I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight-Chapter 15: The Secret Meeting
In the corner of the luxurious room, where the silence was broken only by the children’s uneven, trembling breaths, Morfind Valtier sat in his leather chair.
He watched Kyle and Victor as they curled into themselves at the far edge of the vast bed, refusing to sleep—refusing even to close their eyes, terrified that the palace would turn into that red-lit laboratory the moment they drifted off.
Morfind’s heart—one that had endured brutal battles against B-rank ghouls and lived to tell the tale—was now being crushed by a pain he had never known before.
The pain of helplessness.
He slowly lit his wooden pipe and exhaled a cloud of fragrant gray smoke into the air, trying to calm his burning nerves.
His gaze drifted toward the window, still battered by raindrops, and his thoughts wandered back to the hell he had pulled those two children from... and to the person who had made him aware of that hell in the first place.
"What will become of you now... Kayla?" Morfind whispered to himself, his eyes gleaming with deep sorrow.
He remembered that secret meeting two weeks ago.
In a dark back alley in a poor district, a young woman of twenty-seven stood before him, wearing a faded coat, glancing around like a hunted animal.
It was Kayla, the caretaker from the "Dawn Hope" orphanage.
She wasn’t seeking money. She wasn’t asking for protection for herself.
She fell to her knees in the mud before a B-rank hunter, clutching his coat as she wept with a desperation that shattered her pride.
She told him everything.
About the secret laboratory beneath the orphanage.
About the grotesque biological experiments.
About the green liquid... and the children who entered through the adoption door only to leave in torn black bags.
She begged him—pleaded with him like a dying mother—to intervene and save two specific children: Kyle and Victor.
"They’ll turn five next week, sir," Kayla had said, her voice choking on tears.
"The fifth year is the perfect age to fuse monster cores into their fragile bodies. They’re preparing them for harvesting. Please... please... take them! Pay any price, use your influence—but don’t let them reach that day!"
When Morfind heard her story, his fury surged to the point that his aura nearly tore the alley apart.
A B-rank hunter with considerable wealth and influence.
He returned to his mansion, and the very next morning, he ordered a team of investigators from his guild to inspect that "orphanage," which was nothing more than a human flesh mine.
He intended to storm the place and level it to the ground.
But...
The response he received struck him like a cold slap from an invincible force.
"The government refused."
Morfind remembered how a representative from the magical intelligence agency stood before him, dressed in an elegant suit and dark glasses, handing him an official document sealed with the mark of the High Command.
The document didn’t just deny the inspection—it explicitly forbade him from approaching the orphanage in any official capacity.
And when Morfind demanded to adopt all the children to save them, the representative smiled with deadly coldness and said:
"Article 14 of the Care Law, Mr. Valtier: Any hunter ranked C or above is prohibited from adopting more than two children. We do not want you building private armies of awakened minors. If it is discovered that you have adopted a third child—or even ordered someone to adopt on your behalf—your estate will be raided, all children will be reclaimed, and you will be fined and stripped of your guild rank."
In that moment, Morfind understood the bitter truth.
The government wasn’t unaware of what was happening at "Dawn Hope."
It was complicit.
The magical intelligence agency, the major guilds, the High Command... all of them were part of this demonic machine grinding children’s bones to create modified monsters.
As a mere B-rank hunter, Morfind couldn’t declare war against a government controlled by S- and SS-rank monsters.
That would be suicide—and it would get Kyle and Victor killed as well.
So he swallowed his pride... and used the maximum he was allowed: two children only.
"Kayla... you brave soul," Morfind murmured as he extinguished his pipe.
"I pray with all my heart that you are safe. May God forgive me for leaving the others behind..."
But he had no intention of giving up.
He began planning in the shadows.
He would pay dozens of ordinary people with no official ties to him.
He would purchase houses under false names.
He would have them adopt the children one by one.
The plan would take time—and extreme caution to avoid detection by intelligence agencies—but he would do it.
He only prayed that his plan would succeed before the orphanage was emptied completely.
Morfind rose from his chair and slowly approached the bed where the two children trembled.
This was his greatest challenge.
Not fighting monsters... but proving his humanity to these broken beings.
...
...
...
The first days and weeks in Valtier Mansion were far from a happy fairy tale.
They were a brutal psychological war.
Kyle and Victor saw nothing in the palace’s luxury except a golden cage.
In the early days, they refused to eat entirely.
They believed the roasted meat and warm soup were poisoned—or merely "fattening food" before being taken to the lab.
They sat in the corner of the room, sometimes even wetting themselves in terror whenever the door opened.
Morfind ordered all servants removed from that wing.
He allowed no one near them but himself.
On the fourth day of their hunger strike, he entered the room carrying a tray of food.
He didn’t place it in front of them.
Instead, he sat on the wooden floor at a distance and took a spoonful of soup, eating it himself.
Then he cut a piece of meat and ate it.
He continued eating calmly while reading a book, completely ignoring them.
He did this at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
On the sixth day, when hunger gnawed at their small intestines, Victor slowly crawled forward, trembling like a drenched sparrow, toward the tray Morfind had left on the floor.
He took a small piece of bread and darted back into Kyle’s arms. They shared it in silence.
Morfind watched from behind the slightly open door, tears silently streaming down his face.
That was the first step.
The steps that followed came one after another—each harder than the last.
The children feared bathing, terrified that the water would turn into the green liquid Serin had drowned in.
So Morfind would fill the tub with warm water and sit beside it, reading them stories about brave heroes and distant lands... until they realized that water was just water.
He never forced them to sleep in the bed.
When he noticed they preferred sleeping on the hard floor beneath it—because it reminded them of the dormitory floor and gave them a familiar sense of safety—Morfind brought thick blankets and slept on the floor beside them.
He wanted to send them one message:
"You are not alone in the dark anymore."
Slowly, with patient, fatherly care, the ice began to melt.
Victor was the first to speak.
In the fourth month, while Morfind was repairing a broken wooden toy, Victor approached him slowly, touched his sleeve, and whispered in a timid, broken voice:
"Will... will you break it again?"
Morfind smiled gently and said,
"No, my son. Some things break... but our hands were made to fix, not to destroy."
Kyle was the hardest.
His young mind had carved Edgar’s torn image deep within it.
He watched Morfind with his crimson eyes, extremely cautious, analyzing every movement, expecting betrayal at any moment.
But the consistent warmth... the sincerity in the old man’s eyes... the meals that were never followed by pain...
All of it slowly began to rebuild the shattered walls of his soul.
