The heavy transport craft’s specialized mana engines finally whined down to a low, steady hum before cutting off entirely.
After hours of cruising incredibly high above the treacherous oceans separating the two landmasses, the primary exterior airlock hissed open, letting the fresh, slightly humid air of the Cebel continent flood the pressurized cabin.
Stepping down the reinforced metallic boarding ramp, Chrites adjusted the heavy canvas strap of his travel duffel bag.
Around him, the highly secure military spaceport bustled with heavily armed perimeter guards, automated cargo loaders, and active defense personnel directing incoming flights.
“Finally!” Rivb groaned loudly, stretching his arms incredibly high above his head with a deeply relieved emotion.
“My legs feel like solid stone.
If I had to sit strapped inside that flight harness for one more hour, my spine would have permanently fused together.”
“Stop complaining, Rivb,” Shevy remarked, rolling her eyes with a highly amused, sarcastic emotion as she walked down the ramp.
“You slept through the entire second half of the flight anyway.”
“Sleep is essential for muscle recovery,” Rivb argued happily, swinging his oversized bag over his broad shoulder.
Walking quietly alongside them, Melise offered a gentle, mild smile.
“It genuinely was a smooth flight, though.
The runic engineering on these military transport vessels is absolutely incredible.”
“Indeed,” Chrono analyzed, scanning the sprawling concrete command base architecture ahead with a highly focused, professional emotion.
“The runic stabilization arrays completely negated the atmospheric turbulence over the water.
Let us stay close together as we move toward the ground transit sector.”
Vaelora walked elegantly near the center of the group, her custom-tailored travel coat immaculate despite the long journey.
Linease walked slightly behind her, keeping her outward expression perfectly neutral, though her sharp eyes continuously scanned the foreign spaceport infrastructure.
The group followed the designated pedestrian pathways toward a line of heavily armored military transit buses waiting to transport incoming personnel to the central operational barracks.
Just as Vaelora raised her foot to step onto the metal stairs of the primary bus, the ambient air pressure violently warped.
WHOOSH!
SCREECH!
Moving faster than the human eye could track, taking less than a single millisecond, a highly compressed magical knife materialized out of the upper wind currents.
Forged from dense, lethal physical mana, the blade tore downward with terrifying accuracy, aimed directly at Vaelora’s throat.
Chrites’s sensory perception spiked instantly.
Moving purely on absolute instinct, his physical speed broke the boundaries of ordinary reality.
SWISH!
CLANG!
He drew his plain black sword from his duffel bag in a fraction of a millisecond.
With an impossibly precise, sweeping strike, his steel blade intercepted the incoming projectile directly in the air.
The heavy kinetic force of his sword cleanly severed the magical knife in half, instantly shattering its condensed mana into harmless, fading sparks.
CLACK!
With flawless physical mastery, Chrites slid the sword perfectly back into its scabbard, tucking it away into his bag before a single person could register the movement.
The execution was so fast that nobody in the immediate vicinity could tell if he had actually drawn a weapon or if the incoming magical anomaly had simply collapsed on its own.
Vaelora paused on the bus steps, blinking in slight confusion as a sudden gust of wind ruffled her hair.
Chrites instantly slouched his shoulders, dropping back into his completely mundane, helpless student persona.
He grabbed his stomach, forcing a highly strained, uncomfortable emotion.
“Oh, sorry guys,” Chrites groaned out loud.
“I think the rapid altitude change really messed with my system.
I need to go find a spaceport washroom immediately.
You guys go ahead and secure seats on the bus; I will be right back.”
“Honestly, your timing is terrible,” Shevy sighed, shaking her head.
“Do not miss the bus departure, Chrites!” Chrono warned with a serious tone.
Chrites turned and jogged away quickly, ducking behind a massive automated cargo bay completely out of sight from the main boarding lanes.
The moment the dark shadows concealed him, his slouched posture vanished entirely.
