We moved back on the dark hallway, where Renard stepped towards the tall window that overlooked the building we were going to attack. He looked at it for a moment as we walked towards him.
“Are you clear on where you’re supposed to enter?” he asked, his face turned to the building.
I followed his gaze and the building. It wasn’t easy to tell exactly which window he pointed to, but after looking for a moment, I identified the one he mentioned, just like in the image of the building from before. However, I couldn’t say the same for Nicole and James, so I turned a glance to them. Nicole confidently nodded, while James appeared to be unsure.
“Don’t worry. I’ll trail it for you. Once I do, you’ll have to act quickly so people don’t realize what we’re doing before we do anything,” Renard said, after which he placed a hand on the window. It easily came down to our side, after which a couple of people from the other room took it and made sure it didn’t shatter.
Strong wind started flowing into the hallway, causing our hair to sway under the cold air of the night. Renard didn’t waste time as he moved to the edge of the window and pointed a finger to the building. A dim golden line appeared momentarily in the air, after which it disappeared as fast as it appeared. He turned to look at us.
“Did you get it?” he asked with a serious expression. We all nodded. It had been as clear as it could’ve been. “Good. Then start the mission.”
“I’ll go first,” I said, taking a step to the edge of the window with my eyes set on the window I was supposed to enter.
It was a rather small window, and precision was absolutely necessary. I still didn’t fear missing or falling, since I could still fly, but the important thing was that I didn’t activate the building’s defenses by missing. I empowered myself, and a shroud of darkness covered my body. I leaned slightly to the outside of the building and after a quick hop, I launched myself to the target.
In an instant, I covered the distance between the two buildings, shattering the hard window that I was supposed to enter and landing inside a mostly dark room. Once I was inside, I turned to look back at the path I took. There were no alarms, no warnings, nor any kind of magical activation. My entrance had gone just as expected.
“Good job,” I heard Salrak speak in my ear. “The security systems’ bug was activated as soon as you launched yourself, so you should get a move on.”
I didn’t reply as I just looked back to make sure the other two could properly follow me. To make things easier on them, I left a small shadow on the air that will hide what was probably going to happen when they jumped in here…
The next one to follow was James, who took a running-start position in the hallway. The helmet of his dark tech-armor appeared, and with a flash of light at his back, he launched himself here, cleanly entering through the window in a similar fashion as I did. I could clearly see in the dark shadow that I left behind the trail of Holy Magic that he used to launch himself… which is why I left that shadow there.
And almost right after James, Nicole flew here. She was faster than James, but her trail was fiery, making it almost as easy to see as James’ Holy Magic, but thankfully, the shadow I left behind was enough to cover for her fire, so when she entered the building, no alarm and no warning was set off.
With a sigh and a hand on her chest, Nicole turned to look at me. Same as James. I nodded and turned to look at the door of the room we landed. “Let's get going. We don’t have much time.”
“I heard something from the bathroom. I think something fell,” the muffled voice of a man could be heard from beyond the closed door of the bathroom. “I’ll go check it out.”
Soon after, movement could be heard as someone was getting closer. I focused on my dark magic and covered the whole bathroom in darkness, making it appear no different than just a dark room. The door opened, and the silhouette of a man standing by the door could be seen.
“What the—?” he exclaimed, reaching his hand in the dark to the side of a wall, and I waited for Salrak to say something about this man.
As if He was reading my mind, Salrak gave us the information of the man that was stumbling in the dark, who eventually reached for his phone and turned on the flashlight on it, only for the light to be completely consumed by my darkness.
Before the man could open his mouth to exclaim about the situation, James threw his spear right at the man’s head, immediately killing him and causing his lifeless body to go flying to the wall of the hallway behind him, where the spear crashed.
“Huh!?” someone exclaimed from beyond the door, and I turned a glare at James, who couldn’t see it in the darkness.
It was too late to try to be sneaky now. If we didn’t want to be swarmed, we had to move, so with a swift movement, I rushed out of the door, pivoting on my feet as soon as I was on the hallway to turn in the direction of the person that exclaimed. There was a man wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a black tie to match it. He reached for a black thing on his side, but before he could even lift his hand to do anything with it, I fired a small Hellfire ball, which hit the thing in his hand, exploding it and causing the man to exclaim and falter backwards.
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From my side, Nicole burst out with her ‘Fire Phoenix Battledress’ aflame. With a determined glare, she fired a cone of blue flame with a white core from her hand. It instantly reached the man at the end of the hall, who immediately burst into flames before falling to the ground just as fast as the fire that hit him.
Soon after, James walked out of the bathroom, glancing in each direction of the hallway, before grabbing the spear that was still stuck on the wall. “Well, it seems like there was no alarm yet.”
“Not for long,” Salrak followed up before I could say anything. “Someone is going to come look for these men in about four minutes. Once they find out they’re not here, the alarms shall be sounded. The same thing can be said about that person if they don’t return after a while—just in case you were thinking about ending that person too as soon as they showed up.”
