Affinity:Chaos
chapter-298

'You've sensed them?' Void asked casually.

"Un." Grey nodded without any change in his expression.

He had been running through this canyon for the past two hours, he could see that he wasn't too far from Reynolds. He only sat down to catch his breath and planned to continue his journey in a few minutes' time.

'Heh! As long as they're not here to cause any trouble for me, I have no problems with them,' said Grey.

He still had his cloak on, but his disguise was already gone. He couldn't be bothered with making a new one in a place where he was barely known, so he just let it be.

After three minutes, the figures of the five people soon appeared in Grey's view. He stared at them in curiosity, but he didn't have much interest in them though.

The group continued approaching him, because of the cloak he had on, they couldn't tell if he was the one they were searching for or not.

After getting within one hundred and fifty meters of Grey, the group stopped.

"He's not the one," The leader of the group said.

"How can you tell?" Johanne asked the question that was on the minds of the others.

"He's on the stage as me, probably about to even break through to the Sixth stage. That's not an individual we'd want to tangle with." The leader replied.

He looked at Johanne, indicating for her to locate where the second energy was coming from. After a few seconds, she pointed to the right path that was fifteen meters away from where they were standing.

After getting a direction, the group headed straight for it without any delay. This had been the longest Reynolds had stayed in a position, so they hoped he might be tired of running.

Grey watched as they left curiously, "Hmm, they seem sensible,"

'Such a shame, I thought we were going to fight some people,' Void said sadly.

'Heh! I think it's better this way. Although they wouldn't be too much of a problem, I'm not a fan of unnecessary fights.' Grey chuckled before taking out the disk.

'Good, he's still in the same location, looks like he finally stopped moving,' He thought when he looked at the hologram above the disk.

He stayed for a few more minutes before standing up and scratching his body, it was time to see Reynolds. He was a little excited at the thought of seeing Reynolds again, it has been well over a month since he saw any of his friends.

The only thing that made him sad was that he couldn't make the communication device, but on the way here, he added a modification to the disk. It was a way to signal the others if the user was in danger, just like the original use of the wooden objects when he collected them from Quinn.

With the one he made though, it wasn't a one-time use like the previous one, rather, it could be used repeatedly, unless the device was destroyed.

Grey soon got to the path the group took, he looked at it interestingly before looking at his disk again.

"Hmm, interesting."

_____

Reynolds was currently still sitting outside the same cave, waiting for the group. There were three paths ahead of him, one on the right, and two on left. He was feeling a little nervous because the thought of Grey being caught scared him. He didn't want to believe it, but thinking of how they kept finding him and connecting it to the device Grey wanted to make made him feel like Grey was already captured.

'Hopefully I'm just overthinking,' he tried consoling himself.

'Maybe they stole the device from him after he escaped, yes, that's very plausible,' He thought once again.

While he was still in the middle of racking his brain about Grey being possibly captured, he sensed the group coming in his direction.

"I see you're tired of running?" The leader said before their figures appeared from the path on the right.

"Who says I'm running? But I'm curious though, why are you people after me?' Reynolds asked while standing up.

Other than the three paths ahead of him, there was one behind him. Once he gets what he wants from these people, or if they attack him, he would flee immediately.

"A criminal always knows the crime they're being captured for," The leader said with a fake smile.

"Oh, but what if the criminal commits six crimes in the same day and escapes, but was later captured. Then there's no way he would know why he's being captured," Reynolds replied thoughtfully while putting on a mocking smile.

Spending so much time with Klaus was bound to yield some results, although he might not be as quick-witted as Klaus when it came to saying things that would offend his opponents, he was sure he was slowly catching up.

The leader was lost for words when he heard Reynolds' reply. He couldn't refute it because it was correct, but not replying meant that he was wrong with his initial statement. Seeing Reynolds' mocking smile irritated him even more.

Just when he was about to attack, he noticed Reynolds wanted to say something else.

"I didn't wait for you people to speak about criminals." Reynolds said before his expression turned serious, "How do you keep finding me? I've been intrigued by this for some hours now,"

The leader looked at Reynolds before laughing out, "You really want to know?"

Reynolds didn't respond, he already knew they weren't going to tell him. He took a step back, planning to escape. Since they didn't want to tell him what he wanted, then there was no use in staying behind.

Just as he took a step back, a feeling of danger suddenly enveloped him. He didn't waste any time and quickly jumped forward.

Boom!

An attack came from behind him, striking the rock on the side. Luckily, he didn't retreat when he sensed the attack, or he might've been struck by it.

The attack was positioned in a way that the only way to dodge it was by moving forward. The only Elementalists who can dodge that attack without moving forward are Space Elementalists.

After Reynolds stood up from where he landed, his expression changed before looking at the sky.

"An Inscriber."