He tapped directly into his internal spatial core.
A highly unique, dense wave of spatial magic enveloped his body.
In a seamless visual shift, his ordinary civilian clothing dissolved into the spatial void, instantly replaced by the sharp, tailored black formal suit and heavy obsidian coat of the syndicate leader.
He pulled his painted demon mask securely over his face, his blue eyes glowing with cold, absolute authority.
Tracking the faint trajectory vector of the shattered projectile, Chrites merged into the dark liquid shadows.
He teleported instantly, bypassing physical space to materialize high atop a towering spaceport observation crane situated five hundred yards away.
Crouched on the metal platform was a specialized magical sniper.
The assassin held a long-barreled magical caster rifle designed to launch condensed physical mana blades across vast distances.
Before the sniper could reload his weapon, Chrites materialized directly behind him.
Moving with absolute execution, Chrites pressed the razor-sharp edge of his black sword firmly against the side of the assassin’s neck.
The sniper froze entirely, dropping his caster rifle in pure, unadulterated terror.
“Sorry, sorry!
I swear I am not going to shoot again!” the sniper stammered, his voice trembling with highly desperate, panicked emotion.
“Who the hell are you working for?” Chrites demanded, his magically distorted voice vibrating with heavy, suffocating darkness.
“I cannot tell you!
I am sorry, I swear I cannot tell you!” the assassin cried out, pressing himself desperately away from the blade.
Chrites’s eyes narrowed coldly behind the slits of his mask.
He pressed the flat edge of the sword slightly closer, letting the sharp steel barely pierce the surface skin.
A thin line of crimson blood welled up against the metal.
“Speak,” Chrites commanded with absolute obedience.
Pushed to the absolute brink of survival, the terrified sniper sobbed.
“Okay, okay!
I am an operative assigned directly from the organization of D—”
DOOM!
SPLAT!
Before the assassin could fully articulate the final letters of DNT, an automated, deeply embedded magical trigger activated inside his brain.
Forged from a highly complex, automated execution curse, the raw magical seal violently detonated.
The sniper’s head was cleanly chopped and obliterated into two distinct parts by the automated internal fail-safe, instantly killing him before he could reveal his faction’s true identity.
Chrites took a quick step back to avoid the spray, his eyes wide with genuine shock beneath his demon mask.
The absolute speed and lethal force of the automated curse seal were astounding.
DNT was so protective of its operational secrecy that it literally planted fatal triggers inside the minds of its own subordinates.
Disgusted by the cowardly, psychopathic nature of using cheat skills to bind their operatives to silence, Chrites lowered his sword.
With the immediate threat neutralized, Chrites utilized his spatial spell once more.
His formal attire dissolved back into the void, returning him perfectly to his civilian shirt and trousers.
He slipped back through the shadow pathways, emerging smoothly near the terminal exits and jogging up to the idling transit bus.
“Ah, sorry for keeping you guys waiting,” Chrites said breathlessly as he stepped onto the bus, offering a polite, embarrassed smile.
“You barely made it,” Rivb laughed boisterously from the back row.
“Sit down before the driver leaves us behind.”
Chrites took an empty seat near the window as the heavy armored bus accelerated out of the spaceport gates, heading toward the central military command base.
As he watched the sprawling Cebel landscape roll past, his mind remained sharply focused on DNT’s ruthless internal security measures.
Seeking coordination, Chrites initiated a direct, silent telepathic link to Linease, who was sitting three rows ahead next to Melise.
“Linease, can you hear me?” Chrites relayed telepathically.
“The sniper was DNT.
They have lethal automated silence curses embedded in their personnel.”
Linease did not turn her head, but her mental response carried a highly sarcastic, deeply jealous emotion. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“Oh, really?” Linease thought back sharply.
“Well, you certainly look like you are enjoying the smooth bus ride.
In fact, you looked like you were genuinely enjoying the transport flight too, especially while eating that elaborate homemade lunch Vaelora made for you.”
