Chapter 282: Someone’s Partner
After closing the manifest, the attendant carried the case down the stairs. Without touching the plinth, Rias caught one half of the shelf as it slid closed and slipped through the narrowing gap without creating another access record.
The air grew hotter with every step. A deep mechanical hum traveled through the stone, occasionally broken by the clink of glass or the hiss of pressurized steam.
At the bottom, the attendant stopped before a heavy door. Crucible Concord’s seal covered the center of the door, but the newer metal did not completely hide the older mark carved into the stone.
Rias recognized the split jaw in Just Die’s crest.
Just Die had no public claim over the quarter. Its mark was buried down here, where ordinary visitors would never see it.
The attendant used the black case to unlock the lower door. Heat and bitter fumes rolled into the stairwell before he carried the recalled potions inside.
Rias moved closer once the door shut. The crooked hinge kept it from sealing properly, leaving a thin, dark gap along the frame.
Voices came through it.
"Sea Dragon blood is already in the base," a man said, his voice low and hurried. "It came from a monster, and every barrel was approved."
A glass vial clicked against stone inside the room.
"What you brought came from an intelligent bonded beast. Someone’s partner." His voice dropped almost to a whisper. "I can’t pour that into a cauldron and call it the same thing."
Another voice answered from deeper in the laboratory.
"You want results for your guild and for yourself, yeah?" Raze Dawg said. "Do it."
Rias pressed two fingers to the lower door and carefully widened the crooked gap.
Heat rolled over her mask, and the bitter fumes stung her eyes. She eased the door open only far enough to look inside.
The hidden laboratory occupied a natural chamber beneath the shops. Six sealed cauldrons stood in a semicircle, surrounded by copper coils and narrow glass tubes that carried liquids of different colors toward a central measuring table. Steam hissed from vents in the floor and curled around the equipment before the exhaust shafts pulled it into the ceiling.
Two padded chairs faced each other beside the nearest cauldron. Mana readers extended from the armrests, built to measure a pair of players at the same time. The stations farther back were different. One seat remained human-sized, while the other had been replaced with a low platform fitted with reinforced straps, adjustable collars, and other restraints sized for an intelligent beast.
The beast platforms stood empty.
Bond tags hung from hooks beside them. Each pair shared a serial number, with one tag assigned to a player and the other to a bonded companion. Several pairs had been crossed out in red.
Rias shifted her hip until the recording crystal on her belt had a clear view of the room.
The attendant set the black case beside the central table and removed the recalled vials of Clearthread Pair and Bedrock Accord. A Crucible Concord alchemist in gray stood across from him, one hand hovering above a narrow vial of dark-red blood. Two players wearing Just Die’s crest guarded the room, one by the service stair and the other beside the formula cabinets.
Raze Dawg waited on the other side of the cauldron.
[Raze Dawg Lv. 60]
[Guild: Just Die]
[Class: Beastslayer]
Rias had seen him in Night Espresso’s battle records. His red scarf and white-fanged half-mask were familiar, but jagged plates now reinforced his black leather armor. Deadmaw and Gravefang crossed his back, their hooked edges split by gold light. The Legendary pair Martin had broken apart in Cascade Valley was complete again.
The real change covered his left shoulder. A hyena-shaped pauldron sat there, its charcoal hide split by dull-orange cracks along the jaw. The torn ear and pale eye belonged to Ashjaw, the beast Rias had watched follow him into the poisoned water.
Now Raze wore that face as armor.
The Crucible Concord alchemist pushed the blood vial away from the cauldron. "CC-L17 was supposed to test whether the carrier could hold a trace response. That was all. I never cleared it for either public formula, and those visitors drank the batch without knowing what we’d added."
Raze rested one hand on the measuring table. "But it worked. They heard a stopper through a wall and smelled oil from across the store. The circuit caught every reaction before anyone knew what was happening."
"I logged those reactions because Crucible Concord requires us to monitor side effects," the alchemist said. His voice rose, then fell when one of the guards looked over. "That system is there to protect visitors. I won’t use it to turn them into Just Die’s test subjects. I’m destroying the recalled stock."
"Your batch proved bonded-beast blood can pass a trait to a player while the bond is active." Raze tapped the dark-red vial with one armored finger. "That was the weak batch. Now make the stronger one."
A wide reaction display beside the cauldrons updated with data from the public quarter. The cheerful heart-shaped flask from Two Hearts, One Flask appeared in one corner, badly out of place among the dark formula lines.
Anonymous paired records scrolled across the display, covering Twinmend’s transfer rates, Highstep’s stamina drain, Bedrock’s shifting resistance, and Clearthread’s mana separation. The customers’ names had been removed.
Two new entries sat at the bottom.
[Undeclared Response: Predatory Auditory Acuity]
[Undeclared Response: Predatory Olfactory Acuity]
The timing matched Martin’s and Rias’s final tasting.
The public tasting results and two stolen senses fed into the CC-L17 model together. Every paired formula upstairs had supplied response data to the project, but only Clearthread Pair and Bedrock Accord contained the hidden carrier batch.
Rias kept the recording crystal aimed at the display long enough to capture the data, then turned it back toward Raze and the alchemist.
"Temporary senses aren’t a progression path," the alchemist said. "Beastslayer eligibility only appeared after maximum bond. You can’t replace months or years of building that bond by making one dose stronger."
"Then don’t cram the whole bond into one dose." Raze nodded toward the paired chairs. "Start with scent and movement, then add pain and shared recovery once those work. The formulas upstairs already pass effects between two registered signatures, so keep feeding the system the right responses until it recognizes them."