After making all the arrangements for the trip, Roland rushed back to the apartment building as fast as he could. Unfortunately, he underestimated Garcia's diligence.
In the corridor, he saw a familiar figure leaning against the wall near Room 0825 while talking on the phone and watching the bustle downstairs. She wore a gray and white T-shirt, loose black pants, and ankle-high skate shoes, looking both youthful and full of energy. If he had never known her, he would have thought of her as a girl-next-door type of woman, a lively and cheerful character often seen on TV.
Judging from her face, she was still a little angry but not cold and harsh as the Garcia he remembered. He could not deny that Princess Garcia Wimbledon, Queen of Clearwater, looked surprisingly good in this sports outfit.
When he came close to the door of the room, she saw him. "Alright, I've got something else to do. I'm hanging up and don't call me back if it's only to try to persuade me."
"Is the Clover group calling you again about the demolition matter?" He pretended to be casual and asked.
"It has nothing to do with you." She put away the phone, her expression skeptical. "Where have you been? Didn't you say that you wanted to take a shower?"
"Do you know how many ways there are to get rid of an odor? One is cleaning, another one is covering it with a new odor." He talked nonsense while keeping a straight face. "The tenant, that little girl living with me, needed to use the bathroom. She didn't want to be late for school so I really couldn't fight with her. I thought I could get some sweat to cover my smell so I went running outside." "But, surprisingly, this body just doesn't sweat very much. Now I see why you martialists always look neat and clean. Well, this isn't important at all. Anyhow, I didn't sneak away. You see that I'm standing right in front of you now, don't you?"
"..." Garcia stared at him for a long time before opening her mouth. "I don't want to interfere with your private life, but it's not good to indulge yourself. More importantly... it's also about education."
"What?" Roland was stunned.
"I mean those girls who came out of your apartment... Why can't you get things done somewhere else? Why do you have to bring them home? Have you already forgotten that there's a little girl in your home," said Garcia, frowning, "
He almost choked upon hearing such words. He had deliberately arranged the Taquila witches to cut off their consciousness and get into the Dreamland once Zero had left for school, but he had never expected what the other residents would have thought about these women coming out of his home. Garcia had the complete wrong idea based on what she had seen.
"It's true that some martialists will become less decent when they become famous. In the face of money and fame, a man will easily lose himself, but don't forget that we're fighting for this world and always have to maintain a high morale. Overindulgence will only make your movements slow..."
"Ahem, I got it." Feeling that she wanted to give him a moral education lecture, he immediately interrupted her. "We can talk about this matter later. Could you please let me change my clothes first? I don't want to be late for our visit."
She closed her mouth in displeasure and glared at him. "...Be quick."
He dressed up by putting on his new suit. Under Zero's gaze, he put a fried egg into a sandwich bag to eat as breakfast and walked out of the apartment.
"You..." At the door, Garcia blinked at him.
"It's my first time visiting the headquarters and I thought that I should dress formally." Roland shrugged. "I'm a new member of the association and casual clothing seems disrespectful for such an occasion. What do you think?"
"Hah... whatever you want." She shook her head. "But to my surprise, you look... quite good in this suit."
"Of course, you get what you pay for. This trim custom-made suit cost me a lot of my 'robbery income'. After all, the clothes make the man. An ordinary-looking man would look great immediately after dressing up and, as an added benefit, I'm slim and have nice long gray hair. Back in the world where I lived before, people would believe that I'm an elf prince," he thought to himself.
They went downstairs together and waited outside the residential area. A large bus soon came to fetch them. He noticed that it did not have a number plate and all its windows were covered by black curtains. He could not see anything inside it.
"Get on the bus," Garcia whispered. He somehow felt that she looked much more serious now.
When he stepped onto the bus, he pretended to casually look back at the street side. He saw that Phyllis had already stopped a taxi.
When the door was closed, he found that it was surprisingly bright inside. All the lights along the aisle were turned on and quite a few people were sitting on the bus.
Most of them were dressed in various styles and looked like a group of performance artists. Only a few seemed like normal people, but they all were engrossed in their own affairs instead of greeting Garcia. He soon noticed that some guys, who obviously harbored ulterior motives, had fixed their eyes on him since he had gotten on the bus.
Garcia did not say anything. She held Roland's hand, which was very unusual, and walked with him directly to the back of the bus.
"Are they your colleagues?" he whispered to her when they sat down.
"The Martialist Association isn't a company." She rolled her eyes at him. "Most people in this bus are newly awakened people just like you. It's also the first time for me to meet them."
"So many of them?" He was a little surprised. He roughly counted and found there were over 20 people in this bus.
"Yes, there are quite a lot of them. The last time I went to the association, there were only five or six new members... but that's not surprising," she replied. "although ordinary people know nothing about the changes in the world, the ones awakened with the Force of Nature can still sense them. I've told you that not all the awakened ones choose to join us. The centrists aren't less than the association's martialists. Now, as the Erosion intensifies and the number of Fallen Evils rapidly grows, the situation has become more dangerous for the centrists. More of them are going to join our association in the future."
"So you mean most of them are wild martialists or self-training martialists?"
"You did find more appropriate words to describe them." She curled her mouth into a smile. "I guess so, but that's just between us. Don't call them that publicly. They don't like restrictions. That's why they refused to join the association. Gaining great strength will boost a person's ego, making him or her become arrogant. This not only hinders their progress but also gives them a very odd attitude."
"As for the odd attitude, I think I've already experienced it," he said casually.
"In the past, a conflict had happened where some wild... martialist joined the association and killed several martialists when they were performing a hunting job. In the end, the Defenders stood out to kill the wild martialist. You'd better ignore their provocations as the association will severely punish such behaviors."
"The wild martialists are that strong?"
"Yes, these people often get attacked by Fallen Evils and, compared to newly awakened ones, they're much more experienced in actual combats and are better in reacting quickly in emergency situations, but they're usually obsessed by worldly affairs. If you stop overindulging yourself and practice hard, you can rapidly improve yourself."
She sighed and continued. "The Force of Nature is a gift from the deities. It's an ability to protect ourselves rather than a tool to exploit others. If we fail to stop the Erosion, the entire world may cease to exist. Many awakened ones just enjoy the pleasures brought by their power, but completely forget their responsibility."
He found what she said sounded familiar... He thought for a moment and realized that perhaps this was also the reason that those witches, who had been aware of the harm caused by demons, established the Union 800 years ago.
Suddenly, it quieted down outside. The grating sounds made by the bus wheels rubbing against the road became deep and simple as if the bus was traveling alone in a spacious tunnel.
Half an hour later, the bus finally stopped.
Just when he thought that they had arrived, the bus started to shake slightly and he felt weightless all of a sudden.
The bus was sinking into the ground.