Chapter 217: Following the Leads!

The walk out of the suppression chamber was quiet. It wasn’t a quiet that was born from peace or anything similar, but instead a strange, chilling silence that lingered after violence, after truth had been torn loose and left bleeding on the floor.

Albedo didn’t rush once he left the suppression chamber, remaining calm as he thought of his future actions.

Eventually, Albedo found himself moving through the Everglade-controlled substructure at an unhurried pace, boots clicking softly against reinforced stone as warded lights dimmed and reactivated in sequence before him.

The facility was layered, buried beneath layers of legal deniability and shell ownership, and built with the confidence of an organization that genuinely believed no one important would ever come looking.

It seemed there was someone high up in the Council who were also making sure that whatever the Everglade Family did wouldn’t be found out, and with that person helping them, they believed they’d never be caught.

They were wrong.

Raven was for more intelligent and resourceful than any of them could’ve imagined, and she was already deep on their trial, picking up on even the smallest clues they had dropped to build a detailed file on them and their actions.

Now, she had sent Albedo on the case.

By the time Albedo emerged into the open night air, the city above was alive. Mana-lamps glowed along elevated walkways, casting pale gold light across streets that never truly slept.

Vehicles rolled by, nobles laughed behind privacy wards, adventurers drank away the day’s bloodshed, and somewhere in the distance a bard’s enchanted instrument hummed softly.

Normalcy, at least for the Northern Region.

He tilted his head slightly, eyes glowing faintly purple as Source Code flickered to life. Information layered itself over reality, mana density, ley flow direction, latent enchantments embedded into nearby structures. He filtered it all out, focusing only on what mattered.

Using the information he’d just gained from his ’interrogation,’ he looked at what he was looking for.

The Eastern border, the abandoned glassworks district under the control of the Everglade Family, the old aqueduct hub, a collapsed cistern being controlled by their proxy families, and a triple-sigil ward.

A smile tugged faintly at the corner of Albedo’s mouth as he saw all of this.

“Predictable,” he murmured.

Everglade liked old infrastructure. Forgotten places. Locations that sat just outside the mental map of most citizens, too derelict to care about, too inconvenient to renovate. Perfect for crimes that required bodies to vanish without causing ripples.

Albedo stepped into a shadow between two buildings and vanished. The glassworks district had once been a symbol of progress. Now it was a graveyard of ambition for them to enact whatever disgusting plan they had.

Tall, skeletal factory chimneys jutted into the sky like broken spears, their surfaces cracked and blackened by decades of disuse.

Glass panes lay shattered across the ground, crunching softly beneath Albedo’s boots as he moved through the ruins. The air carried a faint chemical tang, mixed with damp stone and old mana residue, echoes of enchantments long since unraveled.

He slowed as he approached the cistern carefully. From the outside, it was exactly what Vane had described to him under duress.

A collapsed stone dome half-sunken into the earth, overgrown with weeds and moss, rainwater pooling along fractured edges. To mundane senses, it was nothing more than a forgotten water structure.

To Albedo’s eyes, it glowed.

Three sigils were carved into the stone rim, deliberately weathered to look accidental. One suppressed sound. One bent perception of anyone who stared at it, while the final sigil redirected mana flow inward, ensuring that anything cast nearby would bleed harmlessly into the ground.

It was a professional job, and only someone vastly superior like Raven, or someone with an ability similar to Source Code could truly crack it as easily as Albedo did.

“Triple-layered,” Albedo muttered, “Mid-tier vampire craftsmanship. Old-school. Making sure no-one catches their tail,” he said, crouching and placing two fingers against the sigils.

Instead of dispelling them, he listened.

Mana spoke to him in patterns, rhythms, tension, intent. These wards weren’t alarms, as they instead acted like they were filters. Designed to let authorized signatures pass through unnoticed while subtly nudging everything else away.

Albedo smiled, before he decided to force his way through, causing the sigils to scream, not audibly, but spiritually.

Mana recoiled as Source Code flooded his vision, rewriting the interaction in real time. The wards tried to bend perception around him, failed. Tried to suppress his presence, failed. Tried to redirect mana, failed catastrophically.

The stone cracked.

Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across the cistern’s rim as the wards collapsed inward, imploding silently. Albedo dropped through the opening, cloak fluttering briefly before settling as he landed lightly on damp stone below.

The aqueduct hub stretched before him.

Massive stone channels ran along the walls and floor, once used to redirect water throughout the district.

