Chapter 350: Jax Has Been Compromised [Bonus - ]
His voice wasn’t surprised.
It was dripping with exhausted irritation.
Evelyn stiffened violently.
The giant stuffed kraken slipped from her numb grasp, falling to the wet cobblestone with a soft pathetic thud.
She stood there, fully exposed in her oversized gray hoodie and her painted metal mask.
Panic flooded her veins as her mind short-circuited under the weight of his direct gaze.
"I—I don’t know what you are talking about," Evelyn stuttered, desperately trying to deepen her voice through the mask to sound like a random, aggressive street thug. "I am just playing a game."
Matt let out a heavy bitter sigh. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose, shaking his head.
"Drop the act, Evelyn," Matt said bluntly, easily piercing through her pathetic disguise. "You walk exactly the same way you always do. Your posture is rigid and nobody else in this entire city wears heavy boots with an oversized gray hoodie to a festive street fair."
Evelyn slowly reached up, unclasping the leather straps and pulling the Kitsune mask off her face.
Her pale cheeks were flushed a deep, embarrassed crimson, and her dark eyes darted nervously between her unimpressed brother and the wide-eyed pink-haired girl.
"You were actively stalking me," Matt continued, his voice rising in volume, drawing the awkward unwanted attention of the stall vendor. "Why? Is it really that surprising that I am out with a girl? Did you seriously have to follow me through five different sectors just to spy on my personal life?"
The pink-haired girl placed a gentle calming hand on Matt’s arm, looking at Evelyn with nervous empathy.
"Matt, calm down," his girlfriend whispered softly, pulling at his sleeve. "People are staring at us. Let’s just talk to her normally."
"No!" Matt interrupted her harshly, pulling his arm away from her grasp.
He glared at Evelyn with burning resentment. "That is just how she is, Sarah. She is always like this... She disappears into the Sovereign Realm for weeks at a time, completely ghosts all of my messages, and then suddenly shows up out of nowhere just to hover over my shoulder like a vulture... She can’t just give me any privacy!"
Evelyn’s chest tightened painfully. The words felt like physical blows against her ribs.
"Is it considered invading your privacy if I am just making sure you are safe?" Evelyn asked defensively, her voice cracking slightly as she tried to justify her actions. "You know how dangerous Valoria City can be, Matt. The syndicates are everywhere... I just wanted to make sure you were protected while you were out."
"Stop."
Matt interrupted her, his dark eyes devoid of any warmth.
He looked at his older sister with a cold piercing gaze that lacked any affection or gratitude for the sacrifices she had made to keep him in that prestigious college.
"Stalking me through a festival isn’t making sure I am safe, Evelyn," Matt delivered the brutal, unyielding truth. "It’s just suffocating. I don’t need a bodyguard. I just want a normal life..."
A crushing silence fell over the brightly lit stall. Even the cheerful vendor stopped moving, awkwardly pretending to organize his glass bottles to avoid the uncomfortable family drama unfolding in front of him.
Silas stood a few feet away, his golden-ringed eyes watching the scene intently from behind his Oni mask.
He felt a sharp pang of sympathy for Evelyn, knowing how fiercely she fought to provide for her family.
But he refused to step in.
He was not going to get involved in their deep-seated family trauma. It wasn’t his place, and defending her as a Warlord would only make Matt more resentful of her dangerous lifestyle.
Evelyn stood frozen for a long moment, fully absorbing the cold stinging rejection.
Her brother didn’t want her protection... He didn’t want her hovering... He didn’t care about the millions of credits she bled for...
He just wanted her gone.
Evelyn quickly pulled the Kitsune mask back down over her face, hiding her tears.
She spun around on her combat boots and immediately ran off, sprinting desperately back into the dense flowing crowds of the Shogitown plaza.
Silas took a half-step forward.
He opened his mouth, almost calling out her name to stop her from running blindly into the dangerous undercity sectors alone.
But he bit his tongue, stopping himself just in time to protect herself from the surrounding crowd.
