Chapter 90: The Blueprint

The biometric scanner on the pristine vault door blinked with a stubborn, glowing red light.

’It was designed to open only to the genetic signature of its creators, or as the novel’s plot originally dictated the blood of the destined Hero.’

Draven had neither.

He placed his bare hand flat against the cold metal alloy. He closed his eyes.

He didn’t push raw mana into the door. That would trigger the internal lockdown.

Instead, Draven pushed a hyper-concentrated, microscopic sliver of Vector Manipulation directly through the steel casing.

He felt the physical forces holding the heavy locking pins in place. He felt the tension of the internal springs.

’Reverse,’ Draven commanded.

He forcibly shifted the kinetic vectors of the internal mechanism.

Inside the door, solid steel pins were violently dragged backward against their own locking grooves.

CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.

The red light flickered, short-circuited, and turned green. The heavy blast door hissed, breaking a seal that had lasted for decades, and popped open.

Draven slipped inside.

The vault was surprisingly small, barely the size of a closet. In the center sat a single steel pedestal.

Resting on top of it was a sleek, Old World USB drive and a small, rectangular playback device. There were a few other sealed metallic cases lining the shelves.

Draven didn’t hesitate. He didn’t plug the device in.

He didn’t care to watch the final message of the dead scientists right now.

He simply swept his hand across the pedestal and the shelves. In a flash of spatial mana, every single item in the vault vanished into his inventory.

’No time to waste on the words of dead men!’

DING!

[System Alert: Destiny Intervention Complete.]

[Target: Hero’s Destined Opportunity Stolen.]

[Reward: 50,000 System Points & Blueprint Integration.]

Draven smiled coldly. He turned on his heel and stepped back out into the chaotic darkness of the server room.

The battle was deafening.

The fifty-foot-high ceiling was raining acid and smaller spiders, while the colossal Rank-A Hive Mother tore through the rusted server racks like they were paper.

But the squad was holding the line with terrifying efficiency.

"Three dropping on the right flank!" Natalie shouted over the gunfire, her eyes squeezed shut as she tracked the chaotic mana signatures.

"I’ve got them!" Estella responded. She raised her stardust-conduit staff.

Instead of a massive, room-destroying explosion, she fired three highly concentrated, fist-sized bolts of purple energy.

They hit the falling spiders mid-air, detonating them cleanly without touching the ceiling.

"Hold the line, Bram!" Aegon roared.

"I’m holding!" Bram gritted his teeth. The massive boy was practically buried under the Hive Mother’s assault.

The giant beast slammed a spiked, hairy leg against his tower shield.

The kinetic force shattered the concrete beneath Bram’s boots, driving him to one knee, but he refused to yield an inch.

Standing right behind him, Neville clapped his hands together.

"Holy Mend!" Neville shouted.

A stream of golden light washed over Bram, instantly knitting the strained muscles in his back and reinforcing his stamina.

The puppet was playing his part flawlessly.

"Left flank is getting crowded!" Cole yelled, racking the bolt of his rifle. He fired a heavy caliber round that tore clean through two smaller spiders.

"Leave them to me!" Lyra laughed maniacally.

She was sliding across the rusted floor, her dual hand-cannons flashing as she unloaded round after round into the darkness.

A spider lunged from the shadows, aiming directly for Lyra’s blind spot.

It never made it.

Nyx dropped seamlessly from a rusted beam above, her twin daggers sinking cleanly into the spider’s neck.

She twisted the blades, killing it silently, before melting back into the shadows.

"Reina! Now!" Aegon ordered.

Reina stepped out from behind Bram’s shield. She swung her massive ice axe, slamming the blade into the metal floor.

A wave of freezing frost erupted outward.

It caught the Hive Mother’s two front legs, instantly encasing them in thick blocks of solid ice, pinning the colossal beast to the ground.

The Hive Mother shrieked in fury.

It reared its bloated head back, its mandibles expanding as it prepared to spit a massive, room-clearing wave of corrosive acid.

"Lucien!" Aegon yelled.

"Already there," Lucien’s calm voice echoed from above.

The duelist had used the chaos to scale a towering stack of fallen server racks.

As the Hive Mother reared its head back to spit, Lucien launched himself into the air.

He didn’t go for a fatal blow. He went for the opening.

Lucien’s slender rapier flashed like a streak of silver lightning. He plunged the blade directly into the massive cluster of the Hive Mother’s violet, glowing eyes.

The beast unleashed a deafening, agonizing screech. It thrashed wildly, blinded, the acid spilling harmlessly onto the ceiling above.

Lucien kicked off the beast’s face, backflipping safely to the ground.

Aegon didn’t waste the opening.

"Crucible!" Aegon roared.

The Vanguard leader’s body erupted in blinding, crimson steam as he pushed his physical limits. His spear ignited with a roaring torrent of Blood Fire.

Aegon sprinted forward, stepped onto Bram’s raised shield, and used the massive boy as a springboard. Aegon launched himself twenty feet into the air.

He brought the Blood Fire spear down with devastating force, driving the burning blade straight through the top of the blinded Hive Mother’s skull.

The spear pierced its brain, pinning its massive head to the metal floor.

The Hive Mother twitched once, let out a low, gurgling hiss, and died.

Without the command of their mother, the remaining smaller spiders panicked and scattered, retreating into the deep ventilation shafts.

Silence fell over the ruined server room, broken only by the heavy breathing of eleven teenagers.

"Is it... dead?" Natalie asked, opening her eyes.

Aegon ripped his spear out of the beast’s skull, wiping the corrosive blood off the shaft. The crimson fire faded from his body.

"It’s dead," Aegon confirmed, exhaling a long breath.

He looked around at the squad.

Estella was leaning on her staff.

Cole was reloading.

Lucien was calmly wiping down his rapier.

They had just killed a Rank-A Boss monster without a single casualty.

Draven stepped out of the shadows, clapping slowly.

"Flawless execution, Captain," Draven praised smoothly, rejoining the group. "The formations held quite wonderfully. The Vanguard would be proud of your feats."

"We all did our part," Aegon smiled, clapping Bram on the shoulder. He then looked at Neville. "Good healing, Hennessey. We couldn’t have held the chokepoint without you."

"I am just glad to be of service," Neville bowed his head humbly, hiding the ancient intelligence behind his blue eyes.

’Well, currently he is just working on his Holy Magic. That’s what the story we are going with right now. He was captured by the Cult and we needed to show how genuine our story is. The current Neville is stronger than the one who is dead.’

Draven looked at the massive dead spider, then casually glanced toward the empty biometric vault in the shadows.

He had the Hero’s destiny safely tucked inside his spatial ring.

He had fifty thousand System points ready to spend.

And his squad was rapidly evolving into an elite Vanguard unit.

"Let’s harvest the core," Draven instructed, pulling out a carving knife.

"Then we map the rest of this bunker and get out of the dark."