Chapter 77: Hostile Takeover

Chapter 77: Chapter 77: Hostile Takeover

The Capital was a monument to institutionalized arrogance.

Unlike Genesis City, which was choked by smog and industrial grit, the Capital gleamed with pristine, magically-filtered air. Towering skyscrapers of enchanted glass and white marble pierced the clouds, connected by glowing pathways of hard-light infrastructure.

The Dragonheart Spire sat at the absolute center of the financial district. It was a hundred-story monolith that screamed untouchable wealth.

Donald walked through the revolving glass doors of the grand lobby. Evelyn flanked his right side, wearing a tailored charcoal suit that barely concealed the terrifying density of her S-Rank muscles. Sylvia was nowhere to be seen; the A-Rank assassin had seamlessly melted into Donald’s elongated shadow the moment they stepped off the private jet. Nyx rested on Donald’s shoulder, her tail flicking lazily.

The lobby was a cavernous expanse of polished obsidian and gold trim. A massive crystalline chandelier hung from the ceiling, radiating a soothing, artificial mana field.

As Donald approached the front desk, the ambient temperature in the room plummeted. Evelyn wasn’t suppressing her aura. She was letting just enough of her celestial pressure bleed into the air to trigger every magical alarm in the building.

The receptionist, a low-level Awakened, visibly paled. He reached under the desk, slamming the silent alarm.

"May I... help you?" the receptionist stammered, staring at Donald’s gold mask.

"I’m here to close an account," Donald said smoothly, resting his hands in his pockets.

Before the receptionist could answer, the air in the lobby cracked with the sound of spatial distortion. A dozen heavily armored Dragonheart Sentinels teleported into the massive room, forming a perfect half-circle around Donald and Evelyn.

These weren’t the disposable mercenaries Julian Vane had taken into the dungeon. These were Level 50+ Capital elites. They wore seamless silver power-armor laced with anti-magic runes and carried heavy halberds charged with kinetic energy.

A tall man with a scarred face and a silver Guild insignia stepped through the ranks of Sentinels. He drew a long, hummimg energy blade.

"You’re the Investor," the Sentinel Captain stated, his eyes narrowing. "Julian Vane issued a shoot-on-sight order for you the moment he returned an hour ago. You’re trespassing on sovereign Dragonheart territory."

"I’m not trespassing," Donald corrected gently. "I’m performing an audit."

"Kill them," the Captain ordered.

The twelve Sentinels moved with terrifying, synchronized speed. Six of them lunged forward with their halberds, aiming to pin Donald to the floor, while the other six leveled their gauntlets to unleash a concentrated volley of binding spells at Evelyn.

They never even got close.

Nyx vanished from Donald’s shoulder.

The winged cat became a streak of absolute darkness. She didn’t attack the men charging Donald; she banked hard to the left, diving straight through the chest of the heavily armored Captain.

The Captain gasped, his eyes rolling back in his head as his magical circuits instantly seized.

[Familiar (Nyx) engaged target: Sentinel Captain (Level 58).]

[Skill Triggered: Phantasmal Siphon.]

[Nyx has stolen: +22 Speed, +18 Strength, +15 Stamina.]

[Transferring stats to Investor...]

The injection of stolen stats hit Donald’s Level 20 baseline like a shot of liquid fire. His Speed vaulted from 85 to an unnatural 107. His perception of the room dramatically slowed down. The charging Sentinels seemed to be moving through thick molasses.

Donald stepped into the strike zone of the leading Sentinel. He didn’t use a weapon. He grabbed the heavy steel shaft of the halberd mid-thrust. With his temporarily boosted 103 Strength, he casually snapped the enchanted weapon in half like a dry twig.

Before the Sentinel could process the impossible display of physical force, Donald drove a palm strike directly into the center of the man’s silver breastplate. The sheer kinetic trauma crumpled the armor, launching the elite guard fifty feet backward into the obsidian reception desk, shattering it to dust.

