The Guide is Actually a Body-Switching Esper [BL]-Chapter 465: Hatching

Chapter 465: Hatching
The next morning, shortly after Damien went to work (after a sleepless, ’busy’ night), Lane drove straight to ManaTech. Ava still hadn’t answered his text, but it didn’t matter. She was often unresponsive, as she couldn’t be bothered to check her phone, and Lane was there only to deliver new samples, anyway. Even if he didn’t run into her, he could just leave the spatial bag in her personal lab with a note.
"Hi." He approached the front desk, smiling at the receptionist. "May I ask where I can find Dr. Ava Hill?"
The receptionist lifted her gaze from the screen. "May I know who’s asking, Sir?"
Lane didn’t visit ManaTech all that often, and even when he did, he usually just walked straight in, so it was only natural that not all receptionists recognized him. However, as Lane pushed his ManaTech access card in front of her and she typed his ID number into the system, her eyes widened, and she rushed to check whether Dr. Ava Hill was logged in.
The man in front of her was listed as a VIP! She didn’t know why or who exactly he was, since the system didn’t allow her to access such information, but he certainly had enough clearance for her to give him a response.
"Dr. Ava Hill should be in lab E16. Would you like me to call her for you?"
"E16?" Lane thought for a moment. He had been in block E before, if he remembered correctly. That was where the most confidential experiments were conducted, and access was even more restricted. Ava had used it in the past to conduct experiments on Lane, as well as on some of the bodies of people he previously possessed, in order to try to understand his ability better...
While he was almost certain that he had been there before, though, it had only been with Ava. So, he didn’t know whether his card granted him access to those labs.
"Could you call her for me, please?" he asked the receptionist. "Tell her that Lane is here."
He didn’t feel like going all the way to block E just to bounce off the door.
"Please wait a moment." The receptionist typed something on her computer, probably contacting Ava through the system. Although Ava frequently neglected her phone, she was likely to respond to a system notification, since it was work-related, and she would get the notification on her tablet, which she used to record the data.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, the receptionist turned back to Lane.
"Dr. Hill is asking you to come to the lab yourself," she ed with slight hesitation. Since she didn’t know who Lane was, she also didn’t know what sort of connection he had to Ava, but to ask a VIP to just ’come by himself’... Ava Hill was one of their most valued researchers when it came to Mana biology, so she would probably get away with it, but still...
Lane only nodded his head, though. "Alright. Thank you!" he smiled at the receptionist, before heading in. Since Ava told him to come in, that must have meant that he had access to block E.
Hopefully. Since it wasn’t concerning her research, there was a possibility that Ava didn’t remember which blocks she gave Lane access to, and Lane might still not be able to get in...
But no. She remembered it well. Or, at the very least, guessed well. When Lane reached block E and scanned his key card, the diode on the scanner turned green, and the lock clicked, the door opening. Same thing when he arrived at the room E16.
"...If you have any more requests regarding managing your affairs, I’m not going to agree," Ava said as soon as he noticed Lane walk in.
"Ah, that’s so cold! You’re not going to even listen to me first?" Lane gasped, acting wounded. To which, Ava responded with a short,
"No."
"That’s so cruel..." Lane complained. Of course, he was just pretending - while he would have loved to employ Ava as his secretary, as she had done an excellent job managing Blanc and Vulcan when he had been gone, he knew that there was no point in even asking. Ava was willing to temporarily help him out when Lane was physically unable to manage the secret organization’s affairs, but she was way too busy to do this regularly.
"Anyway, you come at a great time. Take a look at this!" Completely ignoring Lane’s theatrics, Ava gestured at the man, calling him closer. "Aren’t they the cutest?"
Only then did Lane notice what Ava was up to. She was standing in front of a large terrarium, and inside... There were tiny spider monsters! Stretching their legs, and walking around. Some still in the middle of breaking out of their shells...
It seems that Lane had come right at the time of their hatching. No wonder Ava didn’t want to come to the front desk to pick him up.
But...
"You have a really weird taste, you know?" Lane lifted his brows, approaching the terrarium. Although he personally wasn’t scared of the monsters, nor was he appalled by them - he had seen way too many disgusting creatures to have any reaction - he would have never found them ’cute’. At least not those spiders.
"You just don’t know how to appreciate curious creatures," Ava rolled her eyes, unbothered by Lane’s comment. In her eyes, the spiders were quite adorable, even though she was aware of what they were capable of...
And, well, she had a point. As Lane observed the baby spiders, crawling out of their eggshells, there was something almost cute about how they moved. He reached out, wanting to poke one of them...
"Ouch!"
The moment his finger got close to one of the spiders, it instantly unfolded its petal-like mouth, and wrapped it around Lane’s finger, starting to rub its tiny teeth against his skin. It didn’t really hurt, and the spider was tiny, so it couldn’t cause Lane much damage, but...
"Get off!" Lane hissed, shaking his hand.
But, instead of letting go, the spider only quickened its movements. Next to him, Ava snickered at his distress, before reaching out to help Lane (or rather, to save the spider before Lane lost his patience and hurt her new pet), when all of a sudden...
"Huh?"
Lane paused, staring at the spider. It was still grinding his finger, but for a moment, he forgot about it.
Because he got a strange feeling. A familiar feeling.
The feeling that he had when the conditions for him to activate his innate ability were met!