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"He noticed."

Just two words formed one of the shortest sentences possible. Two words that held a simple meaning, carried a piece of straightforward information.

Two words shouldn\'t be all that hard to stomach. And yet, those two words pictured one of the few worst scenarios possible that Castor and Alice could experience.

"Shit…" Alice muttered, turning her eyes away from Castor\'s face and sinking deeper into her levi-chair. She lowered her eyes before hiding her face in her hands. "I\'m sorry, I really am…"

"Stop it," Castor cut the girl\'s whimpering short. "There is no time to whine now," he announced before taking a deep breath and raising his face.

For but a second, Castor closed his eyes and held his breath. A few seconds passed.

"Haaa…." Castor released the breath that he held and opened his eyes back up.

All the turmoil that shook his soul the second the shit hit the fan was now gone, replaced by the cold clarity. His eyes lost all of their usual shine, all of the emotions that Alice could normally see in them.

\'Ugh…\' Alice gulped her saliva down as she stole a quick glance at the man\'s face. \'Seeing him like that…\' she swallowed her saliva yet again, instinctively trying to solve the problem of her parched throat. \'It\'s… new?\'

"Do you have anything prepared for the third phase?" Castor asked as he turned around and approached one of the smaller, side consoles before calmly typing a few words into the system.

"Only the skeletal structure of the scenario," Alice admitted while her eyes followed Castor\'s movements.

"So you don\'t have anything properly completed?" Castor asked in a flat, steady voice while keeping up with what he was doing at his console.

"Let me check," Alice muttered, turning her eyes toward her own set of holoscreens.

Alice\'s fingers danced upon the projection of her keyboard, quickly rearranging all the data displayed on her screens.

"I have two nearly finished scenarios that I was cooking for the two other agents we are tracking," she reported.

Her hands danced again, pulling up a set of the assets she already used on the other agents to the front of her screens.

"Worst case scenario, I could reuse the procedures we\'ve already implemented for the other agents…" Alice\'s voice ground to a halt, turning weaker and weaker with each word.

The girl then turned her head around, finally taking a proper look at Castor\'s… back.

"Surely, you are aware of the problems that are bound to arise if we do this," she muttered, her throat refusing to produce any greater sound.

"Yeah," Castor responded in his new, empty voice while still busying himself with whatever he was typing on his own console. "We could try to throw random shit at the wall and see what sticks," he muttered, changing his voice for the first time.

\'Is he focusing on something?\' Alice thought, her curiosity nearly taking over the dread of the situation they were in.

It was a normal thing for the agents of the planet subjected to their program to grow increasingly aware of the interference. It was a natural result of their meddling, something that the fleet failed to eliminate from the procedural results even after literal tens of thousands of attempts.

Given the massive baggage of experiences like this, the think-tank of the fleet decided not to wrestle with the impossible and opted to adopt this repeating result into the procedure instead.

It was thanks to this development, implemented measly twenty million unified years ago, that the procedure now included a point of contact. A simple solution to the problem of interference where the meddling party would officially establish contact with those who reached the fifth stage while fulfilling a few other criteria necessary for it to happen.

The problem with the current situation was that the agent in question only reached the third stage! And now, he received a solid confirmation that there indeed was a third party orchestrating the events!

"We can\'t change the past," Castor slowly muttered, oozing his words one by one while clearly focusing on the task at hand. "And now that he knows for sure that there is something greater going on, ignoring the situation will only lead to a disaster," he announced, his voice regaining its former calm and tone right as he swiped his hand to the side, sending a data package to one of Alice\'s screens.

The girl looked up… and froze.

"Wha… what is this?!" Alice freaked out a little as she stared at an extremely complex scenario, a project that neared ninety percent of its completion.

"Long story short, there was a time when the influence of my former partner has yet to bury all of my creativity," Castor shortly explained, already moving on to implementing the scenario within the agent\'s system. "Help me out, would you?" he then requested, clearly struggling to reach even a fraction of the operating speed that Alice could perform without even trying.

"Sure thing," Alice muttered in reply.

Her head was a mess. While the situation wasn\'t all that hard to understand, she couldn\'t help but be shocked by the development.

\'This project… it\'s insane for how crude it is,\' she thought, taking over the implementation process only to complete it within a few short seconds.

"It\'s ready," she then announced, turning her eyes over at Castor\'s face.

"The prologue should buy us enough time to prepare," Castor said, squinting his eyes as he locked his arms on his chest. "So, let\'s not keep our man waiting."

Alice blinked her eyes a few times before taking a deep sigh and pressing the confirmation button.

The screen displaying the situation of the agent in question flickered as the surge of quantum particles carried on the new data into the agent\'s system, clogging up the communication ray that kept the video up.

Then, the agent\'s eyes closed. His body fell back only to rest into a comfortable chair made straight out of the shadows of the merchant\'s domain.

"Now then," Alice muttered, turning her eyes from the screens over to Castor\'s face. "What do you want to prepare us for?" she asked, only for her eyes to widen up a little when she saw what Castor was doing.

"Isn\'t it obvious?" Castor asked while dressing himself up in a special suit, a suit he didn\'t expect to use until the very last moment before the wave of mana would shower the planet below them. "I\'m going to pay him a visit."