Chapter 212 Volume IV - Chapter 57: An Insulting Escape
It didn't take me long to finally get an answer as I continued to try to understand Tenebra's, his clone's purpose.
"Sir! There's a concentration o' mana in a small area in the spots where the clones died!"
Mana... Why would he concentrate mana in tiny spots all over the ship?
What can he do with this mana?
"Try to disperse the concentrated mana."
"Understood!"
Just then there was another explosion. When I checked on the map, I saw that it was near the center of the ship, much smaller than the other explosions.
What was he planning?
I brought the map in front of me again and enlarged the scale. I looked at where the explosions had occurred so far, and then where the clones had been detected and killed.
New clones and new explosions kept happening. They were in random places, they made no sense. There was no need to keep out of sight, no place they were particularly close to or avoided.
Just then, as I was studying the map, something occurred to me.
I connected the dots in my mind, focused on the lines, and stared at the screen for a moment when the first thing I saw was a hexagon forming the outer layer. Then I stiffened where I was.
"Shut down all power sources!"
Beads of sweat rolled down my forehead and my eyes widened. What was in front of my eyes... was something I never expected to see.
It was a giant rune.
There was a huge rune in front of my eyes.
It was simple, short, and meaningless. Yet that is precisely why it was dangerous. Even without meaning, an unstable rune would often end in disaster. Such a huge rune could not possibly be stable.
Tenebra's only problem was that he had to find a source of mana to support it. Yet this was also one of the least of his worries. Because the ship itself was already a huge source of mana. After all, the ship was running entirely on mana.
"General, if we do this, we'll lose all our ele-"
"Shut up and do as I say if you don't want to get blown up!"
In this way, as the huge rune continued to be drawn across the map, suddenly the lights went out all over the ship. Corridors, storerooms, rooms, cameras, and security systems.
Everything went offline and the map in front of me disappeared. A deep and tense silence suddenly enveloped the whole room.
I was in the darkness, clenching my fists in the silence.
I inhaled and exhaled rapidly as the staff illuminated the room with their personal devices while trying to communicate with the same devices.
My heart was pounding, my head ached.
Tenebra now had a great advantage. The ship was pitch black and no systems were working.
*******
I scattered the idle soldiers throughout the corridors of the ship.
Minutes had passed since the whole ship was plunged into darkness and silence. Yet Tenebra was nowhere to be seen.
No matter how long it took, he was never seen by anyone. There wasn't even one group that lost contact. There hadn't been a single casualty since the power went out and there seemed to be no problems on board.
It was as if Tenebra was specifically waiting for the power to return.
Is it possible he died in a corner?
No... he must be doing it on purpose. He must want me to think that.
He must be planning, he must be standing somewhere, thinking about how to get off the ship.
When the minutes gave way to a full hour and still nothing came out, I realized I was about to lose my mind.
First I tried to calm myself down, then I checked to see if anything had happened since the ship lost power.
There wasn't.
There was nothing.
No matter how much I looked, or how many times I read every single detail, there was nothing.
"Where are you..."
He cut off all power to the ship... What could be his next goal?
I have to think, if I think, I can find out... Just like that rune he tried to draw, I can find out what he is trying to do this time and what he is going to do.
I just have to think...
"G- General..."
I paused momentarily, then slowly turned to the person who had called me.
He had a shocked look on his face.
I felt something inside me that suddenly began to rise to the surface. As I looked at the expression of the dwarf in front of me, I felt this feeling growing stronger, slowly enveloping my whole body.
It was fear.
Why was he making such an expression?
"What happened?"
The dwarf took a deep breath, swallowed, and bowed his head. Then I saw what happened as a holographic screen appeared in front of me with a light from his wristband.
I froze in place for a few seconds, staring blankly at the image in front of me, while a thousand different thoughts passed through my mind, but they were insignificant.
My lips involuntarily curled upward.
It wasn't happiness, it wasn't excitement.
It was anger, real anger.
It was an anger of humiliation.
Because what I saw on the screen in front of me was something I never expected from Tenebra.
On the holographic screen in front of me was an image of a room, one of the rooms almost at the very outer edge of the ship. It was also a room in the first place where Tenebra had caused all this mess.
It was a room from the dungeons, the room where the tortures took place.
However, there was a hole in the wall of the room.
It was a hole that seemed to open into infinity, a hole that progressed as it went on, a hole that a human could only pass through.
It was a hole that seemed to have been created by melting. Outside, in the darkness of the night, some of the light from the stars reaching Lunerra could be seen at the end of the hole.
When the ship lost power, the barrier went down, so when he melted the exoskeleton and came out, he didn't have the problem of getting caught in the barrier.
The whole time we were looking for him on the ship, he was drilling this hole. While I was thinking about what he was planning, he was getting closer and closer to the outside and now when I found his trail for the first time, he had already escaped, he was no longer on this ship.
I felt like he was blatantly swearing at me, and what I was seeing in front of my eyes was an insult to all the time I had spent and every move I thought Tenebra was capable of.
Was it really that simple?
Tenebra could just melt a hole in Caleuche and get out? All he had to do was cut the power?
"The troops outside the ship... they didn't see anything?"
"Our reason for findin' the hole be them, sir..."
"Reactivate the reactors and start a quick search with the vehicles in the garage."
The outside of the ship was not empty of course, there was a camp outside as well as some of the army inside the ship.
Still, the camp outside was not overly difficult to bypass. After all, the security and many of the systems that this camp relied on were directly connected to the ship.
When the ship was powered down, so was the camp.
Considering, that Tenebra could turn invisible... He was probably long gone by now.
Finally, after a while, I stopped holding back and started laughing.
The dwarf in front of me looked at me with confusion mixed with fear, but I didn't care.
"HAHAHAHAHAAH...!"
I felt cheated.
I hadn't expected this.
I didn't expect that boy to run away from me like that. I didn't even think he could escape, let alone run away like that.
Why didn't I think he could do something like that... Why didn't I think he could use such a straight, simple method?
He had to get off the ship as fast as he could with his weakened, possibly dying body... And the best way he could do that was to go straight out with brute force.
Why didn't I think of that?
Why didn't it occur to me at the beginning, when I saw the room where he was being held captive, the door to the warehouse, and the 'melted' walls and doors like that, that he could do that too?
"Haa..."
When I finally stopped laughing, I took a deep breath and turned my gaze to the floor. Then I clenched my fist and teeth at the same time. I stopped trying to keep my wrinkled features in check as I smiled crookedly.
"Damn... fuck..."
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