Chapter 27— The Midnight Ambush.
Chapter 27— The Midnight Ambush.
Th freezing night air hung heavy over the grand plaza, wrapping the towering white marble pillars of the Central vault in a thick, spectral mist.
At twenty-three minutes past eleven, the past paved courtyards was usually dead silent.
Tonight, however, the subtle metallic clinking of heavy lockboxes shattered the quiet atmosphere.
Delegate Malakor pulled hiss fur-lined cloak tightly around his broad shoulders, his ring-adorned fingers trembling
Uncontrollably as two armored mercenaries hoisted a massive brass-bound chest onto the raear platform of an unmarked black carriage.
Faster, you fools!" Malakor hissed, his voice strained with rising panic as he glanced toward the darkened spires of the Academy Administration Building. "If those chests aren’t secured before the midnight guard rotation, I’ll have both your contracts terminated!"
One of the mercenaries—a towering warrior clad in midnight-black plate armor with a heavy greataxe strapped to his back—slowly turned his head. His eyes glowed with a faint, dangerous crimson light beneath his visor.
"Calm your nerves, Delegate," the merc grunted, his voice sounding like grinding stone.
"You hired the Shadow-Blade Vanguard. The red-eyed player guaranteed that the clock tower would become a graveyard for anyone who stole the registry. No academy brat survived that collapse. You are worrying over ghosts."
"I don’t care about ghosts!" Malakor spat, wiping a bead of cold sweat from his forehead.
"I care about the High Council. The moment they notice the vault ledgers are missing, this whole district will be locked down under martial law. Pack the last fifty thousand high-grade mana crystals, and let’s go!"
Far above the plaza, perched atop the stone archway of the eastern alley, two shadowy figures observed the entire scene through the dense fog.
Kaelen crouched silently on the stone ledge, his eyes glowing with the dark, translucent hue of his Void Core as his system interface calculated the exact distance, weight, and mana signatures of the targets below. Beside him, Tsubaki’s hand rested loosely on the hilt of his katana, his breathing slow and entirely silent.
[QUEST TARGET LOCKED: DELEGATE MALAKOR]
[ESCORT DETECTED: 2x A-RANK VANGUARD MERCENARIES]
[SYSTEM COUNTDOWN TO AMBUSH: 00 Hours 01 Minutes]
"The Guards are shifting into position on the main avenue," Tsubaki whispered without moving a muscle. "Lyra delivered the documents. The outer perimeter is sealed."
"Good," Kaelen replied coldly, his Void Core pulsing beneath his dark coat as the great clock in the central plaza began its heavy midnight chime. "Then Malakor has nowhere left to run."
BAM! BAM! BAM!
The deep, metallic bells echoed across the empty plaza. On the fourth toll, loud shouts erupted from the main boulevard as dozens of heavily armored Academy Guardians flooded the entrance with radiant light torches, blocking the main avenue entirely.
"Unregistered mana breach detected at the Central Vault!" a guard captain bellowed through a magic-amplified horn. "Halt and present your authorization seals immediately!"
Malakor gasped, his face draining of all colors. "The Guard?! How did they—no! Drive the carriage through the eastern exit now!"
The two mercenaries didn’t hesitate. Grabbing the reins, they whipped the horses into a frenzy, plunging the heavy carriage straight into the narrow, dark passage of the eastern alleyway—exactly where the Guard could not maneuver their heavy formations.
Malakor stumbled inside the carriage, muttering curses as the horses thundered into the dark corridor.
"Clear the path! Anyone in this alley dies!"
"They won’t get the chance," Kaelen murmured from above.
He dropped from the stone archway, landing with effortless precision in the middle of the alleyway, directly in front of the galloping horses. He extended his right hand, his fingers spreading wide as dark, digital ripples spread across the cobblestones beneath his boots.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: Void Core / Gravitational Suppression]
A localized pulse of extreme gravity slammed down like an invisible hydraulic press. The horses whinnied violently, their legs collapsing under the sudden, crushing weight as the heavy carriage skidded to a violent halt, its iron wheels grinding against the stone in a shower of brilliant sparks.
Before the dust could even settle, the first A-Rank mercenary leapt from the roof of the carriage, his massive great axe glowing with a terrifying blood-red mana aura as he brought it down in a vertical execution strike aimed directly at Kaelen’s head.
"Die, brat!" the mercenary roared.
SHING!
A flash of silver light cut through the dark mist.
Tsubaki materialized from the shadows like a ghost, his katana parrying the massive great axe mid-air with a sharp, deafening clash of steel. Sparks illuminated Tsubaki’s cold, focused eyes as he deflected the blow to the side, utilizing the mercenary’s own momentum to slide behind his armored frame.
