Chapter 220: Investigation!

The Northern Capital wore its civility like a mask, polished marble streets, arched bridges of spell-reinforced glass, banners fluttering from noble estates proclaiming lineage and virtue. To most, it was a city of order.

To Albedo, it was a ledger waiting to be balanced.

He moved through the morning crowds without drawing attention, presence dialed down, mana signature diffused into something comfortably unremarkable.

Source Code ran quietly in the background, not blazing, not searching blindly, just listening. Every ward pulse, every residual spell trace, every fluctuation in ambient mana density was logged, sorted, cross-referenced against what he already knew.

Everglade didn’t hunt in the open. That much had been clear from the start. The disappearances were too clean, too methodical. There wasn’t any riots or mass panic. Just enough unease to be dismissed as rumor if anyone asked too loudly. That required infrastructure, logistics, compliance, silence.

And silence, in a city like this, was never free, so Albedo was determined to find everything about their operations, starting with their vassal houses.

***

House Valemont was old, but not powerful.

Their crest, three interlocking rings over a chalice, marked them as a medical-aligned noble family, historically responsible for managing blood wards, healing halls, and emergency mana relief centers during past conflicts. A Respectable Family, but also convenient for the goals of the Everglades.

Albedo stood across the street from one of their “philanthropic clinics,” hands tucked into his coat pockets, gaze unfocused. To mundane sight, it was nothing more than a well-maintained stone building with soft-blue wardlights and a steady trickle of patients.

To Source Code, it was a mess.

The wards were too dense for a civilian clinic. Triple-layered mana filtration, internal suppression glyphs, and an isolation field that prevented spiritual resonance leakage. That wasn’t for disease control.

That was for storage.

He waited there extremely patiently and watched staff rotations, all the while he counted all of the various deliveries.

Three unmarked wagons arrived over the course of two hours, no insignia, no guild stamps. Each time, the ward intensity spiked briefly, then normalized.

Albedo exhaled softly.

“Blood doesn’t move itself,” he murmured.

He didn’t break in. Not yet.

Valemont was a node, not a source. He needed the network, so he left, moving to his next goal.

The Northern Capital prided itself on immaculate record-keeping. Taxes, census data, mana licensing, everything was cataloged, duplicated, and sealed in bureaucratic redundancy.

Which made anomalies stand out.

Albedo spent the early afternoon in motion, drifting between administrative districts, never entering restricted buildings, never touching protected terminals. He didn’t need to.

Every document left a mana echo. Every enchanted seal carried a signature. With Source Code parsing layers most people didn’t even know existed, the city’s paperwork unfolded before him like translucent pages.

Patterns emerged.

Entire neighborhoods listed as “relocated due to infrastructure renewal,” yet no corresponding construction permits. Merchant caravans registered as “delayed indefinitely,” but never officially declared lost.

Adventurers marked as having “taken private contracts” without guild confirmation. All of it funneled back to a handful of intermediary families.

Not Everglade. Never Everglade directly, but close enough.

House Thorneveil

Security contractors. Private guards. Monster suppression specialists.

Their hiring records exploded over the past year. Triple the manpower, double the funding. Yet their active patrol routes avoided monster zones and focused instead on border districts and transit hubs.

People-moving routes.

House Mirell

Trade brokers with stakes in cold-storage logistics and mana-preservation arrays.

Their warehouses lined the river districts, water-aligned mana masking spiritual residue, perfect for hiding large-scale blood transport.

House Kessarine

A minor noble house technically under Everglade protection.

Publicly bankrupt. Privately flush with liquid assets, funneled through shell guilds and offshore mana banks.

Desperate people did desperate things.

Albedo stopped beneath a skybridge and leaned against the stone railing, eyes closed as the data finished locking into place.

Three families, all of whom had different functions, but all within one system.

“They’re feeding him,” Albedo said quietly. “All of you.”

He didn’t strike immediately. Instead, the city began to misbehave.

A Thorneveil patrol encountered a “routing error” in their command crystals and arrived late to a scheduled escort, just late enough for their client to panic and cancel the contract.

A Mirell warehouse suffered a mana imbalance that spoiled several high-value preservation units. No damage. No sabotage trace. Just loss.

House Kessarine’s credit lines froze for twelve minutes. Long enough for creditors to notice. Long enough for fear to bloom.

Nothing lethal. Nothing overt.

But fear spread faster than blood.

Albedo watched the reactions from a distance, seated in a quiet tea house overlooking the merchant quarter. He didn’t need to listen in on conversations; he could feel it.

