CHAPTER 101— Alchemy City(7)
The trio—Rowan, Sarina, and Ritvik—infiltrated the GAA auxiliary wing with calculated stealth. Most of the campus was dead silent, the student body deeply asleep after a long day.
"Why aren't there any guards?" Ritvik muttered under his breath, squinting down at the architectural schematic as they crept past another empty corridor.
Indeed, it had been nearly twenty minutes of movement of them sneaking around and they have hardly came across any gaurds.
"I guess most of them left with that convoy, we saw on the road." Sarina murmured, her eyes scanning the shadows.
'Just what the hell is actually going on here?'
Rowan thought, a knot of unease tightening in his chest. What had initially started as a personal, singular mission to track down his brother's history through Alokik had now morphed into something far more sinister.
Stop.
Behind a wall Ritvik came to a halt.
"Shh..." Ritvik whispered, flattening himself against a wall.
He held up a hand, signaling the others to freeze. Rowan and Sarina leaned around the edge of the wall. Fifty yards ahead, positioned right in front of the primary access corridor leading to the auxiliary data archives, a solo security guard marched back and forth on patrol.
"According to the map the way to the Data archives is from there but there's a guard on the way too." Ritvik whispered, tapping the paper
"How do we cross it?" Rowan asked, his voice dropping to a low hiss.
"We have to knock that guard out."
Rowan instinctively reached back, his hand wrapping around the grip of his axe.
"Put that down you lunatic. Are you thinking of chopping his head off or something?"
Rowan blinked with embarrassment as he let go of the handle.
Sigh... Ritvik pinched the bridge of his nose. "Let me handle this."
Ritvik stepped out slightly from the cover of the wall, closed his eyes, and brought his hands together, shaping his fingers into the form of a pistol. Slowly, a tight, highly compressed vortex of swirling atmospheric air condensed at his fingertips, shrinking down to the size of a tiny raindrop.
Mini-Wind Drive.
With a subtle flick of his wrist, Ritvik aimed and snapped his fingers. The microscopic projectile of high-velocity air hissed through the corridor like a phantom bullet.
Snap.
It struck a precise pressure point along the guard's neck. The man's eyes rolled back instantly, going entirely blank as his legs buckled, collapsing softly onto the linoleum floor without a sound.
"Yes!" Ritvik pumped his fist in a silent victory.
The trio quickly crossed Section 4, breathing a collective sigh of relief as they stepped deeper into the sector. Ritvik kept his eyes glued to the map, meticulously tracing the optimal paths through the maze-like sub-level.
"Alright, so next we need to loop around into Section 3," Ritvik muttered, tapping the blueprint.
"How are you even able to read that messy map?" Rowan wondered.
"Well... All you need to do is have a brain to read." Ritvik replied smugly.
"Are you making fun of me again?"
"No just stating facts."
Sarina glanced back at them, her expression completely flat. "You two, since when did you two started fighting this much?"
"Oh... Come on Sarina, making fun of each other is an innate trait of deep friendship." Ritvik protested.
"I thought friends don't make fun of each other?" Sarina replied.
"Well, looks like you never had a good friend then or maybe male and female bonding operate on entirely differently."
"Shouldn't we focus on keeping our voices down so we don't trigger an alert?" Rowan interrupted.
"Oh, ho! Look at you, finally picking up basic operational awareness from hanging out with me—though you're still missing half the puzzle, obviously. There's a reason we're whispering." Ritvik teased softly.
Rowan opted to keep quiet, choosing his sanity over a counter-argument.
"How much longer are we walking?" Rowan groaned after another ten minutes of descending stairwells. "When is this Section 3 supposed to show up?"
"Hmm... It sure has been quite some time." Sarina noted.
"What can I do? There are so many intersecting ways leading to section 3 so be quiet and let me figure it out." Ritvik snapped defensively, tracing his index finger along the map lines.
"Okay... taking a sharp right past this junction is the fastest route."
He veered right down a narrow, shadowy archway, with Rowan and Sarina falling right in step behind him.
As they approached the heavy metal bulkhead marking the boundary of Section 3, Ritvik held up a hand.
"Be careful we might encounter some guards."
Rowan and Sarina immediately dropped into low combat stances, their hands resting on their gear as they approached the section three.
"Alright."
Step.
The moment they rounded the corner and crossed the threshold into Section 3, both Rowan and Sarina lunged forward, prepared to violently tackle any active guards on sight.
Instead, their momentum completely evaporated. They froze dead in their tracks, staring in utter disbelief.
"Huh...?" Ritvik blinked, his jaw dropping open.
Sprawled across the floor directly in front of the section 3 were two GAA security guards—both completely out cold.
"What the...?" Rowan muttered, lowering his axe as he inspected the bodies. "They're already down?"
Sarina dropped to one knee, pressing two fingers against the nearest guard's throat.
"They're alive. Just knocked out clean."
Rowan looked up at the open, unbarred entryway leading into the section 3. "Looks like someone is already there before us."
Cold sweat beaded along Ritvik's temples as he stared down the empty corridor. "Um... are you two genuinely sure we want to keep going deeper?"
