Chapter 1526: Into The Hostile Zone III

It wasn’t easy for Zhao Li Xin and the others to make their way downward. Surveillance cameras watched every angle, and soldiers patrolled with disciplined precision. More troubling still, they spotted several paladins embedded among the Luxemborough troops.

The paladins didn’t wear their usual pristine white uniform but instead a plain black uniform, almost identical to the soldiers around them, but they didn’t carry guns; instead, they carried swords attached to their hips, completely giving away their identity right away, especially to anyone who had fought against a Paladin face-to-face.

Eventually, Jay and Zhao Li Xin split from Clift and Samuel, their objectives branching in different directions deep within the facility.

Jay and Zhao Li Xin couldn’t risk the elevators since they had surveillance cameras.

Therefore, they tracked down an emergency staircase, or something serving that purpose. However, reaching it was a problem entirely different.

The entryway was heavily guarded, with two soldiers checking the nametags of every worker, scanning each one with suspicious eyes. Above them, surveillance cameras angled downward, unblinking.

Even though taking out the soldiers and disabling the cameras would be simple for Jay and Zhao Li Xin, that kind of disturbance would undoubtedly alert the enemy in the control room, and that was the last thing they wanted.

Jay leaned out from behind the wall, eyes narrowing as he tracked the guards’ rhythm, waiting for even the smallest gap.

"We have to find another way in," he murmured under his breath.

Zhao Li Xin scanned the area, his gaze moving with calm precision. Then something caught his eye. He nudged Jay’s arm lightly. "Hey... what is she doing?"

Jay followed his line of sight. Then he saw a woman in a brown skirted uniform pushing a cleaning cart down the corridor. She stopped beside a section of the wall that looked unremarkable at first glance. With a press of a button, a narrow panel split open, revealing a chute. A moment later, a pile of dirty laundry tumbled out.

The cleaning lady collected the load, stuffed it efficiently into the cart, closed the panel, and continued on her way.

Jay blinked, his expression briefly blank as the obvious clicked into place.Of course, a place this massive would need a cleaning service.

"Oh, they’ve got a dumbwaiter."

Zhao Li Xin tilted his head, puzzled. "What is that?"

"Just a small freight lift," Jay explained while keeping his voice low. "It used to move goods between floors. In this case—dirty laundry."

"Oh?" Zhao Li Xin responded, as he always did when encountering something unfamiliar.

"It’s old tech," Jay went on, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret. "Cheap, durable, and it runs without guzzling too much energy. Last time I saw one was back in L’Markieth... We used to joke that sending things through a dumbwaiter was faster than using the elevator." He paused, eyes drifting as the memory flickered. Then a slow, mischievous grin curled across his face.

"Yo, Li Xin—wanna get dirty?"

"..."

Ah, that comment and that look—Zhao Li Xin’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. "So you’re the one who taught my wife..."

"Huh? Taught what?" Jay blinked, genuinely perplexed.

Zhao Li Xin remembered vividly how Lory used to toss out vulgar, ambiguous comments with that exact same grin. He’d always wondered where she’d picked up such habits.

’So it was him.’

...If Jay had heard what Zhao Li Xin was thinking, he would’ve practically flailed his arms in panic, vehemently refuted it, saying, ’No! It wasn’t me—it was Fargo! They learned it from Fargo!!’

At the same time, Clift and Samuel used the elevator to get to the bottom level of the underground facility, but he didn’t get inside the elevator but rode on top of the elevator box.

However, the elevator only took them to the seventh floor, B7, and after that, it required high-level access that they didn’t have time to search for, so they had to find another way, and according to the map, there was a way through a ventilation pipe.

Of course, it wasn’t an ordinary ventilation pipe, nope, far from it. The shaft they stood above was massive, fitted with two enormous turbines responsible for circulating air through the underground facility.

Their job was simple: keep the oxygen levels stable on the lowest floor. The turbine at the bottom spun to force out carbon dioxide and polluted air, and once it completed its cycle, the upper turbine would roar to life, pushing fresh air downward.

And that was the problem.

The turbines worked in perfect alternation, like the ticking of a merciless clock. Each gust blasted through the shaft at nearly fifteen meters per second.

If Clift and Samuel wanted to drop to the ground floor, they had one narrow window when the top turbine engaged. The air pressure would give them enough momentum to descend quickly. ℴ𝗆

But if they mistimed it, if they were even a second late, the bottom turbine would roar to life. They would be blasted back up the shaft... and if the top turbine happened to spin again at that exact moment, they wouldn’t just be thrown.

They would be carved apart, as vegetables tossed straight into a blender.