Matt watched her disappear into the neon-lit sea of people.
He let out another heavy sigh, aggressively rubbing his temples as his girlfriend patted his back.
He finally turned his attention to the towering, imposing young man standing quietly near the pillar.
"Who are you supposed to be?" Matt asked tiredly, gesturing to Silas’s dark trench coat and terrifying demonic mask. "Are you her new boyfriend or something? Or just another one of her guards?"
Silas didn’t reply. He didn’t offer a nod, a threat, or a single word of confirmation.
He simply turned his back on the college student and broke into a steady jog, weaving effortlessly through the dense crowd to chase after Evelyn.
They needed to get to the underground contact, and he couldn’t let her wander the streets without backup.
’Well I can only be thankful that Lia knew she was wrong...’ Silas thought, he couldn’t help but think of this Matt person was an ungrateful person.
...
Evelyn pressed her back against the damp rusted brick wall of a narrow isolated alleyway.
She had successfully lost them.
She had ducked down three different side streets, taking erratic winding turns until the blaring noise of the central festival faded into a distant muffled hum.
It was too much. All of this was too much to process.
Evelyn slid slowly down the rough brick wall, pulling her knees tightly against her chest and wrapping her arms protectively around her legs.
Her chest heaved with shallow frantic breaths. Hot, stinging tears pooled in her eyes, burning uncomfortably against the cold metal of her Kitsune mask.
She was trying her best to be a good big sister.
That was all she ever wanted to be.
She had wanted to come to Shogitown with him for several years now.
She had asked him every single autumn to attend the Moon Festival with her.
She wanted to buy him the kraken skewers and the massive ice cream cones.
She wanted to share the spoils of her Sovereign Realm conquests with the only family she had left in the world.
And he had just decided to come here with a random civilian girl from his college?
Were they dating? How long had they been together? Why wasn’t she made aware of this whole thing? Did he hide it from her on purpose?
The dark invasive thoughts spiraled violently in her mind, turning her skills against her own deep insecurities.
Was she truly a bad sister? Was her constant absence, necessitated by the grueling demands of running The Unmovable Wall, ruining his life? Was she just a creepy overbearing stalker interfering with his normal, happy existence?
There were so many conflicting, painful thoughts tearing through her head that she had to sit back, close her eyes, and forcefully command her racing heart to calm down.
She focused on the steady dripping of a broken drainage pipe nearby to ground herself in reality.
After a few minutes, Evelyn slowly opened her eyes and stood up on shaky legs.
She looked around the dimly lit trash-strewn alleyway. She had run so fast and taken so many erratic turns that she had apparently lost Silas too.
The rugged dark-haired Lord was nowhere to be seen.
’Let me just go meet Jax first,’ Evelyn reasoned internally with her training finally overriding her emotional breakdown as she popped another Cigarette. ’I know the exact coordinates of the cyber-rig... I will secure the location, make sure the coast is clear, and then I’ll call Silas on the secure network to guide him in.’
She compartmentalized the trauma, forcefully locking the image of Matt’s cold rejection into a dark mental box.
She had a mission to complete.
Evelyn reached back and pulled the heavy hood of her oversized gray sweater firmly up over her head, shadowing the Kitsune mask.
She shoved her hands deep into her pockets, adjusting the hidden daggers strapped to her thighs, and stepped out of the alley.
She took an unorthodox winding direction to reach Jax’s place.
Shogitown was cool, vibrant, and full of life on the outside main streets. But the deeper you walked into the district, past the festival boundaries and into the neglected industrial sectors, the deeper one realized that this place was just rotten to the core.
The real cherry blossom trees vanished, replaced by rusted metal scaffolding and sparking exposed utility cables.
The bright neon signs flickered violently, casting long erratic shadows over the grimy, cracked pavement.
The smell of roasted food was replaced by the overwhelming stench of stagnant water, cheap mechanical oil, and unwashed bodies.
This was syndicate territory.
