Chương 196

Orion briefly considered whether Valerius would go home to lick his wounds before taking any action. It wouldn't have been out of character, as he figured the young man would desperately want to release his frustrations, preferably on someone who couldn't fight back, like his family's servants. Luckily, that didn't turn out to be the case. Fueled by a mix of humiliation and panic, Valerius led them directly from the pristine Noble District into the smoke-filled core of Silverpeak's industrial zone.

Orion and Pauline followed behind, moving from shadow to shadow without losing sight of their target. It wasn't the most comfortable way to travel, but compared to teleporting, it was leagues ahead, so Orion didn't complain. Eventually, the noble heir led them to a large brick building at the back of the district. The sign above the loading bay read Melior Textiles, its letters faded by soot, and from within, the rhythmic clack-hiss of mana-looms created a deafening wall of sound.

Valerius stormed past the workers, ignoring their surprised looks as he headed for a steel door at the back of the facility. He growled a passcode to a security guard and pushed inside without waiting for the man to open the door. Before the door could click shut, Pauline pressed their bodies further into the darkness, riding on Valerius's shadow as it stretched across the threshold. The room beyond was starkly different from the factory floor.

The walls were lined with acoustic-damping foam, muffling the machinery's noise without using any enchantments, which was quite an odd choice. It was an office, but lacking personal touches, just a desk, two chairs, and a man reviewing a ledger. The man appeared completely ordinary. He wore the tough, sturdy clothes of a floor manager, his hair was turning gray at the temples, and he didn't even bother to look up as Valerius burst in.

"It broke!" Valerius shouted, slamming his uninjured hand on the desk.

"You said it was invincible! That no shield could stop it, and yet it let that twerp humiliate me!" Twerp?! I'll show you twerp, you little… Orion's outrage would have made for a funny scene, but his emotions cooled instantly as the man lifted his gaze and slowly closed the ledger. He looked at Valerius with cold, dead eyes.

"I told you," he said calmly, although there was something about him that rubbed Orion the wrong way, "that it was a prototype. And I told you never to come here unless summoned. You seem incapable of listening to anything I say."

"Do you know who I am?" Valerius yelled, pacing the small room and completely unaware of the danger he was in.

"I am a Melior! And I was humiliated in front of the entire aristocracy, my weapon taken! No, this cannot stand! I need a replacement, a better one. Now! And since you've already damaged my reputation, you'd better throw in a vial of that, too." The man slowly got up, showing that he was much bigger than he looked while sitting.

"You let the sword be taken?" He hissed out. Orion was getting the feeling that things were about to turn ugly, so he took a moment to inspect the other. Itzam — Agent of the Iron State Class: Enmeshed Mechanist [B-rank] Level: 139 Mind: 500 Attunement: 773 Body: 211 Traits: Circuit Mana Manipulation [B-rank]; Haywire [B-rank]; Reactive Adaptation [C-rank]; Structural Precision [C-rank]; Forging [C-rank] Uh oh. It's not my fault!" Valerius spat.

"He used some trick, and then some witch came and took him away!" Itzam stopped in front of Valerius and raised his right hand, covered with a leather glove. The backhand was so quick that Orion barely registered it. Valerius was knocked off his feet and slammed against the soundproof wall, sliding down with a grunt. Blood dripped from his lip. Itzam adjusted his glove, covering where the leather had risen slightly, revealing not skin but polished steel and articulated pistons at the wrist.

"You seem to have become a liability, Valerius," he said, reaching into his belt.

"We invested in your family for political cover. If you can't maintain a simple cover, you're useless, and if you need even more help after all we've done to pull you out of mediocrity…" Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. He pulled out a short, serrated knife. The blade was dark and coated with something Orion immediately recognized as the Silence. Valerius's eyes went wide.

"Wait... no! My father—""Will mourn a tragic accident," Itzam finished, stepping forward, clearly aiming to silence the noble once and for all. And though Orion would have liked nothing more than to smack Valerius around a bit more, this wasn't something he could allow. Luckily, Pauline shared his thoughts, because she burst out of Valerius's shadow, and a tendril of solid darkness shot out, trying to pin the agent to the wall. But Itzam was quick.

He spun, slashing the knife through the air, and the blade cut through Pauline's shadow-construct as if it were smoke, dissipating the magic instantly.

"Witch!" the man hissed, but he didn't try to fight her. Instead, he slammed his hand against a discolored part of the wall. A moment later, a siren started wailing, echoing even through the soundproofing. He then threw something on the floor, and thick, grey smoke instantly filled the room. It wasn't magical smoke, but chemical, and it burned the eyes and throat.

"Get out!" Orion coughed, even as he tracked Itzam through his HUD, as the man flew past them and made for the exit. Orion and Pauline burst out of the office a second later, but the factory was in chaos. The siren had panicked the workers, who were scrambling away from their looms, and Itzam was moving through the crowd, shoving people aside.

