The heavy stone tunnel leading into the hidden secondary base was wide and brightly lit by glowing magical panels set into the ceiling.
The air inside the underground facility was dry and slightly cold, a sharp contrast to the dusty canyon outside.
As they walked deeper into the mountain, the sound of their boots echoing against the solid rock walls was the only noise in the complete silence.
Before they reached the end of the long corridor, Chrites suddenly stopped walking and raised his left hand.
“Halt,” Chrites ordered smoothly.
He turned to look at Linease and the three elite guards walking closely behind him.
“Before we step through these main doors, put your masks on.
No one in this facility is allowed to see your true faces.
We are operating in hostile territory now, and total anonymity is our greatest weapon.”
Linease nodded quickly, feeling a sudden rush of nervous energy in her chest.
She reached into the pocket of her long dark coat and pulled out the plain black mask the female syndicate member had given her earlier.
She slipped it over her face, adjusting the straps tightly.
Looking through the narrow eye slits, she watched Chrites pull his terrifying, painted demon mask back over his own features.
The moment the demon mask was securely in place, the average high school student completely vanished.
The chilling, absolute leader of The Obsidian Syndicate had returned.
Chrites pressed his palm against the heavy metal doors at the end of the tunnel.
They hissed loudly and slid open, revealing a massive, highly advanced holding room.
The room was equipped with heavy computer terminals, medical supplies, and weapons racks, looking very much like their main bunker back home.
Several syndicate members in dark suits were sitting on a metal bench near the wall, quietly cleaning their weapons.
But the most important thing in the room was situated directly in the center.
A man was tied firmly to a heavy steel chair.
A dark canvas bag was pulled completely over his head, hiding his face.
Thick, heavy ropes bound his chest and legs to the metal frame.
His hands were locked tightly behind his back using heavily enchanted magical chains.
The chains glowed with a deep, pulsating purple light, constantly draining the mana core of the captive so he could not cast a single spell or use any magic to escape.
He was completely helpless.
One of the syndicate members, a tall man named Vane, immediately stood up from the metal bench and walked over to them.
“Oh, sir, you have finally come,” Vane said, bowing his head respectfully toward Chrites.
“We were waiting for you for a moment.
Here is the guy who you were asking for.
We secured him exactly according to your strict timetable.”
Chrites nodded his head slowly, looking down at the struggling captive in the chair.
“Good work, Vane.
You have done it very well.
Your team executed the extraction flawlessly.
And now, we can finally have a special question and answer session with him.”
Linease stood near the doorway, completely confused.
She stared at the tied-up man, trying to figure out what was going on.
“Who is this?” she asked quietly.
“Why is he tied up with magic chains like a dangerous criminal?”
Chrites walked slowly around the heavy steel chair.
He reached out and grabbed the dark canvas bag covering the man’s head.
With a quick, sharp pull, he ripped the bag off.
The captive gasped loudly for air, his face red and sweating profusely.
He was an older man with graying hair, wearing a highly expensive, custom-tailored suit that was now ripped and covered in dirt from the kidnapping.
“I want to explain something very important to you, Linease,” Chrites said, his magically distorted voice echoing coldly through the room.
“This guy sitting here is not just some small, random thug you might think of.
He is the President of the Rint continent.
He is the leader of the exact same landmass we are standing on right now.”
Linease took a sudden, sharp step backward.
Her eyes went completely wide behind her black mask.
Her breathing stopped for a full second.
She stared at the gray-haired man in the chair.
She recognized his face from the global news channels.
It really was the President of the Rint continent.
Her mind struggled to comprehend what was happening.
How the hell did The Obsidian Syndicate kidnap the heavily guarded political leader of an entire continent in just a few milliseconds?
It made absolutely no logical sense.
The President should have been surrounded by hundreds of elite magical bodyguards in a fortified government palace.
Yet, here he was, tied to a chair in a dark basement.
“This is not just a big deal for us.
To The Obsidian Syndicate, this is a really small thing to do.
He is just a government President.
Capturing a politician or a gang leader is not a big idea for us.
We go wherever we want, and we take whoever we want.”
Linease finally realized the absolute, terrifying total strength of the organization she had just joined.
The true power of The Obsidian Syndicate was beyond anything she could have ever imagined.
They were not just vigilantes; they were an unstoppable force of nature that could topple global governments overnight.
The President of the Rint continent coughed loudly, blinking against the bright lights of the underground room.
He looked around wildly at the masked soldiers surrounding him.
“Why have you captured me?!” the President yelled, his voice shaking with a mixture of intense fear and political arrogance.
“What do you want from me?
Do you know who I am?
Release me this instant!”
Chrites stepped directly in front of the President and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Oh, you are really not patient at all,” Chrites said, shaking his masked head.
“You are being really aggressive, man.
You should learn to stay calm when you are tied to a chair.
We have caught you for a very simple reason.
I know exactly what role you played tonight.
You personally ordered your military army to attack the southern border of the Grovics continent.”
The President’s face went completely pale.
He swallowed hard but tried to keep his angry expression.
“I do not know what the hell you are talking about!
Who the hell are you guys?”
Chrites leaned forward, bringing his terrifying demon mask just inches away from the President’s sweating face.
