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98.2% water, 1.8% solid consisting of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, chlorine, and other trace elements… consistent with human tears. “Tears?” Theodore was astonished. Even though he had collected the few drops of water for examination and had suspicions about what those drops were... yet he was not entirely convinced it was possible. This was because Dark Sun did not shed tears, not unless Theodore or Devon ordered him to shed tears. Then why were there teardrops on Dark Sun’s desk? Dark Sun would not cry. Does that mean that the emotion switch has been activated? Has Dark Sun reverted back to being Dar? But how was that possible? Absolutely nothing had happened to trigger it. Besides the two of them, no one had visited or spent time with Dark Sun at home. No one… Theodore suddenly thought of Ezart’s words. Dar is just throwing a temper tantrum. Staring blankly, Theodore thought about it. Maybe… “Theodore, where’s Dar? Why isn’t he at home? Where’d he go?” Devon’s voice suddenly drifted through from the telephone. Theodore looked towards the phone, which showed that it was actually a call from upstairs. “Solaris Emperor?” he gaped. “Wh- why did you return so quickly? Didn’t you have a meeting?” Devon promptly bellowed, “I was so worried about Dar that my heart was hurting; my stomach was hurting. There was no way I could hold a conference like that! Other than quickly returning to visit him, there was nothing else I wanted to do! Where’s Dar?” “Ezart forgot his backpack earlier. Dar went to deliver it. He should be back soon.” “I see.” Devon nodded, his expression gloomy. “I think you should go take some painkillers,” Theodore suggested sincerely. “I haven’t eaten anything. If I take painkillers, my stomach is doomed!” “I’ll get DS II to cook you some noodles.” “No, no!” Devon was so agitated that he practically leapt up. Turning to face Theodore, who looked on in shock, he explained somewhat tiredly. “I don’t want to treat DS II as Dar anymore.” “But I want you to treat him as Dar.” Devon was stunned. He lifted his head and looked at Theodore shrewdly. The corners of Theodore’s lips curved slightly upwards. “Regarding the matter of restoring Dar, I have some ideas…” he said slowly.********************
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“Dar… what a surprise! You actually bought me supper?” Theodore was currently gorging on a bowl of noodles. He smiled apologetically. “I’m terribly sorry; DS II has already cooked some noodles for me. Thank goodness he’s here, or else I would have starved to death! Why don’t you put the food over there? If I get hungry later, I’ll think about eating it.” Dark Sun put down the meal containers. “Okay then. Go modify your guns!” Theodore dismissed Dark Sun with a wave and then lowered his head once more, continuing to eat noodles as he pored over a pile of experimental data. Dark Sun nodded his head, turned away, and left. When he sat down on the sofa and returned upstairs, Theodore put down his noodles and lifted his head to watch the underside of the ascending sofa with a concerned expression.********************
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In the morning, when the time came to head to school, Ezart did not make an appearance. Dark Sun waited for 20 minutes, but Ezart still did not turn up. After a while, Dark Sun reasoned that since Ezart had fought in the arena until late the previous night, perhaps he wouldn’t attend classes today. So Dark Sun decided to head to school by himself. As soon as he stepped into the classroom, Dark Sun automatically looked towards his own seat… and spotted Ezart already sitting at his own desk next to it, sleeping so deeply that he produced a symphony of snores. Dark Sun’s footsteps slowed for a moment, but he still went to his own seat, and without disturbing Ezart’s nap, he simply opened his backpack and put the materials he needed for class on the desk. Today the classroom was also extremely quiet. All of the students were as well-behaved as they were yesterday. On closer inspection, one could see their gazes continuously drifting towards the window, but today the view outside the window appeared to be as peaceful as the inside of the classroom. Not much time had passed before the bell rang, indicating the beginning of class. The teacher stood at the doorway and poked his head in, sizing up the overall situation and determining whether or not to have class today. The students today were as well-behaved as