Novel Full Chapter 823: 823: Kill Her?
Chapter 823: Chapter 823: Kill Her?
Kain stood at the open doorway of the interrogation chamber, one hand gripping the cold steel frame, his silhouette framed against the pulsing glow of the 5-star containment sigils etched into the HQ’s walls.
The air was thick with the sharp tang of metal used to construct the cells and the acrid residue of Malzahir’s corrosive spittle, which had just splattered onto Airalai’s sleeve, exposing a sigil beneath the surface of the fabric with an unknown purpose.
The sigil pulsed like a heartbeat, its eerie light clashing with the surrounding glow of the room. The team—Darrius, Malzahir, Jax, and Miya—stood clustered outside the reinforced glass panel, their contracts bristling, the tension so dense it felt like a physical weight pressing down on the room.
Kain’s voice cut through the stunned silence, low and edged with menace. “What’s this sigil’s purpose, Airalai?”
Airalai, bound to the steel bench by the 5-star enchanted rope, froze for a heartbeat, her violet eyes widening in a flicker of shock.
A sneeze—a freaking sneeze—had exposed her hidden trump card. Something she truly hadn’t anticipated. Her composure snapped back, lips curling into a tight, calculated smile. “Didn’t expect that, did you?” she said, her voice low and sharp, carrying a hint of irritation beneath its usual polish. “It’s already done its job, Kain. They are probably already heading toward my location.” The words were direct, laced with a taunting edge, but grounded, like someone caught off-guard yet quick to regain control.
Malzahir flinched, his voice rising in panic. “Did my sneeze activate it? I didn’t mean to—my nose has just been acting up lately. I don’t think I’m used to all the—umm, what did you call it?—pollen! There aren’t so many plants in the desert and I—” His serpentine wyrm contract wrapped the end of its tail around his shoulders in comfort while letting out a comforting hiss.
Jax, slouched against the glass panel, let out a sarcastic snort, his segmented cube beast whirring beside him, pink magnetic arcs crackling like suppressed laughter. “Nice one, Mal. You sneezed us into a damn ambush. Maybe next time aim for her eyes?”
Darius, the team’s anchor, placed a steadying hand on Malzahir’s shoulder, his jellyfish-squid hybrid pulsing brighter as he touched Malzahir, likely sensing the danger in Malzahir’s gift and wanting to separate its owner from him. “The sigil was likely active long before your sneeze, Malzahir. You helped us—exposed it before it could do more harm.”
And Darius was right. Although they’d patted her down and confiscated her space rings, they hadn’t thought to rip the seams of her clothes open to check for anything hidden within the fabric of her clothes.
Kain’s glare from the doorway silenced them. “Focus. Now.”
He stepped back into the cell, prompting Aegis to terraform and shrink his body to enter the cell along with him. Now both the invisible Bea and Aegis were flanking him, their presence a silent warning.
For added security, Kain also summoned three Vespid guards—including the single mutant one amongst them. They followed his direction, buzzing into position behind Airalai, their stingers aimed like guns at the back of her neck. Airalai’s eyes flicked to the Vespids, but she remained still, her posture relaxed despite the threat.
Kain knelt before her, his sigil-crafting expertise—sharpened through carving countless awakening arrays (both on people and for practice)—dissecting the sigil’s function.
As Airalai said, it was a like beacon, broadcasting Airalai’s location by piggybacking off her spiritual aura.
Her capture was no longer a secret. But the good news was that the Black Dawn didn’t know exactly where she was. It was more like a homing beacon than a single coordinate transmission, meaning that the signal needed to stay on for them to follow it. Once it was off, even if they knew the general area she was last in, they’d be unable to pinpoint her exact location.
Unfortunately, Kain’s skill with sigils made him aware of the peculiarities of this one. His keen senses detected faint energy threads weaving through her clothing and skin, linking to other hidden sigils—layered redundancies to ensure the signal endured if one failed.
‘She came expecting to be caught?,’ Kain thought, his jaw tightening, ‘No. She thought she was meeting the Director. Her uncle. He is just an ordinary person in her mind. Perhaps this is a countermeasure all members of a certain rank possess?’
Airalai leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “You’re wasting time, Kain. That signal’s been activated since I surrendered. Want to guess how close they are?” Her tone was practical, almost casual, but carried a sting of mockery, as if daring him to react.
The team’s reactions crackled through the panel’s speaker. Darius’s voice was ice-cold, resolute. “She’s too dangerous, Kain. Execute her before Black Dawn storms this place. We can’t risk our location being revealed.”
