CHAPTER 100— Alchemy City(6)
Evening descended over Alchemy City, casting a neon-tinted glow across the towering architecture. Outside the grand luxury hotel reserved for the visitors, the Grand Aetherion students were corralled into a chaotic line.
"All right, settle down!" Instructor Valeria's commanding voice cut sharply through the murmurs. "I hope you enjoyed the GAA campus tour today. Now, head straight to your assigned rooms and get some rest. Tomorrow morning, we're touring the city's Amaro Plaza district." Instructor Valeria's commanding voice echoed through the students.
"Remember—no fighting inside the hotel corridors!. Also, Zephyr, if I catch you sneaking into the girls room again, your disciplinary punishment is going to be severe. The complaints about you are already piling up like a mountain."
Valeria scanned the crowd, only to realize the obnoxious playboy was nowhere to be found. "Where is Zephyr?"
"He already went inside his room." One student answered.
Valeria slapped her palm against her forehead with a heavy sigh.
"Unbelievable... This troublemaker."
She waved her hand dismissively. "Dismissed! Get inside your rooms."
As the students cheerfully streamed through the grand glass doors of the hotel lobby, a familiar voice called out from the courtyard.
"Hey! Ria!"
Valeria turned to see Aiden and Elias stumbling down the stone pathway. Aiden had one arm locked unceremoniously around Elias's neck in a messy half-nelson, both of them looking profoundly unhinged and thoroughly intoxicated.
"You two?!" Valeria growled, marching over.
"Where have you been all day? I've been hunting for you both across the entire city to the point where I didn't even get to enjoy a single second of the trip!"
Aiden blinked lazily, holding up a sleek, amber glass bottle with a triumphant grin.
"Oh, come on, Ria. Stop stressing and live a little. The local brews in this district are absolute masterpieces. They don't just ferment grapes here—they make wine out of mangos and wild apples. Have you ever tasted apple wine before?"
"Apple wine? Are you idiots just getting scammed into buying expensive juice—mph?!"
Aiden didn't wait for a response. He smoothly shoved the bottle neck forward, pressing it right against Valeria's lips and forcing her to take a sudden, startled gulp.
Coughing, Valeria pulled back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her face instantly flushed a rosy pink. "...Okay, wait. That actually is wine, and it has a completely unreal kick to it."
Aiden chuckled stupidly, still keeping Elias trapped in his headlock. "See? Told you. And the best part? Zero hangover guarantees. Absolute miracle tech."
"You lying bastard, since when is alcohol safety something to brag about?" Valeria muttered, snatching the bottle back and taking another deep, appreciative swig.
12:00 AM — Midnight
Deep inside the darkened hotel corridors, Seraphine sat quietly in her room alongside Selene and Marna.
"It's time."
"Yeah,"
"Let's move."
The trinity slipped out into the dimly lit hallway, creeping stealthily toward the exit. But after taking barely half a dozen steps, they froze dead in their tracks, their eyes going wide with sheer, unadulterated shock.
Just a few yards away, another student was emerging from a doorway—and carrying an equally horrified expression.
Zephyr stood in the frame of his hotel room, one hand still gripping the brass doorknob.
His shirt was a disaster—half the buttons were aggressively torn off, exposing his chest, while Circi stood right beside him hands tracing his chest and looking equally disheveled with her hair tied up in a messy hasty knot.
Zephyr and Circi stared at Seraphine and her two friends in mortified silence.
For three agonizing seconds, not a single person breathed. Telepathic understanding swept through the corridor. With mutual, unspoken agreement, both parties collectively decided to pretend they had seen absolutely nothing.
Zephyr yanked Circi back into his room and slammed the door shut with a heavy click, while Seraphine turned on her heel and marched past at double-time, maintaining a violently straight face.
A few moments later, down the exact same corridor, Rowan, Sarina, and Ritvik crept out for their own covert operation.
Thud.
Ritvik blinked, pausing as a muffled rustle echoed from the room beside him.
'Huh? What was that?'
"...Ah... mm... hnn..."
