Elane was crouching a little timidly beside Rohan’s hospital bed, looking skittish, as if she didn’t quite know how to act in that moment. Her hair practically bounced on her shoulders with how much her legs were tapping up and down.

Rohan observed her, noticing that her outfit was different than he last remembered, a knee-level skirt and a light, floral shirt, once again reminding Rohan that Elane was just like any other girl, though he could imagine how desperate she was for a change of clothes after wearing the same thing for days and not even having the opportunity to take a shower.

On the other side, her father sat down with his eyes partially closed, waiting for the perfect opportunity to interject. Though in Rohan’s opinion, that time had long passed...

"Well? What is it you wanted to catch me up on?" Rohan asked, confusedly shifting his gaze between the two.

’It would be nice if either one of you switched sides so I wouldn’t have to strain my neck so much...’ He hesitated to say this aloud after seeing Elane’s father’s face suddenly turn so stern.

"What she means is that both of you should rather fill me in, first, don’t you agree?" The stern looking man suddenly spoke, not helping the already rising tension in the room.

Elane’s leg tapping had already started to increase in tempo — she was clearly nervous.

Rohan remained calm despite the sudden rise in pressure.

"It would help if you gave me a direction to start." He spoke to her father, matching the pressure he was exuding.

’Two can play at this game!’

Rohan wasn’t afraid that the man would turn out like that E rank Elite from Red Fang, or like Rudith’s bunch. No, this man was Elane’s father. His trust in Elane had only been increasing ever since their first meeting, despite the wobbly bits in between when they faced off against the Elite Soldier Ant, and it had skyrocketed during their tense moments inside the Spike Beast gate.

Even if Elane seemed reluctant to even speak much about her father in front of Rohan, he could tell that deep down she trusted the man most in the world.

’Early on she always talked about ’My father said this...’, ’My father did that...’ despite the awkwardness that followed. He won’t try anything funny with me unless I give him a reason to.’

Rohan decided to trust his gut.

And for the moment, it seemed to have paid off. Her father held his gaze against Rohan’s for a few more seconds before closing his eyes and giving a curt nod of approval.

"I like your attitude, boy. Now, why don’t we start off with a few introductions. My daughter over here still hasn’t told me your name. As for me, my name is Harland, but we aren’t friends, so you’ll refer to me as Sir." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Rohan didn’t respond at first, a little too stunned by the man’s old timer attitude to react. His face remained placid while he shot a quick glance over at Elane, noticing her doing her best to avert her eyes.

Meanwhile, Elane: ’This is the most interesting ceiling I’ve ever seen...’

"Cough... I’m Rohan. Nice to meet you... sir."

Harland nodded once more in satisfaction, making Rohan fall into even deeper silence.

’You said not even 5 minutes ago that you were glad to have skipped the awkward introductions...’

Rohan didn’t know what to say, so he simply stayed silent.

Harland, completely oblivious to his daughter’s and Rohan’s thoughts, moved on.

"Start from the beginning. I want to know how you two got to know each other and how the hell you ended up in this situation."

But his face soon returned back to its stern manner, no longer showing any signs of satisfaction or playfulness like before.

"Well... long story short..."

***

Rohan, and eventually Elane after she decided to join the conversation, explained things from the very beginning to Harland. Starting all the way back from their first interaction in the Origin Realm.

Rohan spared Elane the dignity by dimming down her initial reactions to her Awakening, quickly skimming past them since they weren’t too relevant anyway.

He also deftly avoided mentioning anything about his killing of the Elite Soldier Ant, as while he trusted Elane and she trusted her father, things wouldn’t work like that for him.

Trust took time to build up, and having just met Harland, Rohan wasn’t going to divulge any major information just yet.

Though he wouldn’t be able to stop Elane from doing that, he had faith she wouldn’t for now.

After swiftly moving on from their travels in the Origin Realm and explaining the betrayal they experienced by Rudith and her group, to which Harland wasn’t surprised at all that it occurred, he finally got to the crux of the matter.

"—And that’s when we encountered Norm’s group, after having dealt with the suspiciously intelligent Spike Beast. We temporarily joined forces while investigating the Waystones’ destruction, which led us to the centre of the gate."

After a slight pause, Rohan turned to Elane.

"Speaking of Norm... did he make it?"

He received a nod in response, lifting a slight weight off his chest that he didn’t know was there.

Harland didn’t add much of his own input while Rohan spoke, choosing to let him tell the story in full.

"It all turned out to be the work of some buy named Liam: he had the terrifying ability to control the other thousand remaining Spike Beasts at once, and even the empty shell of the gate’s boss as well."

Rohan held back from mentioning the boss being a Pseudo-Commander tier beast. He wasn’t aware of whether anyone other than he and Elane knew of that fact, so he chose to conceal it for now.

If word got out that they were able to thwart a plot to sacrifice over a hundred Awakened in order to cultivate a Commander Tier beast, and that it was partially successful, then the headlines would be crazy.

Attention was the last thing Rohan wanted right now, especially after revealing his ability to evolve Genetic Armaments to Elane.

He didn’t exactly tell her outright, nor did he plan to unless she decided to confront him about it, but it was useless to deny it at this point.

After all, she did hand over the Spike Beast Bow as a Normal Tier weapon to Rohan after some slight reluctance, only to find that once he handed it back, it was miraculously an Elite tier Genetic Armament now.

"Why did you stop speaking?" Harland asked.

"Huh? Oh, well, I had already passed out by that point, so I don’t know what happened after that." Rohan responded, telling half-truths.

The fact was that the final battle against Liam contained so many of his secrets that even trying to explain them would just draw in more suspicion. His best course of action was just to avoid it entirely.

Both Rohan and Harland glanced over at Elane after he was finished explaining — one hoping that she caught onto the hint to keep some things secret, and the other’s thoughts completely unknown to the duo.