Chapter 289: The Woman Behind Victoria
The porcelain fountain was the first thing Victoria saw when Mountain Risen’s private safe area loaded around her.
Water trickled over the fountain’s white tiers. The same bench stood beneath the dark pines, and the same paths curved toward the academy’s upper shelves. Victoria had stood there after Just Die lost Cascade Valley, reading the guild-channel aftermath and deciding what use she could still make of Raze Dawg’s defeat.
Rias’s recording floated at the edge of her vision, showing the route from the public alchemy quarter through a concealed staff corridor and into the laboratory beneath the stores carrying Crucible Concord’s crest.
The report beside it displayed Formula Fragment 17 and the sponsor entry Victoria had once assumed would never matter again. Her name still linked the order that began the project to everything the laboratory had produced since.
Victoria passed the bench without slowing and headed down through Mountain Risen. She made no effort to hide where she was going. Cold wind swept between the academy shelves, stirring her short white hair and snapping the fitted panels of her black hunter attire against her thighs.
Members of Just Die recognized her along the way. Several straightened and lowered their heads, but no one questioned why their guild leader was heading toward the alchemy quarter. Raze would hear about her approach before she reached him. Whether she surprised him no longer mattered.
She could have sent another order through the guild interface. Every officer would have received it at once, allowing her to remain safe while the people below decided how much of the order they intended to obey. For too long, that was how she had run Just Die. She set a target, attached enough money to make refusal inconvenient, and judged the outcome from somewhere the cost could not reach her.
This time, she needed to see who still obeyed her and who had already chosen Raze.
The public quarter had changed since Rias made the recording. Crucible Concord inspectors crowded the central desk, sealing reaction logs while store managers argued that they knew nothing about the recalled batches. Two academy guards stood near the storefront Martin had forced open. The paneled wall still sat crooked on its damaged track, and Robert’s Crystal Warhammer had left a deep mark in the seam.
Rather than pass through the storefront, Victoria used a separate service route reserved for Just Die’s officers. Her guild credentials opened the first gate, and the sponsor seal tied to her character unlocked the lower access point. She still possessed every formal permission the project had granted her. Each one added another line to the evidence against Victoria.
When the lower seal accepted her, she left the access log open. The black cases shown in Rias’s recording had allowed workers to pass without leaving ordinary visitor entries. Victoria authorized her descent under her own name, ensuring Crucible Concord’s investigators would find it.
Halfway down the stairs, a heated draft rolled over her, carrying the bitter smell of scorched herbs, cleansing alcohol, and the coppery trace of blood. At the bottom, the hidden sublevel opened onto a laboratory torn apart by the fight.
One formula cabinet had been split down the middle, scattering broken slates across the floor. Their surviving lines flashed beneath puddles of neutralizing rinse. The central measuring table lay in splinters around its twisted copper frame, while a severed cooling line dripped into a bucket someone had placed beneath it. Amid all the wreckage, the cauldrons continued to hum.
More than a dozen Just Die officers stood along the walls and between the equipment stations. Some still wore combat gear, while others displayed recruitment, logistics, or quartermaster insignia. The two guards from Rias’s recording had joined them. Both had recovered enough to stand, although one kept his damaged arm tucked close to his side.
The stairs remained open behind Victoria. Ahead, the officers had formed a loose wall between her and the cauldrons, their positions chosen to protect the work from their own guild leader.
Crucible Concord personnel occupied the inner work area. Beside the central cauldron stood the alchemist who had resisted Raze in the recording, his gray sleeves rolled to his elbows and his hands still trembling. Three other collaborators replaced broken glass and checked the pipes before transferring the recalled CC-L17 stock onto a clean tray.
Raze waited on the far side of the ruined table. This time, he neither apologized nor lowered his head as he had after past failures. Victoria stopped where the entire laboratory could see her.
"Shut down the cauldrons. Disconnect the public reaction feed, lock every copy of Formula Fragment 17, and leave the samples where they are. No one uses them again."
At the nearest station, a collaborator paused with his hand over a valve. Instead of closing it, he looked to Raze. Victoria gave him time to obey, but the man never moved.
"Start sealing the evidence," she said. "Preserve the original logs, batch manifests, bond tags, blood samples, funding records, and access history. Nothing leaves this room, and no one burns, consumes, deletes, or transfers another item."
She pointed toward the mana lines connected to the public-response display. "Remove every visitor signature from the active model, but keep the stolen reactions in the audit copy. Beastslayer recruitment and live-bond testing end now. Any source beasts in this facility stay unharmed until inspection, and Crucible Concord’s uninvolved leadership gets the full record."
The room stayed silent except for the hum of the cauldrons and the soft metallic tap of water striking the bucket. No one reached for the shutdown controls.
Victoria faced the alchemist at the central station. "You argued against putting the carrier in the public formulas. Seal the restricted materials and step away from the cauldron."
He started to answer. "Guild Leader, I..."
One of the other collaborators shifted beside him. The alchemist glanced at Raze and said nothing else.
"Look at me," Victoria said. Once he did, she asked, "Are you going to seal them?"
The alchemist dropped his gaze to the controls and did not step away.
He had argued with Raze when only two guards and an attendant were present. Now that Just Die’s officers surrounded him, he was no longer willing to side with the name at the top of the guild roster. Victoria’s title might punish him later, but Raze’s people were here now and could reach him before he took a single step away from the cauldron.
Victoria opened the roster and shared it with everyone in the room.
[Guild Leader: Victoria]
[Second-in-Command: Raze Dawg]
Victoria selected Raze’s officer entry and tried to suspend his permissions.
[Action blocked: An active officer challenge has suspended unilateral guild-leader actions.]
[Guild title remains unchanged until the challenge is resolved. External sponsor records are not affected by the officer challenge.]
The interface still placed her above Raze, yet no one in the laboratory looked to her for the next order.
"My sponsor seal authorized this facility," Victoria said. "I’m revoking it. Anyone who keeps working after that puts their own name on the next restricted batch."
A recruitment officer near the wall scoffed under his breath. Another player looked down at the roster, closed it, and stayed where he was.
Raze braced one hand against the broken edge of the measuring table.
"No."
The refusal was nearly lost beneath the machinery. Even so, one collaborator resumed checking a pressure gauge, while a Just Die quartermaster stepped in front of the trays holding the recalled stock. The other officers shifted with them, leaving Raze at the center as their official guild leader stood alone near the stairs.
Victoria kept her voice level. "Raze, move away from the cauldrons."
His fingers curled against the broken wood.
"You gave me one order after I lost at Cascade Valley. You don’t get to come back now and pretend this one erases it."