Chapter 65: C Rank Mission: Retrieve the Core
Shadow Valley's streets were as dim as ever, with mist breathing in and out of the cracks in the ground like something alive.
Purple flames flickered atop broken walls, cold and watchful, like rows of half opened eyes. In the darkness beyond, even more eyes lurked, fixed on the lone figure walking through the fog.
Hodell moved at an unhurried pace.
In this chaotic wasteland, his bearing felt absurdly out of place. He did not walk like a fugitive, a scavenger, or a killer. He walked like a graduate returning to an academy chapel, calm, measured, and entirely unbothered by the world around him.
The gazes hiding in the shadows retreated the moment they brushed the hem of his robe.
"Mr. Pale..."
"Quiet. Are you trying to die? Don't look at him."
The whispers were torn apart by the cold wind and buried once more under the fog.
The Clearing House loomed ahead like a mausoleum. The heavy stone door sensed his presence and slowly creaked open with a long, dull groan.
Inside, the blind old man behind the counter paused for the first time that day.
He actually rose to his feet.
His withered hands folded over his abdomen, and he bowed slightly, far more respectful than he ever was toward anyone else.
To the old man, Hodell's aura was like a torch thrust into midnight. Still, deep, restrained, and impossible to ignore.
"Sir," he rasped, "you've arrived."
"I want to see the missions."
Hodell waved a hand and walked straight toward the center of the hall.
A massive black stone stele floated there, countless phantom plaques rising and falling across its surface like dead leaves in a current.
He did not lack money. But he had no reason to refuse more experience.
The Esper System had always been abnormal compared to the other four systems. Many missions that were deadly or impossible for others were trivial for him. Before heading into Shadow City, there was no reason to leave Shadow Valley's resources untouched.
His perception swept across the dense cluster of mission plaques. Information poured into his mind in a cold, orderly stream.
At last, his gaze settled on a black token veined with dark violet light.
He plucked it from the air.
"The reward on this one is high," Hodell said. "Why has no one taken it?"
The old man turned toward the token, his expression growing solemn.
"That is a recovery mission issued by the Truth Society. The target is an underground laboratory on the edge of the North District. During the last Tide, a structural collapse sealed the site beneath three layers of high density lead gold plates and pressure resistant partitions."
He paused.
"The internal air pressure is now extremely unstable. Any violent excavation, whether physical or magical, risks triggering a chain self destruction. Three ranked experts attempted infiltration before. None returned."
His voice grew lower.
"The Truth Society has already marked it as a dead knot. They are prepared to write it off."
Hodell had heard of the Truth Society. They were one of the true giants of Shadow Valley. Most of the prosthetic limbs, mechanical eyes, and modified organs floating around the black market carried their fingerprints somewhere.
"A dead knot?"
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Then he dropped the mission token on the old man's desk with a crisp sound.
"Register it."
The old man's brows tightened. "Sir, this is not merely dangerous. It is..."
"I know."
Hodell turned and walked back into the fog before the old man finished speaking.
[You have triggered C Rank Mission: [Retrieve the Core]]
[Mission Reward: 250,000 EXP]
At the edge of the North District, Laboratory No. 09 looked less like a ruin and more like a wound.
Rust colored dust whirled through the air. The wind screamed over broken steel like a beast dragging its claws across sheet metal.
Hodell stood at the rim of the collapsed crater and narrowed his eyes.
He did not believe a single word of the briefing.
A place like this should never have been so vulnerable to a simple Tide. Not if the Truth Society had considered it important.
He closed his eyes and let his perception sink.
The answer arrived almost immediately.
"It was not the Tide," he murmured. "Something went wrong during an internal experiment."
The three layers of lead gold alloy above the lab were more than a seal. They were a coffin lid. Worse, the material was packed with chaotic interference fields that shredded ordinary perception to pieces.
For anyone else, the mission was exactly what the old man had called it.
A dead knot.
For Hodell, it was merely troublesome.
He stepped forward and let his body touch the alloy wall.
Then he blurred.
Not visually. Not like speed. Not like stealth.
He simply slipped one layer outside ordinary reality and passed through the dead metal like a ghost crossing shadow.
The lab beneath was a disaster zone.
Twisted rebar jutted out like broken bones. Ruptured pipes screamed and spat steam. Force fields were collapsing in overlapping waves, and the instrument panels hanging from the ceiling spun madly under distorted magnetic pull.
A glob of corrosive waste floated past his face. Hodell tilted his head slightly and let it drift by.
Step by step, he advanced through the wreckage, his perception mapping every vibration, every unstable beam, every safe foothold.
When corridors were blocked, he phased through them.
When pressure currents threatened to push him off balance, he adjusted his rhythm and moved through the narrow gaps between destruction.
Five minutes later, he reached the lowest level.
The core chamber stood in eerie silence.
At its center, a superconducting core floated inside a magnetic confinement rack. Soft blue radiance flowed over its surface like a nebula captured in crystal.
It was beautiful.
And dangerous.
High pressure plasma clouds drifted around it. One wrong move, and the entire system would collapse into a violent chain reaction.
Hodell extended a hand.
[Energy Simulation] spread from his fingertips, aligning itself with the exact rhythm of the magnetic confinement field. His movements were quick, precise, and impossibly steady.
The moment his fingers closed around the core, the noise of the chamber disappeared.
Steam, alarms, electrical whining, all of it fell silent.
The chamber became still.
Too still.
