Chapter 1531: Start Diversionary Tactic II

Clift ended the transmission with a soft click, then angled his gaze toward the reinforced glass of the capsule chamber. Beyond it stood another sealed enclosure, a room covered with glass, and inside, three men were strapped upright to metal platforms that resembled vertical beds. Thick cables burrowed into their spines and skulls, snaking upward to merge with the humming machinery that surrounded them.

Outside the glass room, Igor stood watching, his jaw tight as he scrolled through the data on his tablet. A second scientist moved with clinical detachment, injecting a clear serum into the arm of one of the restrained subjects.

Next to Igor stood a striking woman locked in a tense argument with him, and Clift recognized the woman as Elena Reynolds. Even beneath the unforgiving fluorescent lights, her beauty was unmistakable.

Her elegant brows were drawn together, her voice sharp with frustration, her posture taut with rising irritation. Clift couldn’t hear a word from outside the glass, but her expression told him enough.

Abruptly, one of the lab personnel stiffened as if remembering something and hurried toward the exit.

Clift moved swiftly. He slipped away from the window and glided toward the door just as it hissed open. The moment the man stepped through, Clift pressed himself flat against the darkness on the floor, his form melting seamlessly into shadow. In a blink, he slid across the threshold before the door sealed shut behind him.

Inside the lab, he drifted silently across the floor, merging with the deep shadow beneath a long metal table. From this vantage point, the voices became clear, sharp, clipped, and entirely unaware of the phantom listening in the dark.

It was then Clift heard the conversation.

"Begin mana enhancement," Igor instructed.

A lab technician is seated behind a machine with wide screens, and below the screen, there are numerous buttons, knobs, and symbols. The lab technician reached out and slowly twisted one of the dials.

The men strapped to the platforms began to jolt and convulse, their veins bulging beneath their skin. Igor and Elena watched with unreadable expressions.

"More..." Igor said coldly.

The technician swallowed hard and turned the knob again, and it slowly nearly to maximum. He cast a worried look at Igor as the three restrained men thrashed violently, blue veins crawling across their necks and bodies like swollen ropes about to burst.

But Igor remained indifferent. "Keep it going."

"They won’t withstand it," Elena sighed, not out of pity, but out of annoyance at yet another probable failure.

"Keep going," Igor insisted.

And just as Elena predicted, the men finally hit their limit. Their heads burst, like pumpkins blown apart by a shotgun blast. Gore splattered violently across the interior of the reinforced glass chamber, streaking the surface in thick, dripping lines.

"See?" Elena said coolly, casting Igor a sharp, I told you so look.

Igor’s lips pressed into a thin, irritated line, annoyance and frustration sharpening his expression. After a beat, he turned toward the lab technician. "How far did we push their mana?"

"One hundred fifty, Sir," the technician replied, voice trembling.

"So we only boosted them from low-level to barely above mid-level?" Elena scoffed, folding her arms. "You know that’s not good enough, right?" Her tone dripped with sarcasm.

"You think I don’t know that?" Igor snapped.

"If we want Gifted people to willingly plug themselves into these devices, the upgrade has to be dramatic. Tripling their power at least." Elena exhaled, exasperated.

Igor dragged a hand through his hair in exasperation. "Whose brilliant idea was it to promise we could enhance someone’s power? Blocking mana is easy, but increasing it—" he let out a tight breath, "—that’s an entirely different beast."

Elena lifted her hands in a helpless shrug. "What else are we supposed to do to convince Gifted to let us implant this device? Hardly anyone wants their mana suppressed. Most would rather refine their abilities, especially after the Dark Age War, when they finally realized how useful their powers could be."

Her lips curved into a cold, humorless chuckle. "So we slapped a pretty label on it. Called the Mana Deterrent something more marketable, Mana Augmentation."

The corner of her mouth lifted at the lie embedded in the name. ’Augmentation’ might sound sophisticated. But at the same time, it was vague and didn’t explain clearly what exactly was being changed.

"We need more time..." Igor muttered, his fists tightening.

"We only have time until the Aetherion Spear is finished," Elena said quietly. "If we fail... You know what will happen to us."

She glanced toward the corpse behind the glass wall, already zipped into a body bag. The cleanup team was scrubbing the remaining blood and fragments of brain matter from the floor, wiping the room spotless. Soon, it would look as if the three subjects had never existed at all.

"Maybe our fate won’t be any better than theirs..." she murmured.

Igor watched the team work with mechanical efficiency, erasing every trace of failure. His face drained of color. Perhaps he had overestimated his value to Theodore Navarro. But regret was useless now.

