To Live Again, For the First Time!

Emilin tapped the corner of her lips and smiled.

Indeed there were truly crouching tigers and hidden dragons everywhere.

She had known that Sister Margo was no one ordinary from the moment she heard of the project they were going to launch, but she hadn't realized that such a problem would arise.

The hacker that supported Sister Margo was very powerful. Of course not enough for Emilin to be worried, but still, much better than anyone they had dealt with so far.

In fact, this expert was on another level.

Emilin didn't know what the requirements were to become a Master in the hacking field, if she had to guess, Emilin would assume the expert to at least be at that level.

The hacker clearly had his own style, which was seemingly very flexible, but the ease and speed at which he moved were quite shocking.

Like a fast-flowing current that split at some point and then met back up at another point further down the stream.

As for the lines that went too far to be recovered, those that went off track, they were immediately discarded with no hesitation.

Though since he was going against Theodore and not someone of a much higher caliber, the times the expert had to waste lines of code were few and far in between. 

Emilin was observing and controlling everything from the sidelines, and of course, she hid her presence well. She wouldn't get involved until her brother told her to or things got out of hand.

So far, things had yet to reach that point.

But Emilin did find it somewhat amusing that the other side, though clearly better than her brother, was only working slightly above his level, which was helping her brother adapt and improve rapidly.

It was good to have different opponents every once in a while, and this opponent was especially good for rapid improvement.

It was all about his style.

Like a current, when you are going against it, it is inevitable that you would have to exert a great force, however, the force acted upon you was more or less proportional to the force you exert against it.

You could let yourself get carried away and lose.

You could exert an equivalent force and stand your ground, and when you finally reached that point, you could slowly fight back.

Right now, Theodore was at the point where he was slowly fighting back to not get pushed back as much. In other words, he was retreating, but by less each time.

Aiming to stand his ground before he could possibly fight back.

But to his advantage, this was his home ground, it was his playing field that they were working on. 

The place he was most familiar with.

He had countless firewalls set up, and while they served of little use, they weren't completely obsolete.

Theo was improving rapidly, at least relative to his starting point, and taking into consideration, how much you can really improve in a short period of time.

Emilin didn't care what the other person's intentions were, but since it was currently helping her brother, Emilin would take this into account when she had to step in.

It was already an established fact that they were the ones in the wrong here, but she wasn't going to let them get caught.

Not ever.

Seeing as Emilin wasn't doing anything, Xander gave her a few more glances.

"You're talking to..."

"My brother..." Emilin didn't turn away from the computer as she revealed information that Xander would have thought would be put under a tight seal, "you may know him better as TWO."

Xander's eyes were just about to pop off.

'Excuse me, but can you please not say that as if it's nothing?? Fuck! It's a family of geniuses. And here I thought I was great, but when I'm with these people, my ego has to recede faster than my uncle's hairline.'

Xander lamented his old age.

If the other doctors that worked, well, anywhere in the world really, knew of this, they would probably want to slap him even harder than on regular days, which was saying something.

It wasn't unreasonable though, since he was decades younger than the other people in the same position at the age of 25.

"I feel so old..." he mumbled, which was heard by Levi Stanley, Xander's trusted assistant who sat to his right, his eyes twitched.

'If you're old, then what am I? Dead?'

Thankfully Xander only said this in front of another monster and his faithful assistant, or the number of beatings he owed wouldn't be in the single digits.

Levi's hand was also itching for no reason, in particular, no reason whatsoever.

'Xander seems to be getting into the habit of humblebragging...' Levi thought to himself.

But in the past few weeks, he was only getting more and more convinced that Xander was the so-called, main character.

Things were falling into place and even the humble bragging served to further convince Assistant Levi of his long-standing claim.

At this point, even if someone gave him a list of reasons why that wasn't the case, that Xander was no main character, it would be incredibly hard for that person to convince Levi.

This was something that Levi had believed for 10 years now.

The reasons why it was true only piled up, while all reasons why it could be false were either ignored or used to build up the evidence or invalidated.

In other words, Levi was deluding himself.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing in this case. He was guaranteed to be incredibly loyal, not to mention determined, hardworking, and goal orientated.

The goal being, to become an assistant good enough to support the main character, which he was slowly, but surely achieving.

From an outside point of view, it could be said that Levi was both incredibly successful and admirable.

If people didn't know what he was thinking in that pretty little head of his, they would only really have awe towards him when it came to the work he did.

Levi was someone who seemed to be prepared for anything and everything when it came to serving his boss.

Either way though, he was only human, that didn't stop him from having hot palms when someone humble bragged to this extent, though he did see where his employer was coming from.

He was equally shocked to discover that Lady Emilin's brother was the elusive TWO, who also sounded to be quite young.

(Theodore's voice is actually rather deep, but when he spoke to his sister, it was a few octaves higher.)

"Is your brother older?"

Xander knew that he probably shouldn't be asking too much, but this was also his attempt to save what was left of his pride.

In his heart, he hoped that one of them was either adopted and were in fact decades apart in age, or that their parents simply gave birth to them, I don't know, a few dozen years apart?

"Mhm, he's 3 years older."

Xander wanted to cry, but he held it back like one would a fart… that was something at least right?

Xander would probably bawl his eyes out if Theodore were in fact younger.

He couldn't jump out the window since the floor they were on wasn't high enough to guarantee a painless death..

As for Emilin, she had no scruples when telling Xander this private information.

She already took him as one of her own, even if he was a little... muddle-headed at times.

[Trust the people that you use, and don't use the people you don't trust.] That would be the saying that Emilin went by in situations like this. That and the fact that she had her own precautions.

Well, either way, she didn't have that many reservations with people that she met in person.

'It's about time. I should probably come clean with everything and take him in as a student already.' Emilin thought about passing everything over right about now.

She also hadn't been doing nothing this past week while Xander had been getting familiar with the documents.

She had used this past week to type up all the knowledge that she believed could be passed on to the following generation through Xander.

Of course, she wasn't sure if it could be accomplished in just one generation, but after she passed it on, it would no longer be her problem.

All she would have to do would be sit and count the profits whenever she was free.

Thinking to this point, while keeping the situation on her screen stable, she asked Xander his thoughts on the matter.

"So what do you think about doing the Master-apprentice ceremony tomorrow?"

Pffft

The water that Xander was drinking to cool himself down could no longer be held in as he spat it right out.

This landed right around Levi, whose eyes and hands both twitched once again, but Xander didn't have the time to be concerned about his assistant, who calmly took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe himself.

First, Xander had to make sure that no papers were damaged from the water, and well, spit.

Only after sighing in relief did he realize what he had done, giving Levi an apologetic look.

"I'll take silence as you having no qualms on the matter," Emilin added.

'Huh? HUH?? Waitwaitwait! How was that silence? That was me being too shocked to speak. Happiness just came too fast! One second, just give me one second!'

In fact, Xander was so stunned silent that he hadn't realized that he had only just said those words in his mind.