Chapter 24: Midnight and Dawn
The slaves who had been forced into [Serenity Collars] were herded like cattle.
Under the shouts and clubs of the Black Bone inner guards, they were driven toward the largest training ground at the center of the manor. One by one, then in clusters, they were shoved into place and ordered to squat shoulder to shoulder in a dense, trembling mass. Around their necks, the collars reflected the light with a cold metallic sheen that made the whole scene feel even more sinister.
They were not placed there at random.
Most of them were deliberately lined up across the broad main approach leading toward the manor's core buildings. Any force charging in from the front or sweeping in from the flanks would have to look through a sea of unarmed bodies before it could strike at Black Bone's real defenses.
"Hostages…"
From behind a chunk of broken stone, Hodell adjusted the lens of his magic guiding observation device and narrowed his eyes.
The inner guards were still moving around the edges of the slave formation, setting up something.
The air around the training ground felt wrong.
Too orderly. Too deliberate.
Too eerie.
…
On the raised platform at the front of the training ground, the Black Bone Patriarch had changed into a formal black suit. His expression was grave, almost mournful, and in one hand he held a staff crowned with a dark crystal.
When he cleared his throat, an amplification array hidden beneath the platform flared to life, carrying his voice across the estate and all the way to the official forces gathering outside.
"Members of the General Administration of Mysteries. Mages of the Ministry of Magic. And you children beside me, who have always trusted the protection of Black Bone…"
His voice was deep, heavy with false sorrow.
"Look carefully."
He spread both arms and gestured toward the mass of kneeling Hybrids below him.
"These poor mixed blood children. In your eyes, they are stains born from civilization's failures. Impurities. Burdens. Yet it was the Black Bone Family that took them in. We fed them. Sheltered them. Gave them a place to live when the rest of the world wished they had never been born."
His tone suddenly rose, thick with performative anger.
"And what do you intend to do today? Under the banner of justice, you would destroy the last place willing to keep them alive. Your spells, your war machines, your so called righteous assault will grind them into dust before it ever reaches me!"
He slammed the bottom of his staff against the platform.
The dark crystal flashed.
In the next instant, the arrays around the training ground perimeter lit up in a dull red glow. The collars on every slave's neck lit up as well. The crowd below shuddered in terror as the red light pulsed across their throats like a warning from the abyss.
"Negotiate with me!" the Patriarch roared. "This device is bound to every life on this field. It is also linked to an energy core powerful enough to blow this entire place apart. I do not wish to see these children die, but if you force my hand, then I would sooner take them with me into the underworld than surrender them to executioners who call themselves just!"
Then came his terms.
"Open the eastern route. Prepare an unmonitored wind chasing skiff. Once I leave safely, I swear on the honor of the Black Bone Family that I will deactivate every collar and release every slave!"
He paused, letting the threat settle in.
"Otherwise…" His voice turned cold. "Their blood will stain your record, not mine. If you choose your mission over their lives, then let the world see what your justice is worth."
…
Outside the manor, the joint force's advance ground to a halt.
For all their strength, they could not simply ignore hundreds of lives laid bare in front of them.
The Ministry mages had already completed the framework for several large offensive spells. Brilliant light gathered at the tips of their staffs, but no one released it. Members of the General Administration's assault teams stood ready with weapons drawn, their gazes fixed on the slaves packed together in the training ground. Some were adults. Some were children. All of them were defenseless.
At the command line, senior officials exchanged quick, tense words.
The Ministry's side had already mapped the energy signature of the area, and what they saw did nothing to ease the situation.
"He's stalling," said one Ministry official, his eyes cold as he studied the projection. "There is a spatial coordinate lock inside the red zone. This is not just a hostage crisis. He's trying to complete a teleportation sequence."
An official from the General Administration spoke through clenched teeth. "And if we breach before it finishes, the hostages die first."
"Then we give him what he wants," the Ministry official replied. "Or rather, we let him think we do. Continue pressure from the front, but do not cross the red line. Delay. Stretch negotiations. Once the teleportation starts, the energy web around the hostages will loosen during transition. That will be our opening."
Orders were relayed at once.
The front line adjusted.
The deadlock continued.
…
Hodell lowered the observation device slightly, his expression tightening.
He could feel the shape of the problem now.
With his simple energy perception maxed out and his talent sharpened by [Energy Simulation], the fluctuations ahead felt far more distinct to him than they should have. The collars, the perimeter arrays, the spatial buildup beneath the manor, none of it was accidental. The Black Bone Patriarch's performance was buying time for something far more important than a clean escape.
And behind the packed training ground, beyond a narrow side gate, he could still see more slaves being driven inward in scattered groups.
They were being taken toward that squat grey building at the back.
What is that place?
If he stopped here and simply relayed what he had seen, he would be safe enough.
But safety had never once handed him an answer.
Faction missions were rare. The more he contributed, the better the final reward. More importantly, if there really was another force moving beneath the Black Bone affair, as Lamia had implied, then standing outside and following orders would never let him see it.
Go in and he might find nothing.
Stay out and he would definitely find nothing.
There was no time left to hesitate.
Hodell retreated to a blind corner among the outer ruins, took a slow breath, and sank his awareness into his own body.
Then he began doing something he had never seriously attempted before.
Instead of simulating a spell, he reversed the flow of [Energy Simulation] and started carefully peeling away the stabilizing effect of the gene specialization potion that kept his body in a human state.
A dull ache spread through his bones.
His muscles twitched.
A faint numbness crawled across his face and scalp. His ears sharpened, the contours of his features shifted slightly, and even his aura began to change.
It worked, but it did not feel good.
