August 17th, 628

"Sorry babe, gonna have to leave you behind for this one."

I smiled at Umara, the few agents around me prepping the last of their gear.

She sighed with a frown.

"I don't like you taking this risk alone. I can be subtle too."

"With my equipment, I know you can. But we've got protocol and these guys know how to follow it."

"Would I really be that much of a liability?"

"Are you really looking for that answer?"

My brow raised at her, and she turned her head with a huff.

"So you're saying you hate me."

"Hah! Don't you start putting words in my mouth, missy. We'll be back before nightfall and then I'll take care of you as much as you want. You can wait for me at the estate if you're that eager."

"No, I'm gonna be watching."

"Enjoy the show then."

I leaned down and gave her a kiss, slipping in some tongue before wrapping mine around hers.

She stiffened a bit and I pulled out, smiling as her pale face flushed.

"Bad."

"Love you, too. Now get on out of here. Daddy's got a vault to raid."

I sent her off with a pinch on the ass, checking my gear one last time before rounding everyone up.

I was the fifth man in this team, and today, we were collecting intelligence.

I found the suit I wanted. The Armored Personnel Powered Exosuit, Model APE-88: Infiltrator Configuration.

The Infiltrator suit was designed with stealth and mobility in mind. Still moderately armored, the Infiltrator had special pieces of technology designed to almost completely eliminate one's physical signature, only limited to optical obscuration.

I stepped into the suit, its sleek form wrapping around my body. The technology in this suit was even greater than that of the Assault exosuit. The structure, its spines, and all of its little components were smaller and streamlined. It could take the beating the assault suit could, but its bulk was less.

After the suit configured itself to my body, I lifted the helmet. Its face was similar to that of the flight suit, a visorless shell with multiple optical lenses around the front, dark and lifeless, drinking in all that entered them.

I slipped it on, feeling it clasp around my head and link with my suit. The HUD booted, going through its diagnostic, my eyes flickering with light.

I saw the sight around me, another expanded field of view, including a separate screen showing directly behind me. I had eyes on the back of my head, no blind spots, besides directly above my head.

I glanced at the other four agents around me, their bodies covered in our latest generation of armor. None of them were using Crystal or Mana rifles since they would easily trip alarms, so all weapons were cold.

After everything was in place, we boarded a plane and set off to our target.

The territory of Duke Ballistra.

……

Umara sat down in a chair beside Polly and Jasmine. They were in front of a wall of screens showing video feeds from everyone in the outgoing squad.

She glanced at John's feed, seeing him tampering with a gun she didn't recognize. It was silenced and had some interesting tech on it, though she couldn't guess what it did.

They were silent in the plane, only stepping up when the time for drop came.

The green light was lit, the hatch was opened, and they stepped out. They fell through the atmosphere for a time, their jetpacks burning when they were close to ground and killing their momentum.

Their feet hit the ground, Umara glancing at an aerial feed to the side. The Duke's mansion was two miles from them. Located in what some would consider the middle of nowhere, Duke Ballistra was a major exporter of livestock goods. They owned vast ranches and farmland, being one of the richest nobles in the entire Kingdom and a vital part of the economy.

However, in recent months, John had started to see some patterns. The Kingdom's dark forces were beginning to develop their own Aerial technology derived from his own. For the sake of making absolutely sure that John couldn't spy on them, they started to manufacture and distribute their own Aerials to their own people. They also deployed their own Nodes, creating a secret communication network across the Kingdom exclusive to them. It wasn't something John could easily monitor, not nearly as easily as the open book that had been the normal Nodenet.

After mapping out certain areas based on traffic and comparing it over time, John noticed that some places had gone dark. These places were either owned by the Third Claw or were migrated to their Nodenet. That meant secrets, and John didn't like being in the dark.

Not that this mission was exclusively for breaking into this Nodenet. John said he found something interesting, and this was the first lead.

After hitting the ground the squad started moving. John's suit went invisible in the vision of the other agents, all of them flying across the grassland under their feet and rapidly making an approach to one of the buildings attached to the mansion. The entire estate was huge, with a dozen interconnected buildings and hundreds of people throughout them.

It had heavy security as well. They saw guards posted around the large walls that surrounded the bulk of the mansion. After all the assassinations, every noble had multiplied their security and Dukes were no exception. They may not be afraid of an assassin, but they had people around them they wanted to protect.