Evelyn didn’t even draw the Bloodhound’s Fang. She simply stepped in front of the incoming volley of binding spells, let out a sharp breath, and flared her wings. The burst of blinding celestial light acted as an EMP, completely vaporizing the hostile mana and temporarily blinding the remaining Sentinels.

"The Aegis Detention Block is directly below us," Sylvia’s voice whispered directly into Donald’s earpiece from the shadows. "Three hundred feet down. Solid titanium-alloy flooring and stacked magical wards."

"Understood," Donald said quietly.

Nyx phased back out of the staggered Captain, doing a mid-air barrel roll before diving through another Sentinel, siphoning a fresh wave of Mana and Strength into Donald’s veins.

Donald pulled his left hand from his jacket pocket. The sleeve tore open, revealing the massive, jagged purple-and-black plating of the Abyssal Impact Pile Bunker strapped to his forearm. The weapon was already humming, drawing in the ambient mana of the massive chandelier above them to charge its thunder core.

"Evie," Donald called out, locking his footing on the polished obsidian floor. "Clear the blast radius."

Evelyn smiled. She vanished in a blur of gold light, reappearing near the revolving doors, completely out of the center of the lobby.

The Sentinel Captain shook off the paralysis from Nyx’s siphon. He stared in absolute horror at the heavy A-Rank gauntlet powering up on Donald’s arm. The core was glowing with a terrifying, unstable mixture of blue lightning and crimson hellfire.

"Stop him!" the Captain screamed, scrambling backward. "He’s going to breach the floor!"

Donald aimed his left fist directly downward at the obsidian tiles.

"Hostile takeover," Donald whispered.

He pulled the trigger.

The piston fired. The B-Rank baseline weapon had been terrifying, but Garrick’s A-Rank abyssal upgrades turned it into an engine of absolute devastation.

The dual-elemental detonation hit the floor with the force of a localized meteor strike. Blue lightning shattered the anti-magic wards stacked beneath the tiles, stripping the magical defenses instantly. A microsecond later, the crimson hellfire violently melted the structural titanium-alloy framing.

The shockwave blew out every single glass window on the ground floor of the Dragonheart Spire. The remaining Sentinels were thrown like ragdolls against the walls.

The floor completely gave out.

A massive, perfectly circular, twenty-foot-wide crater was blasted straight through the foundations of the building. Donald didn’t even try to catch his balance; he simply let gravity take him, dropping into the smoking, molten abyss he had just created.

Evelyn dove into the hole a second later, her wings remaining tucked to maximize her descent speed.

They fell for three hundred feet through utter darkness, passing through layers of severed power cables and melted concrete, before slamming into the subterranean floor of the Aegis Detention Block.

Donald landed in a three-point stance, the Abyssal Impact gauntlet venting a thick cloud of blue smoke.

He stood up, his golden [Valuation Eye] scanning the new environment.

The Aegis block was a nightmare. It was a sprawling, sterile grid of high-security isolation cells made of magically reinforced glass. The air was freezing, humming with a heavy, oppressive suppression field designed to violently drain the mana of anyone locked inside.

At the far end of the long corridor, a massive vault door stood closed. Standing in front of it was a man wrapped in heavy chains, wielding a massive executioner’s scythe. He wasn’t a Sentinel; his aura was far darker, reeking of the same corrupted, abyssal energy Julian Vane had trafficked in.

"Sylvia," Donald spoke quietly into the quiet, echoing corridor.

The shadow directly beneath Donald’s boots expanded. Sylvia rose from the darkness, her new B-Rank tungsten daggers already drawn. Her breathing was slightly erratic, her violet eyes locked desperately on the heavy vault door at the end of the hall.

Her little brother was behind that door.

"Stay calm," Donald ordered softly, placing his smoking left hand gently on her shoulder. The stolen stats were fading from his system, but his voice was an absolute bedrock of control. "You are an A-Rank asset. We are going to walk down this hallway, we are going to break that vault, and we are taking Leo home. Anyone who stands in the way is getting liquidated."

Sylvia took a sharp breath, the panic in her chest instantly hardening into cold, lethal focus. She nodded, adjusting her grip on her daggers.

"Let’s go," Sylvia whispered.