Chapter 15: Going Deeper
As soon as the silence caused by the power outage descended upon the hall, the sound strings within Max's vision began to tremble. And a few seconds later, the tremble grew to be a quake, which then became a violent convulsion.
Travis had sown seeds of chaos in the form of erratic sound frequencies that traveled and kept bouncing against the walls. As to what the sounds were, Max could only guess.
Influenced by these sounds, people began freaking out. The guards had entered the hall, their hands trained on the laser guns in their holsters. Some of them were busy trying to calm everyone down, while some kept their eyes vigilant, looking for the culprit of the power outage.
Well, the culprit was already on his way toward the door leading to the emergency staircase. With Max in tow.
But right before both of them reached the blue door, Dylan paused. He glanced around as if expecting someone to appear. Max had already anticipated it, so he didn't question Dylan's action.
All of a sudden, a woman in a guard's outfit approached them from the hall, which made Dylan sigh in relief.
The woman nodded at them before Dylan continued moving toward the emergency door. He opened it and allowed Max and the woman to enter before he closed the door. After that, the three descended the staircase.
Along the way, the woman asked, "So, you're the new guy?"
Max's Iris transcribed her words before he answered. [That's me. I'm Max.]
They didn't stop moving as she introduced herself. "My name's Maya. Welcome to the crew."
She was the member of the heist crew who had been planted into the building that morning. Using her Talent in light mana to disguise herself, she had managed to infiltrate the part of the bank near the vault to transmit information to Lukas over the afternoon. This gave Lukas a picture as to which areas Max and Dylan should avoid, as they had guards stationed there at certain points in time. Some guards also did patrols every now and then, but Maya had obtained their schedules. In addition, she had made contact with a few of these guards via her Iris, giving Lukas access to their Irises.
Around five minutes ago, she had just been relieved from her shift. And even though the situation above had turned chaotic due to the power outage, they knew the bottom floor, especially the sections near the vault, would always have guards with their schedules unchanged. This was due to the anti-electric field reinforcement put in place on the door and walls surrounding the vault room.
A few seconds later, the three arrived at the door of the floor where the vault was located. Max made sure to keep his Iris on as Dylan prepared to push the door open.
Back in The Revolutionaries' HQ, Lukas was observing the screen showing the map of the floor. On it, a couple red dots were moving down the hallway behind the emergency door. As the dots passed by the door, Lukas readied himself.
A few seconds later, Max's Iris received a new text from Lukas.
[Now!]
Dylan and Maya had also received the same message on their Iris, but in audio form. Instantly, Dylan gently pushed the door open and waited until Max and Maya passed through it. Lukas then sent another message.
[Five meters to the right, and then turn left.]
The three did exactly that, but before they turned, they got another instruction.
[Two guards ahead, but don't worry. They're supposed to turn around right about now.]
Max, Dylan, and Maya turned left and glimpsed the backs of two guards making a right turn at the end of the hallway.
[Your path is in the opposite direction of those two, so keep moving until I tell you to stop.]
The three walked quietly ahead and turned to the left at the end of the hallway. Behind them, the two guards had rounded a corner, receding from their view.
[Wait for a bit until I tell you to move.]
Lukas must have been waiting for the moment where both the stationary and patrolling guards were turned away from the path the three were going to take. About twenty long seconds later, Lukas finally gave them a go ahead.
The group walked ahead carefully, keeping themselves from rushing despite the adrenaline pumping inside their system. This was a little bad for Max's health—he could feel mana starting to act up around his heart. Dylan could feel this, so he put a hand on his shoulder and smiled reassuringly.
Nami also did her best to keep Max calm. 'It's going to be fine. Breathe in, breathe out.'
Max then tried to focus more on his breathing and less on his surroundings. He decided to put his utmost trust on Dylan and Maya. The path was quite long, so they had to traverse it for more than a minute.
But suddenly, about three-fourth of the way, Max spotted the sound strings quiver slightly from the left. Half a second later, he received a message from Lukas.
[A guard suddenly left his post for some reason. They're coming from that left turn ahead of you.]
Maya nudged Dylan's elbow. "I've got this," she whispered before raising her hand and applying an invisibility technique around the two guys.
Max didn't want to switch to his mana sight, so he couldn't see how the mana waves were being manipulated by the light mage. It didn't matter anyway; he didn't need to learn how it worked since he already had his own invisibility technique.
