Chapter 1532: An Open Challenge

Meanwhile, several floors above, the facility descended into chaos.

Jay, Zhao Li Xin, and Lory tore through the corridors like a living calamity, it was less a battle and more like a one-sided storm.

Alarms screamed, boots thundered, and wave after wave of guards, Dragxtarn units, and Paladins flooded in to stop them. None lasted more than seconds.

Jay moved at a rapid speed. He vanished in a blur, his body snapping from point to point like a bolt of living lightning. To the guards, he was nothing but afterimages, a flicker of motion followed by sudden pain.

Daggers flashed, precise and merciless. One heartbeat, a man stood screaming orders; the next, he collapsed before the sound could leave his throat. Jay flowed through them effortlessly, striking dozens in a single seamless motion, never slowing, never hesitating.

While Zhao Li Xin’s movements were quieter, he didn’t summon the Crimson Lightning Sword, though. He didn’t need to. A short, simple blade was enough.

He stepped into close quarters with chilling calm, his movements sharp, efficient, and fatal. A twist of the wrist, a single thrust, artery, nerve, heart. Each strike was deliberate, surgical. Enemies fell without understanding how they’d been killed, their bodies hitting the floor before the echo of gunfire faded. There was no rage in him, no urgency, only cold efficiency.

And then there was Lory. Her bow was dancing on the string as she loosed arrows in rapid succession. Each arrow flew true, slicing the air without wasted motion, no missed targets.

Guards fell one by one, collapsing as if their strings had been cut. To those watching from afar, it looked almost unreal: arrows appearing where death was needed most, precise and unforgiving.

Then the Paladins intervened. They raised their hands, then thorny vines erupted from the ground, twisting and coiling toward the trio in a crushing snare. But the counter came instantly, fluid, practiced, seamless.

Lory raised her hand, conjuring a compressed water sphere that slammed into the vines, destabilizing their structure. In the same heartbeat, Jay followed up, electricity crackling from his fingers as he discharged a stunning surge through the soaked growth. The vines convulsed, frozen mid-attack.

Zhao Li Xin stepped forward. He lifted his hand, soon after wildfire emerged. The dark purple flames surged outward, devouring the paralyzed vines in an instant. They burned to ash before they could even hit the floor, heat rippling through the corridor like a final verdict.

Silence followed. Broken only by the crackle of dying embers and the groans of the fallen. Together, they were not just powerful. They were unstoppable.

The corridor became a graveyard of broken formations and shattered confidence. Units sent to stop them were swallowed whole by the storm, erased before they could regroup. Radios crackled with panicked reports, pleading for support.

Somewhere, deep within the command sector, Andreass received the alert: Unauthorized deactivation of a Mana Deterrent—Raven Jane.

The truth is, Sean had been watching for Lory to come out for a long time. He never believed she had died in the plane crash. The woman was too clever, too cunning, too annoyingly powerful to die in a mere plane crash. So he had waited, patient and certain, knowing she would resurface eventually.

He had been waiting.

Unfortunately, with the Aetherion Spear still incomplete, its tracking range remained limited. When Raven Jane was beyond that radius, she became like a ghost, unreachable, invisible, well, she always liked that, though.

Still, Sean was certain of one thing: if she intended to remove the Mana Deterrent embedded in her body, she would eventually come to Zenon. Because the Blackridged facility was the only place capable of doing so, and as he predicted, she was here but not in the way he expected.

For a fleeting instant, Raven Jane’s signal reappeared on the system, confirmed inside Blackridged. The data spike lasted less than a second before collapsing back into static, but it was immediately followed by a far more critical alert: unauthorized activation of an internal deactivation unit.

One of the machines had been accessed, and the procedure had been completed successfully?

From a technical standpoint, this should have been impossible. The deactivation systems were designed for operation only by certified laboratory personnel, requiring multilayer authentication, biometric verification, and procedural knowledge far beyond that of an outsider. The interface alone was complex enough to deter most trained technicians without proper clearance. Yet the fact is undeniable.

Someone had bypassed the safeguards, overridden the protocols, and executed the process with precision. Sean, reviewing the logs, could not reconcile the outcome with the system’s intended limitations.

The only plausible conclusion was an external variable, an operator with exceptional computational aptitude capable of exploiting the machine’s vulnerabilities.

What Sean did not know was that such a variable existed. A specialist. A computational savant, a genius called Jay.

After that, the system’s automatic protocols triggered at once. Lockdown procedures engaged. Security forces were mobilized. The perpetrator was to be contained at all costs.

Sean, alerted alongside Andreass, had issued a single, explicit order: Raven Jane was not to be killed. He wanted her alive. He needed to know how she had infiltrated Blackridged, how she had bypassed safeguards no outsider should have been able to breach.