Mana tightened. Defensive wards activated where none had been before. Messages flew through encrypted channels, each carrying the same unspoken question.

Is someone sabotaging us?

Good, it will create distrust, confusion, but most importantly, quiet chaos.

By evening, one of them broke.

House Kessarine’s youngest heir, a man barely holding onto his title, slipped out of his estate under layered concealment, heading toward a neutral district known for illicit negotiations.

Albedo followed at a distance, steps soundless, presence folded into the ambient flow of the city.

The heir never noticed him. The meeting never happened. When the man vanished into a blind alley, there was no scream, no struggle. Just a soft collapse of wards and the sudden, crushing realization that he was no longer alone.

Albedo stood before him, eyes glowing faintly violet.

“We’re going to talk,” Albedo said calmly. “And you’re going to decide how much of your family survives afterward.”

Tears came quickly and so did names. By the time night fell, Albedo had what he needed.

Not just confirmation, but structure. Names, routes, schedules, internal hierarchies. Proof that Everglade’s vassals weren’t just complicit; they were essential. Without them, the machine starved.

Albedo stood atop a quiet rooftop overlooking the river districts, coat fluttering faintly in the wind. Albedo remained on the rooftop long after the last confession had been cataloged and sealed away inside Source Code’s layered memory.

Below him, the river districts glimmered with reflected lanternlight, warehouses and estates resting side by side in a deceptive harmony.

Barges drifted slowly along the canals, their wakes barely disturbing the surface, just like Everglade’s operations.

That illusion no longer fooled him. He closed his eyes, and the city unfolded.

Not as streets and buildings, but as flowcharts of influence. Contracts intersecting with blood banks. Patrol routes overlaying census gaps. Merchant guilds feeding data into noble estates that fed resources into Everglade’s hands.

None of the vassal houses truly mattered on their own. Valemont stored. Thorneveil moved. Mirell preserved. Kessarine laundered.

Magnus Everglade had built his power on distance, layers of separation that ensured no single failure could be traced back to him. Even the glassworks site had been disposable. Contractors. Mercenaries. A dead-end node meant to collapse cleanly.

Efficient, very predictable, but fatally dependent on secrecy. Albedo opened his eyes, violet light fading as Source Code settled into a low, focused hum.

“Then that’s where it ends,” he murmured.

Not with Magnus. Not yet. You didn’t decapitate a serpent before cutting its nerves. The middle men were the nerves of this analogy.

He wouldn’t slaughter them outright. That would be too loud, too clean, too easy to spin into isolated tragedies. Everglade would mourn privately, replace them quietly, and reinforce the shell.

No.

He would rot them from the inside.

Valemont’s clinics would begin failing inspections, legitimately, with Raven’s assistance of course. Minor irregularities exposed to the right oversight bodies. Blood storage arrays flagged for “ethical violations.”

Healers panicking as supply chains tightened and patients asked questions that couldn’t be answered without lying.

Thorneveil’s contracts would fracture. Patrol failures at critical moments. Clients injured, not killed, just enough to sue. Guild arbitration dragging their reputation through public channels they couldn’t suppress without drawing attention.

Mirell’s preservation networks would start leaking data. Shipping manifests misaligned. Cold-storage anomalies that spoiled product without visible sabotage. Investors would pull out, fearing instability.

And Kessarine?

They would implode.

Debt called in. Alliances withdrawn. Their name whispered in the same circles that once quietly protected them. By the time Everglade noticed, there would be nothing left to salvage.

Albedo didn’t feel satisfaction at the thought.

Only inevitability.

He adjusted his coat and stepped back from the edge of the rooftop, gaze lifting briefly to the distant spires of the noble quarter. Somewhere in that forest of stone and power, Magnus Everglade was still moving pieces, still believing himself insulated.

Let him.

Every move Magnus made relied on the assumption that silence could be maintained.

Albedo would make silence impossible.

People would notice when clinics closed. When guards failed. When trade slowed. When noble houses fell not to war, but to scrutiny. And once attention turned outward, once light crept into places Everglade had kept dark for decades,

The feeding would stop.

And a predator that couldn’t feed was just another beast waiting to die.

Albedo stepped off the rooftop, vanishing into the city’s veins as easily as a thought slipping between breaths.

Tomorrow, the Northern Capital would wake to a city that still looked orderly.

But beneath its polished marble and spell-reinforced glass, the arteries were already closing.

And Everglade would feel it soon.

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