Dylan and Max could feel a faint breeze of mana crawling up their bodies, but nothing in their sight changed. However, they knew that should the guard come near them, the invisibility technique would prevent them from being seen.
The three then resumed their walk. A few seconds later, Max could see the sound strings shaking from behind. That must be the guard. However, the fact that the sound strings didn't become more intense indicated that they really were invisible at the moment.
It took less than half a minute for them to reach the end of the hallway. On the right was a door which Dylan immediately opened.
There was a guard inside the small room behind the door. But before he could shout or raise his gun, Dylan knocked him out by tasing him—zapping him from a distance. The door closed behind Maya just as the guard's body plopped on the ground.
Right next to the passed out guard was another door. This time, it was locked.
But ain't no lock could hold Max back.
He immediately approached the door and noticed that the lock had a similar mechanism as the one at Daryl's Magic Barrell.
This would be his first time lockpicking several times in a day, and that included cracking the vault later.
After receiving his gloves back from Dylan, he immediately got to work. He switched to his mana sight and identified the mana signature the electric mana conductor gave off after being exposed to the same people's mana over and over. While Dylan and Maya stood watch, he began shaping the mana waves in front of him in a certain way that fit the 'slots' within the conductor's mana signature.
About fifteen seconds later, the door got unlocked. It was actually quite a long time for his standard, since the mana signature's slots had very tiny and subtle differences from each other, owing to the multiple people whose mana could fit into these slots.
Max didn't open the door right away. He stepped to the side and allowed Dylan to take the lead. The man himself was actually seen glancing at Max in a curious way, probably wondering how the heck he managed to deal with the lock.
Dylan didn't immediately open the door this time. He picked up the fainted guard's body and held it in front of his own body. And just like he expected, he was immediately welcomed into the vault room with a few flying knives.
A mage was waiting inside the vault room. A force mage, to be precise. With his trained reaction speed, the mage was able to detect the presence of Max's Mana Regulator and act fast enough to prevent Dylan from entering by throwing his knives. With their proficiency in controlling kinetic mana, a force mage would never miss their target. Unless of course, their target was protected by a meat shield. Which was the case this time.
Three knives were now planted in the guard's chest, blood spurting out of the wounds.
With Max standing to the side, he was safe from the mage's line of stabby stabs. Dylan didn't give the mage time to retrieve his knives before advancing forward. He kept his meat shield as he ran ahead.
Just as he was about to shoot a lightning bolt, he felt his meat shield pushing back against his body. But before the mage managed to grow enough kinetic energy to send him flying backward, Dylan shoved the guard's body to the side.
It was that very body that ended up flying instead. The kinetic mana was applied to the poor guard and not Dylan himself, after all.
Now that Dylan had a clear view of the mage, he didn't waste time as he finally shot a lightning bolt. However, the mage was fast enough to evade being hit on his center; the bolt ended up injuring his shoulder. His right hand then stretched, recalling his knives back from the guard's body, while his left hand did a slapping motion.
The slapping motion was directed at Dylan, whose body was suddenly shoved to the side, right onto the path of the returning knives.
Just before the knives managed to stab his back, he flipped midair and managed to catch two of the knives. Though he had no choice but to grit his teeth as one knife sank into his upper left arm.
He eventually landed, and then used the momentum from his earlier flip to throw the two knives toward the mage. But not before fueling them with high voltage of electricity.
The knives traveled at great speed, startling the mage. He managed to deflect one using his kinetic mana, but one successfully pierced his abdomen. His body immediately started convulsing due to the high amount of electricity lingering on the knife's blade.
This time though, it was not a mere tasing. Dylan had employed high enough voltage to electrocute the guy, effectively killing him. Wouldn't want the government's puppet to report back about today's incident, after all.
Dylan took a deep breath as he looked down at his injured arm. Suddenly, Maya appeared by his side carrying Max's jacket. She was going to take out the knife and stop the bleeding by tying the jacket around his arm.
Max himself was already walking toward the big circular metal vault on the far end of the room. Along the way, he glanced at the guard's probably-dead body and then at the mage's definitely-dead body. His eyes looked apathetic, as if it wasn't his first time seeing such a scene.
He finally stopped in front of the vault to observe the locks.
Nami suddenly conveyed to him, 'Back in my world, mages would begin their cultivation path with a ceremony and a test to see if they could be accepted in the academy of their choosing. But I guess for you, there's nothing better than robbing a bank to start your journey.'
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone