Chapter 96: All Roads Lead to the Mine
"They’re gone."
The moment Silas and Darius entered the valley, Chaz lost track of them.
Ahead of them, a carefully prepared trap lay in wait, crafted by his B-Enhancers to catch the two students the moment they drew close. Yet just as he expected them to walk into it, they vanished.
He had noticed Silas’s sudden bursts of speed before, but never for such an extended period. The relentless pace caught even the trackers off guard, creating a brief blind spot in their surveillance. By the time the pursuing Enhancers reached the valley, the two had already disappeared.
They searched every corner of the valley and swept the surrounding area, yet found no trace of either student.
It was as though they had vanished into thin air.
"And my daughter is moving farther away... How strange..."
His gaze shifted toward the shuttle flying into the distance. At first, he had assumed Cher was trying to escape his grasp, especially with Silas leading everyone on a seemingly pointless chase. Now, however, that assumption no longer made sense.
As soon as Silas and Darius disappeared, his attention instinctively turned toward the one place he had ignored from the beginning, the mine. As long as Cher continued moving away from it, he had assumed the mine held no importance. But now the mine suddenly seemed to hold the answer to every question.
"Send fifty Enhancers and two hundred soldiers back to the mine," he ordered at once. "Search the entire area. If you find anything unusual, report to me immediately."
As his subordinates carried out the command, his wristwatch flashed with a new message. After reading it, his expression shifted ever so slightly.
"So the outside players are finally making their move."
His eyes settled on the tactical map before him.
"That reminds me... There are two students from those clans."
He had expected those clans to set their sights on the dragon. While his own objective was different, the dragon remained an indispensable piece of his plan.
"And who said I’d let anyone share such a fine harvest?"
His expression hardened as he reached for another wristwatch, one bearing his clan’s emblem.
"Two unauthorised special squads from rival clans are on the move."
"They’ll arrive at different times."
"I’ll forward everything you need."
"You know what to do."
After sending the message to his clan’s special squad, a cold grin slowly spread across his face.
"It seems this little dragon hunt is about to become far more interesting than I expected."
"We can’t find the bastard!"
Several of the fastest Dark Hunters returned empty-handed.
They had believed Silas was finally abandoning the fight and trying to flee. They had looked forward to catching him, making him pay for everything he had done, and venting the resentment they had been suppressing for so long.
Instead, he had simply disappeared.
Most of them were furious, but one remained calm.
"We can’t let our anger blind us," the Scorpion leader said, silencing the others. "Don’t forget why we came here in the first place. We’re already close to the mine, and fortunately, that damned dragon isn’t around."
"So we’re just letting that bastard get away?" the Wyvern leader growled, voicing everyone’s frustration.
"He isn’t running away," the Scorpion leader replied evenly. "From the very beginning, he has been trying to reach the mine. Stop wasting time searching for him and head there instead. Something tells me we’ll find him soon enough."
The Scorpion leader had to spend several precious moments calming the others before they finally gave in to his proposal. Yet the moment they charged toward the mine, terrible news awaited them.
A massive defensive line had already been established ahead, formed by the mine garrison and arranged with remarkable discipline.
The expressions of the Dark Hunters darkened.
They had assumed the soldiers massacred by the dragon were all that remained of the mine’s defences. Instead, a fresh force had been waiting for them all along.
By the time they realised the truth, retreat was no longer an option.
The mine troops had already received their orders.
"Attack!"
The defensive line surged forward.
"Scatter!" the Scorpion leader roared. "Break through wherever you can!"
He understood that bunching together would only make them easy prey. Their only chance of survival was to spread the battlefield apart, force the defenders to split their attention, and slip through the gaps.
"We’ll regroup at the mine."
With that, he dashed toward one flank alongside his ten most trusted subordinates, while the other two leaders led their own men in different directions.
High above, the dragon continued to circle the battlefield in silence.
Unlike everyone below, it could clearly sense Silas’s location, as well as the movements of every other human.
"That ant..." it muttered. "He intends to hide while letting the others descend into chaos."
It had watched Silas disappear into an underground tunnel and considered digging straight through the earth to retrieve the flower by force.
Then its senses reached deeper.
"That insect hid inside a Mana Vein?!"
For the first time since this chase began, genuine hesitation crossed its mind.
Humans knew nothing of it, but dragons possessed an instinctive aversion to Mana Veins.
"Was it a coincidence?"
The dragon recalled everything that had happened since Silas entered its territory.
"No... impossible."
"That ant is weak, but he is far from foolish."
"He chose that place on purpose."
The realisation filled it with fury.
Not long ago, it had been the hunter, patiently observing its prey from the shadows. Now their positions had reversed. Silas had hidden somewhere the dragon could not easily reach, forcing it to wait for him to emerge.
That thought alone was unbearable.
"I refuse to believe that ant has no one he cares about."
Its gaze shifted toward the chaos unfolding above the Mana Vein.
"I’ll show you the price of provoking a dragon."
Without warning, the dragon abandoned its concealment.
Instead of descending in its true form, however, it transformed into a humanoid figure before diving into the battlefield.
It was not acting out of blind rage. The Mana Vein stretched far beyond the tunnel Silas had entered, forcing it to abandon its draconic form if it wished to approach the area.
Even so, its lethality hardly diminished.
Unfortunately for Chaz, the dragon chose to descend upon the largest nearby concentration of humans, the mine garrison’s carefully prepared defensive line.
Until then, the Dark Hunters had been cut down in waves, unable to break through the defenders.
The dragon’s arrival turned the battle into utter chaos.
The B-Enhancers struggled to divide their attention between two enemies, while the dragon exploited every opening with ruthless precision. Its humanoid body was far smaller and harder to track than its true form, allowing it to weave through the battlefield as devastating explosions tore apart tightly packed soldiers and Enhancers alike.
The advantage the mine forces had built so carefully began to crumble.
Realising they could no longer afford to be restrained, the B-Enhancers shifted their full focus to hunting the dragon down.
The surviving Dark Hunters wasted no time.
Taking advantage of the confusion, they fled through the widening gaps in the defensive line and sprinted toward the mine as fast as their legs could carry them.
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