Chapter 39: Revealing the Tip of the Iceberg
Inside the sealed workspace, the lights had been deliberately dimmed. The only illumination came from the cold blue glow of the data screens, which flowed across Arthur's face in shifting bands of light and shadow.
Strings of figures flickered across the crystal panel in front of him, rising and vanishing in dense clusters. He sat motionless, one hand propping up his chin, his gaze fixed and unreadable, as though the world beyond the screen had ceased to exist.
Then the inner lining of his cuff grew faintly warm.
Arthur's eyelids twitched.
His fingers moved at once, brushing lightly against his wrist.
...
Elsewhere, Irene was stationed before the remote monitoring array, fully focused on recalibrating the energy sensors aimed at the mining district.
On the panel before her, countless curves rose and fell in steady rhythms, mapping the background energy levels of different shafts and sectors. Everything looked normal. Too normal. In Oluson, that alone was enough to make people nervous.
Then one of the readings jumped.
It was tiny, so slight it nearly vanished into the noise of the environment, but Irene still caught it.
Her brows drew together as her fingers flew across the controls.
"Please," she muttered under her breath, her voice tight with unease. "Please don't let this be trouble."
...
Deep inside the abandoned tunnel, Hodell was pressed against the icy rock wall, breathing hard.
Each inhale scraped at his lungs like broken glass. The air in front of him felt thick, almost gelatinous, squeezed dense by four overlapping psionic fields. The black clad men had cornered him completely, hemming him into the dead end like hunters driving prey into a pit.
The pressure was suffocating.
At a moment like this, he actually missed Phantom a little.
If nothing else, that lunatic had known how to run.
Back then, if the Third Squad had not lacked total confidence in capturing Phantom alive, he never would have gotten the chance to separate from the others and confront him alone. And later, when he had been watching the Blingshee Society from the shadows, he really had considered absorbing Phantom's ability for infiltration work.
Unfortunately, the timing had been wrong.
When he first advanced, he had lacked the experience points. Later, even after preserving Phantom's tissue samples, he still could not tell whether the problem was incomplete tissue, a more complicated gene chain, or the fact that [Ability: Copy] simply demanded a ridiculous cost when copying abilities of that level.
Right now, all of that regret was meaningless.
A psionic shock slammed into the wall behind him.
Crack!
The stone split open, shards spraying across his back just as he twisted aside. In the next instant, one of the men facing him thrust both hands downward. A physical wave of condensed psionic pressure crashed into the ground like an invisible mountain, trying to flatten him into the tunnel floor.
Hodell's eyes flashed.
Instead of retreating, he surged forward.
[Flame Fist]!
[Character summon card has been used. Current uses: 3/3. Uses exhausted. The card will now disappear.]
Fire and psionic force collided head on with a thunderous boom.
The blast shoved the nearest attacker backward. Hodell rode the rebound, slipping half a step left, and that single movement saved his life. Two razor thin psionic spikes stabbed silently through the place where he had just been standing, drilling two dark holes into the stone floor.
No pause.
No breathing room.
Hodell flicked a chunk of broken rubble up with his foot and kicked it hard toward the dripping rock ceiling overhead. Water burst downward in a spray, and in that brief splash of distraction, he caught the faintest tremor in the field directly in front of him.
There.
As expected, precise psionic structures hated sudden interference.
He drove his right foot into the ground. Source energy exploded beneath him, hurling him forward like a fish darting along the edge of a net. Both fists came up, energy compressed so tightly around them that the air itself seemed to distort, and he smashed them straight into the nearest black clad man.
The man had not expected such a vicious counterattack from that angle.
He barely got a shield up in time.
The collision still rocked him hard.
His face paled, blood and energy churning together in his chest, and he stumbled back two full steps. The suppression field on the left side loosened for a heartbeat.
A gap.
Hodell seized it instantly.
"Don't even think about it!"
The other three reacted at once. Psionic force flooded into the breach, not just restoring it, but making it heavier than before. A barbed psionic chain lashed out from a vicious angle and coiled around Hodell's right leg like a venomous serpent.
Then it tightened.
Pain exploded through his calf.
"Damn it!"
His momentum died as the chain yanked him backward with terrifying force. But even while being dragged, a dangerous glint flashed through his eyes.
He did not resist.
He spun with the pull instead, using the force to turn his entire body into a battering ram and smash toward another one of the men in black.
A desperate gamble.
The man only looked at him coldly.
A psionic barrier sprang up in front of him.
Thud.
Hodell's shoulder and forearm slammed into it head on. The barrier held. A sharp pain shot up his arm bone, nearly numbing it.
These four were not particularly fast. That much he had already judged.
But their style was foul to deal with. Flexible, layered, tricky, and relentless. Their psionic attacks came from impossible angles and shifted too quickly to read with the body alone.
"A dying beast still knows how to struggle," the man he'd driven back sneered.
The opening closed.
At the same time, the fourth attacker struck from Hodell's blind spot. A cold burst of psionic force lanced straight into his soul.
He was hit from both sides.
Hodell barely managed to steady his footing before he had to defend again. He took the mental attack head on, and a spike of agony stabbed through his skull. For a fraction of a second, his body lagged.