Along with the guards were a myriad of security measures. Scanners, alarms, coded doors, and reinforcement magic everywhere. According to some of the recent assassinations, they also started employing life monitors on all the guards. If one died, they would know and it would send the entire establishment into a frenzy. They couldn't just go around killing everyone, especially not the important people.

The five ran to the gate in the wall. It was closed and locked, but they had come at this particular time for a reason.

A wagon was already approaching the gate from the inside. Once close, the gate opened and let the wagon through.

The squad simply walked in despite there being a dozen different scanners that washed over them, courtesy of John's new Programmed Magic series of devices. He has used a similar device when handing off Faey's new armor and spear, and from then on it had been frequently used by Pale Horsemen in their assassinations.

Completely and utterly undetectable by all current means of scanning, proved once more by this mission.

After walking through the gate they ran across the grounds before finding a particular building close to the main building. Once there, John stabbed his SEER Knife into the door's lock, half a second passing before he pushed it open.

They moved interior, still completely silent, not a single word being uttered along the way. Umara had to admit that they moved fast and efficiently. She had been joking with John earlier, but seeing them in action, she knew she really would have been a liability.

Not that she was bummed. She was perfectly fine letting the professionals do their work.

The building they entered was the security post, where all the operations of guarding the complex originated. The security measures on this particular building were intense, but before John's bioware they all crumbled.

They moved through the security post and found the control room where the Authority 10 Nephilim, the head guard, was stationed behind a console.

John stopped outside the glass windows that peered into that room. The Authority 10 was just sitting there completely relaxed, watching the wagon at the gate leave. Nothing else was happening. It was just another routine day.

John looked down at the console. Right against the wall, it was within reach despite them being unable to walk into the room undetected.

John stabbed his knife through the wall, reaching the enchantments on the other side. Umara saw another screen pop up in front of her, dense pages and logs of data streaming across it.

Within seconds, the entire security system was under John's control.

The life monitors were frozen and set into a loop. Now it wouldn't alert anyone when someone was killed. Their trust in their tech would blind them.

Then they got the codes to every door and deactivated the alarm functions of every scanner, ensuring smooth entry into most levels of the complex. They downloaded all data available, including maps and blueprints. On those maps was a secret underground complex, their target.

John pulled his knife out, a wireless access point left behind. John could wirelessly control everything from his personal systems now, also completely undetected, another courtesy of his Programmed Magic. Even if they detected the stray signals, not only would nobody be alerted, but they wouldn't know where they came from.

The Mantle of Wisdom's principle technology was still far beyond anything the Kingdom could muster.

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They rapidly left the security post, their first job completed after a mere 10 minutes. From there they went to the main building, simply jogging past every guard, maid, and noble offspring they came across. John stared at the Nephilim family while moving past them longer than he looked at the guards or maids.

The sight of those horns and markings were probably pissing him off.

Umara checked their biometrics on another screen. John's heart rate was sitting at 43 bpm, all metrics completely stable. The other agents were hovering around 80 or 90, a little higher than normal, but clearly showing their slight anxiety. Being Authority 9, none of them were so strong as to be easily noticeable, but not weak enough to be incapable of combat. Still, being in the mansion of a Duke, and so brazenly walking through it and among its inhabitants completely invisible was enough to get anyone a little excited.

From the main building they went down a hall where all kinds of paintings, statues, and trinkets were on display. The architecture and decoration were excessively rich. There were entire columns and display pedestals made entirely of gold and reinforced several times over. It was an amount of money that made even Umara gawk. Her mother, even if only slightly less rich, never gilded her household like that.

They moved through the hall and found themselves before two huge double doors, closed and locked on an independent enchantment. Before it were four guards dressed in ornamental armor as strong as they were opulent. The guards, all Authority 9, were standing there silently, albeit a bit lazily slumped.

This was the door to the vault.

John glanced at the other agents before finally speaking.

"I'll unlock it first."

Some nonverbal signals from the others signalled their acknowledgment. John moved past the guards and up to the doors, going to a knee and taking out a device.

It was a new illusory device, capable of not just making things invisible, but putting out dynamic images.

After dropping it and activating it, he took out his SEER Knife and cracked the lock on the doors. Despite being on its own independent, and much more thoroughly made enchantment, it still didn't stand a chance. Data was sent back simultaneously, showing the layout of the enchantment and its functions.

