Chapter 66: Infiltrating the Sanctum

Chapter 66: Chapter 66: Infiltrating the Sanctum

"Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness." — Sun Tzu, The Art of War

•••

Joel had meant what he said, so he stayed behind after class.

The other students quickly left the lecture hall, relieved that the emotional lecture was finally over.

Malakor slowly wiped the chalkboard, waiting until the last student had left and the door clicked shut.

"Graft rejection," he said without turning around. "That’s an unusual interest for someone who has never asked a question in my class."

"I was saving them," Joel replied.

"For what?"

"For questions worth asking."

Malakor turned to face him, his expression still warm and friendly.

"Curiosity is always welcome in my classroom. I hold night sessions in the dissection theater, where we study specimens brought from the Deep."

He paused briefly.

"A curious student like you could learn a great deal there. My door is always open, especially at night."

"I’ll be sure to bring some questions," Joel said.

"Only questions?"

"That’s all I collect."

Malakor laughed warmly, and Joel joined him with a polite smile.

Both appeared friendly and relaxed.

But beneath their smiles, each was carefully watching the other.

•••

Hall Nine hummed quietly around midnight.

Nyx stood in the shadows between the reclamation pipes, her two-and-a-half-meter body covered in blades, listening as Joel spoke his thoughts aloud.

"Thomas first," Joel said.

He studied the stolen cipher ledger under the lamp as he explained his thoughts.

If he handed Malakor over to the Inquisition tomorrow, Thomas would take the credit and close the case after dealing with the professor.

But the people behind Malakor, the ones who had funded nine years of altered expedition routes and student records, would remain hidden.

They would simply find someone else to replace him.

There was another problem.

Joel had stolen the evidence, broken into the laboratory without permission, and killed its guardian without reporting it.

The Inquisition could easily cover up such crimes, and sometimes the people involved disappeared along with the evidence.

"Thomas would either take all the credit or silence me because I know too much," Joel said. "Neither option works for me."

He closed the ledger.

"So Malakor won’t be handed over to Thomas. I’ll eliminate him myself, when the time is right."

"Before or after the shipment, Architect?"

"Before. But first, we need to investigate his research."

Joel tapped the strangest section of the ledger.

It listed materials that had nothing to do with weapons: soul-glass, imprint wax, and ascendant bone.

Another entry appeared repeatedly in Malakor’s handwriting.

Vault intake.

The letters called the research the Doctor’s Tear project.

"There’s something hidden beneath that laboratory, and the weapons are paying for it," Joel said.

"The shipment leaves in nine days, but Malakor won’t wait that long after discovering his ledgers have been stolen. He’ll either move whatever is inside the vault or destroy it within a week."

Joel closed the ledger.

"So we’re going tonight."

The crown on Nyx’s head pulsed once, showing her excitement.

"A hunt right beneath their feet," she said with a pleased smile.

[Ding!]

[Hidden quest updated: Undertow. New objective: locate the source of the ’vault intake’ entries.]

•••

The faculty annex had much tighter security after dark.

Silver tripwires stretched across every window, while watch-glyphs covered the corridor walls. These magical devices absorbed lamplight and recorded everything the light touched.

The academy normally sold such expensive security systems to banks.

Yet Malakor had installed enough of them to protect an entire bank overnight.

That alone made Joel even more suspicious.

Nyx moved first.

She raised her hand and spread her shadows across the corridor lamps, covering them one after another.

As darkness filled the hallway, the watch-glyphs stopped working. Without light, they could no longer record anything.

Joel calmly walked through the corridor beneath them.

[Ding!]

[Skill activated: ’Phantom Tread’ (E) - Lv. 2.]

[Surface noise reduced by ninety percent. Footfall pressure spread across the full sole. Duration: 2 hours.]

Joel moved so quietly that his footsteps were barely heard.

The cadaver vault now had a new lock. A carved mouth had appeared where the old keyhole used to be, waiting for someone to speak the correct password.

Fortunately, Joel already knew it.

The stolen ledger contained the passwords for the entire week, and this living lock couldn’t be changed quickly.

"Inventory," Joel said.

K-CHK!

The mouth swallowed, and the lock opened.

The stairwell below was filled with nineteen thin cords of pale light. They stretched across the passage, giving off a faint humming sound.

Joel carefully moved between them, twisting his body to avoid touching any of the cords.

When one blocked his path completely, Nyx covered it with a layer of shadow.

The cord trembled slightly.

Vmmm.

A faint sound escaped, but no alarm followed.

At the bottom of the stairs, the living muscle barrier had been doubled.

Between the two layers hung something new.

It was a huge mass of flesh covered in ears and thin membranes. The creature slowly rotated, listening for the slightest sound.

An alarm organ was hidden deep inside its body.

The first barrier required a familiar heartbeat to open.

Nyx provided hers.

Squelch!

The muscle fibers parted.

But the hanging creature suddenly stopped humming.

Its many ears turned toward them.

A low sound began building inside its body.

Joel had only four seconds before the alarm activated.

He acted immediately.

SHHK!

