The silence in the medical ward felt incredibly heavy. Ragnar and Virelith stared at me with faces full of despair, awaiting the order to abort the mission. To them, the Explosive Rune based on a Blood Curse was an impenetrable wall of death.
But to me, it was a dinner invitation.
I extended my right hand, which was free of bandages. "Lend me your dagger, Bear."
Ragnar furrowed his thick brow. "What for? You cannot fight from a bed, Kael."
"Just hand it over," I insisted in a calm tone that brooked no argument.
Reluctantly, Ragnar drew the hunting dagger from his waist and placed it in my palm. Without blinking even once, I turned the sharp blade and slashed my own left palm in a swift motion.
"Kael! What are you doing?!" Virelith shrieked softly, her eyes widening in horror as fresh blood immediately poured out.
I did not answer. I picked up a small empty glass vial from the medicine tray beside the bed, then squeezed my palm over it.
My blood flowed inside. Its color was unlike normal human blood; it was an incredibly dark red, almost pitch black, and it pulsed with an unnatural magical warmth.
Once the vial was half full, I sealed it tightly and offered it to Virelith. The girl took a step back, staring at the vial as if I had just handed her cobra venom.
"Listen closely, Engineer," I said, looking straight into Virelith's trembling eyes. "Take this vial back to the sewers. Go to the blind spot right beneath the foundation of Silas's vault. Then, drip my blood directly onto the rocks emitting that cursed glow."
"A-are you crazy?" Virelith's voice trembled violently. "That stone is coated with an explosive rune! A single drop of a foreign substance with different mana will trigger an explosion that flattens the entire black market!"
I smirked thinly, feeling the Sanguine Core in my chest throb with anticipation. "The Black Tower's blood curse is designed to prey on human mana. But my blood is not prey, Virelith. My blood is the apex predator. Just drip it, and prepare to destroy that floor. Let me handle the rest."
Ragnar snatched the glass vial from my hand, stared at its strangely pulsating contents, and then looked at me with the savage grin returning to his face. "I am starting to like this absurd plan of yours, Young Master. Come on, Bookworm. We have a vault to rob."
___
Back inside the ancient Aethelgard sewers.
The air down there felt far fouler than before. The stench of acidic waste mixed with the aroma of dead moss stung the nose. The rhythmic echo of dripping water created a symphony of tension that made Virelith's heart beat twice as fast.
The girl stood directly beneath the foundation of Silas's vault room. Her blistered right hand still stung terribly. The memory of that red curse's sting made her hesitate to step forward.
"Ragnar... what if Draven is wrong?" whispered Virelith, her hands trembling holding the glass vial filled with Kael's blood. "What if we all explode into ashes?"
Ragnar stepped forward, his giant body standing firmly behind Virelith. Instead of mocking her, the street thug's voice sounded heavy and reassuring.
"If Kael says his blood will eat that curse, then that is exactly what will happen. Do it, Engineer. I am right behind you," Ragnar said quietly.
Virelith took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the damp sewer air. She steeled her heart. With a trembling left hand, she uncorked the glass vial.
An evil, dark red light pulsed faintly from the rock crevices above them. The Blood Curse Rune was actively awaiting its prey.
Virelith stood on her tiptoes, raised the vial, and poured its entire contents onto the stone surface emitting the rune's glow.
For the first second, nothing happened.
Then, in the next second, a sight defying all laws of magic unfolded before Virelith's eyes. Kael's blood drops did not explode. Instead, the evil red glow of the Curse Rune suddenly vibrated violently and erratically.
The curse lines imprinted on the stone appeared to shrink back in panic. The forbidden magic energy from the Black Tower thrashed about, trying to break free from Kael's blood like prey trapped in the jaws of a starving wolf.
Slurp! In a mere three seconds, all those curse lines were entirely sucked away, swallowed raw by the pool of Kael's blood. The evil red light was completely extinguished. The foundation stone reverted to an ordinary rock.
Dear God... Virelith thought in horror. His blood ate the curse alive.
At the exact same moment, in the quiet medical ward, Kael closed his eyes. Through the magical bond with his own blood, he drew all the Black Tower's curse energy he had just swallowed from afar.
Bam! An incredibly massive, wild, and utterly filthy stream of mana slammed into his chest. Kael choked hard. His throat felt as if boiling lava were pouring through it. He coughed violently and vomited thick pitch-black blood onto his white blanket. His adolescent body convulsed, enduring the brutal energy invasion.
Yet, amidst the nerve-tearing pain, Kael chuckled softly. The severely cracked "glass cup" inside his chest was now slowly being patched by that dense curse energy. This filthy mana was the best fertilizer for his Sanguine Core.
"Now, Virelith!"
Ragnar's shout inside the sewer shattered the Engineer's daze. Realizing the explosive rune was completely dead, Virelith's pragmatism took over once more.
She slammed her wooden staff onto the sewer floor. Her eyes blazed with the flow of pure mana.