But before the order could fully take effect, another report arrived. All the guards had been incapacitated, including Dragxtarn and the Paladin. It’s hard to believe dozens of them were no match for just a few. Sean froze, disbelief etched across his face as a name popped into his head.

Zhao Li Xin.

That obnoxiously handsome man, Sean, had always known he was dangerous. It was infuriating, really. The bloodlust smoldering behind those dark eyes, the strength that casually shattered every known metric, all wrapped up in a face that looked like it belonged on a painting instead of a battlefield.

Sean hated that part the most. Envy, jealousy shimmered inside him, and now knowing the scale of Zhao Li Xin’s true power, Sean cannot describe how he feels right now.

Regardless, he had no time to linger on such shallow, ugly thoughts—thoughts that only reminded him of his own shortcomings. He had never thought that anyone other than his brother, Salvo De Rova, could make him feel this way.

Sean shook his head and forcefully pushed the feeling aside, the way he always did, burying it beneath duty and motion.

"Call Timothy. We need to stop this—ASAP." Sean rose to his feet, the decision already made, his voice sharp with urgency.

"Got it," Andreass replied firmly. Then his gaze lingered on Sean, heavier, searching. "You know that girl is involved. No hesitation this time. If we can capture her, then we should kill her."

Sean paused for a second before the words gradually settled like lead in his chest. He understood Andreass’s logic; in fact, in a normal situation, he would agree with Andreass. However, there’s something about her that make him want to be close to her...but he couldn’t let this feeling sway him any further.

No, Raven Jane was undoubtedly dangerous!

She was in collusion with their greatest enemy, Harland. She had ruined all their plans, and she was stubborn, unyielding, and impossible to coax. Every calculation pointed to the same conclusion: If he couldn’t turn her, he could not let her live.

"I know," Sean said at last, and nodded.

But as he moved again, the conflict lingered beneath the surface, but he ignored it; he had to. He believes he would be able to silence this quieter resistance in his heart eventually.

By the time Sean, Andreass, and their strike unit stormed onto the sixth floor, the battlefield was already decided. The long corridor had fallen into complete chaos.

Dozens of crumpled bodies littered the ground, guards and Paladins alike flung into twisted heaps, some embedded in shattered walls, others sprawled across the floor like fallen leaves after a storm. Sparks crackled from ruptured conduits, emergency lights flashing in erratic pulses that painted the destruction in red and white.

Andreass didn’t waste time assessing the damage; he had no time!

Andreas lunged with all of his power. The moment he spotted Jay, he surged forward, boots slamming against the floor as his blade sang free of its sheath.

Steel met steel in a violent clash—Andreass’s sword colliding with Jay’s dagger in a shower of sparks that lit the air between them.

"You?" Andreass frowned as the face of the enemy strangely looked familiar.

Jay hadn’t bothered with a disguise. He doubted the enemy could be so foolish; they should have figured it out by now. And if, by some miracle, they truly were that stupid, then they might as well learn the truth sooner rather than later.

A grin curved his lips as he drew the dagger. Electricity crept along its edge, bright and restless, coiling like a living thing eager to be unleashed.

"Ah, you must be one of the Constellation, right?" Jay let out a cold smirk.

Jay pivoted and launched a brutal kick, fast enough to blur, but Andreass had already reacted, springing backward just in time. The kick sliced through empty air, the shockwave rattling loose debris from the ceiling.

Andreass landed in a low stance, sword raised, eyes sharp and burning. Jay then rolled his shoulders, sparks snapping at his fingertips, grin widening as chaos roared around them. The fight had truly begun, now.

"Show me what you got?" Jay challenged him.

"You..." Andreass narrowed his eyes. "Do I know you?"

It took a moment for Andreass before the possibility took shape in his mind. His gaze traced the stranger’s face, the sharp lines, the familiar posture, the effortless confidence in the way he stood. Recognition pressed at the edges of his mind, unwelcome and suffocating.

He didn’t want to believe it. Not now. Not like this.

"Justin Thornbery," he forced the name out, squeezing it between his teeth. His heart trembles as the man’s smile only grows wider.

"Nice to meet you. It’s a pleasure, Mr. Andreas Brenn—" Jay inclined his head slightly, his voice smooth, almost courteous, "—or should I say, Mr. Andreass Bruyninct, a member of Constellation, right?"

The implication was unmistakable. Jay knew everything.

Andreass’s expression hardened, the last trace of uncertainty draining from his face.

The Archknights had uncovered it all, the project, the preparations, the careful web of secrets woven in the dark. There would be no more games, no more feints behind false names, no more guessing and quiet maneuvers; finally, King Lucas no longer hides in the shadows. This time, the war would be waged in the open.

This time, the war would be fought in the open. This is undoubtedly an open challenge.

"Shall we continue?" Jay spread his arms, an almost friendly smile playing on his lips, as if inviting a dance rather than a duel.

Andreass tightened his grip on his sword. "We shall." He lunged forward.ℴ𝗆