Chapter 12: Cornered

Rayleigh stood frozen in place, feeling the weight of more than two dozen pairs of eyes staring at him, all of them ready to blast him into oblivion.

Rayleigh was cornered, and he knew it. The feeling was quite familiar. The last time he had felt this cornered was seven years ago, during the trial.

His back had been slammed against a narrow corner where he had no means of escape; the same corner where his sister had also had no means to escape, and now, Rayleigh Pierce found himself in the same situation once again.

Different, but the same.

One of the subordinate agents muttered something into a communication device tightly wrapped around his wrist. "We found him, General."

The top agent of the kill squad was running out of patience. He closed his eyes, tapping into the deepest part of the core of his rune gene, thereby activating his abilities.

The ground beneath Rayleigh groaned as if it were alive. His senses immediately picked up on it.

"I can send you fifty feet underground before you can even think. Do you want to call my bluff and make a move?"

Rayleigh weighed his options carefully. The only safe exit was through the ventilation shaft he had come in through, which he was sure had already been identified by the Silver Corps as his entry point.

He couldn’t escape through it anymore, and even if he could, he still needed to get past these agents.

Realization dawned on Rayleigh. He was done.

None of his abilities could get him out of this situation.

’This can’t be it!’ Rayleigh struggled to come to terms with his defeat. ’I didn’t survive seven years just for it to amount to this!’

"Surrender now, or feel the full force of the Silver Corps on you!"

Rayleigh slowly lifted his hands into the air, his acknowledgement of defeat evident in his eyes. A dejected feeling washed over him as he spoke.

"I surrender."

The next few seconds were a blur of motion—black and silver streaks surrounding and detaining him.

A device was brought out and attached to Rayleigh’s wrist. A locking mechanism clicked into place, and the device wrapped around his arm, concealing his fists completely inside a metal cage.

Rayleigh was escorted through the hallway thereafter.

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Inside a dimly lit room with nothing more than a single light hanging overhead, Rayleigh sat on a metal bench.

The room contained nothing other than the interior of a typical interrogation room; two benches, one for the prisoner and the other for the interrogator, with a single table demarcating the two benches.

Rayleigh glanced at the door, noticing that it was a reinforced, triple-plated steel door, infused with the bones of a Predator-tier beast alongside its shards and minerals.

Reinforced was one way to describe it; almost indestructible was another.

When mankind began traversing the perilous terrain of other planets, they discovered the existence of dangerous alien species, also known as beasts, which they classified accordingly. Some of these beasts possessed bones stronger than most steel from Earth, and they also possessed abilities of their own.

These abilities were located inside the cores of the beasts and, when cultivated, could be used to create highly advanced weapons capable of mimicking the abilities the beasts once possessed.

If an alien creature had an offensive ability, its core would be infused into a weapon designed to deliver damage, such as a Dune Sword.

But when an alien creature possessed a defensive-based ability, its core could be infused into items designed for defense, such as an active barrier.

The door before Rayleigh was infused with a defensive power from a Predator-tier beast.

These beasts were ranked.

Basic beasts.

Advanced beasts.

Intermediate beasts.

Legendary beasts.

Predator beasts.

Apex predator beasts.

Godly beasts.

Primordial beasts.

Celestial beasts.

No human alive had ever come face-to-face with a Celestial beast and lived to tell the tale.

No one knew Celestial beasts existed. Everyone believed the highest tier was the Primordial until they witnessed something far stronger than a Primordial.

The event following the discovery of a Celestial beast on a foreign planet left a sour taste in mankind’s mouth.

That planet had been tagged a no-fly zone centuries ago, and no one, not even the strongest contractors, had been adventurous enough to set foot on that planet ever since.

A systematic chime pulled Rayleigh from his thoughts.

He watched as the steel door opened slowly, and a Silvered agent walked in with a smug look on his face.

"I really wished you had made a move. Breaking your bones would have been an exhilarating experience," the agent mocked. "You won’t die, but the pain you’d feel would be something else."

Rayleigh never understood the drive Silvered agents seemed to get from inflicting pain on people, but then again, he wasn’t surprised. The Silvereds were basically, as he once liked to describe them, the dicks of Skylark.

The agent pulled out a device—it had Rayleigh’s profile displayed vividly across the screen.

"Rayleigh Pierce, 23, human..." The Silvered’s face immediately turned pale. "Non-rune?"

The agent was awash with disbelief. "How did a runeless trashcan like you break into a highly secured facility such as this, break a prisoner out, and steal weapons?!"

"Highly secured?" Rayleigh asked, the mockery dripping from his tone. "Breaking in here has to be, undoubtedly, the easiest thing I have ever had to do in my entire life, and that says a lot because, before this, making an omelette took that spot."

The agent was visibly agitated, but he remained as calm as possible. "The man you broke out, where is he?"

"You failed to catch him. How the hell am I supposed to know his whereabouts?" Rayleigh answered nonchalantly.

"Don’t play with me, Mr. Pierce. If you don’t tell me who employed you to break that prisoner out and steal weapons, you’re going to be in big trouble. What is the name of the man who sent you?"

Rayleigh hummed, pretending to search his memory. "His name is Mr. Why don’t you go kiss my ass."

The agent studied Rayleigh for a while before coming to a conclusion. "You are withholding information because you think there is still a chance for you to escape, aren’t you?"

The agent smiled. "I can assure you, there is no escape. Breaking in might have been a walk in the park, but that is a totally different thing from breaking out. You might as well get comfortable because you will be here a long time."

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