CHAPTER 97: I WAS WAITING FOR MY TEAMMATES, WHAT WERE YOU WAITING FOR?

On August sixteenth, Wayne managed to illuminate all six points of his hexagram, two days ahead of his estimated ten-day period. The grey space stored such an enormous amount of the four elements that no matter how insatiable Wayne was, it could easily satisfy him.

That was undoubtedly good news for him. He was satisfied, but the Book of Greed wasn’t. The magical eyes at the four corners of its cover were like bottomless pits that could never be filled. Without the grey space, he couldn’t imagine how he was going to feed this glutton. He couldn’t very well become a kept man for the goddesses, could he?

Actually, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to be their plaything.

On the other hand, it was also bad news for Wayne. His cheat was inherently flawed and required remodeling work, but the antique coin was Planck’s token; the legendary mage would want it back sooner or later. Besides, Wayne was genuinely worried that the Book of Greed would drain the grey space dry.

Geniuses would receive acclaim, but monsters would only end up dissected. If he drained the space, Planck wouldn’t let it go easily.

For now, the grey space was vast enough that the Book of Greed’s appetite was only an ant colony in a thousand-mile dam—it wouldn’t undermine the dam’s structural integrity in the short term. He could continue to draw from it.

He considered transforming into the Death Knight to grab an antique silver coin from either Planck or Auston, enjoying the benefits while the Death Knight took the blame, but he feared that the Free Mage Alliance had countermeasures in place and could prevent the coin from accessing the grey space. He gave up on the idea with regret.

He was still too weak.

Only the weak worried about consequences; the strong didn’t need to think and could explain the action away with a simple excuse: with great power came entitlement.

Compared to the Dark Knight, Wayne would rather be the last son of Krypton. He much preferred mindless power over a meaningful story with depth.

As for his hexagram, he had only moved beyond a beginner with all six points illuminated, which didn’t mean that his hexagram had linked together and taken shape. He still had to draw in elements to reach perfect balance between earth, fire, water, wind, void, and self for the hexagram to form.

The key was balance.

The standards for balance were different for each mage. Some had strong desires, others had few wants. Given the incredible amount of fire elements in Wayne, he was definitely the intensely ambitious type. He had given up on fighting it.

Initially, he’d been wary of becoming those with strong desires based on the book and Silvia’s description. Mages with intense desires often strayed from the right path and had difficulty resisting external temptations, thus having a higher chance of going mad.

Now? Whatever. There was nothing wrong with having intense desires.

With the Book of Greed, it would be self-destruction for him to pursue the path of little desire. He slowed down his plundering of earth, water, and wind and tried to grasp his own balance. He was like a cream puff, so full of fire elements that they could overflow at any moment. According to the known characteristics of those with strong desires, his craving for the other three elements wouldn’t be too intense.

With fire elements maxed out, there was no reason that he needed to max out the other three elements as well. Such a perfect balance was unrealistic.

Regarding the case, Heidi had been working during the day and coming home at night, fully delegating the task of finding her father to the two detectives. Every time they met, she greeted them with a smile and didn’t seem anxious at all. If the client wasn’t anxious, why would the detectives be? Still, they spent their days running around for the investigation, rarely having the time to rest.

Wayne was only pretending to be busy. In truth, he had been wandering Dragon Heart Island. He shot the final few shots when he encountered the King Kong

crew and took the time to meet up with Veronica and Vera to increase their approval.

On the other hand, Kael was genuinely busy, spending his days running between bars and hotels. If an ordinary person took on heavyweight opponents like him every day, they would’ve collapsed and never gotten it up long ago. Yet he acted like nothing happened. Magic was the only explanation for his endless stamina.

He’d found the true value of magic!

On August twentieth, Heidi could not wait any longer. She invited Wayne and Kael to lunch at the restaurant across from the family company. She stated that she had discovered a secret passage in the company, which likely led to her father’s hiding place.

Although they all knew this was coming, they still had to keep up the act. Wayne and Kael exclaimed in disbelief, saying that they had been combing through the Bart Estate for the past few days and never considered that Mr. Bart could be hiding in the company.

“Damn it, that old fox fooled us!” Kael said with frustration. Oh, how they had wasted precious time by looking in the wrong place.

Heidi echoed his indignance. She sat in her office every day, yet never realized that her father had been hiding right under the same roof.

Having played their parts, the three of them got down to business. The Bart family’s company was a shipyard. All employees had the afternoon off today. Heidi hoped that the two mages could open the secret passage for her, and after the contract was completed, she would lead a security team in to eliminate her father despite their biological connection, ending the family’s endless dealings with the demon. Of course, if the two mages were willing to lend their hands, they would have the right to share the dragon’s great treasure.