“We are the death creators,” Chrites whispered, his voice vibrating with raw, heavy darkness.
“We are the rulers of the death realm.
We belong to the shadows, and your death abides entirely by our hand.
You do not have the right to ask us any questions right now.
You only have to answer our questions and listen to exactly what I say.”
The President shivered violently, pressing himself as far back into the metal chair as the ropes would allow.
“I know your home country has developed some of the biggest, most powerful military weapons in the world,” Chrites continued, pacing slowly around the chair.
“And I know you were planning to use those weapons on the Grovics continent.
I was well aware of your entire strategy from the very beginning.
You ordered your troops to attack the southern border tonight for one specific reason.
You wanted the main Grovics army to be entirely redirected away from the major cities.
You created a violent distraction.”
The President closed his eyes, realizing that these masked demons knew his absolute deepest state secrets.
“You were going to use that super weapon on our country to completely destroy the whole continent,” Chrites stated coldly.
“I know that the weapon you built is really, really strong.
It can destroy entire countries within seconds, and wiping out a continent does not take much time for a bomb like that.
Because you had some of your corrupt spies mixed into our government, they successfully planted that weapon right inside our major borders.”
Linease felt her blood run entirely cold.
A continent-destroying weapon was sitting inside Grovics right now.
If it detonated, everyone she loved, her family, her friends, would be turned into absolute ash.
“But I want to tell you something very important,” Chrites said, stopping his pacing and staring down at the broken politician.
“We already found that weapon.
We dug it out, we secured it, and I currently have that weapon locked safely away with me.
You do not have that weapon anymore.
Your country has suddenly become very weak, and you cannot do anything to stop us.”
The President gasped, shaking his head in total denial.
“No…
that is impossible.
The stealth cloaking on that device was flawless!”
“Nothing is hidden from The Obsidian Syndicate,” Chrites replied firmly.
“And if you sit there and think that you have been kidnapped and your military officials will come here to help you, that is a fake reality.
They will never come here to save you, because they will never get to know the location of this hidden place.
We are completely invisible to your radar systems.”
Chrites pointed a gloved finger at the glowing magical chains wrapped around the President’s wrists.
“And even if someone magically finds this base, we have someone to take care of them easily,” Chrites explained, his tone laced with absolute confidence. Follow the newest chapters on novelping dot com.
“We have elite members who are ranked as Masters.
We have more than twenty-five people in our organization who hold the rank of Master.
Right here, in this specific base on your continent, we currently have five people who are ranked as Masters standing by.”
The President’s eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated horror.
“If you think your people can do anything to stop us, that cannot be true,” Chrites mocked him.
“In your entire country, only twenty to thirty people have achieved the rank of Master.
And the rank of Legendary Master?
That has only been achieved by one single person in your entire military.
It is not a big deal for us to handle that one guy if he shows up.
We also have your ultimate weapon.
You are really, truly powerless right now.”
The underground room was entirely silent.
The heavy reality of the situation crashed down onto the President’s shoulders.
He had lost everything.
His weapon was gone, his army was distracted, and he was completely at the mercy of monsters.
“Surrender your country’s pride,” Chrites commanded.
“I do not want you to surrender your title to the public, but I want you to follow our strict orders from the shadows.
You have to work exactly according to my plan.
If you do not follow my orders, we will brutally eliminate your families.
We can do terrible things that you cannot even think of.
We will eliminate your whole society from the world using your very own weapon.
We are not just threatening you with empty words.
We are talking about the real thing.”
The President stared at the glowing blue eyes behind the demon mask.
He saw absolutely no hesitation and no mercy.
He knew these assassins would gladly press the button and wipe his entire civilization off the map.
Tears welled up in the corners of the President’s eyes.
His political arrogance completely shattered into a million pieces.
“You guys are really bastards,” the President sobbed quietly, his shoulders slumping forward in total defeat.
He spoke emotionally, his voice cracking under the immense pressure.
“I do not have any other option left.
Okay…
fuck it.
Please, just release me.
I am going to help you with any of your plans.
Just please do not kill my family.”
Chrites stood up perfectly straight.
The intense, suffocating aura of dark magic rolling off his body instantly vanished, replaced by a calm, calculated energy.
“Perfect,” Chrites said, clapping his hands together once.
“You think very well.
You are really clever for choosing to survive.
Okay, let us get straight to the plan right now.
We have some important things to tell you to do.”
Chrites walked over to a heavy metal desk and leaned against it, looking down at the defeated world leader.
“First, you will use our secure communication lines to retreat your army from the border of the Grovics continent immediately,” Chrites ordered.
“You will pull every single soldier back into your own territory.
That will create the necessary silence and stop the fighting.
Second, you will sign an immediate peace agreement with the Grovics government.
You will publicly say that you are the main one at fault for attacking our continent.”
The President nodded slowly, accepting his total humiliation.
“Yes.
I will sign the agreement.”
“But you will not take the personal blame,” Chrites added, his voice turning incredibly sharp.
“It was your fault, but you have to blame one of your corrupt military officials for the attack.
You have to claim that a rogue general was the one who went behind your back and organized the invasion.
You will frame him, arrest him, and execute him publicly.
By doing that, those two countries will be put back into total peace and harmony.
You will order this issue to be resolved right now, before the sun comes up.”