before, but there was no wailing female student at the window this time. When the teacher stepped up to the podium, exchanging meaningful looks with the students, he suggested carefully, “Let’s start class first and see how things play out; later we can decide whether or not to end class early. Is that okay with everyone?” The students nodded simultaneously. Most likely this was the first time they had ever shown this much respect to a teacher. The teacher took out a textbook from his briefcase. “All right then, n-now let’s start the combat history class,” he declared. “First let’s read some text. Ac-actually I’ll just read it myself. In year 2007…” Because Eloise was absent, it only took minutes before the students were unable to contain their impatience. The word ‘law-abiding’ was not really in their vocabulary. How could they be expected to remain well behaved for an entire class when there was no immediate danger to their lives? All of the students seemed to have ants in their pants, and one by one they started to squirm. At first they didn’t dare to move too wildly and only chatted with the person sitting next to them or sneakily pulled out weapon catalogs from their drawers, handing them to the person at the neighboring desk. After three minutes… “Fuck you. A 20% discount? Is there such a thing as discounts for guns? You might as well request free bullets for buying a gun. Collect 10 and get a freebie, damn it!” “How dare you say that? What kind of price is this, huh? Are you an extortionist? You might as well use your own gun to rob me; that might be faster!” “You’re right about that… Hey! I’m robbing you now—take out your wallet!” “...Bastard, you think you’re the only one with a gun here?” The teacher hid behind the podium. “Students, gunfights are prohibited during class,” he said in a small voice. And maybe it was because of the excessive strain from the previous day, but it was not long before the classroom became even more chaotic. The teacher did not dare to move an inch from his hiding spot behind the podium, trying to avoid getting hit by a stray bullet. Even though the entire classroom was in a state of utter chaos, the desks where Ezart and Daren sat were especially clean and tidy. So clean that it seemed that even stray bullets would veer off course to avoid this danger zone. Since the teacher wasn’t teaching the lesson anymore, Daren waited for a moment, then put down his pencil and took out the virtual lover game console from his backpack. Only, he played without expression, as if playing it was just a kind of routine task and not much different from taking notes during class. Daren had previously been ridiculed when he played his Xiao Ai game console in front of other students, but they hadn’t dared to bully him for a while now. Not counting the demon Ezart protecting him, Eloise, who occasionally came to class to whine, was frightening enough. Actually, she was much more terrifying than Ezart. At least Ezart did not publicly announce that he was protecting Daren, and, most of the time, he would probably be too lazy to care if Daren was only verbally attacked. In contrast, Eloise had actually jumped onto the podium and announced that if even one hair on Daren’s head was hurt, then she would make them pay a heavy price. As for Eloise’s recent actions, no one doubted her conviction. It was as if she was wearing a sign saying ‘I just want to beat people up’. “This is an announcement from the Principal’s office. Sorry to interrupt the students’ lessons. Mr. Dark Sun, Mr. Dark Sun, please report to the Principal’s office as soon as possible.” At this time, silence had fallen over the entire class. The corners of their mouths twitched erratically, and they thought together, Dark Sun? When did Dark Sun become a student? Wasn’t he ‘personnel unrelated to the school’? When Daren heard the announcement, he slowly lifted his head and pressed Xiao Ai’s off button. After he put Xiao Ai back into his backpack, he lifted his bag, stood up, and walked out of the classroom. He did not attract any attention from other people even as he did so. In this class where class time and break time were not the slightest bit different, everyone had always come and gone as they pleased. Only, in Daren’s immediate path, even stray bullets seemed to veer away and take detours, not daring to cross the minefield. When Daren walked out of the classroom, Ezart slowly lifted his head and looked at his retreating back. Ezart was just in time to see Elian’s trio sneakily stalking Daren. Elian and the