Through friendly negotiation, they signed an agreement to share the loot. The sacred contract was written in ink and should not be violated. Neither parties were allowed to back out.

Everyone was satisfied. They all had a bright future to look forward to. The lunch ended in a cheerful atmosphere.

***

Bart Shipyard.

The shipyard had been moved from a location far from the coast to right at the harbor. Components of the precision machines had been sent to the seaside for reassembly, and the process of packaging, transport, and disassembly required a lot of time and money at every step. It was an unnecessary expense, making it clear that there was more to the new location.

The old factory had been deliberately dismantled and relocated.

Heidi, wearing a professional outfit, led the two detectives to the factory’s reservoir, accompanied by Marina, the professional model in an elegant black dress. Wayne noted that Marina seemed to play an additional role: bodyguard.

The family not only had complicated relationships, but they were also a kinky bunch.

The reservoir of the shipyard had been drained. Dozens of strong workers were cleaning silt, and Wayne, looking down from above, spotted the familiar inverted pentagram.

A faith in hell!

He thought of the basement in the councilor's home. This reservoir was just like the well, but ten times bigger, meaning the unholy magic circle was also magnified ten times.

The workers focused solely on their work, neither casting curious glances nor making chit-chat. They seemed more like well-trained soldiers than anything.

Heidi smiled and stepped aside. It was the two mages’ turn to perform.

Wayne didn’t move, but Kael jumped in with a cross pendant in his hand, softly reciting passages from the holy scripture. A sacred light radiated from him as he made light, solemn steps, each footfall leaving deep white marks on the inverted pentagram.

The magic circle began to rotate, the ground rippling with white energy. As Kael raised both hands slowly, a warm, healing power brought everyone unprecedented peace and contentment. At that moment, Kael looked as sacred as an angel.

(눈_눈)

Hard to imagine a man with a fetish for tanks as an angel. That had to be a trick of light.

The inverted hexagram rotated into a proper pentagram. The holy light drove away evil and dispelled the demon’s protective power. The bricks and stones at the bottom of the reservoir started crumbling, revealing a passage that spiraled downward.

With an easy leap, Kael came up to Heidi. The glint of holiness in his eyes and his incredibly handsome face could only be described as angelic.

Heidi was breathing faster. She became noticeably more respectful to him after his flex of power.

The workers brought over wooden crates, prying them open with crowbars to reveal submachine guns. In only two minutes, a team of armed soldiers was ready for action. Heidi and Marina put on their equipment, and Wayne and Kael also asked for weapons for protection. Five soldiers took point as they descended the spiral staircase into the pitch-dark passage.

Wayne fell back to the rear. Before entering the passage, he shook barely perceptible spores from his pants.

He observed the carvings on the passage walls—all descriptions of different sufferings and punishments, reminding him of hell. It was as if they were standing at the mouth of hell, and the abyss below led to hell itself.

The abyss wasn’t truly bottomless, though, but only twenty meters deep. Their flashlights illuminated the bottom of it, where a wall blocked their path. On the wall was a pattern drawn with blood, warning any visitor that the place had been marked by an evil god, and they should leave quickly.

On the sides of the patterns were simple murals depicting an evil god’s descent to the mortal realm. Dark clouds shrouded the city sky as storms raged and waves rose to towering heights. A dark figure stood upon the land.

Kael studied the murals, whispering to Wayne, “I’ve seen similar paintings in ancient texts stored by the Church of Heavenly Father. The situation is a little thorny. The Bart family’s deal with the demon isn’t as simple as a dragon’s relics.”

And your identity is even more complicated. Tell me, are you an investigator sent by the Church of Heavenly Father?

Wayne shrugged. As a newbie who hadn’t even figured out the Life Alliance he belonged to, the worship in heaven and hell was beyond his understanding.

Meanwhile, the soldiers with Heidi couldn’t find the mechanism to open the wall and were estimating the wall’s thickness to prepare explosives. Kael’s scalp tingled when he saw. He stepped forward and explained how to activate the mechanism. It wasn’t complicated and absolutely didn’t need explosives. Just use blood from a Bart.

Marina drew a dagger and cut the back of her hand, letting blood drip onto the blood pattern according to Kael’s instructions.

Rumble—

The sound of mechanical gears turning came from below. The ground beneath their feet suddenly collapsed. The resulting currents roared as an irresistible suction pulled them all into the darkness.

Meanwhile, the two blondes received word and came to the empty shipyard, making their way to the spiral staircase without meeting any obstruction. Vera turned on her flashlight and tested the path with pebbles, going up to the wall with a blood pattern with Veronica.

