Where had they taken him?
Following Columbina’s directions, Lucian Vale reached the cell where Diluc Ragnvindr was supposed to be held.
The door stood open.
The room was empty.
No restraints.
No prisoner.
No sign that Diluc had simply stepped out during the riot.
With a Fatui Harbinger and an unknown man wearing another Harbinger’s stolen cloak moving through the prison together, the surrounding inmates avoided them as if they carried a plague.
Lucian had no reason to doubt Columbina’s information.
Diluc’s disappearance was almost certainly connected to the person who had been observing him through the surveillance system.
A struggle had passed through this section not long ago.
Broken equipment littered the corridor, and several guards lay unconscious among the wreckage.
Lucian found one wedged behind an overturned cabinet, dragged him out by the ankle, and crouched beside him.
Earth Song shifted.
Crazy Diamond’s restorative power flowed into the guard, repairing his fractured ribs, bruised organs, and split skin in an instant.
The man remained unconscious.
Lucian raised one hand.
Slap!
Then another.
Slap!
The guard’s eyes snapped open.
“Where is he?” Lucian demanded.
“What happened to the prisoner in that room?”
The guard stared at him in terror.
The stolen cloak made Lucian resemble a high-ranking Fatui officer, but his face was completely unfamiliar.
For one panicked moment, the man wondered whether another Harbinger had been appointed without anyone informing the prison staff.
Then he noticed Columbina standing behind Lucian.
Recognition brought immediate relief.
“Reporting, my lord!” the guard said, scrambling to answer.
“The Doctor sent someone to remove the prisoner from that cell about half an hour ago.”
Half an hour.
And shortly afterward, the riot had begun.
That timing was far too convenient to be accidental.
Lucian released the guard’s collar.
The man dropped to the floor with a startled thud, only then realizing that the pain throughout his body had vanished.
He touched his ribs, then his face.
His injuries were gone.
“Thank you, my lord!
Thank you!”
He bowed repeatedly before running away in search of somewhere safer to hide.
Lucian turned toward Columbina and gave her a casual wave.
“Kuutar, you should head back.
I’ll leave once I collect Diluc.”
“Very well.”
Columbina nodded.
The situation around Diluc had clearly changed.
If she remained at Lucian’s side, she might be dragged into a conflict between him and Dottore that had nothing to do with her.
Besides, she had just eaten enough to restore her energy.
Perhaps she could visit Sandrone and sing for her.
Being full felt surprisingly pleasant.
Maybe it was finally time to ask the Tsaritsa for a salary.
With that thought, Columbina floated away.
Lucian waited until she disappeared around the corner.
“Half an hour ago…”
Earth Song changed abilities again.
Moody Blues appeared.
The Stand reconstructed the events that had taken place in front of Diluc’s cell.
Its body transformed into the shape of an unfamiliar prison guard, repeating the man’s movements and voice exactly as they had occurred.
“Hurry up,” the reconstructed guard muttered.
“The Doctor’s orders cannot be delayed.”
The replay continued.
“The eleventh underground level is where the failed test subjects are kept.
We’ll take him there and return immediately.”
Moody Blues reproduced the guard taking a key from his pocket, unlocking the cell, and leading Diluc toward the elevator.
The eleventh underground level.
Lucian had his destination.
Now that Columbina was gone, he no longer needed to behave politely.
He turned one hand palm-up.
Several strands of hair detached from his skin, transformed into razor-sharp feathers, and shot through the corridor.
Every surveillance camera shattered at once.
“Sticky Fingers.”
A massive zipper appeared across the floor.
Lucian pulled it open.
Concrete and metal separated like fabric, revealing the level beneath.
Without hesitation, he jumped through the opening and dropped directly to the eighth underground floor.
The scene below was strange.
There were no prisoners.
Only abandoned experimental equipment, broken restraints, and several guards lying unconscious on the ground.
Lucian destroyed the cameras on that level as well, then continued downward.
Possessing overwhelming strength had certain benefits.
