Chapter 200: Calculus of Fear
When the reports filtering back to the White Wing confirmed that the elite execution squad had completely vanished, Marcus Vorn flew into a cold, calculating rage.
He stood in his private quarters within the White Wing, hands braced against his desk, knuckles white.
Ursula sat in the corner. Her frozen iron eyes blazing with anger.
When their personal information network first brought the news that communication with the tailing squad had been severed, Marcus’s initial reaction was absolute denial. A squad of seven Pillar Knights — including two Spirit Soul realm operatives — vanishing without a single distress signal or emergency magical transmission was fundamentally impossible. These were elite soldiers. Trained professionals. Their communication tokens had fail-safes that triggered on death, injury, or even suspicious mana fluctuations.
None had triggered.
Then the life-force plaques went dark. All seven. Simultaneously.
The reality settled into Marcus’s chest like a blade of ice.
Zenthoria was no longer a controlled trap. Whatever plan Ursula had constructed — the impossible mission, the Pillar Knight ambush, the clean elimination of a potential threat — had been dismantled before it could even begin.
Marcus began pacing.
His mind raced with paranoid calculus that would have terrified anyone who witnessed it. The assassination was too clean. Too professional. The bodies had been found in locations consistent with local outlaw violence, stripped of valuables, wounded with common street weapons. No trace of Vorn techniques. No residual mana signatures that matched any known family ability. No evidence pointing to any organization, faction, or individual.
That was the problem.
The perfection of the cover-up meant Marcus couldn’t determine what had happened. Had Kael somehow achieved Spirit Soul realm power himself? Impossible — the boy had been Rank 1 Mana Heart when he departed. Had an external superpower ambushed them? The other families beneath the Vorn umbrella wouldn’t dare attack Pillar Knights openly. Had a hidden faction within the Vorn family itself been backing Kael from the shadows?
Marcus didn’t throw a loud, childish tantrum. His fury was far more terrifying than that.
As the Fourth Sword — one of the heavily favored candidates for the Family Head position — losing seven Pillar Knights without a single trace of evidence was both a massive blow to his personal military asset pool and a severe humiliation. Those knights were his. Assigned through his authority as a Sword. Their deaths diminished him in ways that politics couldn’t repair.
He turned his fury onto his remaining intelligence officers and personal advisors.
Three men knelt in a line before his desk, heads bowed, sweat beading on their foreheads. Marcus’s aura pressed down on them. The weight of a Sword’s disappointment, which in the Vorn family carried consequences more immediate than death.
"Explain," Marcus said quietly.
The lead officer — a middle-aged man with trembling hands — spoke in a rush. "My lord, the operation proceeded according to plan. The squad established positions in Zenthoria’s eastern district as instructed. Communication was maintained for the first six hours. Then... silence. We attempted remote sensing through the communication tokens. All seven returned null readings. We dispatched a secondary observation team to the city. They found the bodies. The local authorities had already logged the deaths as gang violence. No evidence. No identifiable technique signatures."
"None?"
"None, my lord. Whoever executed this operation understood forensic countermeasures at a master level."
Marcus let the silence stretch for thirty seconds.
When he finally spoke, his voice was soft enough that the officers had to strain to hear.
"You are telling me that a 20 year-old Rank 1 Mana Heart cultivator — a Sleeper and a discard from the Sixth Branch — somehow orchestrated the complete annihilation of seven elite soldiers without leaving a single trace?"
The officers said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Marcus heavily penalized his logistics and tracking teams. Fines that would take years to repay. Demotions that would take longer to reverse. And a warning — delivered with the cold precision of a man who had killed subordinates for less — that another failure of this magnitude would cost them their lives.
The officers retreated with the speed of men who understood exactly how serious that warning was.
Ursula finally spoke from her corner.
"This changes nothing. Kael is still in Zenthoria. The mission is still impossible. He may have removed our eyes, but he cannot remove the city itself."
Marcus didn’t respond. He was staring at the wall, his mind still racing through possibilities that all led to the same uncomfortable conclusion.
Kael is more dangerous than we calculated. Every time I think I we have him, he somehow survives. With his purple grade talent, it’s only a matter of time before he catches up to the sword rank.
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Zenthoria.
The female captain died trying to run.
Kael’s blade caught her between the shoulder blades as she fled toward the fortress’s eastern breach — a clean, fatal strike that dropped her face-first into the rubble. The Void Edge Tier 1 blades cut through mid Mana Heart defenses like paper when backed by lightning-enhanced physical speed.
Behind Kael, the demon wolf feasted.
The Rank 5 captain’s body was barely recognizable. The wolf had torn through his chest cavity with savage efficiency, and crimson-stained jaws worked methodically through the remains.
Footsteps approached from the side alleys. Aria materialized from shadow, her blades sheathed, her expression calm. Garrett followed moments later, wind swirling around him from his rapid movement through the district.
