Chapter 60: Illegal Poacher?

Outside the National High Council Citadel, the scene was pure chaos.

Emergency red lights flashed along the stone pillars, and the wail of citywide sirens echoed across the plaza. Reporters were shouting into cameras, while armored military vehicles rushed through the streets toward District Seven.

Evren and Amber walked quickly down the grand marble staircase, completely calm despite the panic around them.

As they reached the base of the stairs, Evren turned to Amber.

"Take the SUV and go straight back to the hotel. Lock down the penthouse with biometric security, and keep our security detail stationed outside the elevator. Stay with Z."

Amber looked at him, concerned. "What about you? Aren’t you coming back with me?"

"That rift in District Seven has a rare core needed for Zephyra’s Stage Two medicine," Evren explained quietly. "I’m going to get it."

Amber’s eyes widened with understanding. "So that’s why you smiled back in the chamber."

She placed a gentle hand on his arm. "Be careful, Evren. The Council specifically ordered us not to interfere. If they catch you inside, they’ll try to use it against us."

"They won’t catch me," Evren replied with a calm smile. "Get back to the hotel safely."

Amber stepped into the black-and-gold SUV, and the vehicle quickly merged into the outbound traffic.

Evren pulled up the collar of his dark trench coat and blended into the crowds, heading toward the lower industrial zone.

—

Twenty minutes later after using his phone’s navigational app and the road signs, Evren arrived at the edge of District Seven.

The industrial sector was filled with old brick factories, rusted metal pipes, and abandoned freight yards. Police barricades were set up across the main intersection, keeping curious onlookers behind yellow tape.

High above an empty storage yard, a glowing blue spatial portal swirled against the morning sky, humming with low-grade dimensional energy.

Evren didn’t bother trying to push through the police line at ground level. Instead, he slipped quietly into an abandoned four-story brick warehouse behind the storage yard.

Inside the dim building, the passive senses of Kinetic Flow kicked in naturally. His vision effortlessly mapped out the officers’ patrol paths, the sweep of police drone cameras, and the blind angles in the yard below.

Evren walked up the rusted iron stairs to the roof and stepped out onto an industrial crane beam that hung directly above the open storage yard. Looking down from thirty feet above, he waited for the surveillance drones to turn toward the main gate.

The exact second the blind spot opened, Evren stepped off the metal beam.

He dropped straight down like a falling shadow, passing soundlessly through the center of the swirling blue portal mid-air.

Vwoom.

The world shifted, and suddenly Evren landed inside a massive underground cavern.

The air was damp and cold, smelling of wet rock and sulfur. Glowing blue moss grew along the uneven stone walls, providing faint lighting across the cavern floor.

A short distance ahead, a six-man hunting squad was already engaged in combat.

They wore silver-trimmed light armor bearing the crest of a Capital affiliate guild. The squad was made up of a C-Rank swordsman acting as team leader, two D-Rank vanguard brawlers, an archer, a scout, and a young support healer.

They were fighting a pack of five C-Rank stone wolves.

The swordsman swung his blade with decent form, parrying a wolf’s stone-crusted claws while the archer fired mana-infused arrows into the beasts’ flanks.

Suddenly, the young scout glanced over his shoulder and spotted Evren walking casually down the stone path with his hands in his coat pockets.

"Captain! We’ve got an outsider behind us!" the scout yelled, pointing his short dagger.

The squad leader decapitated the last stone wolf, breathing heavily as he wiped dark blood from his steel blade. He turned around, glaring at Evren with hostile eyes.

"Hey! Who the hell authorized you to enter?" the captain barked, gripping his broadsword. "This rift was officially assigned to our guild by the Bureau! Turn around and get the hell out right now!"

"Captain, he can’t leave," the young scout spoke up, gesturing back toward the glowing entrance vortex. "The portal is a one-way threshold. Nobody can exit without a return crystal until the rift boss is dead."

The captain’s jaw tightened, looking Evren up and down with disgust.

"An illegal poacher," the captain sneered. "Listen to me, buddy. The second we clear this boss and the exit opens, I’m personally handing you over to the Bureau enforcers outside. You’ll do five years in a detention cell for unauthorized entry."

The captain took a step forward, pointing his bloody sword tip toward Evren.

"Until this gate is cleared, stay twenty paces behind us. Don’t touch our monsters, don’t get in our way, and don’t even think about touching our boss drops. If you step out of line, we’ll cut you down ourselves. Understand?"

Evren looked at the sword tip with mild indifference. "Understood. Proceed."

The captain scoffed, turning back to his squad. "Keep moving, team! The boss chamber should be right ahead!"

The squad pressed forward through the winding tunnels with Evren walking quietly twenty paces behind them, maintaining a steady pace.

A lone stone wolf that had been hiding in a rocky crevice suddenly lunged straight at Evren from the side, snapping its jagged jaws toward his neck.

Evren didn’t even turn his head.

He casually raised his left hand and flicked the wolf with two fingers.

CRACK!

