NOVEL NEXT Chapter 978: Underground
Max trailed them from the rooftops quietly from the shadows.
The city below was quiet, but not lifeless—the usual patrols crisscrossed the streets, guards barked orders at stragglers, and the faint hum of rune-lamps whispered in the air. Yet the three masked men he followed moved through it all like shadows carved out of stone.
Minutes stretched into what felt like hours. Max expected at least a word, a nod, even the faintest exchange of gestures—but there was nothing. They didn't speak, didn't tilt their heads, didn't even spare glances toward each other.
The silence between them wasn't natural. It was eerie.
Max narrowed his eyes. 'Not even assassins move like this. No subtle hand signals, no coded taps, no glances. Nothing. Just… walking.'
He adjusted his position, leaping silently across to the next roof. Still, he found nothing—no break in their formation, no sign of individual thought.
A chill scraped down his spine.
'Are they even… human?' Max thought, his gaze locked on their backs. He stretched his Three Dimensional Body outward again, probing deeper this time. Their auras were faint, muffled, almost nonexistent—like someone had taken living flames and shoved them into jars, smothered and dimmed until only embers remained.
They didn't feel alive, not in the way normal experts did.
And yet… they walked, breathed, and carried themselves with the weight of power.
Max crouched low on the spire he had landed on, his breath slow and silent. 'This is definitely abnormal.'
The trio turned a corner, heading into a darker street where the rune-lamps glowed weaker, shadows thickening across the stone walls. Even the guards patrolling nearby avoided the street, deliberately steering clear, their eyes sliding away as if pretending not to see.
Max slipped into their wake like a phantom once again tailing them quietly.
His mind sharpened around a thought. 'If I take one of them out quietly, I could soul-search them with Ashes of Insight…'
The purple flames curled in his memory, the forbidden fire that could devour the memories of the individuals it burned through. 'If they're puppets… I'll see who holds the strings. If they're human… then I'll know what twisted them into this.'
But then his gaze narrowed. The street they had chosen sloped downward, deeper into the city's underbelly. No guards here. No rune-lamps. Just heavy stone walls lined with faint grooves—grooves Max quickly realized were hidden conduits for rune circuits. Someone had carved concealment formations right into the bones of the city.
The trio walked without pause, their cadence unbroken, until they reached a dead end. Max perched silently above, his body pressed flat against a ledge, watching.
They stopped before an unremarkable wall of dark stone. Not a mark, not a door. But the one in front pressed his palm to the surface. A ripple of pale light coursed across the stone, runes awakening briefly before swallowing the trio in silence. The wall yawned open—not outward, not inward, but folding like water parting—and they stepped into the darkness below.
The wall sealed itself shut a breath later, erasing all trace of entry.
Max's eyes narrowed, his jaw tightening. He felt the faint tremor of concealed space distortions beneath his feet. 'A building hidden underground… and guarded by runes of this caliber. So, this is where they vanish to.'
He crouched lower, his fingers brushing the stone as his Three Dimensional Body extended outward, mapping the underground like phantom hands pressing through earth. And there it was—a chamber below, sprawling, alive with muted energy.
The underground building breathed like a slumbering beast.
Max crouched in the shadows of the dead-end street, his body still and silent, blending so deeply with the stone around him that even the passing flicker of a surveillance drone above could not have found him.
The faint hum of rune circuits pulsed under the wall where the first trio had vanished, a reminder that the entrance was sealed shut from the inside. There was no forcing it—not without blowing his cover and rousing the entire underground nest.
So he waited.
Minutes bled into hours. The streets above the dead-end grew quiet, the bustle of the hidden city fading to a distant murmur.
Even the guards rarely patrolled here, as if this corner didn't exist. Max remained unmoving, his mind sharpening against the creeping weight of stillness. His Three Dimensional Body stayed extended, probing every shift in mana, every faint tremor in the earth.
Finally—steps.
Three more masked figures emerged from the opposite side of the street. They approached the wall, their silence heavier than steel.
Max's breath drew shallow, his body lowering further into the gloom. 'So they come and go in groups...'
The first of the trio pressed his palm flat against the black stone. The runes flared once more, a faint ripple coursing across the surface like disturbed water. The wall parted.
Max moved.
Not forward in a rush—no, that would be suicide. Instead, he ghosted behind them, folding himself into their shadows as they stepped through. The instant the first masked figure crossed the threshold, Max slid forward in their wake. He was nothing but a whisper of distortion between them, his Invisibility clinging tight, his movements locked in rhythm with theirs.
The wall closed behind him with a soundless pulse, sealing the city away above.
Inside, the air was thick—heavier, charged. The walls glowed faintly with runes that rippled like veins through stone, pulsing with restrained power.
Max moved carefully, keeping just a half-step behind the last figure, his body tucked so close to silence that even the flicker of space mana he carried was buried deep within himself.
'What are they doing inside?' Max's curiosity sharpened to a blade. Every instinct in him screamed caution, but beneath that—burning hotter—was the hunger for answers.
He descended with them into the underground halls, the darkness folding tighter the deeper they went. And they came to a stop. They looked at each other and nodded to themselves.
It was then he saw something that blew his mind away.