Umara glanced at it as the other agents prepared to kill all the guards, dropping their own illusion devices near said guards.

The door had a complex enchantment that required two physical security keys to open. However, there was data for a dozen other keys, all of which would trip a secret alarm when used to open the door. They were bait, and there was even a secret function embedded in the real keys that demanded a special action to verify the user of the key. If anything was done incorrectly, such as by a thief who got the key but knew nothing about the hidden instructions, it would trip the alarm.

Yet John cracked it in seconds. All he had to do was cut the pathways from the keyholes and let the bioware spread like an infection. The enchantment was taken over, put under his full control.

With everything ready, John activated his illusion device, which spat out an image of the closed door. Then he opened it, watching the four guards.

None of them reacted to it, the agents all standing next to them with their own weaponized SEER Knives to their necks.

Seeing that they hadn't been found out, the agents retreated, retrieving their illusion devices and slipping through the door.

John closed it, using a small mute field to mask the sound.

The five moved into the vault, so far still completely undetected. They were greeted with the sight of a well lit library.

Except, it wasn't a library of books. It was a library of wealth.

There were hundreds of shelves, all of them labeled and holding thousands of spatial storage devices. Umara saw John slowly scan across the shelves. Like her, she could tell that he was baffled by how rich it all was.

That was the accumulation of many generations and extremely powerful family heads. This was the vault of the Ballistra Dukedom. It wasn't where they kept everything, but it was where they kept their most valuable possessions.

It was almost criminal how easily John had snuck into such a place. The enchantments on it were top notch, containing power attempting to rival a Sovereign. Unfortunately, John's bioware backed by a Neural Gem and empowered with Programmed Magic meant that there was no enchantment in the Kingdom capable of resisting his control. Programmed Magic could only be stopped by Programmed Magic. It was only unfortunate that, out of fear the Neural Gem might grow out of control, John had taken his careful time integrating Programmed Magic into its systems, only recently developing his SEER Knife to such an extent.

It was also the only reason he was conducting this mission now, and why he had to be on it personally.

After giving themselves almost a minute of inspiration, the squad put their heads back down and moved through the vault. This vault wasn't actually their target.

It was only the doorway to it.

John moved to a podium where a catalog was resting. After stabbing his SEER Knife into it, Umara saw another batch of data come through.

It was a list of everything in the vault. Umara was tempted to go through it and see what was in there, but she eventually didn't bother.

They'd be taking it all anyway. John would never let such wealth remain in a corrupted noble's hands. Or any noble's, for that matter.

Finally, John seemed to have gotten the data he needed. Taking out his knife, he moved with the squad over to a bookshelf on a wall.

John stabbed the knife into the wood of the shelf, some enchantments flashing to life before suddenly activating.

The bookshelf clicked, and John pulled it open. Behind it was a secret doorway with yet another top end lock.

It was dismantled, and soon the squad entered a dimly lit room.

On the floor was surprisingly a teleportation pad.

"I got it."

One of the agents spoke, stepping forward before anyone else could. John watched him before using his knife to tap into its systems, activating the teleporter.

The agent flashed away. There was silence for several seconds before the pad flashed again, the agent reappearing.

"It's all clear."

"Let's move."

They all stepped onto it, flashing away.

Their video feeds went out for a short time, flickering back onto Umara's screen.

They appeared in another room, John moving through the door, which didn't have a lock on it.

Umara felt her pupils narrow when she saw the sight on the other side.

It was a massive underground cave, thousands of feet long, wide, and tall. There were massive stone and metal pillars holding up the ceiling.

And in the center of the room lay the preserved corpse of a Dragon.

The Paragon of Mana, one of the three most noble beasts of the world. It was colossal, clearly hinting at its power when alive. Umara couldn't fathom what it must have looked like in its prime.

Now it was a faded corpse, preserved in foggy ice. The entire room was chilled to extremely low temperatures, a feat which no doubt took massive amounts of power and the corresponding White Crystals. That wasn't mentioning how long it had been this way.

Considering the Paragon beasts had been effectively extinct for well over a few centuries, the investment sunk into this place was unfathomable.

Yet it couldn't compare to the value of the corpse.

It was almost wholly intact, still. Most of its scales were there, as were its wings. None of its claws were still on its limbs, however. There was also a large hole in its chest.

