Chapter 61: Family
After walking through many streets, Agnes and Jinn stepped on a wider road with carriages running up and down.
"Where are we going next?" Agnes walked next to Jinn, continuing their act on the surface, waiting for his signal.
At that moment, a carriage passed by them, and a person with orange hair peeked out of the window with closed eyes, as if sensing their gaze.
Agnes did not see the man, but Jinn noticed his actions out of the corner of his eye and pretended he saw nothing as he said, "Leaving this city."
Grasping Agnes’s hand, he suddenly walked across the street once most of the traffic had disappeared.
Although there was no look of panic on his face, his feet picked up their pace.
Once they disappeared into the street across the road, the man with orange hair opened his eyes and turned to follow their trail.
His eyes were already shining with traces of dragon energy.
"Found them." Officer Chen moved back into the carriage and signaled their driver to stop. He jumped out of the carriage along with his other law enforcement officers.
Officer Chen chased after the couple he suspected, entering the same street, but once they entered it, there was no sign of them.
"Spread out, search every corner in the area. One of you should go call the others and use them to sweep through the entire area. I want no corner left unturned." Officer Chen did not panic and gave the order without missing a beat, like he had done it several times.
’Even though she looked different, her aura was the same. It could only be her.’ He thought as he ran down the empty road. ’But who was that man? Does she have an accomplice? I have never seen him before.’
While the majority of the officers are spread out around the city, the most experienced and powerful ones are stationed to patrol around the city’s boundary.
And it was just by luck that officer Chen decided to join them to help with the search with his powers. He kept his power, "Eye of Truth," along the way even when he was starting to feel the strain.
To his luck, he managed to catch the aura he felt once back in the orphanage. Without mistake, that aura was Agnes’s.
’Where did they disappear to all of a sudden?’ While running, his gaze drifted to the tall city wall surrounding the settlement. The dark bricked wall soared into the sky beyond the heights of the tall buildings closest to it.
While all the forces of the Law enforcement were busy redirecting the search for Agnes to one side of the city, she was calmly walking with Jinn down the same wide road that the carriages used to commute.
"Did you do something?" Agnes asked with a frown, "Why did you suddenly turn after crossing the road?"
"Nothing, just clearing the way for you." Jinn chuckled and led Agnes down the road.
In reality he saw Officer Chen before the man even noticed them, and he even used a single soul to change Agnes’s aura back to the one she had before awakening, along with her appearance.
To officer Chen, Agnes looked like a young woman in her twenties with blonde hair and black eyes.
Changing his own aura but keeping the appearance, he rushed across the road and created an illusion of him and Agnes entering the street, while in reality they had just made a U-turn.
’If only I could change both of our appearances with a single soul.’ Jinn cried his heart out because he had to use another soul point even though he was trying to save them.
But he knew it was important to use it to distract the search team.
As he walked down the street with barely any guard patrolling it, Jinn smirked and thought. ’This gave me a clean path to walk away.’
...
"It has been so long since I saw the wall up close." Standing before the moist stone wall, Agnes placed her hand on its cold surface and muttered with sadness.
She turned around and gazed at the tall spire with a visible bell hanging on the top in the distance.
"Fifteen years. I devoted a decade and a half to the church when they promised me that they would help me find the people who slaughtered my family like pigs." Her eyes burned with fury and pain just looking at the building. "But even after so many years, they did nothing."
Jinn did not interrupt her but took a step closer to her, reassuring her with his silent support.
"But I kept devoting myself to the gods, worshiping them because that hope, their assurance, was the only thing that kept me going." She turned to face Jinn, and a tear slipped from her shiny green eyes. "I would not have lasted this long had it not been for you."
Raising a hand, she cupped Jinn’s left cheek and said, "the day I found you at my doorstep, I thought the gods had given me hope to keep going, but as it turned out, it was not the gods."
As she spoke, the image of his devil form was superimposed on Jinn’s current appearance.
"Now I will no longer wait for any god to create a miracle for me." Lowering her hand, she grasped Jinn’s fingers and urged him. "Let’s go. I would rather not stay here any longer."
Jinn pulled out the second token from his robes and snapped it in half, sending glass-like shards flying in all directions.
One second they were standing behind the walls, and the next they appeared on the long empty road in the middle of nowhere.
One side was empty grassland, and the other was a dense forest in the distance.
Looking back, Agnes saw the city of Veloria in the distance glowing with its brilliance.
"There should be a carriage arriving anytime soon. You can board it and go to Gloria City and lie low there for a year." Jinn passed Agnes the pouch of money that he had been holding for her.
Before she could decline, Jinn added with a wink. "I took 50 Tula coins, and they are enough for me to pass two years at the academy. Besides, you need money for travels and other expenses."
After some hesitation, Agnes took the bag with a warm smile. She stepped forward and leaned in to plant a kiss on Jinn’s cheeks.
"Thank you for giving me a new life, Jinn." Moving back, she touched the spot she had kissed with love and said, "Even if I regret the action that led to this day, I do not regret taking you in that night into my home."
"You are and always will be my family."