It had only been two minutes, yet the collapsed ground had reverted to its original state as if nothing had happened. The murals had changed as well. Gone was the pattern of Blood Worship or the depictions of the evil god’s descent. In their place was a simplified evil dragon with bared fangs and claws.

The dragon soared through the sky as nine knights fought it from the ground. The brutal combat ended with one of the knights carving the dragon’s chest and abdomen with a sword. The terrible fight destroyed a world, and the nine knights were each banished by a vortex. The dragon wailed and clutched its chest, its heart fallen to an unknown place.

Vera’s eyes lit up at the shimmering knight, letting out battle cries while mimicking the knight’s posture, pointing her fingers at Veronica’s chest like a sword.

“Evil dragon, take this!”

Smack!

Getting a chop to the head, she crouched down and held her head with both hands. She wouldn’t mention slaying the dragon again.

Veronica’s heart raced. The murals about the dragon made her blood boil with an irrepressible excitement. She pulled out a small dagger from her waist and struggled to cut her finger. She had trouble breaking her skin with her naturally high defense.

Finally, she managed to squeeze out a trickle of crimson. Before the cut healed, she quickly smeared it on the mural.

Rumble—

Mechanical gears turned again. The two blondes went into a free fall while gaping at each other.

***

“Damn bastard, nearly got me killed.”

In the dim underground waterway, Wayne picked himself up against the slippery wall. His heart still pounded as he remembered what had happened.

After the ground collapsed, the group fell down a sloped waterway and were scattered across the complex network of channels. Wayne had considered many possibilities, but not one was a magical trap that involved rushing water. Looking at the glowing cave around him, he thought that this made more sense.

The shipyard was built two years ago. Organizing a large group of workers to build an underground palace would attract everyone’s attention. It was more like worshippers of an evil god to build a secret base in the underground waterways naturally formed under Dragon Heart Island. Dark and secretive, perfect for their needs.

Despite the dimness, Wayne’s supervision allowed him to see the complicated cave system with only the reflected fluorescent light. He waited for a moment in place. If he was lucky, he might catch beautiful girls falling from the sky—two of them, and all drenched.

Unfortunately, he saw no one after half an hour.

“They probably went down a different branch... Alright. With this much time passed, the paths I need to take must have already been walked by others.”

He waded through knee-deep water, overcoming the strong resistance and slippery footing. With his super vision and keen sense of smell, he moved quickly and soon caught Kael’s scent.

Of everyone, he believed Kael had the greatest odds, so he couldn’t help but stare in silence when he saw the bottomless chasm at the end of the trail of scent. He didn’t believe that Kael would’ve died so easily, so he guessed that the current had washed away the man’s clothes.

Without an important character leading the way, Wayne had to explore on his own. He retraced his steps and followed the spacious cave forward. Two minutes later, he stepped onto flat rocky terrain rather than slippery ground.

After hundreds more steps, the view opened up dramatically. The air was filled with a dry heat, and the rocky walls around him darkened to a dark red as if they were soaked in blood. The closer he got to the center of the clearing, the deeper the red and the greater the heat.

He sniffed and stopped to wait quietly. Marina appeared with a submachine gun. Her hair, which had been pinned up, now fell over her shoulders in a half-dry state. Her long dress was torn into a short skirt for easier movement in cramped environments, revealing her taut, firm legs.

When she saw him alone, she frowned and asked, “Detective Wayne, where is Kael? Aren’t you always together?”

“Don’t know. I’ve lost contact with him.”

“What a shame. I was hoping to ask the two of you for help.”

“Tell me about it!”

Wayne wasn’t familiar with Marina and couldn’t find a common topic to talk about for long. As they exchanged words sporadically, they maintained a distance. Gradually, the sound of footsteps around them grew more numerous. Ten soldiers with loaded weapons surrounded them, pointing all their guns at Wayne.

The tension was thick, and the heated air oppressive. Anyone else would be breathing faster.

He sighed. “Mistress Marina, the expedition has just begun. We haven’t even seen the treasure yet. Isn’t it too early to start killing each other?”

That’s only if you are strong enough to find the treasure! Marina thought.

Of the two detectives from Londan, Kael had proven himself to be a powerful mage, but not Wayne. He had only demonstrated the qualities of a professional detective, acting with caution and careful not to make major mistakes.

Now that they had crossed the river, it was time to tear down the bridge.

“Detective Wayne, I was waiting for my teammate. What were you waiting for? Detective Kael?”

“No, I was waiting for the flowers to bloom.”

Wayne’s voice turned icy as a hot wind swept across the clearing.