Chapter 216: Some Valuable Information!

The silence in the room stretched as the chamber’s suppression arrays hummed steadily, a low, almost comforting vibration that pressed against the senses and dulled the edge of mana without smothering it completely.

It was a room built for answers, not executions. Pain could happen here, often did, but death was an inconvenience.

Albedo watched them both for several heartbeats, letting awareness settle back into their eyes. Fear bloomed differently in each.

Vane, on the left, avoided his gaze entirely, breath shallow and uneven, shoulders already tense as if bracing for the next strike. Kerris, on the right, stared straight at him, jaw clenched, terror buried under training and stubborn pride.

Small fry, indeed.

“Before we continue,” Albedo said mildly, “I want to be very clear about the rules.”

He stood and walked slowly between them, boots echoing softly against the stone. The recorder crystal hovered beside him, its glow steady, patient.

“I don’t need heroics. I don’t need loyalty. And I definitely don’t need silence,” he continued. “What I need is accuracy. If you don’t know something, say so. If you lie, I’ll know. If you waste my time…”

He stopped in front of Kerris and placed two fingers lightly against his sternum.

“…you’ll feel it.”

He withdrew his hand and stepped back, returning to the chair.

“Now,” Albedo said, settling in, “start with the basics. Who do you report to?”

Kerris swallowed. Vane’s fingers twitched against the chains.

“…Handler,” Kerris said finally, “Mid-tier. We don’t see Magnus. Ever.”

“Name,” Albedo prompted.

“Sereth. Last name… I don’t know. Nobody uses surnames in Everglade operations unless they want to die. Retaining anonymity is key to avoiding being picked off,” The man explained, worried under Albedo’s harsh gaze.

Albedo nodded, as if confirming something he already suspected. He flicked his gaze to Vane, “You corroborate?”

Vane hesitated while Albedo didn’t even bother to look at him, the young man simply tapped the recorder once.

Vane flinched. “Y–Yes,” he said quickly. “Sereth. He handles four cells, maybe five. We only saw him twice a month.”

“Good,” Albedo said. “Now we’re moving.”

He leaned forward slightly, “What were your orders regarding me?”

Kerris exhaled through his nose. “Observe. Track movement. Record contacts. Especially… Vampires. Any unscheduled meetings.”

Albedo smiled faintly, “That must’ve been disappointing.”

Kerris didn’t answer.

“And if I noticed you?” Albedo asked.

“Withdraw,” Vane said immediately, “Report. No confrontation unless,”

“Unless?” Albedo prompted.

Vane swallowed, “Unless we were certain you were sniffing your nose where it didn’t belong, or were a big enough threat to Everglade Interests,”

Albedo’s eyes sharpened, “Define ’threat.’”

Silence.

He sighed and stood again.

This time, he went to Vane first.

Two fingers pressed into the hollow at the base of Vane’s throat. Mana surged, not violently, but with surgical precision. Vane’s back arched as pain detonated through his nervous system, every muscle seizing as if electrified.

The scream tore out of him before he could stop it.

Albedo released him a second later.

Vane sagged against the chains, gasping, eyes glassy.

“Define,” Albedo repeated calmly.

“A–Anything tied to BloodHaven,” Vane choked out, “The closer you were you Lilian, the more of a threat you’d become. Also, if you got close to potentially figuring out what was going on with their operations,”

Kerris went pale.

Albedo returned to his chair. “Interesting,” he murmured. “So Magnus was already worried about me, guessing he really wants to marry Lilian to fulfill some sort of plan,”

A-lot of thoughts flashed through Albedo’s mind as he gained that information, but he couldn’t dwell on it for too long, as he had an investigation to continue.

He folded his hands again and stared at the two frightened men before him, “Now we move to the real question.”

He let the words hang for a moment, increasing the tension in the room before he spoke, “What is Everglade doing with the missing people?”

Neither of them answered, instead nervously looking around.

Albedo tilted his head. “You don’t know the full picture,” he said thoughtfully. “I can see that. Which is fine. We’re not starting at the top.”

He gestured lazily toward Kerris, “You,” he said. “Tell me about the routes. Anything you know is good enough,”

Kerris hesitated, then clenched his jaw, “Transit corridors,” he said. “Border districts. Neutral zones where jurisdiction blurs. We were told to flag travelers who fit certain profiles.”

