The air in the commoner district was heavy and damp on the predawn Sunday morning. Heuk-jae and Eun-ji, dressed in dark, non-descript clothing under their Academy robes, moved like shadows.
The stakes were immense: if caught, they would be permanently blacklisted, their freedom jeopardized, and the Administrator's card would betray Lord Kaelan's information leak.
The Silent Ascent
They entered the AATA grounds by bypassing a simple maintenance lock Heuk-jae had charted days earlier—a commoner's knowledge of utility tunnels proving more valuable than noble spells.
They reached the main Archive floor at 2:10 AM.
The floor was vast, patrolled by two slow-moving Aetheric Sentinels—floating, glowing constructs designed to detect unauthorized elemental signatures.
Heuk-jae instantly activated his Facial, projecting a powerful mask of innocence and extreme caution. This aura wasn't for humans; it was a subtle wave of psychic shielding designed to make the Sentinels categorize them as harmless debris.
The two Sentinels swept past, their glowing eyes registering no threat.
"The vault is down there," Heuk-jae whispered, pointing to a dark, seamless section of the floor carved with the seals of the three Proctors.
Bypassing the Seals
The three elemental seals—Earth, Water, and Air—were vibrating slightly, signaling the beginning of the alignment protocol.
"Three attempts only," Heuk-jae warned. "If we fail, the lockdown alarm triggers."
He took the Administrator's Access Card and pressed it to the first seal. It was the seal of Archivist Tremain (Water).
2:14:50 AM. The card glowed, and the seal hissed, retracting into the floor. One down.
Now came the hard part: two seals remained, and their alignment window was closing. The Earth seal (Master Zai) required a handprint, and the Air seal (Proctor Lyra's Mother) required a pure, sustained burst of elemental force.
"My turn," Eun-ji said, gripping her Geomantic Regulator.
Combat: The Sentinel Skirmish
Just as Eun-ji was about to activate her regulator, a patrolling Sentinel detected a flicker of residual energy from the card usage and began sweeping back, accelerating.
"We have company," Heuk-jae muttered, drawing a small, specialized Arcane Shrapnel Pouch from his belt—another black-market tool.
He tossed the pouch, not at the Sentinel, but at a stone column thirty feet away. It exploded silently, showering the area with small, highly charged iron filings.
The Sentinel flew directly into the electrified cloud. Its delicate Aetheric focusing mechanism was instantly thrown into chaos. It sputtered, spinning wildly, and slammed into the ground.
[Heuk-jae used Arcane Shrapnel Pouch (Disrupt) on Sentinel.]
The Final Push
The Sentinel was down, but the metallic clanging of its impact was enough to alert a human guard stationed on the level above. They heard boots running toward the Archives.
2:15:05 AM. Time was almost up.
"Go!" Heuk-jae urged. He stepped up to Master Zai's Earth Seal, ignoring the demand for a handprint.
He activated his Magic Mastery. He channeled a powerful surge of Geomantic Aether—pure, controlled Earth magic—directly into the seal's core mechanism. He didn't use a handprint; he overwrote the lock with the feeling of the element itself.
The Earth Seal glowed an intense brown and sank. Two down.
Simultaneously, Eun-ji placed her Geomantic Regulator against the final seal—the Air Seal. The running footsteps of the guard were now audible just outside the main chamber.
She focused on her 'noble' persona, forcing the illegal device to produce a sustained blast of Aerokinesis. The pressure was immense, threatening to fracture the regulator.
With a final, desperate shove of elemental force, the Air Seal turned white and snapped open. Three down.
The floor shuddered. The three seals were gone, and a circular section of the floor retracted, revealing a dark stairwell plunging into the Restricted Arcane Archives.
Escape and Retreat
"Down! Now!" Heuk-jae commanded.
They plunged down the stairs just as the armed guard burst into the main Archive chamber. The guard stopped, staring at the missing floor section.
As they reached the bottom, Heuk-jae didn't close the vault door. Instead, he reached out with his Magic Mastery and manipulated the ambient Aetheric energy of the door's frame, causing a minor, localized seizure in the lock mechanism.
The vault door slammed shut with a catastrophic sound and instantly triggered a powerful, Academy-wide lockdown alarm.
"Why the alarm?" Eun-ji shouted over the blare, her heart pounding.
"To cover our tracks," Heuk-jae explained, pulling the Geomantic Regulator from her hand and putting away the Access Card. "The chaos of a full system failure means they won't look for the missing card immediately. They'll assume the seals simply failed to realign."
They were inside, but trapped, with the alarm blaring across the campus.
"We have exactly ten minutes before the emergency Proctors arrive. We find the texts, and we find a way out," Heuk-jae stated, pulling a small, focused lamp from his pack. "Eun-ji, your job starts now: locate the Master Zai Arcane Treatise."
[QUEST OBJECTIVE PROGRESS: Restricted Arcane Archives Accessed.]