Ambushes lost much of their charm when almost nothing in the world could seriously injure you.
Inside the monitoring room, another Dottore segment stared grimly at the surviving surveillance feeds.
What kind of ability was this?
Lucian had already demonstrated an impossible method of stealing objects without visible movement.
He possessed a healing power capable of restoring severe injuries instantly.
Now he had somehow breached the prison floors in seconds.
Because the nearest camera had been destroyed before it could capture the zipper clearly, Dottore assumed Lucian had torn through the structure with brute force.
That conclusion was troubling enough.
Abyssal power?
No.
The energy signatures did not match.
Elemental power seemed even less likely.
In Dottore’s eyes, ordinary elemental manipulation had limits, and Lucian’s abilities showed no consistent elemental pattern at all.
The possibilities narrowed.
Either Lucian was a god with an unusually broad authority…
Or he had descended from beyond this world.
Dottore’s knowledge allowed him to approach the truth with astonishing speed.
His only real mistake was underestimating just how far beyond the world Lucian stood.
On the eleventh underground level, dozens of experimental subjects had gathered in a reinforced chamber.
“Boss, shouldn’t we leave while we still can?” one prisoner demanded.
“If the Fatui catch us again, we’ll never get another chance!”
“Shut up!”
The scarred man at the center of the group turned on him.
“I know the Fatui better than any of you.
Leave if you want—but only if you aren’t afraid of being used as cannon fodder the moment you step into the corridor.”
No one answered.
The man’s name was Leon Cristiano.
Once, he had been a lieutenant in the Fatui, only one rank beneath the Harbingers’ direct command structure.
He had craved greater power, but no god had ever acknowledged him with a Vision.
Dottore had noticed that hunger.
The Doctor offered him another path.
A Delusion.
Leon accepted.
The first use nearly killed him, but he survived.
Instead of rewarding that survival, Dottore restricted his freedom and publicly announced that he had died in an accident.
Leon later learned the truth from soldiers who had once served beneath him.
He had not been promoted.
He had become property.
To help his body endure the Delusion, Dottore subjected him to inhuman modifications.
His flesh was repeatedly cut apart, altered, and reinforced.
Vast quantities of life force were consumed before his body could barely fuse with the remnants of a dead god.
Leon was only thirty-six years old.
He should have been in the prime of his life.
Instead, his hair and beard had turned entirely white.
His skin was wrinkled, his organs were failing, and his remaining lifespan flickered like a candle in a winter storm.
The experiments had granted him tremendous strength—enough to approach the threshold of the lowest-ranked Harbinger.
They had also destroyed him.
Leon now understood Dottore far too well.
This prison could not truly fall by accident.
The sudden riot, the missing guards, and the opened cells were all part of an experiment.
Not long ago, a guard had delivered a new prisoner to the laboratory behind him: a red-haired young man whose presence made no sense among Dottore’s discarded test subjects.
The Doctor wanted Leon to become a tool one final time.
Leon refused.
Dottore was the closest thing he had to a mortal enemy.
He would not spend his last hours dying for that monster’s curiosity.
Under Leon’s direction, every experimental subject from below the eighth level had gathered together.
He barely knew most of them, but they had all suffered under the same hands.
He would not allow Dottore to sacrifice them one by one.
Many still dreamed of freedom.
They wanted to run while the exits were open.
Yet none dared challenge Leon openly.
Several had been personally thrown into these cells by him during his years as a Fatui officer.
They knew exactly how strong he had once been—and how terrifying he had become after the experiments.
A heavy impact shook the ceiling.
Thump!
Several sharp sounds followed as the remaining surveillance cameras exploded.
Everyone looked upward.
A zipper opened across the ceiling.
Lucian dropped through it and landed lightly on the floor.
“Huh,” he said, looking around.
“Why is everyone gathered here?”
Panic spread through the prisoners.
They scattered away from him, pressing themselves against walls, overturned tables, and shattered laboratory equipment.
Leon saw Lucian clearly.
