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Leon, Noah, and Krauser glanced at each other.
Although the girl was shrouded in mystery and her appearance and behavior were bizarre, she was currently their only guide to finding Javier.
Leon gave her a heavy nod.
"Lead the way."
Under Manuela's guidance, the four crossed this fork in the road and continued deeper into the darkness within the dam.
The structure here was far more complex than they had imagined, with passages branching out in all directions like a labyrinth.
Without Manuela leading them, they likely would have gotten lost within the cold belly of this steel behemoth.
After walking for about another ten minutes, Manuela stopped before an upward-leading stairwell.
It was a spiral metal staircase, rusted and winding upwards until it vanished into the darkness overhead.
The sound of dripping water in the air grew louder, echoing through the empty stairwell from above.
"Where are we?"
Leon asked in a low voice while vigilantly observing their surroundings.
"Go up from here..." Manuela's voice was still very small, but much steadier than before. "There's a passage above that will let us exit the dam's interior."
"And then we'll reach Javier's castle, right?"
Krauser's voice came from behind, carrying a hint of impatient urging.
"Let's go, stop wasting time."
"Mm..."
Manuela gave a soft response and subconsciously lifted her foot, preparing to step onto the first stair.
But just then, as if remembering something, her movement halted.
She turned around to look at Leon and Krauser, her lips moving as that expression of struggling to speak surfaced again.
"May I ask... Javier, he really..."
She only got halfway through her sentence.
Because she felt that calm gaze coming from the very back of the group.
She didn't even need to turn her head to clearly feel that gaze landing on her back.
An extreme chill instantly surged from her tailbone to the top of her head.
She shuddered violently, and the rest of her sentence was swallowed back down along with her saliva, her throat letting out a choked mumble.
She quickly turned back around, not daring to linger for a second longer, and hurried up the stairs with her head down as if fleeing a terrifying plague.
Leon and Krauser watched her strange reaction, both feeling somewhat baffled.
They exchanged a confused look and then followed her up.
Noah walked at the very back, looking at the girl's panicked retreat with a hint of doubt in his deep black eyes.
Walking behind Manuela, Leon could clearly hear her breathing, which had become rapid due to nervousness.
After thinking for a moment, he decided to try one more time.
He leaned in closer and lowered his voice to a level only the two of them could hear.
"Manuela, why are you so afraid of my friend?"
He had to figure this out.
In a crisis-ridden environment, unexplainable fear and repulsion between team members was an extremely dangerous hidden liability.
Manuela's body visibly stiffened as she gripped the handrail.
She didn't turn around, only shook her head with a small, neurotic tremble.
"I... I don't know..."
Her voice was as light as a breeze, carrying a thick sob and confusion.
"The moment I see him... I... I..."
She stammered for a long time without being able to explain, finally only able to use her most instinctive language to describe the feeling.
"...I just feel so cold... I feel... I feel like he's not... not a person..."
Not a person?
Leon was stunned.
What kind of description was that?
He had seen Lickers and Tyrants; those things weren't people.
But Noah... aside from his skills being terrifyingly beyond common sense, from any angle, he was a living human being.
Leon looked at the frail, slightly trembling back in front of him and shook his head helplessly.
He realized that this girl, like Noah, was shrouded in a mist he couldn't see through.
At the end of the metal stairs was a heavy iron door.
Pushing it open revealed a cramped space where an old freight elevator sat quietly.
The four squeezed inside, and Krauser pressed the 'up' button.
The elevator let out a harsh screeching sound and began to slowly ascend, accompanied by violent shaking.
The cramped space, the shaking cabin, and the ear-grating sound of metal friction made the already tense atmosphere even more oppressive.
After an unknown amount of time, the elevator stopped with a soft 'ding' and a violent jolt.
The doors slowly slid open.
A cold, violent wind mixed with water vapor instantly rushed in.
The roaring outside was deafening.
They had reached the top of the dam.
They were in a corridor cast from concrete, looking like some kind of drainage System or maintenance passage.
The massive water pressure caused the entire dam structure to vibrate slightly.
"It seems our every move is under surveillance."
Krauser's voice cut through the roar, cold and hard.
He was looking up at an inconspicuous black hemisphere on the wall at the corridor's corner, flickering with a faint red dot.
A security camera.
No sooner had he spoken.
"Zzz... crackle..."
A burst of static noise suddenly erupted from several loudspeakers installed along the corridor walls.
Next, a man's voice rang out across the top of the dam through the speakers.
Unexpectedly, the voice was neither fierce nor insane.
Instead, it carried an... unsettling tenderness and pleading.
"Please, my dear... come back quickly..."
The voice echoed in the corridor, tinged with a hint of sorrow.
The moment this voice sounded, Manuela's body stiffened abruptly.
Her eyes went wide, the color drained from her face, and her azure eyes were filled with disbelief and a violent surge of emotion.
The next second.
A word kneaded together from fear, pain, and complex emotions was screamed from the depths of her throat, heart-wrenching and loud.
"Father—!!!"
This word exploded in the minds of Leon and Krauser.
Father?
Leon whipped his head around to look at Manuela, his shock beyond measure.
"Javier... has a daughter?"
Krauser's reaction was more direct; he grabbed Manuela's slender shoulders, his sharp eyes staring dead at her as he almost roared his question.
"You're Javier's daughter!?"
This was too much information to process.
That insane South American drug lord, the mastermind behind the tragedy of the entire village, their ultimate target for this mission... this pitiful-looking girl they had rescued from the church and protected all this way was actually his daughter?!
What exactly was going on?
Was it a trap?
Or was there another hidden story?
Countless questions instantly crowded their minds.
"Ah—!!!"
Grabbed by Krauser, questioned by the two men, and hearing her father's familiar yet terrifying voice, Manuela's mental state completely collapsed.
She let out a scream and violently wrenched herself free from Krauser's grip.
Then, she did something no one expected.
She turned and ran!
She sprinted recklessly along the narrow corridor built into the cliffside, heading toward the unknown area shrouded in darkness at the other end of the dam.
Her white dress fluttered loudly in the gale, her frail back looking so thin and desperate against the backdrop of the massive gray dam.
"Stop!"
Leon shouted instinctively.
But the girl was deaf to him, only running forward with all her might.
"Damn it!" Krauser cursed and moved to give chase.
"Keep up!" Noah's voice rang out clearly amidst the roaring water.
"She definitely knows something!"
Without the slightest hesitation, his legs exerted sudden force, and he shot out like an arrow from a bow, being the first to charge.
Leon and Krauser shared a glance and, no longer hesitating, immediately broke into a sprint, following close behind Noah.
Three agile figures began the pursuit of the fleeing girl.
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