Chương 68: The Immortal

[Maya's POV]

What is he doing here?

Can he take care of them all by himself?

Will he be okay?

What if I get caught because he gets caught?

Questions spun around my head like a hamster running on his wheel.

Handing me a key which I definitely would've also found if I had more time in the bedroom — he told me to leave by myself in order to expose the baron.

I couldn't tell if he was being brave or foolish but when I saw that door blast open, almost hitting me by the way (Bell should've warned me), with a single motion, he painted the entire hallway red.

'He'll be fine,' I told myself as I ran down the stairs, careful not to crash into one of the guards who was running up to join the battle.

'He defeated a demon before. He has a demon curse mark. He's an Agnus. He... he'll be fine,' I tried my hardest to convince myself as I ran to the room he had informed me about.

Pushing the key into the hole, I twisted it and was immediately greeted by a metallic and cold smell as the door opened.

"What... the..."

The outside of the door was wooden but that was just a disguise; it was an extremely thick metal door that looked like it was capable of stopping even the most powerful mage from breaking into it.

I looked around the room and saw that the walls were also thick metal walls.

"This looks like I just infiltrated a bank," I said as I stepped forward.

I noticed that my ability was forcefully turned off as soon as my body enter the room.

"A mana-canceling room," I uttered in annoyance. "The bane of my existence."

There was nothing in the room except this giant safe which was as tall as the tallest man in the world and looked like even a diamond drill wouldn't be able to make a dent in it.

"What a conveniently placed safe. This must be where all the goods are hidden," I commented the obvious as I approached it cautiously.

It most likely wasn't a trap but better safe than sorry.

"No lock," I said, realizing that the key in my hand couldn't be used to open the safe. "No number combination. Just a keycard reader."

Where else would you keep an important keycard than on your body? Meaning that it's on the baron right now and if I wanted access to whatever important items he was keeping in this safe, I would have to steal it from him.

"No wonder he left his key in his bedroom and made it so easily accessible. It's useless without the keycard anyways," I sighed as I kicked the safe in frustration.

I was so close to the news report of the century and yet, every time I took a step forward, it was like another step is added.

Tilting my head up in the direction of where Bell was fighting by himself, I wondered if I should head there and check up on him, see if he was okay, and if he needs it, help him.

But then I looked back down at the safe and remembered that if I just got into this safe, I'd be able to make up for the loss of the article I was going to release on Diana and Bell, their relationship, and their secrets.

Which option should I choose?

Option one, which was the morally correct choice to make.

'But he was the one who said he was going to keep them distracted for me. He sounds confident in his ability to do so. I should trust his words,' I convinced myself.

Then there was option two, the selfish choice.

'He did send me off on a mission to acquire the evidence we both want,' I reminded myself, licking my lips.

"...Sorry Bell. I promise I'll be quick," I muttered as I rushed out of the room and my body returned to its invisible state.

I rushed down to the bottom floor and began frantically looking for the door to the basement which I knew was where the baron was conducting his project due to my eavesdropping.

'Nope, not here.'

'Why is there a random empty room here? And the window is left open too.'

'Why is this mansion so darn massive?'

In a full sprint, I was checking every door, only slowing down to a complete temporary halt when a random group of guards suddenly appeared before me in a rush to join the battle on the top floor.

From the sound of it, the screams, and the clanging noises that I could hear echoes of, I was confident that Bell was still holding his own.

'I knew I made the correct decision. Good luck my partner in crime,' I stated while sending him a virtual fist of encouragement.

I opened the door to a room that had nothing but a grand piano in it. I was about to close it but saw a door inside the room which didn't look like it led to a bathroom or a closet of some sort.

Dashing to the door, I opened it and was greeted by a set of stairs.

I thought the cold metallic smell from earlier was powerful but the stench that struck my nostrils made me want to vomit.

I held my mouth shut as I slowly made my way down the steps, keeping my head down, my eyes glued onto the floor.

As I reached the ground, hesitantly, I looked up and immediately, I gagged.

I've seen little things in my life that I wasn't supposed to see. I've heard a lot of secrets meant to be kept between a small group of people.

I may be young but I've experienced a lifetime's worth of the dark but truthful side of the world.

However, none of them came close to how gruesome and heart-wrenching my immediate impression of the basement was.

'He's... he's a monster!' I internally screamed, feeling a sudden desire to kill the baron.

I understood why Pesha was obsessed with revenge.

I was angered by the fact that the police of the city were in the palm of a man capable of such cruel acts.

I was saddened by the look of all the people here suffering but it felt even more powerful when some of them looked my age, stripped naked down to their bare skin which had marks of bruises and wounds that hadn't completely healed yet.

A lot of them looked like their minds had been killed off while their body was barely holding on for tomorrow.

'Bastard!'

