“Let’s do so.” Josephine Wong sighed and said: “Nameless, Pei, I trust that you would be able to craft an array strong and thorough enough to prevent any leak of malice. Agent Hall, count the casualties and kick off the process. I will attend to them after wrapping up the business here.”

“Understood.” Agent Hall nodded and went back to the exterior with Agent Jill.

“Thank you for your help, Blue. Please continue as you were.” Josephine Wong said.

Blue nodded and flew to the exterior of the array - just now during the fight, while they were trying to combat the defiler, the presence of the defiler seemed to have riled up the monsters that were somehow attracted to the site. And though the agents on the exterior were able to keep them mostly at bay and out of the vicinity of the array, the agents also endured quite a bit of damage and had suffered some casualties - there are many agents who needed magical medical attention.

“Vivian, can you head back to the bunker and bring out some more medical supplies and more reinforcement.” Josephine Wong had to sit on the ground, but she was too weak to finish her move, and she just fell onto the ground, and fainted.

“Ms. Wong!”

When Josephine Wong woke up, she was in a medical tent, located in a temporary medical facility established at a safe distance away from the site where Clearwater Municipal Hospital was. She had a special IV drip connected to her arm, which is filled with some diluted healing potion.

“Ms. Wong, so glad you’re okay.” a healer in a white and green robe came over to the side of her bed and said: “You passed out in the field, looks like you were extremely exhausted. So we consulted with Blue and Nameless, and we decided to just give you some simple restoration drip. Our healers also did a check as thorough as possible on you, since we heard from them that you almost died - if not for a mysterious outsourced contractor of yours. Turns out you are completely fine, aside from your extreme exhaustion. If that kind of healing spell is anymore widely known we’d be out of a job.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone else could learn that spell.” Josephine Wong sat up from her bed and asked the healer: “What about the others? How many injuries?”

“We have 37 injured agents, from all kinds of sources.” the healer sighed: “And 10 deaths, unfortunately.”

“Is Ms. Wong awake.” just this moment, Vivian came into the medical tent Josephine Wong was in, with Nameless, Pei, Alexander and Blue behind her: “Ah! Good! You’re awake!”

“Hey, Vivian, everybody.” Josephine Wong greeted the remaining members of her team with a wry smile: “Sorry, looks like I missed a lot of things.”

“Oh, no worries. You need to rest after… well after all that.” Vivian took away the chart from the healer and smiled in relief when she saw that Josephine Wong would be okay: “And the teams seem to have things under control now, so we’re here to check on you.”

“Thank you.” Josephine Wong coughed lightly: “What about Jianmen? Was he sent to the inn?”

“Yes, Agent Hall and Agent Jill decided to send him there themselves, and they said they would report back when done.” Alexander was not wearing anything on his upper body, revealing all the bandages that covered up his upper torso: “I… I heard some crazy stuff from Nameless and Pei about this Mr. Jianmen Yu, are those true?”

“This monk does not speak in falsity or exaggerations.” Nameless shook his head: “Master Yu possesses great and unparalleled power, he could be the only one in the world that could relieve one from that kind of wound.”

“Hehe, he could just be.” Pei chuckled, her voice was also weak due to exhaustion: “But the thing is - who he is to you, Ms. Wong. I mean I know a handful of very powerful mages, exorcists and Daoists, but I don’t think any of them would just transfer the wounds on their body if I was the one injured by the defiler.”

“Oh, Pei, your gossipy grandma self is showing again!” Vivian laughed out loud.

“Well, to be fair, I would be quite curious as well.” Blue raised his eyebrows: “I mean, I think most of us have heard of him from time to time. I think we all assumed that you were quite close with him and he is an immensely powerful individual. But this close? I would be lying if I were to say I am not interested in learning a bit about him, and how you met.”

“What? You guys don’t have anything better to do right now?” Josephine Wong chuckled and asked.

“We’ve been busy for quite a while, you were out for more than 15 hours.” Pei shrugged: “Now that everything’s more or less in order, we actually don’t have anything terribly urgent to do. And come on, we could use a story break. Or a gossip break.”

“What are you, still a highschooler?” Alexander scoffed, but he still sat down on the ground by the bed: “Buuuut, I do love a biographical story of a powerful individual. So I wouldn’t mind if you can share that with us.”

“Woohoo!” Vivian decided to join in on the fun, and started to lead a chant: “Story! Story! Story!”

“Alirght! Alright!” Josephine Wong shook her head and smiled, as the leader of the team, she could easily tell that their request for gossip and story was due only in part to curiosity, it was also a need for distraction, and something to lighten the heavy mood, due to their heavy losses - losing teammates and friends in a battle against malice and ancient evil like a defiler is not something anyone would encounter everyday: “If I want to tell the story in full, we will need to go back to a time of over a decade ago, while I was still serving as a researcher at the Grant Academy...”