Nyx’s blades sliced through the thick tendon holding the creature to the ceiling.

The enormous mass of flesh dropped.

Joel stepped beneath it, spread his arms, and caught it.

The impact was powerful enough to crush an ordinary person.

But his Aegis Frame absorbed the force, converting it into stored kinetic energy.

His knees bent, and his boots slid half a meter across the dusty floor, leaving two long marks behind.

Then everything fell silent.

Glug.

A nearby tank released a single bubble as its liquid settled.

The rising alarm stopped before it could sound.

The glass-filled laboratory remained exactly as Malakor had left it, except for the creature that had been hanging from the ceiling.

Joel carefully lowered the listener to the floor, as gently as if he were putting down something valuable he had borrowed.

•••

Behind the central workbench, where the cipher ledger had once been, Joel found a hatch in the floor.

It was made of brass and living flesh, cold to the touch. There was no keyhole or lock.

Instead, a small heart beat slowly at its center.

The hatch would only open for Malakor.

Joel placed two fingers against the heart and activated Soul Sight.

He examined the living lock and discovered that it had been created from the same flesh as the barriers upstairs.

Its heart had been trained to recognize only Malakor’s pulse.

Joel kept his own heartbeat calm and steady as he used his power on the lock.

Gradually, the small heart slowed.

Then it stopped beating.

The alarm never activated.

Joel had once destroyed a rune-heart with two fingers. This time, he had simply made one stop working.

FSSSH!

The hatch released a soft breath and opened.

[Ding!]

[Hidden objective completed: bypass the sanctum seal.]

The hidden chamber below was warm.

Ultraviolet moon-lamps filled the room with a faint blue glow. Nine enormous vats stood in a circle at the center, each covered with iron bands and larger than the forty tanks upstairs.

The liquid inside them slowly bubbled.

Glug. Glug.

But these vats didn’t contain students.

They contained Spire-beasts.

One held a gray-scaled hound from the wild strata, with human hands attached to its shoulders.

Another contained a manta ray with a human jaw beneath its head.

A third held a giant siege-toad with human eyes that followed Joel as he walked past. It was slowly drowning inside the vat.

The ninth vat contained something even more disturbing.

It was a bear-sized mass of bones and stitched flesh, with a human throat attached to it.

The creature kept murmuring in its sleep.

"...nine... nine... nine..."

Joel studied the creatures without showing any emotion.

At the center of the chamber stood a lectern holding a thick book containing nine volumes of research.

Joel approached it and read the title twice to make sure he understood what he was seeing.

On the Reconstruction of the Tear Effect.

Joel spent forty minutes reading the research.

The pages contained charts about soul capacity, formulas for imprint wax, and records of failed experiments.

Every experiment had the same problem.

A body with one Class could not safely hold a second. No matter how carefully the two Classes were combined, the body eventually rejected one.

Subject 12 had survived with two Classes for six minutes.

Subject 19 had lasted nine minutes.

Both had died from rejection.

The next pages described plans for further experiments.

Living subjects. Human bodies. Students from next semester’s Deep Dive, whose route had already been changed.

Malakor’s goal was clear.

He wanted to create a body capable of holding several Classes at once without rejecting them, then sell that power to people seeking ascension.

The research was based on the Genesis Tear.

On the first page was a description of the event.

Gray mist. A strange sound like the sea pulling away.

According to the records, some survivors of the Genesis Tear had gained the ability to possess multiple Classes within a single body.

Malakor had spent nine years trying to recreate that effect through his experiments.

But Joel knew something the professor didn’t.

He had experienced the gray mist himself.

He recognized the description immediately.

Whatever power the Genesis Tear granted could not simply be created inside a laboratory.

Malakor was trying to copy something he had never truly understood.

Joel took the entire research folio, including the cipher notes and master index.

Malakor would notice the missing documents by morning.

But Joel wasn’t worried.

By then, he intended to have arranged a meeting with the professor.

[Ding!]

[Discovery logged: Spire-beast chimeras. Graft-lineage: human, multi-source.]

[Ding!]

[Item acquired: ’On the Reconstruction of the Tear Effect’ (Unique). Extraction advised.]

[Ding!]

[Hidden quest advanced: Undertow. The Genesis Tear research is in your possession.]

•••

They left the same way they had entered, carefully avoiding the glowing cords and passing through the living door.

Joel left the small heart inside the vault’s lock completely still. Malakor could figure out what had happened to it himself.

Inside the ninth vat, the strange creature continued repeating the same number.

"Nine days," Joel muttered, before closing the hatch.

They returned to Hall Nine before the morning bell.

Nyx disappeared into the shadows between the pipes, her crown glowing faintly with satisfaction.

"You left the creature in the ninth vat alive," she said.

"It’s a witness," Joel replied. "It might be useful as evidence later."

He removed his worn coat and placed the stolen research folio inside his vault, alongside the ledger, letters, and vial.

Eight days remained before the shipment.

And there was still one professor he intended to eliminate when the time was right.

Malakor had personally invited him to visit.

His door was always open, especially at night.

Joel decided it was time to accept that invitation.