The Great Demon System

5 pm, after school… 

Even with the combined effort of every single member of Moby's group, they were still unable to locate Ray. They searched damn near everywhere in the school in just the span of a single lunch, plus a little extra after. Abby even used multiple wisps and Jayden used her doppelganger powers to help search and it still yielded no results, Ray was nowhere to be found. 

The only places that Moby was not able to search were the upstairs area with all of the second-year students, every single classroom, janitor's room, closet, storage area. Other than that, everywhere else was covered. 

They did not want to ask around with the other students or even teachers in order to not throw off the people possibly keeping him on a leash that people are trying to look for him, which would, in turn, make them hide him even better.

The only places he thought that he could have been was in a hidden area of the forest, in a room he had not checked, or in one of the dorm rooms. 

On his search, Moby was asked by other gangs if he was willing to join them which he of course rejected and thrashed out of his way if they kept on insisting or tried to force him. However, he was only asked by a very small, insignificant amount. He was expecting to be asked by at least 10 groups or gangs which turned out to be very far from what actually happened. 

The only possible explanation that Moby could think of was that the news of him rejecting the Zexis gang had spread throughout the entire school, and if any other gang had Moby as a member it might just bring them trouble from the Zexis gang. If that was the case, then the Zexis gang was stronger and held more influence than he had first assumed. He needed to keep his guard up around them, which was precisely why he needed Travis for that job. 

Of course, Travis had accepted Moby's offer of paying him to be a spy. Moby knew that in the end, he would choose whichever yielded him the most amount of money. It was just in his nature, he would do anything for his mother, something that Moby could use to manipulate him. 

In addition to him accepting his offer, Moby asked him various questions concerning the gang, most of which he had no idea since he was a very low ranking member. Questions like who is the leader, how many members does the gang have, how far is their reach, what is their purpose, all of those questions Moby was given vague or no answer at all. 

This confirmed to Moby that in Travis's current state, he would not be a useful spy and that even if the Zexis gang truly did have Ray, he would be withheld from that information.

He just hoped that if they find out that he was trusted and would be useful in obtaining him as a member, he would undoubtedly rise in the ranks and be provided with more information.

As for the most important question concerning the leader, Travis told him that no one in the gang outside of the top 3 even knew who the leader was. That fact really messed with Moby's brain. If seeing the leader was such a big deal, then why would they want to appoint him as the third seat from the start? Why did they want to meet him in person before he could prove his loyalty to them and push up the ranks? Why him? What was their purpose?

'Maybe I should have accepted their offer just to do some spying, then immediately leaving… No! That would have been way too risky!' Moby thought at the time, questioning his previous hasty actions before deciding to stick to his guts.

In the end, Moby left Travis to continue searching the entire school, not without providing him with a little payment for his services and giving him some throwaway information he could claim to have extracted from him to gain further trust in the gang, in turns providing him with more information in the future. 

After many hours of failed searching, the school doors closed and they were forced to leave the building, meaning that Ray was probably not even there. 

Ray was still not answering his phone and their only near 100% reliable way of finding Ray was to just head back to their dorms and wait until curfew where he would be forced to come under the school rules or else he would be in big trouble. And if that didn't work, then they would just have to camp out of Ray's classroom the next day until he comes out.

Until any further notice, Moby had ordered all of his servants to stop the search and go back home as it was yielding no results. 

Jayden went home in her limousine, escorted by a few servants. As Moby went to bid her farewell, he noticed that none of the servants present where her butler who had always stood out and greeted her on arrival, at first he thought that it was very odd, however, he pushed the thought away as he believed that it was nothing of importance and that the butler was probably in the driver's seat or had something super important to take care of at the mansion. 

As for Abby, she kept on insisting that she could keep searching but ended up following Moby's orders in the end and headed back to her dorm. 

Moby and Alex were now walking together back to their own dorms, not even saying a single word to each other. The worried and less than chipper expression on their faces told the entire story. 

