"Did you manage to retrieve all of the stolen goods?"

Asked Amber as she sat on a large leather chair. Before her, a female secretary politely nodded her head.

"Yes, we have Madam"

"Mhm, how much would we have lost if Ivan had succeeded?"

"That..."

The secretary hesitated.

Brushing her hair to the side, Amber's brows knit and her tone became stern.

"I want a clear answer"

Instantly the atmosphere turned sullen.

"2.7 b-billion U"

Closing her eyes, the secretary mustered up her courage and revealed everything that she knew.

"huuu..."

Hearing the sum, Amber took a deep breath.

She then looked at her assistant and asked once again. She wanted to make sure she didn't mishear.

Unfortunately for her, she did not mishear as her secretary shook her head.

"2.7 billion U, am I hearing incorrectly?"

"U-unfortunately not, Madam. After investigating we found a lot of the auctioned items to have been replaced with fakes. Excluding the sword, the last item, everything that was stolen had an accumulated value of 2.7 billion U"

"Haaa...alright, you may leave"

Letting out a long sigh, Amber dismissed her secretary.

'2.7 billion...'

Although this was within her estimation, hearing the number still threw Amber off. This was a lot of money.

Even she, a ranked hero as well as the owner of multiple businesses would need at least a couple of decades to be able to save up that much money.

"Thank you, Madam, I hope you have a good night"

"Yes, yes"

Dismissed, the secretary bowed her head. Amber casually waved her hand in response. She needed to be left alone.

Clank!

Closing the door behind her, the servant left the room.

Silence prevailed over the room as Amber quietly picked up some papers and looked through them.

Flip! Flip!

For the next thirty minutes, Amber skimmed through the stack of papers.

Written on them were the details of the incident as well as other information regarding the times retrieved from Ivan's dimensional storage space.

'Sigh, I can't seem to be able to concentrate...'

After a while, Amber put the papers down.

Just thinking about the whole situation gave her a headache. In fact, her head was already starting to hurt.

Opening her desk drawer, Amber took a small cylindrical bottle and took out a pill.

"If not for Monica, things would've turned out disastrous..."

Taking a glass of water, Amber downed the pill and muttered.

Had it not been for Monica, her night would've been a sleepless one.

Most of the responsibility for the incident would've been put on her, and in all likelihood, she was going to be the one who would have to pay a large portion of the damages.

"To think that there was a day where I would have to thank Monica. The world is truly something..."

Bitterly laughing, Amber leaned back on her chair and covered her eyes with her arm.

She was tired.

...

Outside the King's Crown hotel...

"See, everything worked out just fine"

With a smile on my face, I patted Kevin on the shoulder.

All in all, everything worked out just fine.

Rather than remaining angry at Kevin, Monica actually thanked him and completely forgave him.

Everything worked out just fine. There was no need for Kevin to remain angry at me.

"Don't touch me!"

Smacking my hand away, Kevin grumpily made his way towards the limousine that was a few blocks ahead.

"Oh, come on! It wasn't that bad. Monica is not even angry at you!"

"It doesn't matter. You backstabbed me"

"Tsk, if we're talking about selling out shouldn't we be talking about you?"

Clicking my tongue, I rebutted.

"What about me?"

"Did you forget about the fact that you literally exposed our conversation to everyone a couple of hours ago?"

"What? that's different"

In response to my argument, Kevin's brows knit.

"Is it though?"

"Yes, it is"

Shaking my head repeatedly, in a low voice that only Kevin and I could hear, I softly aid.

"No, it isn't. Who would you rather piss off, Monica or Melissa?"

If someone asked me who I would rather deal with, I would've without a doubt have chosen Monica.

Although she was weird, she wasn't as crazy as a truly angered Melissa. I'd rather deal with her than Melissa.

Fortunately, now that I was in a business relation with Melissa, things weren't that bad.

However, if it was someone else rather than me...

Well, let's just say that things wouldn't really be good.

"ah..."

Hearing my statement, Kevin opened his mouth. No words came out of his mouth. Deep in his heart he also shared the same sentiment as me.

Melissa was definitely worse than Monica.

"See, even you agree!"

Taking advantage of his hesitation, I pointed out.

"Ah, whatever, I don't want to talk about it anymore..."

Waving his hand in dismissal, Kevin entered the limousine.

'Heee, you're running away...', I muttered, whilst following him from behind.

In the end, Kevin knew that I was right.

An angry Melissa wasn't someone anyone could handle.

'That aside...'

Kevin's anger was somewhat understandable.