“Profiles,” Albedo echoed. “Be specific. I don’t have all day to waste here,”

“Non-local of course, locals are too connected, if they disappear it’ll cause big problems, we were told to target people who didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things,” Kerris said before he continued, “Low political value. Adventurers without noble backing. Merchants operating independently. Tourists with disposable income and no escort. You know, the people who disappear and no-one cares,”

Vane nodded hurriedly as he also added shakily, “No families and definitely no large groups. Clean vanishings.”

Albedo nodded slowly, “And once these targets were flagged?”

“They disappear,” Kerris said, “We don’t see how. That’s not our level. We find them and report, everything else is out of our hands big time,”

“But you’ve seen the handoff,” Albedo pressed.

Kerris hesitated and that caused Albedo to stand up once again, only this time, he didn’t touch Kerris, instead he touched the chain.

Blood-aspected mana bled into the alloy, resonating with the suppression arrays already woven into the room. The chains vibrated, and Kerris screamed as the vibration transferred directly into his bound mana core, setting every nerve alight without damaging tissue.

Albedo watched dispassionately.

“Talk,” he said.

“Underground!” Kerris gasped, coughing up blood as he squeezed out another sentence,”Old infrastructure. Pre-Modern architecture tunnels. Some… aren’t on city maps. Everglade owns access points through shell companies. We flagged people, and another team took them from there.”

“Another team,” Albedo said. “What kind?”

“Specialists is all I know I promise,” Vane cut in quickly, “Not Everglade guards. Contractors. Some weren’t even vampires. We have no idea if they have public identities or stay in the dark until they’re called on for missions,”

That was interesting, making Albedo slightly lean forward as he quickly made a mental note to review later, “Did they kill them?”

“No,” Kerris said immediately. “Not at first. Bodies are… resources for Vampires of course, their Blood is valuable,”

Albedo’s jaw tightened slightly as he heard that last part, “Valuable for what? What does these random peoples blood have that they don’t already have access to?”

Kerris shook his head frantically, “We don’t know! We were told it was ’preparatory acquisition.’ That’s the term they used when talking to us about it,”

“Preparatory,” Albedo repeated softly, taking another mental note for later. He walked toward the wall and traced a finger along a faint crack in the stone, thinking.

“How many?” he asked without turning around.

Vane swallowed, “For the two of us, we’ve captured dozens. Maybe more. Over months, and that’s just the two of us, no doubt other teams have captured just as much if not way more in that same time frame,”

“And timing?” Albedo asked, “Why now?”

Kerris hesitated again, too long and Albedo caught on, turning towards him and staring at Kerris intently.

“You know something,” The Young Human said quietly.

Kerris looked at Vane, then back at Albedo. “…There were rumors,” he admitted. “About a deadline. About something aligning.”

“Aligning how?” Albedo asked.

“Mana flows,” Kerris said. “Ley intersections. Abyssal activity spiking outside the region. Sereth said Everglade needed to be ’ready’ before certain… doors opened.”

That made Albedo very still.

“Abyss,” he said softly.

Neither denied it.

Vane shook his head weakly. “We weren’t told it was Abyssal worship or anything like that,” he said quickly. “We don’t know anything, it could be Abyss or something else, they’re very vague with their descriptions. All they said was there’d be mutual benefits to everyone involved if this is done, including us at the bottom level of the totem pole,”

Albedo laughed quietly, “There is no such thing as mutual benefit with the Abyss,” he said. “Only delayed consequences. You better hope it’s not the Abyss they’re working with,” Albedo said.

He returned to his chair, eyes distant now, mind already threading possibilities together.

“Last questions,” he said. “Then we’re done.”

Both men sagged in relief at the implication.

“Where is the primary site?” Albedo asked.

Kerris shook his head, “We don’t know. Only that it’s not in the open Everglade estate. Too obvious.”

“But,” Vane said weakly, “there’s a secondary node. A holding site. We helped monitor traffic near it.”

Albedo’s gaze snapped to him. “Where.”

Vane swallowed hard. “Old aqueduct hub. Eastern border. Beneath the abandoned glassworks district. Access through a collapsed cistern marked with a triple-sigil ward.”

Albedo smiled.

There it was.

He stood, deactivating the recorder. The crystal dimmed.

“You’ve been very helpful,” he said pleasantly.

Kerris slumped, exhausted. “A–Are you going to kill us?”

Albedo considered that for a moment.

“No,” he said, snapping his fingers as two lines of pure mana shot into their brains.

“If you even try to say anything about what happened here, your brain goes boom.”

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