"f.u.c.k!"Lionel Stuart swore when he saw Michael"s headless corpse slump down lifelessly. Some distance from him, Angelica was screaming and Glen was yelling, probably for Michael, but no matter how hoa.r.s.e they shouted themselves, he was never coming back.
Cronus turned to lumber toward them, but Yue Guang deftly put himself between them, his fists raised and clad in Armament Ba Qi. He looked battered and weary, but he was still capable of putting up a fight if necessary.
However, with Michael"s death, their chances of winning had been halved. No, probably less than that.
…wait…since when did the win condition entail the defeat of their enemy?
"Shun Yin!" Lionel snapped. The young man raised his head sharply to look at him. Good, he was still lucid. "Take your friend and girlfriend and get to the computer mainframe. Get to the computer room immediately."
"But what about you?" he protested.
"We"ll hold that guy off." Lionel gestured to the ma.s.sive figure of Cronus Wright. "We"ll stop him from pursuing you and your friends."
"How?" Shun Yin"s eyes darted toward Michael"s dead body. "There"s no way…"
"The summoner is incapacitated, thanks to Michael, and you three. Not to mention, I drained her of her mana earlier with my Hundred-Colored Flowers technique. She poses no threat to us. Yue Guang and I will just concentrate on Cronus. If she can still move, however, then you are to protect your friends from her. Is that understood?"
Shun Yin"s mouth went dry when he glanced at Glen and Angelica. One was in shock over the loss of his cousin, the other was devastated over the death of her own blood-and-flesh brother. Shun Yin understood at that moment why Lionel was instructing him to bring them away.
In their current mental conditions, neither Glen nor Angelica was capable of fighting. They would only get in the way.
"Understood."
"Good. Hurry! And remember this! Our victory lies not in defeating our enemies, but in denying them the blueprints for the transdimensional device!"
"That"s right."
Shun Yin nodded and watched briefly as Lionel took off to a.s.sist Angelica and Glen. The latter was able to snap out of his stupor more easily, and nodding at Shun Yin"s brief and quiet explanation, he was more than willing to follow along.
However, the two guys didn"t know where the computer mainframe was. That knowledge lay with Angelica, who was still in a daze.
"Hey, Angie! Pull yourself together!" Glen shook her. "We need to get to the computer mainframe and wipe the data now!"
"Do you remember where it is?" Shun Yin asked gently. "Can you take us there?"
Angelica blinked for a moment, and then she nodded. Taking a deep breath, she rose to her feet, with Shun Yin helping her out. Her eyes hardened in determination and she glanced past the three men who were locked in combat.
Lionel noticed them, and then he nodded just a fraction of a millimeter. Receiving the hint, Angelica moved out, taking the other two guys toward Cronus.
The ma.s.sive a.s.sa.s.sin spun toward them, detecting the direction they were heading toward. Even if he wasn"t facing them, he would still have sensed where they were going anyway. However, before he could lunge at them, Yue Guang barreled into him, knocking him to the side. With a yell, Lionel surrounded the t.i.tanic a.s.sa.s.sin with a cloud of petals, obscuring his sight and blocking him off from the three high school students.
"Now!" Glen urged, and they hastened their pace, with Angelica leading them toward one of the doors at the far end.
"Oh no, you don"t!" Serena shrieked and launched one last greenish-black spell at them, the projectile taking the form of an arm. With her mana sucked out by Lionel, and the grievous injury she received from Michael before his demise, there wasn"t much spells she could cast. Without turning around, Glen ordered his White Tiger to take care of it.
With a roar, the Soul Beast pounced on the appendage and destroyed it with a lightning storm. It then turned tail and followed the three, escorting them through the door Angelica took them through.
"Fourth room from the right," Angelica muttered as she searched through her memories. They then turned around the corner and caught sight of the series of doors down the corridor. Angelica smiled. "Just as I remembered them."
The trio charged into the room, barging through the door. As all the a.s.sa.s.sins and dark priests were outside, engaging the Federation army in combat, the interior was mostly unguarded. There were several sentries, but given that the elite and most powerful line troops had been committed to the defense of the headquarters, the ones left behind were reserves and untested trainees.
It didn"t take much for Shun Yin and the others to dispatch them. As soon as they wiped out the guards, they proceeded straight into the computer mainframe room, the vast machine hissing and whizzing under super coolants and fog to ensure it ran at optimal capacity without overheating.
"This is it?" Glen asked, his voice tinged with awe. Angelica nodded in a somewhat anticlimactic manner before confirming.
"This is it."
"So we destroy it?" Shun Yin raised his sword and ignited it, but Angelica immediately restrained him with an annoyed look.
