Much as he hated to admit it, Annie had indeed made the best choice.
Joey also knew that, calculating as he was, he would never have cooperated if he had known about the explosion beforehand.
He stared unblinkingly at Annie and asked:
"You didn't come to see me just to tell me that, did you?" He abruptly paused, glancing at the tightly shut wooden door. "What's the situation now?"
He was curious about the Sheriff's Office's current stance, and whether Benny Hoyland was doing well or poorly.
Annie shook her head, her expression complicated. "Things are even more complicated than I imagined."
"Benny Hoyland is very powerful. Although we didn't discover which Pathway he belongs to this time, we can be certain of one thing: he's at least Sequence 6."
Much weaker than I imagined, then. About the same as Nome? For some reason, Joey felt relieved. Then he asked, "Could that assessment be wrong?"
He recalled the explosion. Benny, who had been right at its center, hadn't seemed to suffer much harm.
If that was all Benny was capable of, Joey was fully confident he could handle him.
"It's highly unlikely. The main thing we need to watch out for now is any Sealed Artifacts he might have."
They chatted a little longer before Annie left.
What happened next went just as Annie had envisioned, thanks to their shared brush with death.
Joey easily earned Benny Hoyland's trust.
Thanks to the Sheriff's Office's advance screening, the third incident never happened.
Three days passed in a flash.
Today was the day Joey left the hospital. In truth, he had recovered long ago. He had stayed because he discovered that the Holy Hall's advanced nutritional solution helped his Spirituality grow.
Unable to find the advancement rank for the Sequence after Fortune