The slums of Jabia City was something else.

The despair of people on the streets begging. Waste that hadn’t been collected in weeks, stagnant water pooling in potholes, the greasy residue of cheap cooking oil clinging to crumbling walls. The buildings leaned against each other like drunkards, their walls patched with corrugated metal and stained fabric. Narrow alleys wound between them like veins, barely wide enough for two people to pass shoulder to shoulder.

Yenna stopped at the entrance to one such alley, her nose wrinkling.

"What better place to hide than a slum," she said flatly. "In this type of setting, nobody asks questions. Nobody reports disappearances. The local enforcement probably doesn’t even enter these districts."

Kael was already moving. "Which is exactly why we’re here."

The foreman’s intel—Cassian’s intel, technically—had pointed them toward a specific block. Warehouse 17-C, according to the transport codes the dead man had discussed. Eastern edge of the slum district, near the old water treatment plant that had been abandoned decades ago.

The irony of a human trafficking operation hiding behind abandoned infrastructure wasn’t lost on Kael.

They were twenty meters from the warehouse entrance when Kael stopped.

His head tilted. Just slightly.

"What—" Yenna started.

"Shut up."

She shut up.

Cassian’s hand was already in his pocket, fingers brushing his watch.

Kael counted.

"Cassian?"

"Forty-three seconds," Cassian said quietly. "They attack when we reach the fifteen-meter mark. The Foundation Establishment one on the roof uses a crossbow. The other comes from inside the warehouse after the first volley."

Kael almost laughed. "To someone like Cassian who can see the future and me with incredible senses, could you even call that an ambush?"

"No," Cassian said.

"Then let’s not disappoint them."

They moved.

The first Core Formation operative dropped his concealed weapon—a short sword—and lunged from behind a market stall. He got three steps before Yenna’s hand came up.

Ice erupted as a wave spread outward like a frozen tide. The operative’s legs locked solid. His sword arm froze mid-swing. His eyes went wide behind a mask of frost that crawled across his face in the space of a heartbeat.

The second operative—from the opposite stall—tried to retreat. But he was too slow as the ice wave caught his ankles, pinned him. He managed one choked gasp before he became a statue.

Kael was already past them.

The rooftop operatives opened fire as mana bolts, compressed and unstable, cracked through the air with high-pitched whines. They were aimed at where Kael had been standing, not where he was now.

His gravity sense mapped their trajectories a full second before impact. It felt like child’s play to him.

The third operative came from his left—a woman with a blade, fast and low, targeting his kidney. Kael didn’t dodge. He reached into his pocket and flicked something toward her.

A coin inscribed on both sides with a Barrier Rune—Rank 1, Mid-Grade quality. He’d made it last week during a sleepless night, burning through seven failed attempts before producing something functional.

The coin activated on contact.

A semicircular shield of compressed mana bloomed in front of Kael—The woman’s sword hit the barrier and shivered, vibrating from the impact. Her eyes widened.

Kael closed the distance.

His fist met her face.

The Void Body Refinement did the rest. Tier 3 Early bone density plus the reinforced muscle fibers meant that when Kael punched someone, the structural integrity of their skull became the weakest variable in the equation.

Crack.

The woman’s head snapped backward as her body dropped without a sound.

Kael was already turning toward the fourth operative. This one was smarter—trying to run. He’d gotten maybe six steps before Kael’s hand closed around the back of his neck.

Crunch.

The man’s legs stopped working. Kael released him and let the body fall.

Yenna engaged the fifth—another rooftop ambush, this one dropping from above with dual daggers. She caught him mid-fall with an ice pillar that erupted from the ground like a spear. It punched through his torso and kept going, pinning him to the second floor of a crumbling building.

The first Foundation Establishment operative emerged from the warehouse—a vampire fast, moving with that predatory grace that characterized the bloodline. He didn’t engage Kael or Cassian. He went for Yenna.

He was fast. Faster than the Core Formation fodder. His hands were claws—elongated fingernails reinforced with mana, curving like sickles, aimed directly at Yenna’s exposed back.

She didn’t see him coming.

But good for them, they had Cassian on them who could see the future.

The world stuttered.

Cassian slowed the time as everything seem to suddenly move slowly as he appeared beside the vampire. He just walked, calmly through a window of time that shouldn’t have existed.

His hands closed around the vampire’s head.

Crack.

Time resumed normally.

The vampire’s body dropped. His head lolled at an angle that necks weren’t supposed to achieve. Dead before he hit the ground.

Yenna spun at the sound.

"Did you just—"

"He was behind you," Kael said. "Cassian handled it."

Yenna looked at Cassian.

She said nothing else.

The eighth operative—the Foundation Establishment crossbow user on the rooftop—had apparently decided that eight dead allies was sufficient reason to retreat. By the time Kael scanned for him, the signature was already fading into the distance.

"Pity," Kael said. "But we don’t have time to chase."

Because the warehouse door was open. And inside, illuminated by flickering red runic lights, Kael could see exactly what the foreman’s shipment codes had pointed toward.

Dozens of operatives of the House of Crimson were moving between cages, loading unconscious bodies onto floating platforms.

And at the far end—a formation.

The teleportation archway was identical to the one in Thornwick.

Kael’s jaw tightened.

This wasn’t a local operation. This was a network. Nodes scattered across worlds, each one collecting, each one teleporting, each one feeding something larger that Kael still couldn’t see.

Three guards stood near the formation. All rank 8, armored in dark metal that pulsed with faint enchantments. And two more behind them—Rank 9, cultivation bases like miniature suns compared to the others.

The male rank 9 had a dark aura coiling around him like living shadow.

Thirty civilians huddled in a transport platform beside the formation. Women, children, elderly. Unconscious or too terrified to move.

The formation hummed.

Yenna left the hiding spot.

Ice spears materalized, crystallizing in the air around her like a constellation—launched toward the male Rank 9.

The man sensing the attack raised one hand.

A dark orb materialized in his palm blocking off the spears as every operative in the building turned toward the trio.

"Bullocks, She just couldn’t hold out for a little longer.", Kael sighs.