I did make him take the fall for me.

In my defense, everything turned out just fine.

Rather than being angry at Kevin, Monica was quite grateful for him.

'As they say, all is well that ends well...'

Had Kevin not pissed Monica off, she would've never have been able to discover Ivan.

The one person she detested with all her heart.

Aside from that, now that she had caught him, she would be able to take back all of the items that he had stolen from her. Me included.

The loss she made for buying the sword would quickly be made back.

"Get in"

Melissa shouted as she rolled the window of the limousine down.

"Aye, aye"

Talk about the devil...

Taking one last look at the King's Crown hotel, I entered the limousine.

The auction had officially come to a close.

*

After separating from the others, I returned to my room.

"Alright, you can come out Angelica"

At my words, black smoke rose in the air and Angelica's enchanting figure appeared before me.

Staring at Angelica for a couple of seconds, I thanked her.

"Thank you for your hard work"

"I'm going to the training room"

nodding her head in acknowledgment, Angelica made her way towards the training ground.

"Aye"

Looking at Angelica's indifferent figure moving towards the training grounds, I shook my head.

Ever since moving to this new apartment, Angelica had been spending most of her time in the training grounds.

With its great insulating system, Angelica could now train without holding back.

She no longer had to worry about her demonic energy being detected when training as the isolating system in the private training ground stopped all energy from leaking out.

She could train all she wanted.

"That aside..."

Shua!

Tapping into my bracelet, a wooden mask appeared in my hand.

"The mask of Dolos..."

I had finally laid my hands on the mask of Dolos. An item that would prove extremely useful for me in the future.

With the mask in my hand, a lot of possibilities had opened up for me. Especially when planning future schemes and endeavors.

'Well, in the future at least...'

Unfortunately, because the mask was so highly ranked, I could only use it for short periods of time before my mana would run out.

This put a limit on the things I could do with the mask.

Still, this was good enough for now.

With my strength progressing at a much faster rate compared to others, it wouldn't be long till I would be able to fully utilize the mask.

Furthermore, with the tournament coming up in a month's time, I wasn't planning on using the mask anytime soon.

Though I did have plans for it, they were for way later into the future.

"That reminds me..."

Standing up, I stretched my back.

"I guess I should start making preparations for the upcoming tournament"

With only a month left till the start of the inter-academy tournament, I knew that I had to start making preparations for it.

Prior to the tournament, there were supposed to be three big events orchestrated by the Monolith.

After completely destroying the first event, the banquet, there were supposed to be another two events.

However, they never occurred.

'Did they perhaps give up or are they planning something else?'

Sitting down on the sofa in the living room, I mused.

Knowing the Monolith well, I knew that they wouldn't give up on such an important event just because one of their plans had failed.

"There must be something else..."

Despite checking on the Monolith watch, I could not figure out what the Monolith had in plan for the tournament.

Even so...

Whatever they were planning on doing, I wasn't going to just sit down and wait for everything to happen.

No, that was the perfect recipe for disaster.

For the next month or so I was planning on doing a thorough investigation of everything that was happening in and out of the academy.

Only once I knew what their plan was could I come up with the appropriate countermeasures.

Rather than have them set up a net that I wouldn't be able to escape from, I would much rather create holes in the net to later use to my advantage.

This way I could come up with proper countermeasures for when the situation arose.

For that, I needed to spend the next month wisely.

"He, who knows. Perhaps I can even benefit from this ordeal..."

I muttered as I laid down on my sofa.

***

At the same time, in a different room.

"dadadada, dum, dum dum"

Lying down on her bed with her hair scattered, Emma hummed to the tune of one of her favorite songs.

"Hm?"

Playing on her phone, Emma opened her calendar and checked her schedule. Suddenly, something caught her interest.

"Oh? Kevin's birthday is coming up soon"

Months ago she remembered asking Kevin for his birthday.

After he had told her when his birthday was, Emma remembered putting it on her calendar so that she wouldn't forget.

"Should I buy him a gift?"

Emma's muttered as her cheeks suddenly reddened.

'Wait, wait, wait. What am I even thinking? Why would I need to buy a gift for him? I've never bought a gift for a boy before'

Clutching onto the helm of her dress, Emma silently shrieked as a myriad of thoughts entered her mind.

"That's right! There's no meaning behind the gift. I'm just thanking him for all the help I received from him"

Convincing herself that there was no meaning behind her action, Emma changed position. This time she was laying down face flat on her bed.

"What should I buy him?"

Emma was stumped. Having never bought a gift for a boy before, she had no clue on what to buy.