"Earth Grinder!"
Her instant earth magic shot upwards, penetrating the no longer protected foundation rocks. The crunch of crushed stone sounded incredibly loud and horrifying, akin to the groan of giant bones being forcibly broken. The foundation structure of the VIP room floor above them lost its support.
The floor collapsed instantly.
BAM!
A giant two-ton iron vault fell freely through the ruined floor. The massive object struck the filthy sewer water right in front of Ragnar and Virelith with a chest-rattling thud. The impact created a shockwave that splashed foul-smelling muddy water right onto Ragnar's face.
"Hahaha! Bullseye!" Ragnar's laughter boomed as he wiped the mud from his eyes.
The iron vault door was severely dented from the fall and the impact of Virelith's rock magic. Its thick hinges were bent. Ragnar stepped forward, wedging his iron crowbar into the gap of the damaged vault door. With a loud roar, he exerted all his primate muscle strength.
CRACK! The vault door was pried open forcefully and swung wide.
Piles of pure gold bars stamped with the Nightbane crest, hundreds of silver coins, and illegal gems instantly spilled into the dirty sewer water. Virelith's eyes widened at the sight of wealth she had never imagined in her entire life.
"Take the gold, Engineer! Put it all in your bag!" ordered Ragnar.
Virelith did not need to be told twice. She immediately crouched down and scooped up the gold quickly.
However, instead of joining in scooping up the gold like a greedy street thug, Ragnar completely ignored the glimmering treasure.
He disregarded the gold bars at his feet and thrust his massive body into the half-broken vault. His large hands dismantled the secret drawers inside the safe.
"Where is that thing... come on, the cunning Silas must have kept it in the safest place," muttered Ragnar while ransacking the vault's contents.
His hand brushed against a tin-lined wooden box in the deepest corner. Ragnar pried it open. Inside lay neatly a thick book with a pitch-black leather cover.
Ragnar pulled the book out. He briefly flipped open the first page. Rows of noble names, extortion money deposit figures, academy instructor bribe costs, and black market transactions were recorded very neatly, all pointing to one name: Orvelis Nightbane.
This was the Ledger belonging to Silas the Snake.
A wide, deadly grin adorned Ragnar's mud-streaked face. He knew exactly that Kael had never planned this operation merely to steal spare change.
Taking the gold would only make the enemy angry, but taking this book... this would make the entire Nightbane faction bleed from the inside.
"Kael will surely love this souvenir," chuckled Ragnar, slipping the Ledger safely behind his chest guard.
"Hey, down there! Intruders in the sewers!"
The loud shouts of the anti-magic armored knights began to echo from the gaping hole above them. Torchlight shone downward, searching for the perpetrators of the most brazen robbery in the history of the Aethelgard black market.
"Our time is up! Run, Bookworm!" exclaimed Ragnar.
Virelith tied her dimensional bag, which was now incredibly heavy, securely. Without looking back, the Vanguard and the Support ran through the darkness of the sewers, disappearing like ghosts before the knights above could even descend ropes to chase them.
Three minutes after the floor collapsed, the VIP room door was forced open from the outside.
Silas the Snake, a skinny man in expensive silk clothing who usually always wore a sly smile, now burst in panting heavily. Behind him, a dozen elite mercenary knights in pitch-black steel armor followed with drawn swords.
Silas's steps halted abruptly at the threshold.
His eyes widened in horror at the sight before him. There was no blood curse explosion. There were no mangled intruder corpses. There was only a giant gaping hole three meters wide in the middle of his room, punching straight through to the foul-smelling sewers below. His massive two-ton iron vault had vanished without a trace.
Silas's legs lost their strength. The man fell to his knees right at the edge of the hole. His face turned as pale as a corpse buried for days.
One of the black-armored knights stepped forward, peering into the hole. "Master Silas... the vault is destroyed down there. The intruders have made off with all of Master Orvelis's pure gold."
"Gold..." whispered Silas, his voice trembling so violently it sounded like the squeak of a choked rat. He grabbed his own hair in panic. "To hell with the gold! To hell with those coins!"
Silas stared at the bottom of the sewer with eyes radiating absolute terror. His heart beat so fast it felt like it would explode.
He did not care about the tens of thousands of missing gold coins. In his mind, now filled with absolute despair, he realized one thing far more terrifying.
My Ledger is gone.
The book that held all the secrets of Orvelis Nightbane's dirty fund flows. The book containing the names of instructors who accepted bribes. The book that, if it fell into the hands of the Student Senate or the Morcant faction, would trigger a mass purge that would destroy the foundation of Nightbane's power in this academy.
Silas began to breathe raggedly, cold sweat flooding his face. He realized that what would kill him tonight was not those sewer intruders.
"Finished... it is all finished..." sobbed Silas in despair, realizing that Orvelis Nightbane would flay him alive before the sun rose. His black market building indeed had not exploded, yet his empire had been razed to the ground.