Samuel peered down into the abyss just as another violent gust of wind roared past, slapping him in the face hard enough to sting. "Are you sure about this?" he asked, voice strained.

Clift shrugged nonchalantly as if it was nothing. "Pretty much..." Then he cast Samuel a sideways smirk. "What? Don’t tell me you’re scared of heights."

Samuel’s lips twitched. "The height isn’t the problem." He heard the rumbling sounds of turbine spinning blades below. "Being sliced like vegetables is."

"What, you don’t like the idea?" Clift asked, his brows knitting together as if personally offended.

"You think your princess would like this kind of idea?" Samuel asked dryly, one brow arched in pure sarcasm.

Clift didn’t even hesitate, he nodded with absolute certainty. "Yeah. She’d be thrilled."

If Lory had been there, she would’ve snapped, ’NO, I wouldn’t!’

________________________________

Somewhere on the ground floor, inside a nearly empty office, Igor sat behind a metal desk while Sean and Andreass faced him from the opposite side, their expressions carved in suspicion.

"How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t remember anything." Igor dragged a hand down his face, equal parts exhausted and furious. He had just been kidnapped—kidnapped, and instead of checking on him, these two were grilling him like a criminal.

Weren’t they the reason he’d been snatched in the first place? How was any of this his fault? The audacity was maddening.

Sean studied him with the quiet scrutiny of someone trained to catch even the smallest lie. But aside from Igor’s simmering irritation, he found nothing on Igor’s face, no guilt, no deceit, just pure frustration.

A few minutes later, a paladin dressed in black stepped into the room and handed Andreass a file. He flipped through it quickly, his eyes lifting to Igor with a measured glance. Then he passed the folder to Sean and offered Igor a polite, practiced bow.

"Apologies for the inconvenience, Mr. Renovich. The project we’re working on is extremely sensitive. We must ensure everyone’s safety."

Igor swallowed the retort burning on his tongue. "Can I go back to work now?" he asked, impatience leaking into every word. ℴ𝒗ⅇ𝑙.

"Of course," Andreass said, lifting a hand to gesture toward the door.

Igor pushed back his chair, straightened his wrinkled clothes—still the ones he’d been wearing during the kidnapping- he let out a loud snort before leaving the room, escorted by the Paladin.

Once they left, Andreas leaned to his chair and folded his arms over his chest while letting out a heavy sigh. "This is bad."

"Tell me about it," Sean muttered, tossing the map onto the table. The papers scattered across it told the same story: the lab results found no foreign substances in Igor’s body, no traces of coercion, nothing to suggest mind tampering. Clean. Untouched.

And yet neither Sean nor Andreass believed a word of it; if anything, the results only made their unease worse.

Igor’s return, healthy, coherent, and without the slightest sign of trauma, left them with more questions than answers. After being taken from the Valkyrium Arena, he should have shown something. A mark. A trace. A gap in awareness. But instead, he claimed memory loss, and nothing supported it.

"It’s Harland. No doubt," Sean said with a click of his tongue, irritation sharpening his voice.

"The problem is... how much do they know?" Andreass murmured, eyes narrowing at the scattered documents.

"We have to assume they know a lot," Sean replied grimly. "Maybe everything."

Andreass shook his head hard. "Not everything. They don’t know the Saintess’ purpose."

"Well, that’s..." Sean exhaled, long and heavy. "Not even all the Constellation members know that."

"And even if they did," Andreass scoffed, "it’s not like they care."

"Guess not." Sean fell quiet, thinking. The silence stretched, weighed down by implications neither wanted to say aloud. At last, he straightened, his expression tightening. "What do you think Harland’s next move is?"

Andreass rose from his chair and stepped toward the window. Below, the ground floor churned with motion, a hive of relentless activity centered around a colossal cylindrical machine. Its steel frame rose like a metallic titan, thick cables snaking across its surface, feeding energy and data into its unfinished core.

Scaffolding wrapped around it in skeletal tiers, cranes swung overhead, and workers clambered along the structure like determined ants. Engineers in white lab coats hovered nearby, tapping swift notes into their tablets, their faces tight with urgency and barely contained anticipation.

’Harland’s next move?’

Andreass felt the answer settle in his gut long before he voiced it.

"If I were in their position," he said slowly, each word cutting clean through the air, "I would investigate this place first. And once I confirmed the threat?"

He exhaled, eyes fixed on the massive machine beyond the window. "I’d destroy this place."

Sean’s expression hardened. He stood silent for several seconds, thoughts churning behind narrowed eyes. Then, with a long, steady breath, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.