They had only one option left. Succeed, or die.

All of a sudden, a few guards entered the room, their expression serious. "Sorry, Sir, ma’am, we were ordered to take you both to a safe place." ℯ

"Does this have anything to do with the alert notification I saw earlier? I thought that only happened on the fourth floor," Elena said with a frown.

"No, ma’am—the breach has reached the sixth floor. We can’t risk your safety anymore," one of the guards replied.

"You all need to step up your game, you know that?" Igor snapped. After being kidnapped once tonight, the thought of another attempt made his temper spike.

The guards swallowed their irritation and forced themselves to remain professional. ℯ

"Well, before that..." one of them said. He pulled out a tool resembling a slim handheld scanner and took Igor by the arm, and ’gently’ gripped Igor’s hand firmly, enough to make a point.

"Hold still, Sir" the guard instructed, raising the device toward the back of Igor’s neck.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Igor complained.

A second later, a sharp ’beep cut through the hallway. One of the soldiers checked his scanner, and his expression hardened. "It’s positive. He’s carrying a tracking device."

"What?" Igor blurted, eyes widening. He barely had a second to panic before a tiny electric sting shot through his shoulder.

"Ow—! What was that?!"

"Sorry, sir," the guard said curtly as he holstered the small disabling tool, "protocol requires us to neutralize the tracker before we move you to a secure location."

"It’s clear now," the guard called to his partner.

Elena’s eyes narrowed the moment the words sank in. Realization struck hard and fast—Igor had been the reason the enemy breached the facility. Whether he knew or not didn’t matter.

She threw him a withering glare. "Idiot."

"Hey, I was KIDNAPPED!" Igor snapped back, feeling wronged, but Elena only rolled her eyes.

The moment Elena and Igor were escorted out, the room collapsed into an uneasy stillness, machines humming, cables ticking softly as they cooled. When the final echo of footsteps dissolved into the distance, the shadows along the far wall rippled, stretching unnaturally as if exhaling.

Clift emerged from under the shadow, his form peeling away from the darkness before solidifying into a crouched figure on the floor. For a heartbeat, he remained half-shadow, half-man, then the transformation completed, leaving only a quiet human silhouette where there had been nothing.

Without hesitation, he drew a small device and shot out the surveillance camera; the faint crack was drowned by the ambient drone of equipment. Satisfied, Clift rose to his feet, scanning the room with sharp, predatory calm.

He moved to the workstation, fingers gliding across the console as he revived the still-warm screen. Igor must have left in a rush; the system was still logged in. With a soft chime, files burst across the monitor, schematics, experiment logs, confidential reports, unfolding like secrets desperate to be seen.

Clift’s gaze sharpened.

A complete dossier on the Mana Detterent, including Igor’s breakthroughs, failures, and month-by-month recalibrations. And just below that... the Aetherion Spear Project, its blueprints glowing faintly, accompanied by deployment estimates and operational plans.

For a heartbeat, Clift simply stared, almost disbelieving the treasure trove laid bare before him. Then a slow, cunning smile curled at the edge of his lips.

He drew out his cell phone, then connected it with practiced ease, and initiated the transfer. Lines of data streamed like a flood, the device vibrating subtly in his hand as it worked to digest the files.

Even with top-tier tech, the analysis bar crawled for a full five minutes, a testament to just how massive and sensitive the information truly was.

Just like Jay’s situation, Clift’s phone was also designed to relay any secured data straight to N.I.M.S. and the Fredhardt servers the instant it was acquired. Under normal conditions, the transfer would have been automatic, silent, invisible, and done in the blink of an eye.

But as the last file settled into his device, a muted notification pulsed on the screen: Network Blocked. Meaning the outbound Transmission is suspended.

Clift’s brow didn’t even twitch. He already knew the facility had a suppression field. A place this secretive wouldn’t let a whisper slip through its walls, much less a data stream.

The files remained locked in the encrypted chamber of his phone, waiting patiently like coiled snakes. They would stay there until the moment he stepped beyond the blockade.

Clift slipped the phone back into his pocket with quiet confidence, the faintest hint of anticipation flickering in his eyes. He checked the time on his wrist display, then lifted it close to his lips.

"Samuel," he murmured, voice low and steady, "start the firecracker."

A soft chuckle crackled through the comm. "Well, watch out for the big firecracker."

Clift’s lips curved, just slightly. "Okay, let’s gather outside, then..."

Afterward, Clift lowered his wrist, the shadows around his feet already beginning to stir in response.