colonel Dalton. "Some days ago, Derek Ashford returned to report his findings."
The man beside him was unaffected. "We can still capture those who have run away or are hiding."
She could tell he didn’t trust the Research Institute to take care of their own people. Seeing him still stay determined, she didn’t say anything further.
They continue walking, meeting some mutated animals along the way. Zerra could tell that the number had decreased a lot compared to last time.
There was still their faint presence, but unlike before, they hid themselves as soon as they sensed the ability users. With the number decreasing a lot, they must have marked them as a dangerous existence now.
They wouldn’t provoke them unless necessary.
As they headed to the destination, it was unknown whether it was a coincidence. They met Derek’s group halfway.
"Zerra," he called out. The tension in his face dissipated a lot the moment he spotted her presence. His eyes lit up a little.
She scrutinized the ability users around him before withdrawing her gaze. "I thought you had arrived there before we did."
"You are also heading there?" Only then did he notice the people around Zerra. His eyes lingered on Cassias. Their eyes accidentally met before they both withdrew their gazes as if nothing had happened.
The silent exchange didn’t escape Zerra’s senses, but since they both acted normally now, she didn’t think about it too deeply.
"We can’t find the place." Derek explained. "We have been searching for a day without any results. Then, I remembered they had put an illusion around the place. How about we work together?"
Regarding the last question, Zerra turned to Lieutenant Colonel Dalton. The man knitted his eyebrows, a little displeased. The discontent flickered on his face, gone as quickly as it came.
Seeing Zerra looking at Lieutenant Colonel Dalton, Derek immediately realized who the leader of the team was.
"I am Derek Ashford, the deputy chief of the Botanical Research Department from the Research Institute. May I know your name?"
"Lieutenant Colonel Dalton," the man said succinctly.
Derek nodded, not minding his somewhat unenthusiastic expression. He repeated the words he had said to Zerra earlier to him. "What do you think, Lieutenant Colonel Dalton? Shall we work together? We have the same goal in this place."