"Stop him!" Orion shouted, leaping over a railing to cut off his path. Itzam saw him falling from above, but he didn't slow down. Instead, he grabbed a nearby worker—a young woman carrying a bolt of cloth—and hurled her into a moving loom. She screamed, but her clothes snagged, and she was pulled toward a gruesome death. Orion immediately abandoned his pursuit, casting a [-g] upon the woman and pulling her back violently just as her sleeve caught in the gears. She flew into Orion's arms, sobbing in terror.

"Run!" He ordered, shoving her toward the exit. Itzam used the distraction to vault over a conveyor belt, aiming for the loading bay. But he had forgotten about the Shadow Witch. Pauline appeared in front of him. She didn't use shadows this time, as she knew they were vulnerable to his blade, instead pulling out a quarterstaff from the darkness. She swung it with great force, but Itzam blocked with his mechanical hand, and the metal rang loudly against the wood.

"Sanctum dogs," the agent spat, slashing with the Silence-coated knife. Pauline dodged backward fluidly. She might not have been a martial class, but it was clear she had practiced the art.

"You come to poison our land and call us dogs?" She feinted high, then swept his legs. Itzam jumped, relying on his enhanced prosthetics to compensate for her longer reach, but surprisingly, Pauline was faster. She pivoted in mid-air, driving the end of her staff into his solar plexus. He grunted as his back slammed into another loom, staggering back up, before slashing wildly at a steam pipe running along the wall. The knife sliced through the metal, and a jet of scalding steam erupted, aimed directly at Pauline.

Orion was already casting, having been waiting for exactly a trick like this.

"[Wind Push]!" he roared, and the CC heated up, doing its best to grant the Tier One spell the power it needed to prevent a tragedy. The superheated vapor struck the air barrier a moment later and expanded outward, shielding her from the burn. Pauline didn't even blink, using the cover to lunge through the steam and grab Itzam's mechanical wrist with a shadow-coated hand. With a shout of exertion, she twisted until a loud crunch sounded.

The servos whined and snapped under the intense pressure, causing the knife to clatter to the floor. Pauline swept his legs again, and this time, he hit the ground hard. She was on him in an instant, pinning him to the concrete with her knee on his chest.

"Secure him!" Orion yelled, running over.

"We need him alive!" This was a far bigger catch than the fishermen of the Blind Man's Bluff. An actual agent of the enemy falling into their hands was more than Orion had hoped for, and if they could bring him to the Sanctum alive, they would gain a wealth of information. Itzam looked up at them. Though his face was bloody, he was smiling with a fanatic's rictus grin.

"The Iron State," he wheezed, "does not leave loose ends." His chest started to glow. A high-pitched whine, identical to the one the vibro-blade had made, began to build from beneath his shirt.

"He's going into overload!" Orion realized as [Hypotheticism] screamed a warning.

"He's rigged a deadman switch!"

"I can't stop it!" Pauline shouted, trying to purge the mana with her shadows, but the energy kept building inside Iztam.

"Get back!" Orion ordered, grabbing Pauline with a gravitational spell and hauling her away. He had only a moment to process the situation. Most of the workers had already left, with only a few still inside the warehouse. Since the structural supports were in immediate danger, he took a deep breath to brace himself and cast [Event Horizon] around Itzam.

It was more reckless than trying to protect himself alone, but he had already calculated the possibilities, and even if he survived the initial blast, there was a good chance he would be buried under the rubble. So he poured every ounce of mana he could summon from the Field into the spell, visualizing it as a sphere with infinite curvature. A gravity well so deep that not even light could escape. Itzam screamed as the explosion detonated. BOOM.

The force of the blast struck Orion's gravity sphere, and for a few seconds, the sphere held, containing the inferno. It was a surreal sight, seeing all that destruction confined within a bubble of warped space. Eventually, the draw became too much for him to hold back, but by then, Pauline had gotten her bearings and added her shadows to his efforts, so he dropped the spell. A moment later, a pillar of fire punched through the roof of the factory, soaring into the evening sky like a beacon.

The shockwave knocked Orion and Pauline off their feet, sending them skidding across the concrete as debris rained down. Orion groaned, pushing a piece of sheet metal off his legs. His ears were ringing, and his body was dangerously close to shutting down from the extreme mana use.

"Pauline?" he coughed, brushing away the dust from his face.

"I'm okay," she rasped from nearby, pulling herself up. It took Orion a few seconds to muster the strength to stand up, but eventually he did and looked down at the crater in the floor. Nothing remained of the agent, not even the mechanical hand.

"Damn it," Orion muttered, frustrated. This was by far their best lead so far.

"It's not over yet," Pauline said, pointing. Cowering behind a stack of crates, untouched by the blast but shaking like a leaf, was Valerius. He stared at the crater, then at Orion, his face drained of all color. Before he could speak, the air pressure in the factory dropped, and an overwhelming presence descended through the hole in the roof. A woman floated down through the smoke. She wore midnight blue robes reinforced with silverite plates.

Her face was stern, framed by steely hair and eyes, and she held a staff that cast light over the warehouse, revealing the scene of destruction in all its glory. Orion met her eyes and recognized her easily. She had been the only Veil Priestess within the Sanctum to act on his behalf and even support his mother. At the same time, she was one of the most feared women, as she was in charge of Security and the Inspectors. Elder Alcmene had arrived.