Ritvik's eyes bulged behind his glasses as his brain frantically tried to process what kind of brutal, life-or-death struggle was taking place inside. He instinctively pressed his ear directly against the wood.
'What the hell is going on in there—?!'
"Hey, Ritvik! What are you standing around for? Move!" Sarina hissed softly from the far end of the corridor.
"O-oh, coming!" Ritvik stammered, tearing himself away from the door and jogging to catch up.
Down in the main hotel lobby, the cavernous space was largely abandoned, save for the flickering glow of automated ceiling lamps.
Seraphine and her friends tiptoed across the open marble tiles toward the front exit, desperate to slip past unnoticed.
"You fucking useless bastard!"
A shrill, furious roar echoed off the vaulted ceiling. All three girls violently froze in their tracks.
'Dammit! Who on earth is still hanging out in the lobby at midnight?!' Seraphine panicked, turning her head toward the lounge area.
What she saw made her jaw detach from her skull.
Seated at a corner table were their three Instructors.
"Aiden, you heartless bastard!" Valeria was gripping Aiden by the collar of his shirt, shaking him back and forth with terrifying velocity.
"What happened to the man who used to chase me around during our academy days?! Now you won't even look at me, you just pass out like a log! Am I genuinely that boring to you now?!"
Tears were streaming down her face as she sobbed like a neglected teenager ignored by her first crush. Her face was completely crimson with rage and alcohol, hurling a continuous stream of uninhibited curses at the immobilized man.
Aiden looked completely brain-dead, staring blankly at the ceiling. A massive, purple goose egg thudded visibly on top of his head—evidence of some prior, catastrophic impact—while he muttered incoherent phrases to himself.
A few feet away, Instructor Elias lay sprawled facedown across the carpet like a discarded rag doll, completely dead to the world while desperately clutching an empty wine bottle to his chest like a teddy bear.
Seraphine stared at the absolute disaster of an academic faculty with hollow, dead eyes.
'Is she blackout drunk? I genuinely thought she was the only sane instructor in the entire academy... guess I was entirely wrong.'
Seraphine thought,sharing a shared look of profound trauma with Selene and Marna before quietly sidestepping the wreckage and bolting out the door.
A minute later, Rowan, Ritvik, and Sarina crept into the lobby behind them.
"Keep it quiet, the exit is right across the hall," Rowan whispered, leading the pace.
Ritvik and Sarina followed closely behind until—
KSSSHHHHK.
The violent sound of shattering glassware pierced the air. Ritvik stopped dead, turning his head toward the lounge table. His soul nearly left his body.
Valeria had completely snapped. She had lunged across the table like a starving wolf tackling a deer, pinning Aiden flat against the table and planting a ferocious, aggressive kiss on him. Aiden made a desperate, muffled choking sound, struggling against the ambush as if his very life force was being extracted through his teeth.
"Whoa... what the happened to Instructor Valeria?!" Ritvik whispered in abject horror.
"Stop staring like an idiot and move!" Sarina hissed, grabbing his sleeve.
"Right, right, moving!" Ritvik squeaked, hurrying after them as they vanished out into the courtyard, leaving the chaotic faculty behind in a haze of alcohol and heartbreak.
---
Outside the perimeter of the GAA campus, Seraphine and her friends crouched low in the deep shadows of a bulidings exterior wall, peering toward the grand main gates.
"Cars?" Selene whispered, pointing.
Just beyond the gates, a sleek convoy of black magitech transport cars idled quietly.
Alchemist King Stalin Bolievia emerged from the main administrative hall, flanked by a squad of armed enforcement officials from the Alchemy Security Unit, before climbing into the lead vehicle.
The girls watched in tense silence.
"What do we do now?" Marna asked nervously. "We can't sneak past if they're holding a perimeter conference right at the entrance."
"Shh... give me a second to think," Seraphine muttered, gripping the rough brickwork tightly.
Then, the convoy hummed to life. The lead engine roared, and the entire fleet of vehicles accelerated down the boulevard, sweeping away into the night.
"Where are they heading at this hour?" Selene wondered aloud.