Jax nodded, arms crossed, his cube beast humming louder. “Finally, something I can get behind. Cut the cord now, Kain—she’s a walking death sentence.”
Miya rolled her eyes, her black-furred feline contract pacing, its three blue-flame tails lashing, heat waves rippling the air. “She’s family to him, technically. Not that this was exactly a cozy reunion. But could you guys just kill ‘family’ as easily as you say?”
The team went silent at her words, that Kain’s silence seemingly affirmed. They instead turned to destroying the signal, each taking a turn. Miya acted first, directing her feline to unleash a precise blast of flames. Blue flames licked Airalai’s sleeve, charring fabric, but the fabrice closest to the sigil flared brighter, absorbing the heat like fuel. “It’s eating the flames,” Miya growled, her feline snarling, tails scorching the floor’s edge in frustration. Airalai’s smirk widened slightly. “Fire won’t help you,” she said, her voice steady, almost bored.
Darius followed, his jellyfish-squid extending tentacles to encase the sigil in a shimmering barrier. The sigil pulsed, fracturing the barrier like brittle glass, its light undimmed.
Jax’s cube beast whirred, firing pink electrified arcs at the rune. The shocks crackled, but the sigil drank the energy, its pulse quickening. “This thing’s a leech,” Jax spat, his beast’s segments spinning faster, arcs flaring in agitation. Airalai tilted her head, her tone dry. “Keep trying. It’s amusing.”
Malzahir, hesitant, unleashed his wyrm’s corrosive mist, amplified by his own poison gift. The mist sizzled, melting more of Airalai’s clothing, including, finally, some of the sigils on the clothing. But unfortunately not all of them. The less sigils there were, the stronger each one seemed to become.
“Even corrosion’s useless,” he muttered, despair creeping in. Airalai’s eyes gleamed, but she said nothing, letting their failure speak for itself.
They each continued experimenting using stronger and stronger skills or using spiritual skills they’ve learned to boost the attacks of their contracts.
With each attempt, some sigils burned or melted away, but the remaining ones grew stronger, drawing power from the losses. Airalai’s clothes disintegrated, leaving her in tattered underwear, but no one noticed her state—Kain, the team, even Airalai herself were too focused on the sigils’ stubborn glow.
Her lack of embarrassment was unnerving, her violet eyes gleaming with quiet defiance as if she thrived on their frustration. They destroyed sigil after sigil until only one remained, carved into her left shoulder, pulsing like a defiant star.
Kain stepped closer, injecting Source Energy into the shoulder sigil with his hand. The raw power surged, dimming the rune’s glow momentarily, but it flared back as he withdrew, his reserves dangerously depleted. Anymore and he’d have to begin drawing from Pangea at a rate that would harm the planet.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, his breath ragged from the effort. Airalai’s voice cut in, sharp and taunting. “Running out of tricks, Kain? You can’t stop it.” Her words were direct, like a blade, meant to prod his growing doubt.
Desperate, Kain summoned Chewy, since this sigil was like an energy leech, he figured an even bigger leech could be used to combat it.
Chewy latched onto Airalai’s shoulder, absorbing the sigil’s energy, its form swelling as the rune dimmed. Instinctively, Kain sensed that the signal had been temporarily blocked. It had worked.
But Kain hesitated to leave Chewy attached to her shoulder—Chewy was technically still quite young and Kain’s weakest contract, what if she harmed him when he wasn’t paying attention? Chewy’s absorption was a temporary fix, not a solution.
Kain’s mind raced, grappling for a permanent way to alter the sigil—something unprecedented. Once complete and activated Sigils were fixed, their function couldn’t be altered and can only be shut off by destroying them or cutting off its power source. Destroying it wasn’t working, unless Kain finally resigned himself to killing Airalai as well. And Chewy’s absorption of its energy was a temporary solution. ‘But changing its function as a beacon is also impossible. It’s never been reported before. Except…’
Except in one case: the Pangea awakening ceremony. In the past, his arrays carved into the flesh of Darius and the others transformed post-bonding, reshaping into the contracted creature’s likeness, their function shifting from drawing their spirit into Pangea to binding and housing a spiritual creature.
In theory, if he drew a Pangea array over the sigil and forced Airalai to bond with a Pangea creature, it might overwrite the beacon. But the risk was catastrophic—exposing Pangea to a Black Dawn operative could unravel everything if she escaped.
Airalai’s gaze met his, her smile tight and knowing. “You’re thinking too hard, Kain,” she said, her voice calm but cutting. “Kill me or don’t. Either way, you’re running out of time.”
‘Yup. I should just kill her.’