"Impressive cleanup," Aria said, scanning the carnage.
Garrett said nothing as he was shocked by what he saw.
His eyes moved from the three captain corpses to the burning fortress to the demon wolf still feeding. His thoughts churned beneath his composed exterior.
He said he would handle the captains. I expected him to hold them off — buy time for Aria and me to finish the small fry and return. Instead, he killed all three. Alone. At Rank 1.
That wolf... it’s at least Rank 4 Mana Heart. It could go toe to toe with a Rank 6. Where did he get a summon like that?
No. Stop asking questions you can’t afford to have answered.
This is why they fear him. This is why the Family Head watches him.
He’s not just talented. He’s something else entirely.
Kael wiped his blades on a dead captain’s cloak and sheathed them. The wolf sensed his movement and raised its blood-soaked muzzle, crimson eyes fixed on its summoner.
"Return."
The wolf dissolved into shadow, flowing across the ground and climbing Kael’s body like liquid darkness before seeping into his shadow.
"We move now." Kael’s voice was businesslike. "This fortress is destroyed, but news will spread. Vasek will know someone is targeting his network. We use the momentum before his organization can consolidate."
He pulled out the map Baron had provided and traced three locations.
"Three remaining bases. Each one smaller than this fortress — garrisons of thirty to fifty fighters, captains at Rank 2 to Rank 4. We split up."
He pointed to the western district. "Aria. The Iron Claw outpost. About 37 fighters, two Rank 2 captains. Shadow approach. No signatures."
Aria nodded.
He pointed to the southern district. "Garrett. The Blood Rust den. 41 fighters, one Rank 4 captain, one Rank 5. Wind approach — you’re fast enough to hit them before they can coordinate."
Garrett nodded.
His finger landed on the northern district. "I’ll take the Silent Fang compound. Thirty fighters, two Rank 3 captains. I’ll handle it."
"How long?" Aria asked.
"Three hours. Each of you has three hours to reach Vasek’s main base after destroying your assigned target. If you’re not there by then, I’ll assume you’re incompetent or in a pickle and proceed without you."
Neither Aria nor Garrett questioned the timeline. They dispersed and vanished into Zenthoria’s labyrinthine streets.
Kael watched them go, then pulled his hood lower and activated the Cloak of Flight.
One hour later, Kael floated above the Silent Fang compound.
At three hundred meters of altitude, no one on the ground would notice him.
The compound below was smaller than Rust Fang Fortress — a single large warehouse converted into a barracks, surrounded by a basic perimeter wall with watchtowers at two corners. No sophisticated defenses. No runic formations. Vasek hadn’t invested heavily in this outpost.
Kael activated Spirit Eyes of the Dark Emperor.
The world shifted into detailed analysis. Mana signatures glowed in his perception — thirty fighters distributed throughout the compound, most at Foundation Establishment rank with a cluster of Mana Heart cultivators in the central building. The two Rank 3 captains were easy to identify — denser auras.
No one above Rank 3. Looks like Baron’s info was spot on. This won’t take long.
He couldn’t use gravity. The residual spatial distortions would be identifiable as Vorn techniques by any competent investigator.
But he had other options.
Kael descended to fifty meters and formed a hand sign — index and middle fingers crossed at the wrists. The same sign he’d used in the tournament, in the Thornwick underground, in a dozen battles since.
"Realm of Darkness: Darker Than Black."
His shadow expanded.
Not outward in a sphere — this time, it moved along the ground like spilled ink, spreading from the point directly beneath him across the compound in a forty-meter radius. Darkness crawled up the perimeter walls, swallowed the watchtowers, seeped through doors and windows, and filled every corner of the compound within seconds.
Inside the warehouse, fighters looked up from their card games and weapon maintenance as the lights simply... stopped existing.
One moment the warehouse was illuminated by mana lamps. The next, it was wrapped in absolute darkness — a darkness so complete that the concept of light had been surgically removed from that patch of reality.
Panic set in immediately.
"What the—"
"I can’t see anything!"
"Stay together! Don’t—"
"Who’s there?! Show yourself!"
Kael descended through the darkness like a falling stone, cloaked in shadow, blades drawn, Spirit Eyes mapping every warm body in the forty-meter radius.
The Chapter ended with Kael’s feet touching the ground inside the pitch-black warehouse and thirty fighters scrambling blindly in the void around him.
A/N: Phew... What a milestone, 200 Chapters already. My fingers are bleeding, my coffee machine is begging for mercy, but we actually made it.Look at us. Two hundred Chapters of chaotic plot twists, sweat, and tears.
-To celebrate not dying at my keyboard, let’s climb those Webnovel charts!
-Smash those powerstones like your life depends on it.
-Toss your golden tickets my way to validate my lack of sleep.
-Show some extra love with gifts to fund my aggressive caffeine addiction.