The wolf’s skull caved in instantly, and the beast was flung thirty feet across the cavern, smashing into the stone wall before crumbling into dust.

Evren continued walking forward without missing a single step.

—

Ten minutes later, the squad reached the end of the cavern.

In the center of a wide rocky chamber stood the rift’s boss... a massive, eight-foot C-Rank Armored Cave Bear covered in thick iron-hard scales.

"Formation B! Frontliners hold the aggro!" the captain shouted.

The fight was messy and drawn out. The two vanguard brawlers took several heavy scratches to their iron shields, but after seven minutes of coordinated attacks, the captain leaped into the air and drove his broadsword straight through the beast’s throat.

THUD!

The giant cave bear collapsed to the ground, dissolving into gray ash and leaving behind a small pile of low-grade mana crystals.

"We did it!" the archer cheered, dropping his bow to catch his breath.

"Good job, everyone," the captain smiled, sheathing his sword. "Pack up the crystals. The exit portal should open any second now."

The squad gathered the loot and waited.

One minute passed.

Two minutes passed.

Nothing happened. The air remained still, and no exit vortex appeared.

"Wait... where’s the exit?" the young healer asked, her voice trembling slightly. "Shouldn’t the gate have opened by now?"

RUMBLE...

The ground beneath their boots suddenly vibrated with a deep, grinding hum.

The solid wall at the end of the chamber suddenly cracked. Two giant stone slabs slid open with a loud screech, revealing a massive archway covered in glowing ancient symbols.

Beyond the archway lay a vast, rectangular sanctuary built from pitch-black obsidian stone.

"What... what is that?" the scout whispered, staring into the dark chamber in awe.

"A hidden secondary rift zone..." the captain muttered, his eyes widening with sudden excitement. "I’ve only read about this in advanced hunter journals. Sometimes low-tier rifts have an undiscovered core vault hidden behind them! There could be ancient relics, high-grade crystal cores, or high-tier blueprints inside!"

The brawlers looked at each other with wide grins. "Captain, if we clear an uncharted secondary zone on a routine C-Rank contract, the guildmaster will promote us to the main strike team!"

"Wait," the young healer hesitated, looking uneasy. "We barely had enough mana potions to finish the bear. Shouldn’t we wait or look for a way out?"

"And let another team come in and claim the discovery credit?" the captain scoffed. "We clear it together. We take the credit together. Everyone agreed?"

The four male hunters nodded eagerly. The healer bit her lip and reluctantly nodded as well.

Completely ignoring Evren, the six hunters walked through the colossal archway and stepped onto the obsidian floor of the hidden sanctuary.

Evren followed quietly, stepping through the threshold right behind them.

The sanctuary was large.

Four massive stone pillars with carved geometric runes supported up the high ceiling. Deep purple crystals covered the dark walls, casting a dim, eerie glow over the chamber.

In the center of the room, a hexagonal stone pedestal stood over a glowing circular array of ancient mana channels carved into the floor.

SLAM!

Behind them, the stone slabs suddenly snapped shut with force. The loud crash echoed through the chamber, making the hunters jump in fright.

"The entrance closed!" the archer gasped, rushing back to shove against the seamless stone wall. "It’s completely sealed!"

"Calm down! It’s just a spatial rift lock," the captain said, trying to keep his voice steady. He pointed toward the central pedestal. "Look at the console in the center. It’s a runic alignment lock. If we synchronize the mana frequency on the dial, the spatial barrier will open."

On top of the pedestal sat a rotating stone disc carved with three concentric rings of glowing runes.

One of the brawlers, an impatient young D-Rank hunter named Dennis, hurried toward the pedestal. "Let me try. I took runic array theory at the academy. It’s just a three-ring frequency lock."

"Dennis, take it slow," the captain cautioned.

Dennis stepped onto the circular platform, grabbed the outer stone ring, and forcefully turned it to align with the glowing blue runes.

Click.

The runes didn’t light up blue.

Instead, the entire floor under Dennis’s boots flared with a blinding red light.

BZZZZZZT!

A high-pitched screech of compressed dimensional energy echoed through the vault.

Before Dennis could even pull his hands back, a thick stone spear stabbed straight up from beneath the floor tiles, impaling him through the chest with terrifying force.

The sharp stone spear punched clean through Dennis’s iron breastplate, lifting his entire body four feet into the air.

Blood sprayed across the glowing red runes like rain.

Dennis’s eyes bulged in shock. He let out a wet, strangled gasp as blood poured from his mouth, his fingers twitching once before his entire body went limp on the spear.

The spear retracted back into the floor with a mechanical click, dropping Dennis’s lifeless body onto the blood-soaked stone with a wet thud.

The vault fell completely silent

The surviving five hunters stood frozen in place, their faces completely drained of color as they stared at the fresh pool of blood expanding across the floor.

The young archer’s knees gave out, his hands shaking violently as he dropped his weapon. In the silence, the scout’s voice trembled in horror: "WHAT... THE... FUCK..."