That fraction was enough.
The four psionic fields overlapped completely, falling on him one after another like giant iron nets. One wrapped around his raised arms and locked them in place. Another crashed into his back and shoulders, trying to force him to his knees. A third coiled around his legs, tightening with brutal precision.
He struggled violently.
Hot source energy leaked from his skin in wisps, sizzling against the inner layer of the psionic restraints.
Then the fourth field descended.
It came down like a collapsing mountain.
That was the final blow.
Hodell's resistance buckled beneath it.
"It's over," the leader said through clenched teeth.
Sweat had already formed along the man's brow. He sounded calm, but the tension in his face betrayed him. Holding down someone like Hodell was clearly no easy task, and more importantly, time was not on their side.
The four layers of restraint locked fully into place.
The leader raised a hand.
That was the signal.
Another man stepped forward and slowly drew out a strange magitech instrument.
It looked like a metallic skull, intricate and sinister. A deep violet gem pulsed at its center, throbbing with a low hum like the heart of some sleeping monster.
Yet at that moment, the corner of Hodell's mouth curved ever so slightly.
People always relaxed most when they believed victory was already theirs.
Then a black line tore through the air.
Swoosh!
It came so fast it might as well have been born from the void itself. A streak of darkness, thin as a needle and swift as lightning, punched straight through the wrist of the man holding the skull device.
Too fast.
Far too fast.
He never even had time to raise a psionic defense.
Puchi!
Blood sprayed. The man's scream tore through the tunnel as the skull instrument flew from his hand and clattered across the rocks. Its purple glow flickered wildly, then went dark.
He clutched his ruined wrist and turned in horror.
Sasha.
She had not just arrived. She had been there, hidden nearby all along, waiting for the single moment when a strike would matter most.
And this was it.
Her eyes were colder than winter steel. Her body blurred forward as she launched herself at another of the black clad men, the one momentarily distracted by his companion's sudden injury.
"Watch out!" the leader barked.
The target reacted fast, a psionic barrier snapping up in front of him. Sasha's short shuttle struck it with a sharp clang, sparks jumping from the impact.
The other two had no choice but to split their focus. One moved to stabilize the weakening field around the injured man. The other spun around and unleashed a solid psionic shockwave at Sasha.
She twisted in midair with inhuman flexibility, her body bending as though boneless, and the shockwave missed her by a hair. Her twin blades flashed in an eerie arc, bypassing the obvious defensive angle and stabbing precisely at the temporary psionic nodes the two men had just formed.
At the same moment, Hodell erupted.
He had been suppressed the entire time, but the instant the four man formation wavered, the source energy in his body roared back to life.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
The psionic restraints began to vibrate violently.
Their stable structure was disrupted all at once. What had seemed unbreakable suddenly turned unstable.
"Break!"
With a savage wrench of his body, Hodell tore free.
Bang!
The chain on his right leg snapped first. Then the restraints on his arms.
He burst out like a beast breaking its cage.
His left ribs still screamed with pain, and blood continued to seep from the wound at his side, but his fighting spirit had only grown more vicious.
He went straight for the injured man.
Finish the weak point first.
"Stop him!"
The leader's face twisted. He and the remaining two tried to reconstruct the encirclement, but Sasha gave them no chance.
She moved like a black butterfly through the narrow tunnel, weaving in and out of the gaps with impossible footwork. Every strike of her twin blades aimed not at easy targets, but at the exact spots that forced the enemy to defend, breaking their rhythm over and over again.
She did not need to kill them instantly.
She only needed to ruin their tempo.
Hodell closed the remaining distance in a single breath and drove a plain, brutal punch into the injured Psion's chest.
Crack!
The sound of breaking bone rang clear.
The man's eyes bulged. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he flew backward and slammed into the rock wall, then slid down unconscious.
The battlefield flipped in an instant.
But the other three were veterans.
After only a brief flash of panic, they regrouped. Back to back, fields linked, forming a stable triangle. Psionic force surged outward again, heavier and more disciplined this time.
Sasha was forced back step by step, darting through gaps and deflecting solid attacks with her blades, but unable to close the distance cleanly.
Hodell was in even worse shape. His source energy reserves were almost empty. At this point, he was hanging on through raw endurance more than anything else.
In this kind of situation, Endurance really was the lifeline of the Esper System.
Under the pressure of the three restored enemies, the two of them were pushed into a temporary disadvantage.
Then the leader's ear twitched.
A signal.
His expression turned black instantly. Reluctance and fury crossed his face.
He looked at Hodell once, long and hard, then spat out a single command.
"Retreat!"
The other two obeyed without hesitation. One grabbed the unconscious man. Another snatched up the fallen skull instrument with telekinesis. The three of them withdrew into the deeper darkness of the tunnel at startling speed.
No bluffing. No final threats. No hesitation.
They retreated as if they had just been ordered to leave at all costs.
The pressure in the tunnel vanished with shocking abruptness.
Sasha landed lightly beside Hodell and shot him a questioning look. His face was pale, his breathing rough, and blood still seeped from the wound at his side.
Hodell shook his head once.