“Tch, well, at least it seems like a lot of people in this place are part of gangsters or just Followers of Leyfall that have been doing some terrible shit to get here…” James followed up, placing the spear on his shoulder. “Time to get to what we came here to do.”
“Let's find some stairs then,” Nicole said and started walking to one side of the hallway.
“I still would prefer to use the elevator,” James said, following after her and I with him.
“I mean, I get it, it’s just a hole that connects the whole building, but I think it would be so annoying to deal with the elevator itself if it’s moving or dropped on us…” Nicole replied, reaching a corner, where she stopped to glance. “Seems like there’s no one here yet. Lucky.”
Saying that, she swiftly moved over to the other end of that hallway with me and James moving closely behind her. As I was looking at her back; at the fiery dress; I finally noticed that she had gotten faster, stronger, and much more precise with both her magic and natural strength. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that, since some of that innocence she used to display was starting to fade… still, this mission was going to end soon, and once it was done, I was going to get Asteora to let the girl go on to do whatever she wanted. She had proved herself to be strong enough.
As soon as we reached that end, she stopped and looked over the corner once more. “There’s a couple of men there…”
Salrak quickly gave a description of them, just like last time, only that this time, Nicole attacked without waiting for us. With a swift dash across the corner, she exploded forward towards the men, leaving behind a trail of orange fire in the air. The men didn’t even have time to react before she landed on top of them. With a hand covered by a cone of bright orange fire that made it look like a burning blade, she sliced the men in half, where they fell in a burning pile on the ground.
James and I quickly followed up, catching up with her as she turned off the fire on the bodies, leaving just a few black charred remains.
“Hmm…” she hummed as she looked at the rows of doors to one side. “Here’s the elevators but… Aha! There’s the emergency exit!”
With a skip, she went over there, but paused with her hand almost placed on the door. Seeing her do that, I approached her. “What’s wrong?”
“Eh… hehe, say, Salrak, if I were to open this door, would there be a building-wide alarm?” she asked with a bashful tone.
“No, those things are under control already,” he said. “Go ahead. I’ll warn you when such a thing is going to happen before you do anything.”
“Okay!” she exclaimed, placing her hand on the door and quickly opening. “No time to waste!”
James and I followed after her. The staircases weren’t anything special, and they were well lit. Since there was 'no time to waste', I looked up at the direction I was supposed to go, but before I did, I turned my eyes on Nicole.
She noticed me, and raised her eyebrows. “What? Worried about me? I’ll be fine! It’s James you should be worried about.”
“Huh? Why me?” He asked with a frown. “You’re the ‘fair lady’ here.”
“I have no doubt that you’ll jump into something really dangerous thinking that you’re special because of your Holy Magic and I’ll have to save you…” she said with a shrug, “Some people really are a handful…”
“This Fire Chicken sure is getting cocky… You don’t want to try me when—”
“We don’t have much time to waste bickering,” Salrak interrupted. “Get moving. It’ll be soon when they’ll raise the alarm.”
“Right,” Nicole replied, giving me one last glance and a smile. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be back before you know it!”
With a sharp nod, I turned to the stairs that led up, only stopping a couple of steps to give one final look at both James and Nicole. “Be careful. This is not like every other base.”
“Yeah, yeah, we know. Don’t worry about it,” James dismissively said, before jumping down the stairs.
“You be careful too!” Nicole exclaimed with a smile and jumped down, going after James.
I didn’t linger any longer once they were out of my sight and did the same as they did, jumping from one floor to the next one to not waste any more time.
* * *
After a few floors of going up with as much speed as I could, the lights that illuminated the stairs suddenly turned red, and the alarm was finally sounded. I momentarily stopped due to how sudden it was. There was a desire to go back and join Nicole and James, just to make sure that they were okay, but I had to trust them and their skills, so with a shake of my head, I kept going up.
“James triggered the alarm,” Salrak said in my ear and I stopped once more.
“Is it going to be an issue?” I asked, looking down the stairs.
“Don’t worry. They seem to be holding their own just fine. But you should hurry. They are already approaching their target,” Salrak answered.
“What? So fast?” I asked this time as I turned and hurried up.
“There's a reason for why James ended up triggering the alarm…” Salrak said, trailing off. “But it seems like you might not be having such an easy time either.”
As he said that, I finally reached the floor I was supposed to get to, and as soon as I opened the doors, I was met with an army of people in white armor. They were similar to how the Golden Holy Knight armor looked, only that these people carried all sorts of weapons; most of them rifles.
From the middle of the army, one man in particular stood out. He had pale skin, straight black hair, and just as dark eyes. His build was rather lean, and he was dressed with elegant black clothes full of intricate golden patterns—some with the shape of a Serpent Dragon—with a few red details on other parts. It was a kind of clothing that I hadn’t seen anyone wear before, but it might just be because of the region I was in.
He walked closer, while the army of white knights just looked at me, their weapons aimed and ready to be used. He stopped a few steps away from me with a half-smile as he looked down on me, and I prepared for anything that could happen.