"Your opponent is here," Tsubaki said softly. In a fraction of a second, his blade executed a three-hit strike against the armor joints at the mercenary’s knees and shoulder.
While Tsubaki engaged the great axe wielder, the second mercenary—a nimble assassin wielding dual serrated daggers dripping with purple paralytic poison—pushed past the wrecked carriage, lunging straight toward Kaelen.
"You’re injured and running on empty, kid!" the assassin hissed, recognizing Kaelen’s bandaged shoulder and weak physical aura.
"A-rank speed isn’t something an E-rank core can react to!"
The assassin vanished into a blur of purple motion, reappearing less than two inches from Kaelen’s throat.
Kaelen didn’t even flinch. His mind remained icy and detached, reading the system’s structural movement indicators in real time. His physical body was battered, but his Void Core’s computational capacity was at its absolute peak.
[ANALYZING TARGET MOVEMENT PATTERN...]
[PREDICTED TRAJECTORY: LEFT CAROTID STRIKE]
[SKILL ACTIVATED: Void Assimilation / Structural Phase]
Just as the poisoned blade touched Kaelen’s neck, his form flickered into a shadowy distortion. The blade passed uselessly through empty air.
Before the assassin could realize he had struck an afterimage, Kaelen’s real body appeared at his flank. Kaelen slammed his right palm directly against the back of the assassin’s neck, where the mana core pathways intersected.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: Void Core / Mana Drain & Disruption]
A sudden, violent vortex erupted from Kaelen’s hand, forcibly sucking the raw, high-tier mana out of the assassin’s meridians.
The assassin shrieked as his purple daggers shattered into harmless mana dust, his body instantly paralyzing as his core pathways were temporarily drained dry. He collapsed onto the cobblestones like a puppet with cut strings.
A few paces away, Tsubaki finished his duel. With a swift, elegant slash, he shattered the greataxe mercenary’s guard, sending the heavy warrior crashing into the stone wall, unconscious and bleeding through his cracked armor.
Silence returned to the narrow alleyway.
Kaelen dusted off his coat, his chest heaving slightly as his system interface chimed with a health warning.
[HEALTH: 42%]
[MANA RESERVES: 18%]
[WARNING: MERIDIAN STRAIN HIGH]
Ignoring the warning, Kaelen stepped toward the wrecked carriage. He grabbed the wooden door and ripped it off its hinges with a surge of raw mana strength.
Inside, Delegate Malakor was cowering on the floorboards, his expensive robes covered in dust, his face white with absolute terror. The two fifty-thousand-mana chests sat behind him, untouched.
"K-Kaelen?! You... you were supposed to be buried under the clock tower!" Malakor stammered, scrambling backward until his head hit the rear panel of the carriage.
"Listen to me! I have gold! I have artifacts! I can give you passing marks for all four years of the academy! I can make you a high noble!"Kaelen reached inside his coat, pulled out the heavy leather-bound registry, and threw it onto the seat beside Malakor.
"The ledger is open, Malakor," Kaelen said, his voice flat and devoid of any emotion. "Your guard captain has already been named, the Academy Guard has surrounded the plaza, and your career is over. You’re coming with us to face trial."
For a second, Malakor stared at the registry in despair. Then, a dark, hysterical smile slowly twisted his features.
"Trial?" Malakor giggled, his eyes wide and unhinged. "You think I’m going to spend the rest of my life in the Guard’s dungeon? You think the High Council will let me live after what I know?"
Malakor reached into his inner pocket with a sudden, frantic jerk. He pulled out a small, pulsing glass sphere filled with a dark, swirling crimson liquid, a forbidden Blood-Core Detonator.
Tsubaki’s eyes widened. "Kaelen, get back! That’s a high-tier explosive core!"
Malakor held the sphere over the brass latch of the fifty-thousand-mana chests.
"If I die here, I’m taking the whole plaza, the evidence, and both of you to hell with me!"
[CRITICAL EMERGENCY ALERT.]
[HIGH-TIER MANA EXPLOSION IMMINENT: 5 SECONDS]
[EVASION PROBABILITY: 0%]
Five seconds, in the realm of high-tier mana perception, was eternity. Kaelen’s Void Core went into overdrive, processing the environment at a staggering speed.
He could see the microscopic hairline fractures forming on the red glass sphere. He could hear the frantic pounding of Tsubaki’s heart behind him and the distant, muffled footsteps of approaching academy guards at the end of the alley.
The air grew stiflingly hot as the volatile blood man began to react with the thousands of high-grade mana crystals stacked inside the carriage. Escaping the blast radius on foot was mathematically impossible. If that core detonated, the chain reaction would vaporize everything within a hundred yards.
Malakor slammed his thumb onto the glass trigger.
All the cards are tight.....