Chrites blinked, completely missing the subtext.
“What does that have to do with the mission?
What is the problem with the lunch?”
“Nothing,” Linease snapped telepathically, her mental tone dripping with cold subtext.
“Absolutely nothing is the problem with the lunch.”
She abruptly severed the telepathic connection, leaving Chrites staring blankly at the back of her seat in total confusion.
Around him, the bus remained filled with warm, comfortable classmate chatter.
“Look at the mana conduits on those perimeter towers,” Chrono observed, pointing out the window.
“The magical architecture here relies heavily on reinforced atmospheric grounding.”
“I just hope the command base cafeteria serves decent food,” Shevy added casually.
“Logistical analysis always makes me incredibly hungry.”
“Everything makes you hungry, Shevy,” Melise laughed softly.
Vaelora smiled elegantly, joining the conversation seamlessly as the bus navigated the secure transit bridges.
Meanwhile, miles away from the bright military avenues, deep within the hidden, shadowed recesses of an unmapped subterranean fortress, the atmosphere was thick with overwhelming magical density.
Inside a sprawling stone operations chamber, twenty-five elite individuals sat at advanced tactical terminals, monitoring global communication arrays.
Suddenly, one of the operators stood up straight, turning toward the center of the room with a highly urgent, serious emotion.
“Sir,” the operator announced clearly.
“Sensors confirm that the direct daughter of General Korrigan has finally arrived on the Cebel continent.”
“Yeah, it is true,” another operative verified, checking his monitors.
“His daughter has officially landed.
I can barely believe command managed to track her transport flight.”
Standing perfectly still in the absolute center of the chamber was a highly imposing man.
He wore a masterfully tailored black suit, complemented perfectly by a sleek, dark mantle coat-cape flowing elegantly down his back.
This was Azraelor, the supreme leader of a highly classified, fiercely independent organization completely separate from DNT.
Azraelor let out a low, smooth chuckle, his eyes gleaming with a deeply calculated, confident emotion.
“It will be really, really interesting to execute this target,” Azraelor mused aloud, his voice carrying immense authority.
“Intelligence reports have just confirmed that she is actively protected by operatives belonging to one of the world’s greatest hidden factions—The Obsidian Syndicate.
Breaching their defensive line will be a highly difficult challenge.”
“Do not worry, sir,” stepped up Seraphina, a highly lethal female Master whose aura crackled with raw energy.
The room was incredibly dense with raw mana.
Operating as Azraelor’s supreme vanguard, the chamber housed exactly twenty-five elite mages.
Azraelor stood at the absolute peak of their hierarchy, commanding the terrifying rank of Legendary Master Tier 3.
Surrounding him were his most trusted executive officers, all strictly adhering to the absolute limits of the magic system: Seraphina ranked securely at the absolute peak of Master Tier 3; Caelum stood tall as a Master Tier 2; Balthazar exuded the heavy pressure of a Master Tier 1; Gideon monitored the arrays with the elite authority of a Master Tier 3; Thalor observed quietly as a Master Tier 2; and Jorik maintained the perimeter as a Master Tier 1.
The remaining subordinates filled out the basic Master tiers perfectly, making the room an absolute fortress of concentrated power.
Azraelor turned his sharp gaze toward the digital tracking map.
“The time has finally arrived to strike,” Azraelor declared, his voice echoing with cold, absolute emotion.
“Killing Korrigan’s daughter on foreign soil will be incredibly beneficial to our ultimate continental objectives.
Seraphina, I am appointing you to lead the primary vanguard.
You will personally infiltrate the military command base and execute the girl.”
Seraphina bowed perfectly, her face showing absolute execution.
“It will be done, sir.”
“Move with total efficiency,” Azraelor commanded smoothly, his dark mantle shifting as he turned back to the primary terminal.
“If she fails to eliminate the target, we immediately transition to Plan B.”