It's already dusk and Sebastian is laying down on the training room floor. Completely defeated and contemplating just giving up entirely.
"Giving up?" asks Yulia, now back from the Arctic mission.
"Just let the idiot grieve for a few minutes," Eva, right beside Yulia, both sitting on the floor, chimes in. "He'll get over it."
"Have you tried doing something easier first?" Yulia asks the agent lying down out of frustration and disappointment.
"Easier how?"
"I don't know, a smaller, simpler application of what you're trying to do?" she explains.
"That's like telling someone who doesn't know how to ride a bike to learn how to ride one with training wheels," Sebastian is not a fan of Yulia's suggestion.
"That doesn't work."
"That's exactly how that works," Eva interjects. "Are you stupid?"
"Oh, wait. Like I have to ask. Of course you are."
"WRONG. You learn by riding a big one and falling face first on the ground and getting a shit ton of bruises," he adds.
"Don't listen to him," Eva tells Yulia. "It's just his idiot instinct speaking and taking over."
"How do you think I learned how to do the shit I do?"
"By being a brainless idiot with flawed logic," Eva mockingly answers.
"First time I went to the Void, I nearly fucking died. BUT I didn't, and that experience helped me get a better grasp on what to do next," Sebastian explains.
"That makes no sense and one doesn't have anything to do with the other," the contrarian Eva responds.
"Wait," Yulia interrupts the banter.
"Has this always been the way you learned things?"
"Yep," he answers.
"And works everytime."
"I COULD probably give you a better advice but it's hard because this isn't how I used to do it when I was starting out and getting used to it," says Yulia.
"See?" Eva inserts.
The disheartened agent's phone starts ringing and vibrating on the ground. Five seconds have passed and he still hasn't made a single move.
"Aren't you gonna answer that?" Eva asks.
"Nope."
The phone rang for another five seconds until it stopped. The caller, like the one he's calling, has given up.
Seconds after, Eva gets a call — from Benedict.
"Hey."
"Yep."
"The idiot is too busy sulking because he sucks and can't get whatever he's trying to do to work."
"Alright, I'll tell him," Eva hangs up.
"It's Benedict, said he's got a special S-rank for you and to get ov—"
Eva hasn't even finished telling him what Benedict told her and he was already starting to get up.
"I'm up, I'm up," says Sebastian, grabbing his belongings on the floor.
"Like a moth to a flame," Eva comments.
The two agents keeping watch also get up to make their way out.
SHHOOM
The excited agent warps right inside Benedict's office. He was too much in a rush to waste time going through the door.
"Why the hell weren't you picking up??"
"What, I didn't know you had an S in your hands."
"So, if it wasn't an S-rank, you wouldn't have came here?"
"That's a dumb question and you know it. Now what do you have for me?"
"This is EXTREMELY urgent and that's why we have no choice but to send YOU"
"Oh, please. Let's stop the excuses and just get on with it."
"There's a monster right outside the Ice Sheet facility," Benedict explains.
"Right now, we're still holding it off and it can't go any further because of the barrier on the perimeter. But every second counts and we can't let this thing get inside the facility."
"And one more thing," Benedict wasn't done.
"This thing looks the same as Crowe's monster."
"The last one?" Sebastian asks, clarifying.
"Yes. And we haven't seen him so far but we're assu—"
"Crowe's there," Sebastian finishes his sentence.
"It's fine. I got it," the agent has a bone to pick with the wanted doctor.
"Normally, I'd negotiate my restriction first. But considering this is Crowe's monster, the son of a bitch comes first," there is no trace of the regular Sebastian in his voice. He had a bone to pick with the wanted doctor.
"Give me the numbers."
Sitting at the southernmost part of the planet is the icy continent of Antarctica where one of Eden's several research facilities is located — The Ice Sheet.
The Ice Sheet is one of, if not the most important facility owned by Eden. It is for this reason that it is perhaps the most secure facility under Eden's watchful eye, second only to Atlantis but only because Atlantis is given an extra layer of security by nature itself, sitting below and down at the dark depths of the ocean.
Like its underwater counterpart in terms of security, The Ice Sheet is monitored and guarded by several drones and machines spanning over a thousand meters around its perimeter. Not only that, but there are also several personnel stationed and scattered inside the perimeter. And like Atlantis, it is also protected by an impregnable barrier.
Normally, any outside threat that would dare set their sight on the facility would be dead as soon as they stepped foot inside the thousand-meter perimeter. The farthest a monster is estimated to reach would be not over the 500-meter mark. And this is only if the monster is classified as over an S-rank, the extremely rare classification of Ancient.
In the Circle's 30-year history of battling monsters, there has only ever been one monster that broke out of the standard set by the S-rank classification. This was the monster behind the Red Square mission, the same monster that is theorized to be Crowe's creation.
Additionally, even if a monster was able to cross the perimeter and reach the facility itself, it would take an enormous amount of effort as well to break through the barrier surrounding the facility. This would be more than enough time for Eden and the Circle to exert its resources to the extent and exterminate the invading threat.
However, the current situation regarding Crowe's monster was a surprising and incredibly threatening exception. The monster has completely skipped through the countless defense measures spanning the thousand-meter perimeter of the facility and appeared right at the 80-meter mark where, although it wasn't completely wreaking havoc, it was withstanding the attacks, using a barrier made out of void-energy and destroying every drone and taking the life of any personnel that arrives to halt its invasion.
There was no visual confirmation, but the most plausible explanation for such an event happening is that Crowe used his portal to sneak the monster in. There was a brief signal of an immense concentration of void energy that only lasted for a mere two seconds, but other than that, there was no sign of Crowe himself.
The monster is now somewhere around the 60 to 55-meter mark, the large, rectangular facility made of metal completely in sight.
SHHOOM
Sebastian warps only a couple of meters away from the facility surrounded by several armed personnel, drones, and even a couple of small, tank-like vehicles.
The monster is still a considerable distance away, but Sebastian can already see it, destroying drones and putting people in the ice.
"I'm here," he calls HQ.
"Recall everyone."
"What?" Benedict responds.
"I said tell everyone to fall back," he explains.
"They'll just get in the way."
He turns around to the personnel guarding the facility.
"Hey! All of you!" he screams. Everyone turns their gaze to him.
"Unless you idiots have a death wish, no one shoots! No one runs in! No one intervenes!"
"Sit back and watch."
SHHOOM
Sebastian warps right in front of Crowe's monster. Exactly the same as the one he defeated and Crowe retrieved, except this time, it's noticeably taller and overall, bigger. Its body seemed bulkier and looked more sinister and dangerous than before. But he wasn't intimidated at all.
"Back for seconds, huh?" he says to the black humanoid monster looking down on him.