Hodell glanced at the core in his hand, then at the now dormant rack surrounding it.
Then he understood.
"This thing wasn't just stored here."
It had been acting as the final stabilizer for the entire underground structure.
A pillar.
An invisible one.
Now it was gone.
Metal groaned.
Far above, the first sounds of total structural failure rippled down the shaft like the opening note of an avalanche.
On the surface, three men in Truth Society uniforms watched a vibration monitor from behind respirator masks.
The one in the middle lit a cigarette and exhaled through his nose.
"Movement detected. The core's been taken."
The other one gave a low laugh. "Mr. Pale lives up to the rumors."
"Rumors are one thing. Surviving this is another."
The leader tapped ash to the ground and looked at the sinking earth beneath them.
"As soon as the core leaves its cradle, the whole laboratory loses physical balance. Once the collapse stops, we dig out the box and collect what's left."
He pressed a red remote trigger.
A secondary interference pulse was sent underground.
The core had been the real objective. Now that it was in motion, the man who took it was no longer useful.
The fewer people who knew the truth, the better.
Below, the world began to die.
The structure around Hodell convulsed as thousands of tons of rock and alloy started to come down.
He tried to expand his phased field.
Instantly, a tearing sensation slashed through his body.
He frowned.
The collapse itself was not the only problem. The underground chamber was saturated with chaotic energy blocks, distorted fields, and the artificial interference the men above had just triggered. The entire place had become a muddy, unstable grave.
He was trapped in a tin coffin while the mountain closed its fist around him.
The laboratory screamed.
A beam weighing several tons tore free above him and plunged downward with a shrill whistle. Hodell did not even look up. An invisible force glanced it aside, and it smashed into the ground beside him in a shower of sparks.
He moved.
Not toward the exit.
Toward the collapsing heart of the chamber.
If he could not stabilize his own ability, then he would stabilize the battlefield.
He looked down at the superconducting core in his hand. The interference had driven it into a violent resonance state. Power pulsed inside it like a caged star trying to split open.
Good.
He bared a faint smile.
"Then let's borrow your rhythm for a moment."
Source energy poured from his body into the core.
The blue glow flared white.
The core let out a high, almost human whine.
"Three."
The chamber shook.
"Two."
The artificial interference reached its peak.
"One."
The core detonated, not outward, but through frequency.
A violent pulse wave exploded through the laboratory and flattened the entire energy field for one single heartbeat.
That was enough.
In that one second, the mud became clear water.
Hodell phased.
He vanished.
The next instant, the whole underground laboratory folded in on itself under the mountain's weight.
On the surface, the crater dropped another several meters.
The three killers stared at the settling dust cloud with satisfaction.
"Nobody survives that."
One of them bent to pick up his weapon. "Once it cools, we can begin recovery."
A voice spoke behind him.
"Without the magnetic pillar, it was troublesome."
The words were calm.
Too calm.
The man froze.
A blade tip emerged from his chest.
He looked down at it dumbly.
Behind him, Hodell stood with a clean storage case tucked under one arm and a short blade in his free hand.
The other two stumbled backward in horror.
"How..." one whispered.
They had buried him under a mountain.
How was he standing here without even a speck of dust on the core box?
Hodell did not answer.
He only smiled.
Then his figure blurred.
Not speed.
Space.
A second later, he was somewhere else.
Then somewhere else again.
Three jumps in one breath.
The two men barely had time to raise their weapons before lines of blood opened across their throats and chests.
All three bodies collapsed together.
The thunder in the distance gradually faded.
The fog deepened.
It parted silently for Hodell as he walked back through it.
When the doors of the Clearing House opened again, the sound of the hinges turning was unusually loud in the dead still hall.
The blind old man looked up from a scrap telegraph on his desk.
He had expected many things.
Hearing footsteps this soon was not one of them.
"Did you leave something behind? The Clearing House does not take responsibility for..."
His voice stopped.
The aura entering the room was calm.
Steady.
Completely intact.
"...Mr. Pale."
Shock broke through the old man's carefully maintained composure.
"You came back?"
No ragged breathing.
No blood scent.
No trace of injury at all.
Only that same still, abyssal energy field as before.
Hodell approached the desk and placed the sealed storage box on it with a soft metallic thud.
"What?" he said mildly. "Is coming back against the rules?"
The old man reached toward the box with trembling fingers. The moment he felt the core's pressure through the casing, he went utterly silent.
From departure to return, it had not even been an hour.
And from every rumor he had already begun receiving through his channels, the laboratory had completely collapsed.
The old man swallowed.
"How did you get out?" he asked hoarsely. "Those lead gold partitions... and the Truth Society's interference..."
Hodell brushed imaginary dust from his cuff.
"Probably luck. The road inside was smoother than I expected. As for the traps and rats outside, they didn't seem very fortunate today."
The old man's lips twitched.
It was the driest joke he had heard in years.
But he was in no position to laugh.
"Very well," he said, forcing his expression back under control. "I will settle the bounty."
His hands moved so quickly while processing the mission that they almost blurred.
[You have completed C Rank Mission: [Retrieve the Core]]
[You have received 250,000 EXP]
When the process was done, the old man lowered his voice.
"Sir. The Truth Society has lost people. They won't let this pass quietly."
Hodell pocketed the reward and turned toward the door.
"Then let them line up."
He stepped back into the fog, expression unreadable.
His class advancement was going to require a great deal of blood.
.....
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