After the darkness felt more and more ahead, the fog started surrounding the whole town reaching inside each house.
Fletcher was silently walking through the streets expecting to get either Cleyn or Blayne and further manipulate them but fortunately none of them showed up.
Cleyn kept doing more & more research for the new scrolls.
Blayne, on the other hand stood in the room where he slept the other day.
Mrs Belton welcomed him with open arms into her house.
The reason behind that was not known yet.
Milo was curious enough to know who was the mysterious entity but he was too scared to approach.
He waited for Blayne to eat with them on the dinner table.
Eventually, at 11:45 pm Blayne showed up to the family dinner.
Blayne was waiting for the man of the house to show up.
When the clock hit exactly at 12 am, the food was brought.
Blayne thought that it was pretty weird and late to serve food but he didn't respond much knowing that the family was on a vacation.
Milo and Mino also joined the table.
The mother of the two also annexed them.
Blayne waited for others to start eating.
In a few seconds, a manly figure often six feet in height joined them holding a bright smile.
It was none other than Mr Belton.
He looked at Blayne and his smile eventually increased further more.
This was not the usual way he used to greet a guest.
This behaviour shocked the family quite a bit but they didn't react after seeing a good change inside him.
There was a complete awkward silence surrounding the whole table just like fog was surrounding the entire town.
Blayne decided to intervene with a cough.
"Uhm...so you are the father of these boys?" Blayne asked, picking up the juice.
"Yeah pal. Do you got kids too?" Mr Belton said with a grin.
"Uhm..I will decide to have a get a few someday." Blayne said, eating the food slowly.
"Not as easy to have them like playing video games." Mr Belton said that with a laugh.
He was expecting all the people to laugh at it but nobody did except Mino.
Blayne also gave a fake smile.
"So what do you do?" Mr Belton continued, stuffing in between fastly.
"I work as a scientist but these days I am more focused to exploring new places." Blayne said with a smile.
"Good to know Mr, keep up the good work." Mr Belton said, cleaning his face.
"And whats your good name?" Mr Belton asked patiently.
"My name is Blayne Benzinoi but you can call me Blayne Benz." Blayne said with a small smile.
After a bit of a small talk with majority of questions, Mr Belton decided to ascend towards the bedroom.
He got up, patted both the kids and went upstairs for sleep.
Mrs Belton also ate her food, kissed the children goodnight and went upstairs too.
Blayne decided to divert his attention to the children who were both silently eating food.
Mino left immediately as he was feeling really sleepy.
It was only Milo & Blayne left on the table.
Finally a good news for both of them to get the insights of each other.
"Hi kid." Blayne said with a smile.
"Hey sir." Milo responded with a smile as well.
"Do you like to read books?" Blayne said in a friendly way.
"Yeah particularly the one with mysteries." Milo said quickly.
"Good taste kid and what do you like in food?" Blayne said again with a generous smile.
"I enjoy eating the cabbage along with cucumber sometimes." Milo said showing his raw smile being nervous.
"Nice nice. What is your name?" Blayne asked sweetly.
"My name is Milo Morz but as this family adopted me they now show it as Milo Belton on the ID card." Milo responded, still sounding nervous.
"Alright alright. You seem to be an introvert, you little bear." Blayne said sitting cross legged.
"No no its just.....just-" Milo was about to stutter something but stopped.
"You can trust me. I wouldn't break you like the others." Blayne said looking at Milo with a blunt smile.
Milo looked directly into his eyes and he saw a friend, a friend he needed in years.
"So Mr Blayne. Mind if I take your name?" Milo said, pointing out his index finger at Blayne.
"Sure sure my little detective." Blayne said with a silent chuckle.
"So here is the thing. As I was the adopted kid of the house, my father never showed me any true love neither did he respect my presence. On the split side, my mother is really sweet but don't like me too. Furthermore, the other goof thinks I am here to take his place in the family which is not true. I just want to be loved and taken care of." Milo said in the same breath, sighing in the end.
"Thats quite a sad case to be honest. Do you know I knew a girl south to this town. She wasn't able to have kids due to some reason so he and her husband eventually adopted one who was aged 7. Fortunately, after one year they had a baby girl. The husband advised the wife to send him back to the orphanage but she didn't agree to that. Years later, that son controls the entire business of the father and the girl is severly diagnosed with a life threatening disease." Blayne said, drinking water in between.
"So what does it signify? Me getting business or Mino getting cancer? Can we give the disease role to the parents?" Milo said with a tilting head.
This made Blayne spit a bit of the water out.
He wasn't ready for this response.
"Listen kid, this means that nobody knows what you are destined to get ahead nor anybody knows how and when your health will degenerate someday." Blayne said, trying to hold a laugh.
He heard a dark joke after a long time and that too coming from a kid.
The talked around for a while with Milo telling him about everything except the physical and mental abuse.
He also further asked about Blayne and his lab.
He was curious and excited enough to visit it someday.
After that both decided to say goodbye and slept in their particular rooms.
They talked their hearts out till one and a half hour.
Milo felt happy and cheerful after a long time.
............................................................................................
Cleyn studied the scroll deeply and now was signified to search for the meaning of it.
He had no idea how he would do so but he kept trying reading different articles, languages even telling his spies to search the language for the 1st scroll.
For the 2nd scroll, he had decoded it as 'Operation Master Clock' but the meaning behind it was still unknown.
He kept roaming in the room, the same one where he left Quilia in.
He was continously thinking about what the 'Master Clock' might be.
After a while, a thought flashed inside his brain.
With the 'Master' reference, Cleyn thought that it might be related to Fletcher.
BUT WHY WOULD HE GIVE A SCROLL WITH HINTING SOMETHING FOR HIM OR AGAINST HIM??
Cleyn looked at the box which was lying on the old spider web filled side table.
He decided to open it up.
It was more like a square puzzle.
It required a set of combinations to form two shapes with three alphabets and three digits to decode it completely.
For the numbers part, he picked the old three ones.
He tried different set of patterns and combinations but none worked out for him.
He randomly decided to drop
[15 10 8].
To his surprise the 2nd lock opened up.
After working for a long time particularly more than hours, he found a combination for the alphabets aswell
The combination was
[O J H].
The way these combinations were making sense for the first one were the total number of digits and the position of alphabet on which it supposedly fell.
The box opened and there Cleyn found another scroll.
The new scroll was also written in a language not understood by him.
He knew that now a brand new mystery was awaiting him.
Cleyn looked out of the window and the dawn welcomed him with a giant wink.
It was the day to complete the 'Operation Master Clock', end the mysterious case and get his old friend Blayne back again.
It was one of the days which he wouldn't ever forget and it was going to be a long one for him.