Umara quickly noticed the people around the corpse, as did John. Two of them were on scaffolding to access the hole in the dragon's chest. Its organ harvest was ongoing, but that implied that after all these years, they were finally choosing now to cash in on their hidden wealth.

Umara frowned. They were empowering themselves right now. John's guesses about how urgent the situation was were turning out to be more true than ever.

A single Dragon that large had enough material for a large group of very powerful people to get saturated with Crowns. Although King Bloods and Royals had no use for Crowns now the ability to receive them, Nephilim did.

That Dragon corpse was a massive source of combat power.

"Hold."

John spoke before the other agents could move.

Their original goal in coming here was to get a look at the anomaly John had spotted, as well as make a backdoor into a portion of the Third Claw's new Nodenet. This was completely out of expectations though.

Umara knew what kind of ramifications this information would have.

She also knew what kind of frenzy they would stir by stealing the corpse as well as all the wealth in the vault.

John stood there, staring at the corpse, his voice suddenly aimed at the spectators.

"You there, Dove?"

"I'm here, Envoy."

"What do you think of the view?"

Umara gave a wry chuckle.

"It's amazing. So amazing that I'm not sure if there's any good way to proceed from here."

"We take that Dragon, and all of our enemies will lock onto us. I'm sure they already know it's us, but we're maintaining this state of affairs because neither of us can afford to escalate right now. If we take the Dragon though…"

"They won't care."

"Indeed. What makes it worse is that this is only a Duke's loot. Not only might this Duke hold other corpses and materials elsewhere, but the Grand Duke and Sovereign households have their own vaults, and they're likely filled with corpses just like these."

"And they're starting to thaw them. Harvest them."

Umara felt a headache coming on.

The Nephilim were already powerful, as was the Scourge. They had every advantage in this war. Umara believed with every fiber of her being that if John weren't here, the Scourge would have their way with them and they'd all be doomed.

But this theoretical stockpile of power was chilling to imagine.

The Kingdom of Dragon Tongue was named after a Paragon, and yet they were precisely the ones to drive the Dragons to extinction. Umara didn't know the details of what happened during that history. It was too long ago. But it didn't take a historian to connect the dots.

How many Dragons had there been? Even if some of them escaped, it would only happen after so many battles, if not a war. So how many Dragon corpses, how many Paragon corpses, were in the hands of these powerful noble households?

Were they precisely the source of the nobility's confidence? Nobody could ever guarantee that their family would raise a powerful heir every generation that it was needed. But if you were a Warlock family like the Ballistra line and had Dragon corpses to make Crowns from, it suddenly wouldn't feel like such a pipe dream.

That was just for the warlock families too. The Knight families likely had Lordbeasts, Paragons of Vigor, ready to pull from for the same purposes. They weren't around either, after all.

The issue was that this was a colossal secret. Umara wondered if her mother knew. If she did, then it was no wonder why she always maintained airs as if she knew better. She knew about the secrets of the nobility tightly linked to the royal family.

The Talerria line didn't originally form around the Kingdom's royalty, after all. They and the Raven Family were independent families with exceptionally powerful heads that established their nobility with sheer strength. It wasn't crazy to assume that they'd be kept out of the loop even many generations later.

But Umara knew her mother had connections in the black markets. She knew how to collect intelligence, and even then, this information had likely been recorded by ancestors long past. If she was really planning rebellion with the Raven Chief, and wanted to monitor the noble family's usage of those corpses…

Suddenly, things were making sense.

"Let's grab intel and go."

John spoke, the agents all moving through the cave.

They found any and all devices and Orbs in the buildings nearby, offloading every bit of data on them and linking them with John's Nodenet so they could continue to be monitored later.

After that, they captured plenty of footage and evidence, including samples of the corpse that they stole from under the workers' noses.

After that, John gave the command.

"Retreat."

The squad quickly moved, all of them leaving the cave and going back through the teleporter. From there they raided the vault. They plucked out spatial storages and emptied their contents, packing them into their own and placing the others back into place. There were also old records, so John went through those and acquired all the data he could.

The vault was expansive, so it took a good amount of time. When they finally emerged and locked the vault behind them, night had fallen.

They left the mansion as easily as they had entered, John resetting the security systems back to normal on his way out.

Umara sat back into her seat while they made their way to the extraction point.

There would be a lot to digest, as well as some big decisions to be made later.

She wondered how soon they could afford to really piss off their enemies.

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