Chapter 329
Chapter 329
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 329
Chapter Title: Reinforcements (2)
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Tap. Tap. Tap.
Following the information Eve had provided, Oliver and Yareli infiltrated the interior of a laboratory set up on one side of Lake Village.
It was nominally a joint research facility between the School of Life Studies and the Department of Life Alchemy, but in reality, it was a human warehouse storing the mages kidnapped during this raid.
While surveying the overall situation in Lake Village through Eve, they had learned that there were three other such warehouses besides this one.
"Where do we go?"
Yareli, who was accompanying Oliver, asked as they reached a fork in the path.
Oliver glanced alternately at the right and left paths before placing his hand on a completely different section of the corridor, infusing it with mana to activate the installed spell, opening an entrance like a dog flap.
As Oliver slipped inside, he answered.
"Down here."
Once Oliver had ducked in, they could see the real secret passage prepared below.
The two forks ahead were secret passages that the School of Life Studies had already scouted in advance. According to Eve's explanation, for an organization preparing an incident of this scale, the School of Life Studies and the Department of Life Alchemy didn't trust each other all that much.
The evidence was that they had secretly created passages to spy on each other or pretended not to know about those secret passages to monitor them.
'But regardless, their preparedness is impressive.'
Oliver thought as he looked around the well-constructed secret passage.
He was truly curious. Was this all just to turn numerous mages into materials...?
Of course, gathering materials of this quantity and quality was no easy task, but something still felt off.
Like a crucial piece was missing.
As Oliver sank into such contemplation, he heard Yareli grunting.
"...Shall I pull you?"
Oliver politely asked, looking at Yareli whose chest was caught in the entrance.
It was meant in good faith, but upon hearing it, Yareli flushed with embarrassment and shame, wriggling until she barely extricated herself and landed softly on the floor.
"......"
Yareli stared silently at Oliver.
Seeing her like that, Oliver asked.
"Did I make some mistake?"
"...No."
Yareli lied.
For some reason, it seemed Oliver had made a mistake.
He had clearly made a kind suggestion to a lady in distress, just as he had learned at the angel's house.
'Was it the hand gesture?'
As Oliver pondered, Yareli spoke.
"I'm really fine, so don't worry about it."
"Ah... Yes, got it. Shall we continue, then?"
Oliver pointed ahead and asked, and Yareli nodded.
Compared to her initial eagerness to rescue her grandmother, she now brimmed with motivation.
"First off, I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"Because I mentioned that students were captured here, you came this way too, right, Yareli?"
Having hit the nail on the head, Yareli couldn't respond immediately.
She had originally wanted to save her grandmother fighting Theodore, but because of Oliver, she had been assigned here.
Of course, they could have ignored Derek, Felix, and the others kidnapped by the School of Life Studies, but Kevin and Terence couldn't bring themselves to do that and had sent Yareli and Oliver this way instead.
"No... It's fine."
"Is it?"
"Yes. Fighting Theodore, Philip, and Grandmother anyway— even if I or you went, we wouldn't have much to do. It's better to rescue the others here."
She felt a pang of regret, but it wasn't a lie.
"Is that so?"
"Yes. This is the right thing to do. If you're a Mage Tower student, that is."
Yareli shone with intense duty and resolve. It protected her body like armor, yet felt restraining.
She looked a bit weary, but even so, she was determined to push through. Truly remarkable endurance.
"Can I ask you something too? Mr. Xenon."
"Pardon? Me?"
"Yes. What exactly are you?"
Yareli asked, peering at Oliver through her thick glasses.
Caught off guard by the blunt question, Oliver hesitated.
"Um... Do I still seem suspicious?"
"Sorry. No ill intent. I just want to clarify things. Given the situation."
It wasn't wrong.
With the School of Life Studies suddenly betraying the Mage Tower and allying with external forces to launch a raid, it wasn't strange to be cautious about anything.
Besides, while Yareli harbored doubts and anxiety, she held no hostility toward Oliver.
As if to prove it, she added an explanation.
"Personally, I'm grateful to you. You figured out the situation through the World Tree and even used the fog barrier to get us here... But that makes me uneasy too. I've never seen a Master at that level."
"Yareli."
Mid-sentence, Oliver suddenly stopped walking. Yareli looked at him with a tense expression.
"We need to enter this ventilation shaft now."
Oliver pointed to the ventilation inlet the size of a narrow corridor and said.
Yareli entered the basement ventilation shaft without hearing an answer to her question.
She had asked twice, yet received no proper reply.
It could have been quite irritating, but the sight visible through the vent gap made it irrelevant.
"......!"
A human with a cow's head was slicing open a person's abdomen like butchering meat at a butcher shop, pulling out organs.
Yareli was deeply shocked.
"...What is that?"
"It's the worker version of the modified humans Professor mentioned. Made by the School of Life Studies."
Yareli glanced at Oliver as if wondering how he knew, but Oliver was too focused observing the modified human to notice her gaze.
