Chapter 506: Petra's Call

Kouhei was the one who had asked Rui to do this, after all, and he couldn’t pretend that the consequences had nothing to do with him.

“Rui is currently in a state where time continues moving for the rest of us, but it doesn’t move for her,” Yuka explained, trying to put the situation into words. “That means that when she finally deactivates her ability, it’ll feel as though she was just standing there and blinked her eyes for a moment. She won’t even need to change her clothes, because the effect extends to everything associated with her, including the bacteria on her body. Basically, as long as nobody interferes with her, she’ll remain completely frozen in place. Days, weeks, or even months could pass for the rest of us, but from her perspective, none of that time would have passed at all.”

In other words, Rui could effectively skip the passage of time while remaining in the exact condition she had been in when she activated her ability.

It was an incredible power, but the implications were considerably more complicated when someone else became involved.

For Kozue, it meant remaining in that frozen state until they found a way to help her. Meanwhile, Kouhei and everyone else would have to continue searching for a solution while the world moved forward around them.

The longer it took to find a cure, the heavier the responsibility would become.

“I promise I’ll repay you for everything you’ve done for me,” Kouhei said quietly as he looked at Kozue, who remained motionless in front of him. “I won’t let all of this effort go to waste, and I’ll find a way to make things right.”

At the moment, they were still nowhere near finding anything that could genuinely help Kozue. They had a few possibilities to consider, but none of them had led to a meaningful breakthrough yet.

Even so, Kouhei wasn’t prepared to give up.

While he was thinking about what to do next, however, he suddenly felt something vibrate inside his pocket.

The unexpected interruption pulled him out of his thoughts, prompting him to reach for his phone and check the incoming call.

The caller was Petra.

Kouhei stepped out of the room for a moment, making sure he was somewhere a little quieter before finally answering the incoming call on his phone. He glanced at the screen to check who was calling, although he already had a pretty good idea of what the conversation would be about once he saw Petra’s name appear.

“Couldn’t you have picked up a little earlier?” Petra asked the moment he answered, sounding as though she had been waiting for him to respond for quite some time.

“I was inside Sano-san’s mansion, so I couldn’t exactly answer your call whenever I wanted,” Kouhei explained while looking around to make sure nobody else was nearby. “I had to find somewhere without other people around before I could talk to you properly, and that took a little longer than I expected.”

“Are you sure Yuka isn’t listening to our conversation right now?” Petra asked.

Honestly, Kouhei thought there was a pretty good chance she was. Although he still had no idea what kind of abilities the members of the Sano Yuka Faction possessed, he wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of them had some kind of surveillance ability that allowed them to monitor the area surrounding the mansion. For all he knew, someone could be keeping track of the people coming and going, listening to conversations, or watching everything that happened inside the property without anyone realizing it.

It wasn’t exactly an unreasonable possibility, especially considering the kind of people involved in the faction.

Kouhei sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case, though, particularly because he had already had sex with Hina inside that very mansion during his previous visit. If someone had been monitoring the place back then, he would rather not imagine how much information they might have gathered about what he and Hina had been doing together. The thought alone was enough to make him question whether finding a private room had actually been worth the trouble.

“Well, let’s leave that aside for now,” Kouhei said, deciding to change the subject before their conversation wandered into territory he would rather avoid. “Anyway, why did you call me out of nowhere? You don’t usually contact me without having something specific to discuss.”

“Can’t I call you just because I miss you?” Petra replied playfully, sounding almost offended that he would question her reasons for calling him.

“I seriously doubt you’d go out of your way to call me just because you missed me,” Kouhei answered, clearly unconvinced by her explanation. “Besides, I haven’t exactly done anything recently that would make you miss me that much, so I don’t think that’s the real reason you’re calling.”

“Aren’t you being a little cold toward me?” Petra complained, letting out a small sigh as though his response had genuinely hurt her feelings. “We’ve already had sex multiple times, so why do you always act like we’re strangers whenever we talk to each other?”

Well, it wasn’t as though she was entirely wrong about that.

Kouhei and Petra had indeed slept together on several occasions, but their relationship wasn’t exactly built on romantic feelings or the kind of affection people usually associated with couples. Their arrangement was based primarily on mutual benefits, with both of them understanding that they had their own reasons for participating in the whole affair.

They regularly had threesomes with Aegis because they needed access to the power contained within the Holy Book, an extraordinary power said to possess all the information in the universe that was currently have Aegis as its vessel. Considering the sheer amount of knowledge it supposedly contained, gaining access to even a fraction of its power could potentially help them uncover answers that would otherwise remain impossible to obtain.

Of course, getting their hands on that information wasn’t as simple as opening the book and reading whatever they wanted. They had to work around certain limitations, and Aegis was the key to making the entire process possible.

The problem was that accessing the Holy Book’s power required Aegis to accumulate a considerable amount of mana. Without enough energy, she couldn’t properly establish a connection with the power or use its abilities for any meaningful length of time. The most effective method they had so far involved forming a Connective Love Link, which allowed Aegis to obtain a substantial amount of mana and temporarily access the Holy Book’s incredible power. And in order to do that, they had to have threesome.

That was why Kouhei kept traveling back and forth between Japan and Italy, meeting up with Petra and Aegis whenever another session became necessary. It was a rather unusual arrangement, to put it mildly, but considering what they were trying to accomplish, he couldn’t exactly complain about the method when it had proven useful.

Still, he sometimes wondered how strange his life would sound if he ever tried explaining it to someone who wasn’t involved in their affairs. Most people would probably have a difficult time believing that he was traveling between countries to participate in intimate sessions with two women just to gain temporary access to a book containing the knowledge of the entire universe.

Then again, his life had become so ridiculous that he wasn’t entirely sure where the line between ordinary and absurd was supposed to be anymore.

“Well, anyway, I didn’t call you just to complain about how you treat me,” Petra continued, finally getting around to the actual reason behind her call. “I’ve arranged a meeting for the three of us this weekend, so I want you to get here as soon as possible.”

Kouhei straightened up slightly as he listened, realizing that she was being more serious than he had initially expected.

“I think we’re getting closer and closer to a breakthrough,” Petra explained. “I have a feeling that Aegis is finally beginning to develop the kind of access that will allow her to see what you’ve been looking for.”

That statement immediately caught his attention, and he found himself considering her words more carefully than before.

They had been repeating the same process for quite some time, but this was the first occasion on which Petra had sounded so confident about their progress. Until then, most of their sessions had resulted in relatively small improvements, and they hadn’t received any definite indication that Aegis was finally approaching the outcome they wanted.

Naturally, Kouhei couldn’t be entirely certain whether Petra’s optimism was justified, since he hadn’t witnessed any breakthrough himself. However, the confidence in her voice made him wonder whether something had genuinely changed behind the scenes, especially if Aegis was finally getting closer to accessing the information they needed.

Perhaps their next session would finally produce something worthwhile instead of leaving them with another list of questions and a promise to try again later.

“Anyway, make sure you come here this weekend, alright?” Petra reminded him, bringing their conversation back to the matter of his attendance. “I don’t want you making other plans and conveniently forgetting about our meeting, especially when we’re this close to finding something important.”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” Kouhei replied with a quiet sigh, already realizing that she probably wouldn’t stop reminding him until he agreed.

“Good. I’ll be waiting for you, then.”