I kept my mouth shut by force and if I didn't, I would've definitely instinctively screamed out the worst insults I was capable of formulating.

I wanted to take pictures but I didn't bring my phone or a camera with me.

'I'll be back to document this later after the baron is arrested for his wrongdoings,' I told myself.

At that exact moment, my heart let out this beat of guilt but I quickly suppressed, convincing myself that I was doing it for the good of the people.

'The people deserve to know what's going on here. They deserve to see the baron for the monster that he is. I'm... I'm doing this for them. Not for me. Yeah... that's right.'

Convinced about my purpose, I began heading deeper into the basement.

There were three other sections from what I could see standing there.

I went to the room directly across and was baffled by what I was looking at.

Dim, flickering candlelights cast eerie shadows of unknown figures across the walls.

When I looked to see what objects were making these strange shapes, it was an unsettling amalgamation of laboratory equipment and a twisted workshop of horrors with purposes that I couldn't fathom at first glance.

There were shelves on the walls adorned with glass vials and arcane instruments that contained strange luminescent fluids and grotesque organic samples.

'What in the world is he doing in this room?' I pondered.

There were cracked and weathered books on a desk where I imagined the baron sat and worked from when he was in this room.

'Are those forbidden texts? Is this the dark arts?' I wondered.

At the center of the room was this magic spell so complex that I couldn't even fathom how long it took to create.

The purpose of the spell was even harder to know but I imagined it had to be something twisted.

But I did know that the baron wasn't in this room so I went to the room on the right.

For some reason, other than the presence of the people in the cages, I could only sense two other presences in the basement and one of them was in the room to the right and the other was in the room to the left.

The presence was far too weak to be the baron so I could only assume that they were his victims of some sort.

'He must be suppressing his presence. Perhaps to keep himself hidden due to the alarm blasting throughout the entire mansion,' I hypothesized.

'Fuck!' I screamed. I anticipated something twisted to reveal itself when I walked into the room but that still wasn't enough to prepare me for it.

There was a naked girl tied to this spinning wheel and she had fresh wounds. Her private part looked like it had been burned and she had several of her teeth removed with the bloodied pliers on the mobile table.

She was whimpering, scared, and tired but was unable to even speak a word because her tongue was missing.

'How long has she been here?'

By the looks of it, she had been here for quite some time. Perhaps even a week.

There was a bed in the corner of the room that smelled so putrid that I didn't want to get close.

I assumed that was where the baron took his victims and had his way with their bodies in regard to sexual intercourse.

This room seemed to serve two purposes. To satisfy his libido and to torture his victims.

I wanted to free the girl, I wanted to give her a hug, but I needed to be in and out of the basement as soon as possible.

I was here for the keycard only.

'Stay focused,' I told myself as I entered the last room.

This was the bloodiest room of the three.

There was a chair in the middle with a dude strapped onto it. Remember the mindless people in cages I was speaking about earlier? He was just like them and if anything, he was in the worst shoes.

His chest was opened up and I could see his literal heart pounding.

A second man with greasy blonde hair was in the room whose mana I couldn't sense even as I stood before him, he was pacing around in a lab coat while drinking a glass of wine.

'No, that isn't wine. That's blood,' I realized my mistake as I looked a little closer to the color and texture.

I discovered in that very moment that the baron consumes his victims as if they are his meal.

I needed to get out of his presence as soon as I could. I saw in his coat pocket, the shape of a keycard, the item I was here to steal.

Slowly, I approached him, waiting for him to come to a complete stop.

I held my breath, I slowed down my heartbeat, I was suppressing my presence even though it wasn't possible to sense it when I was invisible anyway.

That's how terrified I was of getting caught.

He walked over to the dude in the chair and using a scalpel, he cut open a fresh wound and allowed the blood to pour into his cup.

I wanted to attack him right then and there but could sense that he was out of my league.

'Get the keycard. Slowly,' I told myself as I dug two fingers into his pocket.

Before he was able to notice, I pulled the card out and quickly stuffed it into my pocket which also turned it invisible, a feature of my ability.

Turning around, I began heading back from where I came.

"Did you really think I wouldn't notice the vibration of the pool of blood on the floor?" asked the dark voice behind me.

Before I could even understand where I went wrong, something slammed into me, deactivating my invisibility.

I flew into the air and crashed into the wall.

Laying down on the floor, seething in pain, I couldn't help but shake uncontrollably as I watched the man in the lab coat approach me with eight giant tentacles that appeared out of nowhere from his back.

Two of them wrapped around my arms and elevated my body up into the air.

His smile reached all the way to his ears and his eyes that were behind his thick scientist goggles were small but sharp.

His face looked youthful but oddly looked like it wasn't real skin.

"Hello. Nice to meet you. You may know me as Baron Gabriel Webmour but I prefer you call me the Immortal," he introduced himself.