"Chill, Shun Yin. It"s not so simple."
"Heh, chill. That"s a pretty apt word." Glen chuckled until he caught Angelica"s glare and fell silent. She then turned back to Shun Yin.
"We can"t destroy the mainframe yet. We need to hack into it and delete the data from the cloud. The Dark Church-exclusive cloud server is stored in this mainframe, so as long as we hack and delete it here, we"ll be able to erase any backup file in their online server."
"How?" Shun Yin asked, confused. "I"m not skilled at programming, but something about that logic doesn"t sound right…"
"Just explain everything away with magic, okay?" Angelica interrupted. "And before you ask about physical thumb drives and external hard disks that may contain the blueprint, well, there"s nothing we can do about that. But at least destroying the main cloud server and computer mainframe will delay their research for a long while. And if they happen to not have any backup thumb drives or whatever, then even better!"
Shun Yin conceded that it was better than doing nothing and allowing the Dark Church free reign in doing whatever they wanted, so he silently nodded. However, even as he glanced around the freezing room, another thought came to mind.
"Uh, how do we hack the computer then?"
"I can do it." Glen raised a hand. "My lightning magic will allow me to interface with the computer mainframe, and I should be able to bend it to my will and purge it of its data. Then, as a final measure, I"ll destroy the whole computer. White Tiger, watch my back."
"We can do that," Shun Yin began, and Glen grinned.
"I know. I"ll leave it to you…"
"Actually, no." Angelica raised a hand. "If you and your Soul Beast can handle this place by yourselves, then Shun Yin and I should go back and a.s.sist Mr. Stuart and his bodyguard. As powerful as I am, their opponent is a spirit-possessed Cronus Wright. I don"t know how long they can hold out against them." her lips thinned. "We already lost Brother. I don"t want any more sacrifices."
Glen watched her for a moment, and then nodded. "We got rid of all the sentries here, so this place should be clear. Even if there are still any survivors remaining, they"re probably small fries. They won"t be a match for my White Tiger."
"Thank you. We"ll leave this place to you."
Angelica then left, and Shun Yin hastily made to follow. She glanced at him with a bitter smile.
"I went through so much trouble and ordered the a.s.sa.s.sins Guild not to kill my brother…told them to avoid hurting him if possible…and all that went to waste. I never thought he would die here…to an a.s.sa.s.sin, of all people."
"It wasn"t your fault."
"I"m not blaming myself…or anybody." Angelica took a deep breath and balled her fists, her eyes glaring forward. "But admittedly, there were a lot of things I could have done better. I was counting on Brother to be the next head, you know? And now he"s…gone."
"The Porter clan still has you."
"No." Angelica shook her head vehemently. "That"s no longer possible. Didn"t you hear what Glen said? There"s no way I can walk back and take over, not after I ma.s.sacred the elders and killed my parents. And besides, I never wanted to return to the Porter clan. Not after all this." she smiled. "Even if Brother had forgiven me, the law wouldn"t. I committed murder. There is no going back for me."
She whirled around, almost happily, to face him briefly.
"But that"s all right. After all this, I always dreamed of eloping somewhere with you. the both of us, heading toward the Amazerian or Zurum Empire and living out the rest of our lives overseas, free from the responsibilities of my clan…of the ten Great Families."
"My parents…"
"We"ll bring your parents along, of course. If they agree. If not, then…too bad, we"ll just leave them behind."
Shun Yin shook his head in amazement. Angelica was always living in a world of her own. Then again, that was what attracted him to her in the first place. When he first met her when they were both kids, she was building sandcastles in the sky…quite literally, except that they were castles forged from white flames and magic. And she aimed to be a princess.
Perhaps she still wanted to play the role of a princess…a runaway princess in a fairy tale-like romance story.
However, all hope of that happy ending shattered…especially when everyone knows what was going to happen to Angelica in future. Okay, I really should stop breaking the fourth wall. Sorry.
"Eh?"
Shun Yin was surprised when Angelica stopped in front of one of the doors. He skidded to a stop behind her.
"What"s the matter, Angelica? Aren"t we supposed to a.s.sist Mr. Stuart and Mr. Yuan Dao?"
"Yes, but we can"t help them as we are right now." Angelica paused before she reached out and blasted the door open. As the smoke billowed inward, Shun Yin peered inside. Past the dissipating smog, he caught sight of a strange machine.
In the center of the chamber, it stood, with a single orb revolving amidst a network of metallic veins. Glowing ethereal energies suffused the still-running machine, and for some reason Shun Yin felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
"This is…" he began.
Angelica smiled sadly and nodded before finis.h.i.+ng the sentence for him.
"…our only hope for defeating Cronus and Serena Wright."