Amid the swirling melee, Bella and Natasha crept along the walls, threading the needle deeper into the base.
They used neither invisibility cloak nor concealment spell. The battlefield was too chaotic—bullets flying everywhere, soldiers from every faction scrambling in random directions. Somebody could barrel around a corner at any second. Invisibility was meaningless in this mess.
Cobra's troops had already lost all cohesion. A bunch of modern-day soldiers with no death-before-dishonor mentality—the only reason they hadn't completely routed was the base itself.
There was literally nowhere to run. The facility sat over a hundred meters below the surface. Water pressure was crushing, and the seawater was lethally cold. Without a full diving rig, no one was getting out alive.
"So why did these people build an underwater base?" Bella was genuinely baffled. The world was enormous. Uninhabited land wasn't hard to find. What possessed these people to construct a facility where getting in and out was a nightmare?
Natasha tilted her head and considered. "Maybe... because it's cool?"
This very cool underwater base was now a death trap for Cobra's soldiers and a massive headache for the Templars, Trinity, the assorted intelligence agents, the special forces operatives, and Bella's team alike.
The British, French, and German submarines hammered the base relentlessly. Torpedo after torpedo punched through the hull, and the structure began to leak.
Seawater surged in, flooding corridor after corridor. Even Otso Berg—who had been commanding the Templar assault with genuine battlefield composure—stared dumbfounded as a torrent of water swept away over a dozen of his soldiers. The casualties came out of nowhere, with zero warning. A base this massive, and it just... breached? Not a single fail-safe?
He tried to rally his troops, but Trinity's irregulars took one look at the incoming flood and bolted without a word. The panic was infectious; Templar soldiers broke and ran alongside them. The tactical advantage they'd built against Cobra evaporated in seconds.
Otso Berg was a formidable officer, but at this point, even he couldn't hold his men together.
Every organized formation shattered. It was every man for himself, and in close-quarters chaos, Cobra's soldiers—equipped with superior high-tech gear—proved surprisingly effective as individual fighters. Templar and Trinity casualties began climbing fast.
"Die!" Bella reversed her grip on a combat knife and buried it in a Cobra soldier who came sprinting around a corner.
Natasha scooped up the dead man's submachine gun, examined it for two seconds, then tossed it aside in disgust. "Damn it. Fingerprint lock."
They divided roles cleanly: Natasha handled recon and navigation, Bella handled killing. They pushed deeper into the subterranean corridors.
Their original plan had been to do what they'd done with Yashida Industries—steal technical data and walk away clean. But the place was crawling with agents who'd had the exact same idea. Grabbing anything without attracting attention was effectively impossible.
"In my experience, these people didn't build this base underwater just because it looked cool. There has to be a purpose. I just don't have enough intelligence to figure out what." Natasha was stuck. She was certain the base concealed something significant, but without more information, she couldn't even begin to guess.
"Do you have any good ideas? What if it were just you—how would you approach this place?"
Just me? I wouldn't come to this godforsaken hole in the first place.
Under the weight of Natasha's produce-a-good-idea-or-I-bite-you glare, Bella raised her staff and slammed it against the nearest wall.
"Reveal your secrets!"
The wall rang with a resounding clang. Nothing happened.
She pivoted to a Cobra soldier sprinting past and hit him with a quick telepathic probe.
The result: nothing useful. The rank and file had no idea what secrets the base held.
"If only the Baroness or Storm Shadow were here..." she thought, then snapped her fingers. "I've got it."
Bella extended her hand and condensed moisture from the air. The water shaped itself, crystallizing into a delicate, translucent ice bird.
"Find Storm Shadow."
She fed the construct an image of Storm Shadow's features. The ice bird circled twice, oriented itself, and shot down a branching corridor.
"Nata—keep up!"
They abandoned stealth entirely, sprinting through the labyrinthine passages. They passed through three hidden doors, and when the last one opened, the narrow corridor beyond was carpeted with corpses.
Every body bore blade wounds. Several Cobra soldiers still had shuriken embedded in their throats.
"That's Storm Shadow. He should be just ahead."
They softened their footsteps and passed through two more rooms before stopping at a door that resembled a bank vault—thick, reinforced, imposing.
The door stood open. Beyond it lay a metal chamber the size of a basketball court.
Inside, Storm Shadow and his junior martial brother Snake Eyes—clad in black combat gear, bound by his vow of silence—were fighting a squad of soldiers who radiated a distinctly different kind of menace. These troops wore steel masks and moved with mechanical precision.
The Neo-Vipers' equipment was a full tier above standard Cobra infantry. Their combat suits were extraordinarily tough; shuriken struck the surface and bounced off with a metallic ring. Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes dodged, weaved, and exhausted every technique in their arsenal, yet had only managed to drop two.
The Neo-Vipers wielded Pulse Rifles with devastating firepower. Despite their exceptional skill, both ninjas were being driven back hard.
Bella watched from a distance. Her telepathy registered nothing from these soldiers—no inner thoughts, no emotions. They were cold, blank, like machines.
One of the Neo-Vipers detected her psionic probe, spun, and fired.
A massive pulse of energy—something like a condensed shockwave—slammed into the spot where Bella had been standing a heartbeat earlier.
Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes clocked her arrival immediately, but neither side exchanged greetings.
"Leave this to me. You don't move." Bella fixed Natasha with a stern look, categorically refusing to let her join the fight.
The Neo-Vipers were formidable. In any conventional engagement, they would rank among the elite. But against Bella at full power, they were fodder.
She cast Energy Suppression—a second-circle spell—across the Neo-Vipers. The effect was instantaneous: their steps turned unsteady, their bodies went limp, vertigo overwhelmed them.
Ice rapier in hand, Bella moved like a butterfly through blossoms, speed pushed to its absolute limit. One thrust to each neck.
With the bizarre soldiers dispatched, she knelt beside one and pried off its steel mask. Beneath it, the face was already distorting—features twisting and warping before her eyes, then dissolving into a viscous, bloody mass. Two seconds later, even the mass evaporated, leaving nothing but a set of combat gear and a Pulse Rifle.
Every enemy accounted for. Bella turned her gaze to Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes, who edged warily to either side. She ignored them and looked past them, deep into the chamber.
At the far end, surrounded by banks of high-tech equipment, stood a block of ice. Over three meters tall. Two meters wide. Two meters deep.