"And with that many armed escorts? The GAA is infinitely shadier then expected." Marna added, biting her lip.
"Doesn't matter. It clears our path," Seraphine smirked, rising from her crouch.
"Let's move."
Meanwhile, on a parallel side-street, Rowan, Sarina, and Ritvik approached the outer perimeter of the GAA grounds with extreme caution.
"We're almost there." Rowan whispered, checking his surroundings.
"It's way too quiet out here," Ritvik muttered, shivering slightly. "Where did all the traffic go? Are you two sure we shouldn't turn back?"
"Keep your voice down, Ritvik," Sarina warned.
Suddenly, the heavy, mechanical roar of an entire convoy of high-speed vehicles echoed from the main avenue. The trio instinctively dove into a narrow, suffocating alleyway, pressing themselves flat against the brick walls until the screech of tires faded into the distance.
"Weren't those GAA enforcement cruisers?" Sarina noted.
"Where are they going at midnight?" Rowan furrowed his brow.
"Damn... this is giving me serious bad vibes," Ritvik complained. "Are you guys positive we want to keep going?"
"If you're too scared, the hotel is back that way," Sarina replied flatly.
"Yeah, why tag along if all you're going to do is whine?" Rowan added.
Ritvik's eyes flared behind his glasses, genuinely offended. "Hey! I'm only here because my survival instincts are screaming that you two will get yourselves in trouble without me!"
"Yeah, yeah let's go. Ritchie must be waiting for us." Rowan said, breaking into a jog.
Minutes later, they reached the secluded perimeter wall designated on their mental map.
"This is the spot he specified," Rowan whispered, scanning the bricks.
"Hold on, don't rush. Let me handle this," Ritvik muttered, pulling out his mobile phone and punching in a quick encrypted ping.
On the other side of the stone wall, Ritchie was pacing back and forth furiously, gnawing on his thumbnail in sheer nervous panic.
'Where are they?! Don't tell me they are trying to make me stand out here in the freezing cold all night—?'
Vibration.
Ritchie whipped his phone out, reading a brief confirmation text, and shoved it back into his pocket. He grabbed a thick, weighted climbing rope lying coiled in the grass. After swinging it in a wide circular momentum. With a practiced flick of his wrists, he hurled the line upward.
The weighted end sailed cleanly over the top of the wall, landing with a soft thud on the other side.
Ritchie braced his boots against the ground, feeling the immediate tension as someone grabbed hold of the line. He dug his heels in, straining as Rowan hoisted himself up and over the barrier. Ritvik followed closely behind, huffing and puffing, before Sarina scaled the rope with effortless grace, landing softly on her feet and dusting an imaginary speck of dust off her skirt.
"Catch," Ritchie hissed from the shadows, tossing a heavy, rolled-up schematic scroll toward Rowan. "That's the structural schematic layout leading straight to the secure information archives."
Rowan unrolled the parchment, nodding firmly.
"Yeah, My part of the deal is done. I'm heading back to my dorm," Ritchie muttered, turning sharply.
"Hey, Ritchie," Rowan called out softly.
Ritchie paused, looking back over his shoulder.
"Thank you."
Ritchie offered a bittersweet, weary smile.
"Hah... just make sure you burn that map when you're done, and if you get caught, pretend that you never saw me." He started walking away, but stopped after a few steps, staring down at the grass. "I looked up to Alokik quite a bit."
The trio fell silent.
"I don't know what you're hoping to uncover down there, but if something genuinely foul happened to him... make sure the truth comes to light." With that final remark, Ritchie slipped away into the darkness.
I stared at Ritchie not knowing what to say, since I myself am trying to uncover things about Bhaiya. I have no idea if I'm able to give someone else justice or not.
I stared down at the complex engineering schematic in my hands, the dense network of architectural lines spinning confusingly in the dim light.
"Give it here if you're just going to stare at it like a puzzle," Ritvik sighed, snatching the map out of my grip.
He adjusted his glasses, squinting under the moonlight as he traced a finger across the ink lines.
"Alright," Ritvik declared, pointing forward.
"Follow me."
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CHAPTER ENDS