Chương 120: CHAPTER 118: WHISPERS IN THE VAULT

The deafening rumble from the collapsing royal barriers slowly rolled away across the capital, leaving the subterranean laboratory in a tense, dust-filled silence. Down in the sub-basement, fine white plaster sifted down from the vaulted stone ceiling like an indoor snowfall, coating the black obsidian dissection tables in a thin, pale powder.

Broken glass from shattered preservation jars lay scattered across the flagstones, the sharp chemical smell of spilled nutrient fluid and preservative alcohol rising into the cold underground air. Valerius and Cassian pushed themselves up from the heavy oak study desks, their faces pale as they brushed breadcrumbs and masonry dust from their tailored coats.

Lady Lyra steadied herself against a marble pillar, her hands trembling slightly as she checked on Elia and the commoner scholars, who were quickly securing the remaining anatomical parchment scrolls from the falling debris.

"What in the heavens was that?" Cassian muttered, his voice shaking as he looked up toward the vibrating stone ceiling.

"The royal barrier... that golden shield hasn't cracked since the Great Border War thirty years ago." Shin did not answer immediately. He stood calmly by the central observation table, wiping away a layer of fine dust from the newly sutured artificial core with a single, steady swipe of his hand. His posture remained relaxed, entirely unbothered by the violent shockwave that had nearly thrown his disciples to the floor.

Up above, beyond the reinforced steel door of the laboratory, the distant sound of cathedral bells began to toll across the capital. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. It was not the rhythmic, triumphant chime of morning prayer, nor was it the deep, rolling cadence of a military victory. It was the frantic, unbroken rhythm of the imperial warning bells—the high-pitched emergency toll reserved exclusively for catastrophic disasters, hostile foreign invasions, or the impending death of a crowned sovereign.

Within minutes, muffled shouts, panicked orders, and frantic running footsteps echoed down the stone spiral corridors outside the basement. Valerius stepped toward the reinforced door, pressing his ear against the heavy, iron-banded timber to catch the panicked voices filtering down from the main academy hall. His eyes widened with every passing second as the desperate chatter of senior instructors, breathless palace couriers, and royal vanguard guards drifted through the iron seam.

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"The Queen..." Valerius whispered, stepping back from the door as the color drained completely from his face.

"The Queen's necrotic corruption has breached her inner core." The room fell into a suffocating, freezing quiet. The horrific truth quickly pieced itself together from the fragmented whispers passing through the upper halls. For three weeks, the crown had kept the Queen's condition an absolute state secret, locking down the royal bedchambers behind layers of holy barriers, silence wards, and armed vanguard detachments. But the corruption was not an ordinary sickness or seasonal fever.

It was an ancient, flesh-eating necrotic curse that actively devoured living mana pathways and decomposed living tissue from the inside out. In a desperate bid to halt the spreading rot, the King had summoned the High Holy Sanctum's twelve supreme arch-mages to the imperial bedchambers at dawn. They had attempted the traditional, brute-force imperial treatment—flooding the Queen's collapsing body with raw, concentrated radiant light.

For six continuous hours, the high holy mages poured their own vital soul force into her chest, desperately trying to incinerate the dark venom with blinding holy fire. It had ended in complete, catastrophic failure. The crude, burning light had not destroyed the necrotic infection; it had merely irritated the dormant venom, causing the corruption to mutate violently and detonate her internal mana channels.

The resulting energetic backlash had completely drained the life mana of all twelve arch-mages, shattering the golden palace wards and leaving the supreme casters collapsed on the palace floor in severe soul-exhaustion comas. With their highest holy casters incapacitated and the Queen's energetic lifelines tearing apart, the Imperial Chief Physician and the Royal Medical Board had formally abandoned all hope.

They had packed their instruments, sealed the royal chamber doors, and formally declared the Queen's condition terminal. The Royal Court had descended into utter madness. Aristocratic factions were already drawing battle lines in the palace corridors, military commanders were positioning shock troops across the capital bridges, and the Regent was preparing to seize absolute control the second the Queen's heart stopped beating.

Inside his mind, Rudra watched the red necrosis heatmap on his interface expand at a terrifying pace. Crude methods, predictable disaster. Jab andha treatment doge to patient marega hi. (Crude methods, predictable disaster. When you give blind treatment, the patient will obviously die.) The twenty students stood rooted to the stone floor, their eyes wide with sheer terror. They looked down at their silver dissecting tools, then back at the seamlessly repaired core specimen resting on the central table.

For the first time, they truly understood why Shin had drilled them so brutally on micro-mana precision and core stabilization. While the grandest arch-mages of the kingdom had destroyed their patient with uncontrolled brute-force radiance, Shin's quiet, microscopic method was the only theoretical path capable of stitching those shattered lifelines back together without triggering another fatal explosion.

"Sensei..." Elia spoke, her voice quiet but piercing through the heavy silence.

"If the royal medics have given up... then the Queen won't survive until sundown." Shin remained still, his dark eyes fixed on the vibrating ceiling as the bells continued their frantic tolling. SLAM! Suddenly, without a single polite knock, the heavy iron-reinforced door of the subterranean laboratory swung violently open, slamming against the stone wall with a thunderous crash. Standing in the open doorway, breathing heavily against the cold draft of the corridor, was Academy Director Vivienne.

Her usually immaculate, aristocratic appearance was completely gone. She was draped in a dark, travel-stained emergency cloak covered in grey road dust and dried rain. Her sharp eyes, usually calm and calculating, were wild with urgency as they swept past the twenty students and locked directly onto Shin.