"Hm... Still, it seems fortunate."
"...What does?"
"As we learned from the World Tree, things seem busy up top, so there are few mages in this lab itself."
Oliver speculated while examining the modified human C03 clumsily extracting organs.
If they had enough hands, they wouldn't entrust such delicate work to them... Well, it was probably obvious.
No matter turning villagers into chimeras or allying with the Department of Life Alchemy, the School of Life Studies was still short on numbers, so they couldn't spare many forces for these warehouses.
Which meant it would be easy to free the captured mages and let them escape.
Oliver told Yareli to hurry.
She nodded at his words, though she seemed somewhat displeased.
"Mr. Xenon... You seem awfully used to this sort of thing?"
"Yareli, you seem less used to it?"
Oliver countered her question with one of his own.
Someone else might think he was mocking her, but Oliver genuinely wondered, with no such intent.
He had thought mages were accustomed to such scenes. Kevin had even said he had done plenty of dissections himself.
But misunderstanding his intent, Yareli seemed slightly offended.
"Not all mages are familiar with dissections. That's a stereotypical view from ordinary people who don't know the Mage Tower. It's rude."
"Ah, is that so?"
"Yes. We're not black magicians or anything."
"Even black magicians don't all do dissections, Yareli. Depending on the specialization, some don't."
It was true. Excluding the manipulation school that handled corpses professionally, the disease school that did clinical experiments, and the creation school that required knowledge for making creatures, dissections were rare.
In other words, one out of the four schools—the fire school—didn't do them.
'...Ah, black magic is close to dissection (tentacles).'
Oliver belatedly considered correcting himself, but Yareli asked back instead.
"You seem to know quite a bit about black magic?"
"...I learned while assisting Professor Kevin."
After thinking for three seconds, Oliver sold out Kevin. They had been given a difficult mission with instructions to act at their discretion.
He thought it was a flawless lie, but Yareli eyed him suspiciously again, not buying it.
Fortunately, something soon drew their attention.
"Here it is."
Oliver pointed to the vent inlet and said.
Yareli suspiciously eyed Oliver but peered inside as instructed, spotting the restrained Derek, Felix, and other students.
There were twelve in total, all bound to chairs with belts.
The belts channeled mana, disrupting the captives' mana.
'They're all asleep. Something feels off. Drugs?'
Oliver thought, sensing their subtle emotional states, life force, and mana. Maybe they were just deeply asleep.
After surveying the interior, Oliver and Yareli exchanged glances, nodded, and tore off the vent grate with mana to enter.
"My God..."
Upon entering and looking around, Yareli muttered in horror.
The interior was relatively clean, but it reeked of treating the people here as mere objects.
Yareli felt horror, disgust, anger, and a hint of fear at the scene before her.
"Hey, Derek. You okay?"
Yareli shook Derek to wake him, but he wouldn't stir, so she hurriedly tried to unfasten the belt restraining his body.
At that moment, Oliver instinctively sensed something was wrong.
"Yareli, wait—"
Boom!
Before Oliver could finish, the belt came loose, and Derek's body ballooned like a balloon before bursting.
Massive sprays of blood and flesh in all directions.
The other people in the space burst like water balloons one after another.
The room filled with the fishy, red blood.
Oliver felt a sense of déjà vu. The same as in Mountain Face.
Perhaps because of that, following his instincts over his head, Oliver grabbed the panicking Yareli—drenched in blood—by the shoulder, pulled her close, and simultaneously expelled the mana stored in his body outward.
Preventing the blood pooling on the floor from covering the ground where he stood.
Fortunate yet unfortunate—Oliver's guess was spot on.
The large and small chunks of flesh sank into the blood pool on the floor and vanished.
Yareli saw it and asked.
"W-What is that?"
"Blood pool. One of the blood magics."
Having experienced it before, Oliver kindly explained.
"There's no such blood magic..."
"Not the Mage Tower's blood magic—the black magicians' version. By the way, don't worry; Derek and Felix are safe. It doesn't seem like it was them that burst."
With that, Oliver pulled Yareli to his side, tucked her under his arm, and charged forward, smashing through the door to the outside.
Escaping the blood-filled space took priority.
The sturdy iron door shattered under Oliver's mana-infused kick, allowing the blood-soaked Oliver and Yareli to reach the corridor outside.
"...Derek and Felix are safe? What do you mean? They burst right in front of me."
Yareli asked with shaking eyes. Covered in blood, her composure had cracked somewhat, yet her strong endurance kept her rationality intact.
"They made the exterior and interior look convincing, but they're probably not the real ones."
"Then...?"
"Blood balloons."
"Blood balloons?"
"Yes. Different from the ones I know, but essentially the same."
Suddenly, a dissonant third voice interjected.
Oliver and Yareli turned toward the source.
Toward the blood-filled warehouse. There, the pooled blood on the floor had taken on a human shape and was standing.