'Should I ask Ren?'

A thought suddenly struck her. Given how close Ren and Kevin were, there was a chance he would know about what Kevin would like, but...

'I don't know, I'd rather not...'

The idea of asking Ren to help her get a gift irked her a bit. If possible she didn't want to do this.

"Right, how much money do I have left?"

Emma suddenly recalled something.

With her bank account frozen, Emma just realized that she couldn't spend too much money on the gift for Kevin.

She needed to check how much money she had available before deciding.

"Ah..."

Opening her bank account, Emma's mouth hung wide open.

[Account : 64,098U]

She had no money.

***

Clank!

Closing the door behind her, Amanda entered her room.

Slumping on her bed, Amanda thought back on today's events.

At first, everything seemed normal. The auction seemed to be just like any regular action, that was until the last item was brought up...

That was when everything became weird.

Suddenly Kevin started a bidding frenzy. He just kept on putting bid after bid after bid.

At one point, it reached the bid reached such high figures that even Emma was at a loss for words.

However, during his bidding frenzy, though others may have not have noticed it as they were all focusing on Kevin, Amanda saw the subtle gestures and eye contact Ren would make to Kevin from time to time.

From there she started observing Ren more.

She knew that something wasn't right.

It was then that she realized that Ren was in fact the one making the bids.

Amanda was able to figure this out due to the way Ren was tapping on his tablet. It was too in sync with the call signboard.

Though Kevin was also tapping on his tablet, his tapping was a few seconds slower than the call sign that would light up whenever a bid was made.

This did not escape Amanda's perception as she quickly came up with a conclusion.

Ren was the bidder.

Later on, an even more shocking event happened.

Monica, her new instructor, burst into the room and suddenly kicked their attendant Jeremiah into a wall.

Jeremiah later turned out to be Ivan Ranvick, an extremely notorious thief.

'Did Ren know about Ivan?'

Amanda couldn't help but think as she looked back at the events of today.

There were just too many coincidences.

The timing at which Monica and Ivan arrived seemed too perfect for Amanda.

Furthermore, if Ren had purposely bid on the last item to cause Monica to come, it all made sense.

It was just that...

Amanda couldn't figure out was how Ren knew that Monica was in the other VVIP room.

Given that all information was kept a secret, and all the rooms were assigned randomly, such a thing wouldn't have been possible.

Another thing that she didn't know was how Ren was able to know that Jeremiah was Ivan.

Given his notoriety for being able to even escape the grasp of <S> ranked heroes, Amanda really couldn't figure out how Ren found out about his identity.

In the end, though curious, Amanda didn't want to pry too deeply.

Everyone had their secrets and she respected that.

Perhaps one day he would reveal it to everyone.

Ding!

Snapping her out of her thoughts was a small chime that rang from her phone. Looking at the ID of the sender, Amanda realized it was Emma who had texted her.

[Amanda, I need your help with something]

[What do you need?]

Picking up the phone, Amanda sent a quick reply. Following which Emma responded back.

[I want to borrow some money]

Reading the message, Amanda's brows knit for a couple of seconds before they quickly loosened.

She had somehow heard of Emma's situation from Maxwell. So understood what Emma was going through at the moment.

[Okay, how much do you need?]

[About, 5 million U? Can you lend me that much?]

Emma's reply came quite late. It was evident that she took a bit of time to write the message.

[Only that much?]

[Yeah, It's Kevin's birthday in a bit and I wanted to buy him a gift]

"Kevin's birthday?"

Amanda's brows knit. She had no idea that it was soon going to be Kevin's birthday.

'Should I also get him a gift like Emma?', Amanda wondered. Was this was the polite thing to do?

Amanda didn't know.

In the end, Amanda didn't know whether to give him a gift or not.

She wasn't actually that close to Kevin, so she wasn't really comfortable with the idea of giving him a gift.

[So can you lend me?]

[Yes, no problem]

Snapping out of her thoughts was a text from Emma, Amanda replied back.

[Thank you so much, Amanda, I'll pay you back soon!]

[Okay]

Closing her messaging app, Amanda opened her bank account and quickly transferred the money to Emma.

Moments after, the money was quickly sent.

Ring! Ring!

Right after Amanda sent Emma the money, her phone rang. Picking up the phone, Amanda answered. It was Maxwell.

"Hello?"

Ah, young lady!

Maxwell's voice rang out from the speaker. His voice sounded quite rushed.

"Yes?"

Young lady, there's a situation...

Instantly Amanda had an ominous premonition.