He quickly removed his coat and standard gear and hid them beneath a heap of broken stone. Underneath, he wore plain dark clothes. He tore them at the seams, rubbed dust and grit across the fabric, then smeared the same dirt over his face and throat until his skin was raw and reddened.
By the time he was done, he no longer looked like a freshly transferred officer of the General Administration.
He looked like just another miserable Hybrid dragged around by force.
"Uncomfortable," he muttered under his breath, testing the feeling in his limbs, "but workable."
He watched the side route for a few breaths more.
Then, as the guards along that line thinned slightly under pressure from the front, he moved.
He slipped from the rubble, kept low, and merged into the rear of the last group of slaves being driven through the side gate. His head dropped. His shoulders hunched. His eyes turned blank and fearful.
With [Acting Skill] backing every detail, he fit in perfectly.
He would have almost admired himself if the situation were not so ugly.
An inner guard glanced over the line, then abruptly frowned.
"Wait. Why doesn't this one have a collar?"
His gaze locked onto Hodell's bare neck.
Hodell's heart tightened.
Before the man could step closer, another inner guard glanced over and snorted.
"Forget it. It's just a fox brat. What else would it be?"
The first guard paused, then his expression shifted into crude understanding and contempt.
"Right. Useless breed."
He lost interest.
Hodell kept his head lowered and let the line carry him forward, though inwardly he was still trying to understand what being fox blood had to do with not wearing a collar.
The slave beside him, another Hybrid with dull eyes and matted hair, turned his head, stared at him once, then looked away again without a word.
Through the low side gate, the procession descended into a dark, damp passage sloping underground.
…
Outside, Kyle's voice crackled over the encrypted channel.
"Ryan. Ryan, answer."
No response.
Kyle's jaw tightened. "Damn it."
…
The deeper area beneath the grey building was worse than Hodell had expected.
The moment he stepped into the main chamber, his heart sank.
This was no mere holding room.
It was a ritual site.
A massive array had been carved across the floor, so large and complex that a glance alone could not take in its full structure. Refined mana crystals had been stacked at key nodes. Black robed mages moved around the formation in hurried circles, making adjustments, feeding power into secondary channels, and checking the stability of the whole mechanism.
At the center of it, dozens of the first Hybrids brought below had already been forced to kneel on marked rune nodes.
Energy threads extended from the collars on their necks straight into the array.
Their lives were being used as fuel.
Hodell's pupils contracted.
Living batteries.
No wonder the Patriarch had needed time so badly.
This formation was far too large, far too unstable, and far too demanding to activate quickly on its own. The hostages outside were a shield. The slaves inside were fuel. The speech above ground was only buying the final few minutes needed to bring everything online.
And the nature of the formation itself was no longer hard to guess.
Teleportation.
Not a small emergency jump, either. A full scale transfer sequence, probably designed to move the Black Bone core out before the joint force could break through.
He had to stop it.
No, not stop it.
Not directly.
Destroying one of the main nodes head on would blow the entire structure apart and turn every Hybrid in the chamber into pieces. He knew that the instant he started studying the array more carefully.
So he crouched near the edge of the slave group, keeping himself hidden among the bodies, and pressed one palm to the floor like a weak prisoner trying not to fall over.
Then he extended his perception.
The runes beneath the stone lit up in his awareness like a tangled web of veins. Energy surged through them at a terrifying rate. Every line fed another. Every node balanced another. It was precise, dangerous, and badly overworked all at once.
He searched.
Not for a major node.
For a flaw.
A place where speed had overtaken stability. A place where the whole design had been forced into something ugly just to make it function in time.
Sweat rolled from his temples.
His head began to pound.
Outside, the Patriarch's speech neared its final act.
Inside, the light of the teleportation array grew brighter and brighter. The sharp hum of its activation climbed higher until it became a thin, shrieking note that stabbed into the ears.
The Hybrids closest to the center began to visibly wither.
Their collars pulsed like blood red arteries, pulling everything from them and feeding it into the array.
Then—
Found it.
At one of the non core transfer intersections, the flow stuttered ever so slightly.
There.
That section had been built too fast. The alignment was barely holding. Under full load, it was already close to failing.
The entire array suddenly looked different in his mind.
Not elegant.
Not sophisticated.
Just a sprawling knot of forced solutions and bad decisions desperately trying to function long enough not to collapse.
Spaghetti code, he thought grimly. As long as it runs, no one cares how broken it is.
A plan formed instantly.
He focused and fed a tiny, carefully tuned stream of interference energy into that fragile intersection.
Not enough to blow it.
Just enough to gum the gears.
A drop of glue in a screaming engine.
The reaction was immediate.
The array flickered.
Its light faltered for a fraction of a second.
The shrill hum choked and spat out an ugly, distorted noise.
At the same moment, one of the nearby inner guards stiffened.
He turned slowly.
His boots scraped over the stone as he began walking toward the slave group.
It worked.
But not enough.
The interference had landed. The array had definitely been disturbed. Yet the total energy inside the formation was still climbing, still gathering, still forcing its way toward irreversible activation.
Hodell's head felt as though someone had driven a hammer into his skull.
Warm blood spilled from his nose and ran over his lips.
One of the black robed mages looked up sharply.
"Energy flow anomaly! Someone is interfering with the nodes! Search the perimeter!"
Several inner guards immediately swung their attention toward the slave group and the edges of the formation.
Hope rose in Hodell's chest—
Then died just as fast.
His disruption was too small. A nuisance, not a kill shot. It had slowed the process, but only by a breath.
The core runes continued to light up one after another.
The teleportation sequence had entered its final phase.
There was no time left.
Hodell bit down hard enough to taste blood. His whole body tensed. If he wanted to stop this now, he would need to take a far bigger risk.
And then he felt it.
A gaze.
Precise.
Cold.
Locked directly onto him.
.....
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