As Evelyn walked briskly down the narrow, dimly lit streets, several rough-looking men leaning against the walls tried to catcall her.
They eyed her petite frame and her combat boots, completely unaware of the terrifying power housed in her core.
Evelyn didn’t reply to a single word. She kept her head down, subtly projecting a microscopic fraction of her chilling blood-soaked Lord aura.
The men instantly went pale with their survival instincts screaming at them to back away from the hooded girl.
The people in power... the World Council, the Valoria City Mayor, the elite guilds were well aware of these dark dangerous changes in the district.
They knew the syndicates ran illegal chop shops, trafficking rings, and black-market data rigs down here.
However, they deliberately left it alone, preferring to contain the rot in Shogitown rather than spend resources cleansing the streets.
’It is not my business though,’ Evelyn thought coldly with her dark eyes scanning the rooftops for snipers. ’I just don’t want to get tangled with the local syndicates tonight.’
She finally reached the specific dead-end alleyway where Jax’s place was located.
It was a dilapidated, four-story concrete building that looked like it had survived a minor bombing.
The fire escapes were rusted through, and the windows were boarded up with thick steel plating.
Evelyn walked up to the heavy, reinforced iron door of his ground-floor apartment.
She raised her fist to knock out their pre-arranged security rhythm.
But as her knuckles brushed the metal, the door creaked loudly.
It was already open, sitting an inch ajar.
Evelyn paused with her hand hovering in the damp air.
Her combat instincts flared. For some strange reason, the heavy deadbolts were disengaged.
But she quickly relaxed her shoulders.
That wasn’t necessarily a massive issue, since Jax was exactly like that.
He was a brilliant, capable underground information broker, but he was incredibly sloppy with his own physical security.
He lived in a perpetual state of scattered hardware and empty noodle boxes.
He was very rough around the edges, but he was undeniably helpful.
That was the one thing Evelyn truly liked about him. He always delivered the intel she paid for without asking moral questions...
He was not very dateable, though.
’I would much rather date Silas than him,’ Evelyn thought casually, her mind briefly flashing to the tall Lord she had left behind at the festival.
Evelyn aggressively shook her head, banishing the stray romantic thought.
’Focus on the mission,’ Evelyn scolded herself internally.
She pushed the heavy iron door open with the rusted hinges groaning loudly in the quiet alley, and stepped inside while adjusting her mask.
It was a simple sprawling one-room apartment.
The walls were lined with humming server racks and tangled webs of fiber-optic cables. Multiple glowing monitors illuminated the center of the room, casting a stark blue light over the disorganized mess of mechanical parts and discarded energy drink cans.
Things didn’t look too out of place at first glance as there were no obvious signs of a struggle.
But Evelyn was a veteran Lord of the Sovereign Realm.
She had survived countless dungeon ambushes and assassination attempts so her perception was honed to a razor’s edge.
She could tell something was wrong. Something was seriously wrong with the atmosphere of the room.
Jax wasn’t here. The leather chair in front of the monitors was empty.
But if he wasn’t here, why was the heavy iron security door left open? Jax was sloppy, but he was insanely paranoid about his hardware.
He would never leave his primary rig exposed to the street.
Evelyn slowly, silently reached up and adjusted the straps of her Kitsune mask.
She closed her eyes for a split second, actively expanding her internal mana senses outward, letting the invisible ripples of her perception map the entire apartment.
It was not a very big room, but her senses immediately snagged on a terrifying anomaly.
The mana density near the ceiling was disrupted. Someone was actively suppressing their signature, hiding in the shadows above her.
Evelyn opened her eyes.
She didn’t look up.
She kept her posture relaxed, pretending to be oblivious as she walked slowly toward the center of the room where Jax usually kept his primary computers.
Directly above Evelyn, clinging silently to the rusted steel support beams of the ceiling, was a man wearing an all-black stealth suit.
A stark white mask covering his face bore a single jagged black kanji character painted across the forehead.
The exact second Evelyn stepped into the center of the room, the assassin dropped.