His heart lurched.
An instinctive pressure rolled over him—something deeper than killing intent, elemental force, or the aura of a powerful warrior.
It came from life itself.
For a moment, Leon did not see a young man standing before him.
He saw an ancient predator, something like a tyrannosaur that had survived every extinction and continued walking long after the world should have buried it.
Lucian wore a Harbinger’s cloak, yet his face was unfamiliar.
So this was Dottore’s target.
What had that madman been thinking?
Could he truly not sense the difference between them?
Cold sweat streamed down Leon’s face.
Dottore genuinely could not.
As the Ultimate Life Form, Lucian naturally inspired a form of biological affinity in ordinary creatures.
Most living beings instinctively recognized him as something close to the pinnacle of life.
Leon’s genes, however, had been mutilated and rewritten too many times.
Where others might feel warmth or attraction, he sensed only crushing superiority and fear.
Several other heavily modified prisoners reacted the same way.
Their altered bodies recognized Lucian not as kin, but as an impossible standard they had been tortured trying to imitate.
The room fell silent.
Leon was only the group’s leader in name, but no one dared speak before him.
Lucian waited.
No one answered.
“Didn’t you hear me?” he asked.
Then he sighed.
“Never mind.
Where is Diluc?
Red hair.
Young man.
Looks permanently annoyed.”
Every eye turned toward Leon.
He swallowed and forced his voice to remain respectful.
“The man you described is inside the laboratory, my lord.”
Leon pointed toward the sealed room behind him.
Lucian nodded.
“So you’re their leader.”
The old man was sensible.
Lucian had half expected to stretch his muscles and fight his way through the chamber.
Instead, Leon had saved everyone the trouble.
He began walking toward the laboratory, already considering what he might eat for dinner.
Then a foul scent reached him.
Lucian stopped.
It was not sweat, blood, chemicals, or decay from the prison.
It smelled like a corpse that had not yet realized it was dead.
He followed the scent and looked back at Leon.
The odor came from him.
Lucian’s biology recoiled instinctively.
The man’s body had been damaged so severely that every cell carried the stench of approaching death.
There went Lucian’s appetite.
“There’s something seriously wrong with your body,” he said.
A single glance revealed the truth.
Leon’s life force had been nearly exhausted.
His genes had been cut apart and crudely rewritten.
The white hair and aged face were not signs of natural age at all.
Lucian had misjudged him.
This man was still young.
“Yes,” Leon answered quietly.
He lowered his head, pain twisting his expression.
One wrong choice had destroyed the rest of his life.
He should never have believed Dottore’s promises.
A large hand settled on his shoulder.
Leon froze.
Lucian had been more than a dozen meters away a heartbeat earlier.
Now he stood beside him as though the intervening space had never existed.
“I’m a doctor,” Lucian said.
Then he removed his hand and continued toward the laboratory.
Leon stared after him.
Warmth spread through his body.
Gold Experience had already done its work.
His failing organs surged back to life.
His depleted vitality returned in a violent, exhilarating tide.
Wrinkles vanished from his face.
Black color spread from the roots of his white hair and beard.
The sparse scales produced by Dottore’s modifications receded beneath smooth skin.
Before the astonished prisoners, Leon’s body returned to the condition it should have possessed at thirty-six.
He raised trembling hands and stared at them.
For Lucian, using Gold Experience to restore the life that had been stolen from Leon was a trivial act.
It was almost a habit.
Reverence for life had been one of his principles since the day he became the Ultimate Life Form.
Kars had lost that reverence after reaching perfection.
He began seeing every other creature as inferior material, and in the end, even the will of the Earth seemed to reject him.
Perhaps Lucian’s refusal to follow the same path was why the world had once allowed him to live in comfort and glory rather than casting him away.
He did not kill unless it was necessary.
Only those who crossed his final boundary and truly enraged him earned that response.
Power was like a gun.
It was useful when required.
Better still when it never needed to be fired.
🕷️ End of Chapter
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