others noticed that Ezart was awake and entered the classroom, causing the students who really belonged to the class to flee. They were even afraid to move inside a 10-meter radius around the classroom as they tried to avoid being drawn into what would be the most terrifying battle in the academy. “Have you also received the Solaris Emperor’s instructions?” Elian asked upfront. Ezart shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, yesterday night at around 7 or 8. Dar’s big bro sent someone to contact me. He told me not to go to school with him, not to speak to him, not to do this and that, and basically to just ignore him! His brother is really so long winded!” “But this is so hard!” Eloise was the first to burst out loudly. “Dar is so cute. How can I stand ignoring him? I want to chat with him, I want to give him a hug, I want to pinch his cheeks, I want to…” Eli covered his ears and tried to hide somewhere further away. He wanted to avoid being bombarded with both Eloise’s loud wails and inner thoughts, as she was the kind of person whose actions matched her words. “Yeah.” Elian and Ezart completely blocked out the shrieking noises. “But what’s worrying me is whether or not this plan will really work,” Elian remarked, slightly concerned. “What if the plan fails and Dar starts behaving even more coldly?” “Don’t overthink it!” Ezart drawled, rolled his eyes. “Let’s just try it! Even if Dar gets mad and decides to beat me up, that’s still better than his more-dead-than-alive behavior now!” Hearing this, Elian laughed bitterly. “What I’m worried about isn’t that he’ll beat us up. I’m just afraid that if we ignore him he’ll decide that we aren’t his friends and won’t even bother greeting us.” Ezart snorted “Then we’ll do the reverse and beat him up,” he said coldly. “I just can’t believe that that kid would dare to treat us as enemies.” Elian laughed bitterly. He did not share Ezart’s confidnce. If Dar was completely trapped within the mind-set of Dark Sun, then he couldn’t believe in the idea that Dar would never exchange blows with them. Dark Sun was heartless. If one was considered his enemy, it wouldn’t be unusual to be killed by him. At least, that was what Dr. Avery had warned them about. ”I think it’s best if I go check it out.” Elian frowned. Even though the Principal had only made an announcement summoning Dark Sun, surely the Principal wouldn’t refuse to let him listen in. Eloise stopped her shrieking and nodded vigorously. “Let’s go look, let’s go look!” “Going to check on him?” Ezart scoffed. “How poor do you think Dark Sun’s level of awareness is? It’d be strange if you weren’t found out! If you ruin the plans of Dar’s brother, let’s see if you can escape with your lives!” Elian wrinkled his brows frowned deeply. After a long moment, he released a breath, turned his head to look at Eli. “Eli, hold onto Eloise properly and don’t let her sneak off to visit Dar.” Eli lowered the hands that were covering his ears. He walked back towards the rest of them and used both hands to grab onto the hem of Eloise’s clothing. “Let go! Eli, you idiot.” However, Eli did not show the slightest intention of letting go. Eloise glared at him. “Are you my partner or are you Elian’s?” she demanded. “I want to say that I’m Elian’s, but, unfortunately, I’m yours,” Eli replied coldly. “…” To the side, Elian nagged Ezart. “You and Dar are in the same class, so you can pay a little more attention to him. If something really is off about him, then screw the plan! In the end, it won’t be good if we really hurt Dar…” “You’re just as annoying as Dar’s brother!” After yelling that, Ezart was too lazy to bother paying attention to Elian any more. He slumped onto the desk and resumed snoozing. Eloise stood at the side laughing loudly. “Haha! No wonder Dar said from the very beginning that Elian was similar to his brother! You two really are similar!” Hearing this, Elian flushed. “...Eloise!” he growled threateningly. Eloise held her head in her hands and screamed “Eli, Elian’s going to hit me!” “He won’t hit you.” Eli said, and explained expressionlessly. “To tell the truth, he really likes it when Dar calls him Gege. He’s currently thinking to himself that you’ve just noticed it, so he’s feeling very embarrassed inside. He wants to quickly explain himself using the excuse that he’s just worried about the Solaris Emperor’s retaliation, and so on.” “… Eli, I think the person El wants to hit now is you.”*********** Eclipse Hunter v04c02 END ************
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