Is there something she would like to ask... Bai Yin said that like it was the most casual thing in the world, and not her getting ready to expose the secrets of an entire secret cult. Well, maybe not the deepest secrets, as they seemed to have locked those memories away using some kind of magic, for situations like this.

But when they locked those memories, they were undoubtedly considering that the person who would be interrogating or controlling Bai Yin would be one of these other ’clans’, and that they would know a lot of the basic information that Valerie didn’t.

Thus all of that basic information was left out, free for the picking for someone like Valerie. The main question was not if there was something she wanted to ask, it was what did she ask first?

Why was Bai Yin actually sent home with her? Did she have orders to kill her? What was going to happen to Percy at that cult place? How long had they known about magic? How much did they actually know? How did they come about it in the first place?

Who else was involved? Who were these other clans? What was going to happen when the world awakened? Did they know about the coming monsters and were just pretending? Where did they get all their knowledge from?

There were just so many questions swimming around in her mind that these did not even begin to cover it. But she had to start somewhere, and after racking her mind for a few minutes, Valerie finally landed on a question that had been bugging her since she had started this whole ordeal with the Monarch family.

"Who is Klein McLean?" Valerie finally asked with narrowed eyes.

"We don’t know." Bai Yin quickly answered.

Valerie immediately cursed under her breath, chastising herself for wasting her time with such a stupid question, before she paused and thought about the answer. ’We’ not ’I’. Which meant this was more than just her new servant lacking information or having it locked away.

"Explain." Valerie demanded.

"Yes my Lady. Klein McLean is an enigma of a figure. He was a nobody, someone who did nothing with his life and spent it entirely in the background. Had he died on the streets, no one would have missed him or noticed.

Then one day, out of nowhere, he became an immense figure in the background of many different industries, amassing an extraordinary amount of wealth in an incredibly short amount of time, but no one was able to trace where some of it came from.

He became entangled with a few of the other clans, who saw a strange rise in their power thanks to impossible knowledge that he alone possessed, causing a few arguments within the remaining clans as the power imbalance grew. A balance that is slowly being restored thanks to my Lady’s involvement, but which will be disturbed again once the rest of the world awakens to the same strange power as yourself, my Lady.

Who he is, and how he made this meteoric rise, we simply could not explain nor understand. As for his latest endeavours, he has been a backing force behind Rift Divers latest game titled, ’Dawn of Divinity’.

We had previously overlooked this, and that proved to be a mistake. When you arrived, my Lady, someone of strange power and knowledge much like himself, we thought that you two were connected."

Valerie nodded her head as she contemplated everything that she had heard. Someone that suddenly rocketed to the top out of nowhere, possessed strange and seemingly otherworldly knowledge and that people could not understand or predict.

It made sense why they had suspected her of working with him, but even more than herself there was someone who matched this description. Revenant.

He might have been totally useless with a lot of his predictions, but it was ignorant to act like he wasn’t a powerful individual who possessed a lot of knowledge that would be unexplainable. Had his predictions been better, or knowledge focused elsewhere, it wouldn’t be unheard of for him to be rising like that in the real world.

Was this Klein McLean another time traveller? Someone that came from the future and was exploiting their knowledge to grow themselves?

It might explain why he was entangled with the clans and Dawd, despite having strange knowledge that was leagues ahead of their own. Was he behind it all? Just another future traveller that was trying to save the world?

If one could do it, especially one as useless as Revenant, then it wouldn’t be impossible for another to do it.

There were many follow up questions Valerie wanted to ask, but she was painfully aware of the Neural Crown that was resting on her lap, and the battle that she had inadvertently abandoned that she needed to get back to. Even if it was just to clean up the aftermath or run back from respawn.

Still, there was one final question she had to ask for the moment and that needed to be asked.

"Bai Yin... If your clan members attacked me, would you defend me? Even if it meant killing them to do so?"

"Yes my Lady." Bai Yin answered coldly. However it was a murderous cold that displayed her sociopathic bloodlust through her narrowed, crimson eyes.

"If anyone wishes to harm you, I would rip them apart with my bare hands, and would happily give my life in your defence. You are my Lady, my Master. My life is yours completely, for you are the one that gave it to me."

Valerie nodded softly, gulping slightly at the intensity of such an answer. For some reason it made her guilt well up in her chest again. It was also at that moment, that she remembered something else about her time with the Duke, and what she had done with the runic circle that had turned Bai Yin and was still carved onto her back.

"You wanted a name for what you are... Right? I think I just remembered what it is. You’re a Thrall."

"A Thrall..." Bai Yin muttered with a frown, before her mouth twisted into a disturbing smile that sent a shiver down Valerie’s spine.

"A Thrall. I will wear this name with pride, my Lady, and devote myself to being your perfect Thrall. Such is the purpose of my new life."

"Yeah... I suppose it is." Valerie muttered under her breath, swallowing her guilt again, before placing the Neural Crown on her head and succumbing to its pull. Leaving Bai Yin standing silently in the room, staring at Valerie, as a creepy, obsessive smile stretched across her face.