The door leading to the Macron household was opened up by a butler in a black suit. He looked at the little kindergartner with a surprised expression. The girl walked in and the butler looked out to see if there was anyone else, but all he saw was the back of a car driving away.

Curious, his gaze returned to the young miss who walked into the hall and sat down.

“Is Ibuki around?”

She asked, alerting the butler to the strange occurrence.

“She was not with you, young miss?”

The girl shook her head.

“They left off earlier. I had to go see my guardian first.”

The butler put his hand to his chin. If it were normal children, he could put it off as them simply playing about. Especially when they had a mother like Yellen, it became all the more suspicious that they weren’t home at the prescribed time.

“Would you like a cookie and some juice?”

He begun walking towards the kitchen.

“No thank you, I already ate.”

“Very well, young miss. Please wait patiently for the others.”

After saying his piece, the butler rushed past the kitchen towards his personal chamber. In his room, there were two tables with two different phones on them. A red phone and a black phone. He picked up the black phone and the person on the other side immediately picked up.

“…”

The person on the other side did not speak, meaning he had to.

“The young miss and sir have not returned home. It’s been two hours since their supposed arrival time. Miss Mari Mignard is here and she claims both the young miss and sir left off earlier on. It’s possible that Miss Mira is with them.”

As soon as he finished, the person on the other side cut the call. The butler tried to wipe off the sweat that kept snaking down his face. In such a volatile situation, he had to inform everyone in the household. He himself had to make a few more calls to other people to find out more on the situation before reporting back.

***

Yellen cut the call and Daisuke who was sitting down on the couch and reading through some documents could sense Yellen’s rage.

“What is it?”

Without taking his eyes off his papers, he inquired on her bad mood.

“Ibuki and Daichi aren’t home yet.”

“Could be kids just playing about. I used to go to the park and play till five with the others when I was in grade 1. Good times.”

Reminiscing about his childhood days, a calm smile that was a stark contrast to the frown on Yellen appeared on his face.

"Go and find out more about this."

"Come on, don-”

“Go. And. Find. Out. More. About. This. Daisuke.”

Each word sounded more threatening than the last. The vice commander stood up, not wishing to deal with Yellen’s rage. All he had to do was to prove that nothing bad had happened to the kids so she could rest easy.

Even as he was trying to tell Yellen to rest easy, Daisuke would be lying if he said he himself wasn’t feeling a bit nervous about the situation. He would however just describe it as parental anxiety. He did see Ibuki as a sort of niece.

***

Ibuki POV

My head felt fuzzy and my body was heavy. Slowly, I forcefully opened my eyes. Everything was blurry at first, but I could hear voices. They were all mumbled up and I couldn’t make out what exactly it was they were saying.

I shook my head, trying to clear it up a bit. When I tried moving my hands, they were locked up behind me. I tried forcing them out of the lock, but as time went on and my senses slowly returned, I realized that I had been tied up.

A groan left my mouth as I tried to remember the last thing I saw. Some suspicious men knocked us out and now we were here.

“Oh, lookie here, one of them’s awake.”

One of the men came to me. He was skinny and wore a black tank top with baggy pants and a beanie. What I found more interesting was that this entire place smelt like fish. I tried to get a look at everything around me and all I could make out were crates of what I presumed were fish.

I was in some sort of storage house for fishes. Through the openings at the top of the building, I could make out that it was night time. The salty sea’s scent hit my nose as did the loud honk of a ship. I was at a port. To my side, Daichi and Mira had been tied up, both still unconscious.

The man in front of me tapped my forehead and rose my head so my eyes could meet his.

“Huh? I thought she was awake, but looks like she’s still dazed by the drug.”

He looked at one of the other people in the room. When I tried sensing, I managed to find about 30 men in the storage house who possessed force.

“What’d you expect? This thing is designed to incapacitate seasoned chevaliers, though it’s still a work-in-progress and wouldn’t work on guys like us.”

“Oh, it’s from “That” organization, right? I wonder how we even got our hands on it then.”

“Whaaa?”

I managed to say something, though a bit too dumb for anyone to understand. Both men looked at me, at each other, then back at me. A creepy smile found its way onto the skinny guy’s face.

“Looks like I was right.”

‘Ugh. Creep.’

He started to play with my cheeks.

“I can sort of understand wanting to kidnap such a cute brat. She’ll be like that cute little sister you always wanted.”

“Be careful. Intel says she is a very dangerous beast.”

“What? This cute little thing? No way.”

I was getting infuriated by how he kept pulling on my cheeks, so I bit his finger. He pulled out quickly and scowled at me.

“You shitty brat.”

PA!

He delivered a merciless slap to my face, throwing me off my attempts at trying to empower my body. Then he started kicking me in the stomach. Since I had no form of protection on, I was receiving the direct damage from his force packed attacks.

“Oi, relax.”

The other guy picked him up and took him away from me. Unfortunately for my face, he was a bit late. I was covered in blood and could feel a broken rib or two. Considering this guy’s strength, I was actually lucky to get away with such menial damages. As for the pain, it hurt like hell of course, but it wasn’t nearly the worst kind of thing I’d felt so I could grunt through it quietly.

“I warned you not to get too close.”

“Bu-”

“But nothing. If the boss hears of this, he’ll be pissed. We aren’t supposed to touch the packages.”

Wheezing for breath, I forced my cores to activate. They weren’t responding to me at all. I couldn’t understand why exactly this was happening, but if I didn’t do something and regenerate, there was a chance this body would die.

With all power I could muster, I tried pushing my cores, but they only dimmed up for a bit before going off. This toxin that was used on me was beyond dangerous.

This era really was a dangerous one for chevaliers. If such a tool was already invented, what stopped the netherworlders from getting access to it and using it against us?

‘Maybe I can use the Deep state breathing technique… no… my lungs can’t handle that.’

I wanted to force the toxin out of my system, but it was not a good idea for a body as weak as mine. I didn’t know what exactly was the reason, but I was physically weak for a five-year-old. My only saving grace was my force core that I used to empower myself to supernatural standards. It was a weakness no one knew I had, but had become increasingly obvious to me over time.

In that case, the only option I had was to activate my cores.

I could feel myself slowly losing consciousness over time, but I couldn’t give up now. I had to force the cores to heal me up. While I was doing that, my nether core, which I hadn’t paid much attention to, was humming with power.

‘That’s right! The drug probably wasn’t created for netherworlders!’

I activated the core, which ended up being my worst mistake.

At first, the core started to heal my body up, but then it grabbed me and tried to swallow me whole. For a moment, I really was consumed by the core’s eternal darkness. A feeling of dread and death washed over me.

I wasn’t so weak to such concepts, but there was something different about this one. Like being put in a state of death and resurrection over and over again for all of eternity. I wasn’t sure how long this would go. I just wanted to lose consciousness, but the core wasn’t allowing that to happen.