When they finally reached the front of his dorm, Moby let out a loud sigh, scanning his card before tightly grasping the door handle, twisting the knob and opening it up.

As the door slowly opened, the light from the inside flashed in their eyes, something that they did not at all expect as they were almost certain that the lights would have been turned off. 

As the blinding flash of light faded away, what they saw was something they were not at all expecting, their eyes and mouth opening wide in surprise. 

"Ray!? What are you doing here?!" Both Moby and Alex asked, almost unable to believe their own eyes. 

There casually sat Ray, on the bottom bunk of the bed with the usual dull expression on his face, a game system in his hands with headphones on his head. He was all safe and sound, not even a single scratch or spec of dirt to be seen on his face and the usually dirty school uniforms. 

Despite the loud scream of his 2 friends, Ray did not even flinch or look in their direction as if they were not even there. 

It reminded Moby of the scene when he had first entered the dorm all bloodied and Ray just did not notice his presence at all since he was so immersed in his video game.

Moby and Alex both instinctively glanced at each other, looks of relief on both of their faces. They now knew that Ray was completely safe. However, they still needed to ask him a few questions to let their minds be at ease. 

They both walked up to Ray, tapping him on the shoulder to grab his attention as their screams were clearly not working. 

"Oh! You guys are here! Sorry, I didn't notice you guys at all!" Ray said in a happy tone, a somehow natural-looking smile on his face that greatly caught Moby and Alex off guard. 

Other than that one time at the amusement park, It was their first time ever seeing such an expression on Ray's face. Any other time that he had tried to smile, it would always turn out extremely weird and awkward, however this time, it looked very natural which made them happy yet greatly disturbed at the same time to see how much he had changed in the 2 weeks that they did not see each other.

However, with Alex's knight vision that even exceeded Moby's, he was able to spot that his smile was slightly twitchy, and not perfectly natural which made him believe that either Ray was trying to practice how to properly smile or he was being forced to smile by someone else. 

He relayed that information to Moby using their mind link and he thought that observation was very intriguing. So, they both decided to ask their questions in order to confirm what was actually happening and get to the bottom of things.

"Hey! Ray! We really are so happy to see you! It's been so long! We hope that you have done well in these 2 weeks we've been apart. We have been trying to contact you all day and you would not respond at all… Why is that? Even if you were playing video games at lunch and after school, you could have still checked your notifications when you were in class. You had us extremely worried you know? We no joke searched the entire school and we were not able to find you," Alex said with a worried expression on his face. 

"Hmmm?" Ray said in confusion, taking off his headphones before looking down at his watch to see upwards of 50 unanswered notifications on his watch, making his eyes go wide. 

"Oh! I am so, so sorry! I honestly had no idea! I have been sitting here for the past 10 hours or so, I honestly lost track of time while I was playing and I couldn't hear the notification from my headphones…" Ray answered with an embarrassed voice. 

"Wait… 10 hours? Does that mean that you have been here all day? You didn't go to class?" Moby asked with extreme skepticism in his eyes.

Their dorm room was one of the only places that they did not check during their search since they would eventually be forced to go back there in the end. Now they felt extremely stupid for thinking that. If only they did not have that mindset and checked the dorm room earlier, they would have saved them the trouble of searching for hours on end.

"Oh! You guys haven't heard? Those who got in the top 10% in the research division exams get an extra free day off school. I just decided to stay in the dorm and play video games until you guys came back… It was pretty much all I did for the week break... I had no idea that you guys were that worried about me…" Ray said, looking down on the ground to hide his sad, disturbed facial expression even though it was not a total lie.

The school did indeed give him and the other top 10% a free day off school but he used that excuse to hide the rest of the truth. 

"Wait… Does that mean that you got in the top 10% of everyone!?" They both asked in shock.

"Yes, it does… you guys gave me motivation and helped inspire me to work harder to get what was truly supposed to be mine in the first place," Ray said, still looking down, his disturbed expression shifting into a mellow smile as it was one of the first truths that he had told in his entire story.