Rowan and Sarina turned around, giving him identical unimpressed stares.
Ritvik cleared his throat awkwardly. "Ok, ok. Understood. No one cares about my opinion."
With that settled, the trio pressed forward into the heart of Section 3. Rowan, and Sarina moved with tactical precision, scanning every angle, while Ritvik walked like a terrified zombie, keeping one hand on his map and the other trembling slightly.
'My instincts are screaming bloody murder.' Ritvik thought frantically, rubbing the back of his neck as a cold shiver ran down his spine.
'The only time my nervous system has ever short-circuited this badly was whenever that red-haired tyrantness was standing within five feet of me. Does that mean whatever is waiting for us at the end of this hallway is just as dangerous as her?!'
Snap.
A sudden acoustic anomaly triggered his internal warning system.
"Get ready!" Ritvik hissed.
From the intersecting corridor just ahead, a group of shadowy figures abruptly materialized.
Everything happened in a chaotic blur of motion.
Rowan and Sarina whipped their wand and axe up, instantly locking onto the intruders.
In the dim emergency lighting, their opponents reacted with terrifying speed, raising their own wands and staff points straight toward Rowan and Sarina's throats.
Ritvik, dropping his usual comedic demeanor, thrust his staff forward with absolute lethal focus, aiming directly at the neck of the person standing opposite him.
"Hah?!"
"Hah?!"
A synchronized gasp of absolute shock echoed off the walls as the combatants finally recognized the faces illuminated by the dim lights.
Rowan had his axe leveled straight at Selene, while Selene had her staff locked dead against Rowan's collarbone.
A fraction of an inch away, Sarina and Marna stood in a mirror-image standoff, wand and staff poised at each other's jugulars.
Realizing who they were about to execute, they all froze, their eyes drifting automatically toward the center of the clash.
"Huh?!"
Ritvik and Seraphine were locked in a staring contest of pure, unadulterated horror, each holding their respective wand and staff focus millimeters away from the other's windpipe.
"Sigh..."
Standing a few paces back in the shadows, Kaya pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long, exhausted groan.
"You absolute, brainless mutt!" Seraphine shrieked, instantly dropping her combat stance, lunging forward, and grabbing Ritvik violently by the collar to shake him back and forth like a rag doll. "What the hell are you doing down here?! Are you actively stalking me now?! You disgusting little stalker—!"
"Hey, come on. Don't put yourself in such high regards. There's no way anyone in this world would wanna stalk you."
Ritvik choked out, his body flailing limply as the fabric of his collar stretched to its absolute limit under Seraphine's fury.
"What did you said?! you mutt."
"Alright, enough! Break it up." Kaya intervened, placing a firm hand on Seraphine's shoulder to peel her off. She raised an eyebrow, looking past the red-haired fire mage toward the newcomers.
"Also... do you actually know these three clowns?"
Seraphine released Ritvik's collar, crossed her arms tightly over her chest, and violently whipped her head away with an exaggerated hmph. "Hmph. Never seen this mutt in my life."
"That means you do know him?" Kaya muttered.
"Hah." Ritvik sighed internally. 'Does she ever get tired of hating me?'
"Why on earth are you lot trespassing down here anyway?" Kaya demanded, turning her sharp gaze back to them.
"Probably the exact same reason as her." Rowan replied evenly pointing at Seraphine and, stepping forward. As he locked eyes with Kaya, memories of the Honor Room flooded back—specifically the moment back in GAA when both he and Seraphine had simultaneously demanded answers about Alokik Sarvanathan.
Kaya held his gaze for a long, heavy moment before letting out a soft sigh and closing her eyes. "Very well. Fall in line. We move together."
"Wait—what?!" Seraphine protested loudly. "Why are we babysitting them?! Especially that irritating four-eyed mutt?!"
"Because if they're down here on their own, they're either going to trigger the internal alarms and get us all caught, or stumble into the some kind of security grid," Kaya reasoned logically, turning toward the restricted archive doors. "It's safer to keep them where we can watch them."
Kaya paused, suddenly narrowing her eyes as a realization hit her. "Wait a minute... how did you even navigate this deep into the restricted sub-levels without getting lost?"
"Oh, easy. With this," Ritvik piped up, proudly holding up the crumpled map.
Kaya raised an eyebrow, staring at the paper. "Where on earth did you acquire a structural layout of the auxiliary archives?"
"Found it lying around," Ritvik replied smoothly.
"..." Kaya stared at him with deadpan silence, entirely unconvinced.
Ritvik shook his head, offering a wise expression. "Ah... come on. Read between the lines. It means I'm sworn to secrecy."
"You'd better burn that document the second we clear this checkpoint," Kaya warned, turning back on her heel. "Because from here on out, I'm leading the way."
"Yeah, yeah, sure," Ritvik muttered, casually folding the map and shoving it back into his pocket. 'I'll keep it as a backup just in case she has zero directional sense.' he reasoned internally.
And with that bizarre, highly unstable coalition of seven students assembled in the dark, they resumed their march toward the data archives—each driven by their own goals, completely unaware of what might be awaiting them ahead.
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CHAPTER ENDS