Now they were dry, repurposed, and reinforced with modern enchantments. Mana lamps lined the ceiling, casting cold white light across a scene that made Albedo’s expression harden.

There, Albedo could spot cages, dozens of them. Iron, silver-lined, rune-etched. Some empty. Some not. All of the cages enchanted with runes to suppress the powers of those inside.

People lay within, men and women of varying ages, all unconscious, all alive. Tubes ran from their arms into crystalline reservoirs embedded into the wall, each one slowly filling with blood tinged faintly with mana.

The tubes weren’t draining them dry, instead, the flow of blood was measured and controlled, almost like they wanted to slowly drain them, maximizing the amount of blood they could rip from these poor victims.

“Preparatory acquisition,” Albedo said quietly.

His fingers clenched. He moved forward, senses flaring outward as he mapped the space. Four entrances. Two guard corridors. One central processing chamber deeper within the hub. No Everglade guards present, only contractors, just as Vane had said.

Non-vampires. Humans, BeastKin, normal Demons, there was even a Dark Elf, all of whom Albedo could categorize as mercenaries.

They noticed him three seconds too late. The first man turned, mouth opening to shout, but Albedo was already there.

Havoc and Ruin materialized in his hands in a flash of crimson-black light. Infernal Mode ignited silently, heat warping the air as Albedo fired twice.

The bullets burned, twin lines of crimson flame punched through the mercenary’s chest, incinerating his heart before he hit the ground.

Albedo pivoted, firing again as another contractor reached for a signaling crystal. The bullet curved midair, gravity bending subtly, and punched through the man’s skull.

Two down.

The rest reacted fast, better trained than average. Mana shields flared. Blades came out. One mage began chanting, but it was too slow to catch Albedo, who swapped modes in his weapons mid motion to Graviton.

The third shot detonated into compressed gravity, imploding in the center of the room. Contractors screamed as they were yanked off their feet, bodies slamming together in a chaotic mass. Albedo walked into the distortion calmly, firing methodically.

Each shot was precise and merciless. When the gravity field collapsed, only bodies remained, silence returning to the environment.

Albedo exhaled slowly, then turned his attention back to the captives.

He moved from cage to cage, scanning vitals, reinforcing weakened life forces with gentle pulses of mana. Some stirred. Others remained unconscious, but stable.

“They were planning long-term use,” he muttered, “Blood conditioning. Mana adaptation.”

His jaw tightened.

This was preparation for something larger, something that required blood altered by prolonged exposure to specific things.

All of it looked like they were preparing for a dark ritual, or something even worse.

Albedo followed the aqueduct deeper.

The processing chamber was a cathedral of stone and crystal. Massive blood reservoirs lined the walls, each labeled with coded runes denoting mana density, elemental affinity, and something else, something darker.

Compatibility. At the center of the chamber stood a ritual array, that was currently inactive, but was definitely used recently due to its mana residue.

Albedo knelt, placing a hand against the etched floor.

Images flickered through his mind, ritual circles activating, blood flowing along channels, a massive mana surge tearing open something that should not exist. The echo of Abyssal pressure lingered faintly, like a bruise on reality.

“So that’s it,” he said softly.

Everglade wasn’t summoning the Abyss.

They were preparing vessels.

Blood refined, conditioned, and aligned to withstand Abyssal influence without immediate collapse. People turned into containers. Into tools.

“Magnus,” Albedo whispered, voice cold. “You absolute bastard.”

He stood, eyes burning. This wasn’t a side operation.

This was infrastructure. Which meant there were more sites, and a primary facility he still didn’t know anything about.

Albedo activated his recorder again, documenting everything, layouts, arrays, sigils, blood composition. Evidence stacked neatly in his mind, each piece slotting into a growing picture.

Then he destroyed the chamber.

Infernal Mode roared to life as Albedo raised Havoc and Ruin, firing into the reservoirs. Crimson flames engulfed the blood crystals, evaporating their contents in controlled bursts. The ritual array shattered under sustained fire, runes screaming as they unraveled.

The structure began to collapse.

Albedo moved quickly, unlocking cages, reinforcing weakened captives with mana constructs to guide them toward the exit. He didn’t escort them all the way out, too slow, but he ensured they’d survive long enough to be found.

As he stepped back into the night, the aqueduct hub collapsed behind him, sealing itself beneath tons of stone and molten glass.

No evidence left behind.

Only absence.

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