He could still stand.
At that exact moment, another sound came crashing through the tunnel.
Heavy footsteps.
Multiple people.
And Baron's voice, loud enough to crack stone.
"Out of the way! General Administration routine inspection! We've received reports of illegal energy activity in this abandoned zone! Anyone interfering with official business will be dealt with on the spot!"
The man sounded less like he was issuing a warning and more like he was declaring war.
"Ryan! Sasha!"
Kyle's voice came next, urgent and sharp.
A few moments later, the rest of the team arrived.
Only then did Hodell finally let the tight coil in his nerves loosen.
Kyle swept one glance over the battlefield and frowned hard. "Did we miss it? What happened?"
Baron stomped over at once, still carrying enough anger to start another fight on the spot. "Where are you hurt? Where are those bastards? Which way did they run?"
"We got ambushed by four Psions," Hodell said.
He kept it brief.
Irene's healing spell was already falling over him, washing cool relief through the pain in his ribs. The worst of the bleeding slowed at once.
Not long after, Kyle's communicator chimed softly. He stepped aside, listened, responded in a low voice, and came back wearing a darker expression than before.
"Arthur intercepted an encrypted message connected to this area," he said. "The signal had strong anti tracking protection, so he couldn't identify the source. But he confirmed one thing."
He looked around the group.
"It was an emergency evacuation order."
Baron's face darkened instantly. "Obsidian Group. It has to be those bastards. Captain, let's go back right now and crack their doors open!"
"Baron."
Kyle's voice cracked like a whip.
"We have no direct evidence that the Obsidian Group ordered this attack. The situation underground is still unclear. We withdraw first, report everything, and move from there."
Baron's jaw clenched. His chest rose and fell twice before he spat hard to the side.
"Damn it. That's disgusting."
Kyle ignored the outburst and turned to Irene. "How bad is Ryan?"
"He'll live," Irene said, though worry remained in her voice. "I've stabilized the immediate damage, but he needs a full treatment and proper rest as soon as possible."
"Good enough. This place is no longer worth the risk." Kyle looked down the dark tunnel where the Psions had vanished. "If they decide to turn back once reinforcements arrive, we'll be trapped. We move now."
The withdrawal that followed was strangely smooth.
No pursuit.
No harassment.
No second trap.
The enemy had clearly chosen to pull back completely the moment the fight no longer favored them.
That alone was unnerving.
...
By the time they returned to the briefing room, the tension had eased slightly, though only slightly.
Hodell's face was still pale, but he no longer looked like he was about to collapse. Irene had done good work.
Kyle returned after finishing the formal report. Before he could sit down, Irene looked at Hodell curiously.
"Ryan," she asked, "what exactly is a scapegoat?"
Hodell leaned back in his chair and answered simply, "Someone who takes the blame for crimes or mistakes committed by others."
Loyi's expression shifted. "You mean... the Blingshee Society may have been framed?"
"Possibly."
Hodell paused, ordering his thoughts.
"The last time we nearly died in the mine, the official conclusion blamed it on mana net structural disorder caused by Black Bone's illegal experiments and reckless excavation. That explanation became one of the reasons the mine was shut down."
He glanced at Kyle, then continued.
"And the shutdown created the opening for the Obsidian Group to take over the site."
No one interrupted.
Baron scratched the back of his head. "I'm still not seeing what that has to do with the Blingshee Society."
"The Blingshee Society case closed too perfectly," Hodell said. "Too neatly. It looked less like the end of an investigation and more like a trap somebody had already baited for us."
He looked toward Loyi.
"During the Black Bone incident, we encountered targeted mana net shielding. Your data today confirms similar features appeared again. That alone tells us we're not dealing with ordinary corruption or a few greedy officials skimming profit off the top."
Then his gaze shifted to the others.
"And those four men underground. They were trained. Disciplined. Coordinated. All Psychics. That reminds me of the psionic coating technology that appeared in the Mark incident."
He let that connection hang for a beat.
"Now ask yourselves this. If the Blingshee Society were really the one behind it all, would they still dare act so openly after being warned and sanctioned by the authorities? If they truly had that level of confidence, power, and organization, why were they exposed so clumsily in the first place? And if it was all just bad luck, then why was the buyer in Mark's deal so capable? Why did he react like a professional operator instead of a frightened black market contact?"
Loyi's brows drew together as the shape of the argument began to emerge in his mind.
Hodell folded his hands.
"My guess is this. The real culprit is someone else."
The room went utterly still.
"The Blingshee Society was chosen as a scapegoat not only because their technology overlaps in certain areas. More importantly, the real culprit's power system or core technical route may itself be deeply rooted in psionic energy. In that context, the Blingshee Society, a local organization with known knowledge of psionic research and enough visibility to make a believable suspect, becomes the perfect body to dump the blame on."
Baron's expression hardened.
Loyi stopped moving altogether.
Even Kyle's eyes changed.
Hodell finished in a low, steady voice.
"So I suspect our investigation has already brushed against the edge of a larger force. Not a scattered group of criminals, but a highly organized faction with trained manpower, deliberate concealment methods, and enough reach to shape the narrative around entire cases."
.....
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