This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

Once the mysterious man in the mirror had laid out his plan, she began to act with an almost frightening efficiency.

Bribing the principal had been surprisingly easy. The man was a greedy opportunist who didn't ask questions as long as the money was good and the risks were low.

Heather had spun a convincing story about wanting to help struggling students as a way to rehabilitate her tarnished reputation. The principal, eager to see a prominent name like Frost associated with the school in a positive light, handed over the files without much hesitation.

The students she targeted were easy to identify—average grades, unremarkable family backgrounds, parents who worked long hours and wouldn't have the time or influence to dig too deeply if something went wrong.

Heather would approach their families under the guise of being a caring tutor, offering her services at a rate far lower than anyone else of her supposed calibre would charge. The parents, reassured by the principal's endorsement, readily agreed.

Once Heather became a fixed feature of the child's life, she would begin her reconnaissance. She'd note the child's schedule, their habits, and, most importantly, the gaps in their parents' attention.

It was a cold, calculated process, but she justified it to herself as necessary. These children weren't exceptional—they wouldn't achieve greatness in their lifetimes. By helping with their cause research, they'd be contributing to something far more significant.

When she had all the information she needed, Heather would discreetly pass on the information, including the most suitable times to "retrieve" the test subject, during their regular communication intervals using the mirror.

And not long after passing on the information the student would mysteriously go missing.

Of course, being a tutor for all of the subjects that went missing would raise suspicions against her, so some of the students she tutored were not targets to be kidnapped. And some of the students she flagged as targets using the information provided by the principal were not approached by her to be a tutor, but by a proxy paid by her.

The only other chance to interact with the mysterious man was when she had to provide her "financial donations."

For the financial transactions, Heather was forced to deal in cash. Large sums were involved, so cash was very inconvenient, but due to the sensitive nature of the man's identity they also didn't want to risk leaving a paper trail.

Instead, she withdrew the money in chunks and stashed it in a space ring that is then brought to an abandoned house on the city's outskirts at regular intervals—and one of those dates just so happened to be coming up.

Completely controlled by one of Bea's splits, they used the next financial exchange opportunity to plant another split on Heather's space ring.

Although, when outside of the brain Bea's concealment abilities were not as strong and the split could be detected by a vigilant 6-star beast-tamer, after repeated tests they confirmed that the likelihood of the split being discovered was low.

The space ring that they used for the exchange is of high quality and had many added measures to ensure that no unrelated individuals could access what was inside.

An unintended consequence of that is that the space ring emits stronger fluctuations of spiritual power than the average space ring, and so the presence of the split attached to the inside of the ring band was much more difficult to detect.

On the night of the scheduled exchange, the controlled Heather followed the routine she had performed many times before, not revealing any abnormality in case someone were to be watching.

She arrived at the abandoned house under the cover of darkness, her footsteps soft against the cracked pavement. She approached the rusted mailbox, and familiarly slipped the space ring inside.

She didn't linger. Once the ring was in place, she turned and left and continued about her day as usual.

Not long after her departure, they sensed movement of the ring. However, since the split could sense that the spiritual power fluctuations of the person carrying the ring was at least 2 levels above itself, it did not make any moves to infect them.

However, there was no need for that. As long as it remained concealed, Kain and Serena would eventually be able to get to where they needed.

And true to what they thought, after nearly an hour of travel to another area of the city's outskirts almost on the complete opposite end of the city, the movement of the ring stopped.

Based on the limited information transmitted by the split, it was a large building—a factory? school?— that was completely abandoned.

Serena and Kain headed over there together with only the two of them.

Bridge desperately also wanted to come, but Kain managed to prevent him from also coming by stating that since they didn't know if this man had any other partners, they would need someone to remain at the orphanage in order to be assured of the others' safety while they were going to get Cherry.

Finally convinced by the reason given Kain, Bridge agreed to remain at the orphanage—much to Kain's relief.

Although Bridge was by no means weak, based on the information that they had, their opponent was likely at least a 6-star beast-tamer, and he didn't want to also have to worry about his brother's safety while fighting. Taking care of his own safety was challenging enough.

Fortunately, during the time that they were obtaining information while staying at the orphanage, Serena somehow managed to make all of her contracts also advance to green-grade, so the gap between her and the opponent wasn't so big.

By this point Kain wasn't even shocked at the overnight breakthroughs anymore, and given that these breakthroughs were advantageous to their rescue efforts, he was actually quite happy that his greatest rival suddenly had a huge boost in strength.

"Based on what we know, at least 8 children have gone missing," Kain said while looking at the silent and dark building in the distance, "hopefully it's not too late to get them all back…"