471 Chapter 471 Violence And Deceit
(Green Seed Town, Commander Rundert’s office. 4:00 pm)
As the most authoritative person within the confines of the city, Basil Rundert was not a man used to being questioned; one can imagine his anger when someone did much more than ask him.
crash*
Unable to control his anger, Rundert grabbed the glass ashtray on his desk and hurled it at a wall. His secretary, a poor sergeant who had been through various humiliations at the commandant’s hands, could only watch in silence, afraid of inadvertently provoking the man.
“How dare that bitch? I initially allowed her to come to my city when I was following a lead about the gang problems in Kars city. Why the hell is she now requesting an audit of my arsenal?”
Rundert didn’t expect an answer to his questions, his yelling was just a way to contain his anger, but the sight of his secretary shivering in a corner still irritated him greatly.
Like a sheep that knows that she is being watched by a wolf, the secretary began to tremble more; she knew Rundert quite well and knew what that look meant. Holding her breath, the secretary mustered all her willpower, preparing herself for what was coming. The abuse and humiliation were the least of it; she knew that if she didn’t manage to please Rundert properly, he could hurt her a lot.
The nefarious intentions in Rundert’s eyes were forced to stop when there was a loud knock on the office door. From the other side of the door came the voice of Lieutenant Colonel Graham. “Commander, something serious happened.”
Pulling his invasive gaze away from his secretary, who seemed about to cry, Rundert responded with barely suppressed annoyance. “Come in.”
.....
Lieutenant Colonel Graham entered the room as soon as he received the go-ahead, looking ready to speak. However, his mouth closed immediately upon seeing that the secretary was still in the room.
Rundert noticed Graham’s behavior; he knew his subordinate well and knew that he wouldn’t be here without a good reason, so he dismissed his secretary nonchalantly, like a child who was no longer in the mood to continue playing. “Ana, leave us alone.”
If not for the secretary knowing that Graham was just a different kind of scum, she would have thanked Graham; instead, she just left the room as quickly as possible.
As soon as the secretary closed the door behind her, Graham explained why his hasty visit. “Something happened to that woman, the internal investigations captain from Kars City.”
Exasperated and on the verge of acting recklessly, Rundert responded with a near growl. “What happened now? What does that bitch want?”
Graham wanted to speak, but a look of discomfort refused to leave his face. Annoyed, Rundert had to insist. “Just say it once and for all. What the hell happened?
“Someone tried to kill her.” Graham responded stiffly.
Rundert certainly didn’t expect that kind of response; there was even a brief moment when he rejoiced at someone else’s misfortune. But Rundert hadn’t gotten that far without using his brain; he quickly realized the problem, which was a big problem.
From Rundert’s perspective, any evil that could happen to Sofia was a reason to be happy, but that was just his selfishness talking about him; he understood the bigger picture better. A captain of internal investigations was almost killed in his jurisdiction; that was a huge problem.
To make matters worse, Sofia wasn’t just any captain; she had quite a bit of prestige and connections. As if all of the above wasn’t enough, Sofia was currently investigating the military headquarters under Rundert’s command. Her dying now would raise many suspicions the commander would prefer to avoid.
In the best-case scenario, crucial parts of the investigation would die with Sofia. Her death would give Rundert enough time to sweep his crimes under the rug; unfortunately, Sofia was alive.
Looking both tired and helpless, Rundert only said one thing in response. “How the hell did this happen?”
(An hour before)
Lying on top of a building, peering through the sights of her sniper rifle, Sara waited for her target to arrive. As an arcanist, Sara was not the best combatant in the world, at least not in close combat. Still, her ability to learn and calculate and her control over herself made her an excellent sniper, a little hidden talent Desmond nurtured.
The weapon Sara used was, for lack of better words, intimidating. Her rifle was even taller than Sara’s, and the bullets she used were almost the size of her hands. It was a very expensive item that Sara wouldn’t have bought on the black market without Desmond’s insistence.
Squatting next to Sara, Yulei waited calmly with a pair of digital binoculars, another expensive little tool. It was almost suspicious how a lot of cutting-edge military-grade equipment hit the black market; Of course, no one dared to question the enormous corporation that manufactured said kit.
Long ago, this had become the world of the strongest, but wealth had not lost its value at all. The large macro corporations that survived the cataclysm only grew by adding all kinds of espers to their ranks through the resources at your disposal. Not that any of this was relevant to the current situation other than the fact that this was how Desmond managed to obtain all manner of black market gear.
Since she had to maintain a high state of concentration, especially when she expected to shoot a moving vehicle at a considerable distance, Sara couldn’t look away from her gun, so she had to ask her partner for other details. “How much left?”
Yulei pulled out a terminal linked to the tracking device attached to the vehicle, seeing that the signal was a couple of blocks away from coming into her line of sight. “They’ll be within your range in eight seconds. It’s going to be a tough shot; you have to do as much damage as possible without killing anyone; Are you sure you can do it?”
Sara didn’t immediately answer the question; instead, she waited to get her eyes on the target. When the military vehicle came into her line of sight, it was as if everything had slowed down. Trajectories, complex mathematical formulas, factors to consider, and predictions of possible results, all of this and more, filled Sara’s vision.
Only those who studied and played with the arcana could understand its complexity and depth. Each law was filled with thousands of mysteries, variables, and perspectives. An arcana user could spend a lifetime studying a single law and still not understand a bit of it.
In terms of difficulty, training in the ways of arcana was far more complex than mana and aura, but what neither aura nor mana could accomplish, arcana could. Traditionally, arcana is a path of study and knowledge, so good fighters weren’t common, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist.
In that sense, Sara was the perfect example; she had an innate talent and understanding of the law of knowledge. Sara had barely managed to set her sights on the endless path of the arcana; however, with the right tools, she was terrifying.
The analyses and predictions in Sara’s mind raced at such speed that it was almost as if she could see into the future, a grueling task that drained her mind and her arcane reserves. A couple of seconds was enough to make Sara’s stamina, and arcane deplete midway, but those seconds were all she needed.
Bang*
A single shot was enough. The bullet tore through three hundred meters in less than a breath, hitting one of the military vehicle’s tires at the perfect angle to flip the car over on a perfectly timed collision course.
Everything happened exactly as it happened in Sara’s mind a second before she fired the shot, with only millimeter differences in some insignificant details. The vehicle went off the road, flipped over, being carried by residual momentum until it collided with a utility pole.
It was quite a scene to behold, but Sofia and Silvia, inside the vehicle, were practically intact. Shaking the daze out of their minds, Sofia and Silvia crawled out of the overturned vehicle. With weapons at the ready and their senses focused, both women began to search for an enemy.
Since it had to look realistic, Sara fired a couple more shots, not one of which hit Silvia or Sofia, although they came so close that no one could tell that the shooter had no intention of hurting someone.
After the fifth shot, Sara stopped, having calculated that her window of time to escape the scene undetected had begun to close. “Lily, it’s time to go.”
Barricaded in the overturned vehicle, Sofía and Silvia waited until reinforcements arrived. Almost half an hour passed while reinforcements arrived, the girls received an on-site medical check-up, and the scene was secured.
On this occasion, Sofía and Silvia were furious but terrified by what could have happened. Sofia was pretty sure this had something to do with the records requests she made a couple of hours ago. Silvia, for her part, knew this had to somehow be related to Desmond, although she wasn’t sure if it was retaliation on Rundert’s part or if her motherfucker boss actually tried to kill her.
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