Chapter 180

  At the other end of the corridor, where the dead body of the st guard y sprawled on the floor, a door led into the lounge area. Jake jogged the length of the corridor, stepped over the lifeless body of the bandit he had just killed, and approached the door. Pushing it opeepped inside and paused for a moment to survey the vast room.

  He quickly identified the spot on the wall where the three sub-bosses had hidden the Skeleton Key, recalling the recorded footage he had watched in the security trol room. Jake crossed the lounge and stepped toward the wall. It didn’t take long for him to find the hidden button. When he pressed it, a se of the wall slid open, revealing the front of a small safe embedded within it.

  A touchpad was embedded in the front of the safe. Jake had memorized the fit code Dominic used to unlock the door to the security trol room. He couldn’t help but wonder if the safe was secured with the same code, but he decided against trying it.

  He looked at the safe for a brief moment, evaluating its durability. Jake was fident he could breach it with retive ease. Stepping back, he activated Acid Spit with a thought.

  He felt the mana flowing from the mana pool located in his midse to his mouth through one of the els. A glob of acid formed in his mouth and hovered there, waiting for his and to be released. Thanks to the Quick Charge upgrade for the ability, the entire process was nearly instantaneous.

  Jake aimed at the safe, opened his jaws, and uhe acidic projectile from his mouth. It struck the front wall, spttering acid everywhere. Almost instantly, the metal started to sizzle, sending curls of smoke upward. Thanks to an upgrade called Enhanced Potency, which he had acquired some time ago, his Acid Spit had bee signifitly more powerful, capable of dissolving various metal surfaces with ease.

  Moments ter, a rge hole with melted edges opened up in the front wall of the safe. Jake leaned closer to look inside. Apart from the Skeletohe safe was empty. He slipped his hand through the opening, grasped the key, and swiftly pulled it out. He paused briefly to examihe Skeleton Key lying in his palm.

  The key was rge, though not excessively so. Its only notable feature was the design at the top, shaped like a demon’s head. The head sported two horns curling back along its skull, while the gaping mouth dispyed rows of shark-like teeth. Two small red gems, resembling rubies, glinted in the demon’s eye sockets.

  For a brief moment, Jake sidered how to carry the key. He could hold it in one hand, as it wouldn’t greatly interfere with his climbing hting capabilities. However, he preferred having both hands avaible. In the end, he opted to pce it in his mouth. After all, he didn’t have a throat cavity, so he wouldn’t actally swallow it. As long as he kept his mouth shut, the key would be securely stashed away. He just o avoid using Acid Spit for the time being to preveing the key inside his mouth.

  After that, he left the lounge and headed for the stairs leading to the sed floor. When he reached the bodies of the guards he had killed he door to the outside, he halted. After sying the two of them, he had detached his bded tentacles. They couldn’t survive on their own, and when separated from his body, cut off from the mana that nourished them, they quickly turned into small piles of dust, as always happened. Once separated, they withered, shrinking in size several times, leaving behind nothing more than small piles of dust.

  When Miller tried to figure out what had happened inside HQ, he would surely notice the evidence. While he might not be able to identify it and learn what those remnants were, Jake still wao make the residue as unnoticeable as possible. To that end, he took a moment to scatter the dust piles, spreading them across the area to make the residue barely visible. On the sed floor, he repeated this process with the piles of dust the tendrils had turned into after beiached from his body, carefully spreading the residue across the entire width of the corridor.

  Before returning to the roof, he took a moment to think. One body y in the corridor on the sed floor, and another was in the security trol room. Several more bodies were on the first floor. He had take care not to use Cws, Smashfists, or any other abilities that could expose him. His goal was to make it seem as if all the guards had been killed by knives, so he solely employed Bded Tentacles, always ensuring the wounds looked as if they had been inflicted by a human rather than a powerful monster.

  When the leader of the gang tried to determine what had happened in HQ, his prime suspects would undoubtedly be his three closest subordinates: Dominic, Minh, and Patrick. Besides him, only they had access to the security trol room. He would likely deduce that one of them had lured the guard at the door into the security trol room, where the assaint had killed him. The sed victim was the guard in the corridor. Following that, the assaint desded the stairs, systematically taking out all the guards one by one.

  Perhaps, Miller would also suspect that the culprit wasn’t w alone. He might pte the possibility that two of his sub-bosses were w together. Alternatively, he might think that the culprit enlisted help from one of the guards on the first floor to assist in killing the others, and afterward, the assaint elimihat guard as well to leave no witnesses.

  Sure enough, Dominic, Minh, and Patrick would insist they had no part in the massacre that had occurred at HQ. Sihey weren’t friends and were pletely terrified of Miller, the three of them would point fingers at one another, desperately trying to deflect suspi away from themselves.

  One of them might even point out that the safe had been breached with some kind of acid, asserting it as evidence of their innoce. However, Miller would ter that the safe hadn’t been opened simply by entering the code for a reason: it was likely deliberately staged to make it seem like an outsider had breached their headquarters.

  So the three sub-bosses would cim that an intruder infiltrated their base, somehow managing to sneak in without beied by the guards stationed everywhere, as well as the top-notch, super-sensitive mae gun turrets, which Jake knew from experience was nearly impossible. Then the culprit somehow hacked into the security trol room, evadiion by the guards inside HQ. Afterward, they killed everyone inside and, to save time, broke open the safe instead of hag into it.

  However, to Miller, this version would sound far too unrealistic for him to accept. In his opinion, a much more pusible sario would be that one of his sub-bosses had stolen the Skeleton Key and made a clumsy attempt to make it look like an intruder was responsible. After that, the three sub-bosses would simply start pointing fingers at each other, trying to divert suspi away from themselves. In the process, they would iently reveal a lot of their own dirty secrets, such as Minh spying on the base leaders and Patrick being critiiller behind his back.

  Ultimately, all evidence would suggest that one or possibly two of his closest subordinates were responsible for stealing the Skeleton Key and staging it to look like an outsider was responsible. Sininic, Minh, and Patrick would deny their involvement, Miller would likely choose to torture each of them in order to uhe truth of the situation.

  A detective with a sharp mind, one capable of notig all the details and quickly pieg everything together, might have been able to solve this puzzle. However, such detectives existed only in fi, not in the real world. At first g would certainly appear that his sub-bosses were the ones who stole the key.

  After t his closest subordinates for a while, Miller might eventually realize that none of them had stolen the Skeleton Key after all. However, it was impossible to tell how long it would take for him to e to this clusion. By that time, Jake might already be preparing to un atta their base. Or perhaps one of his sub-bosses might fess to stealing the key simply t the suffering to an end.

  Jake’s gaze fell upon the remnants of Kus’s assault rifle. Jake remembered biting into it, splintering the on into several pieces. He hadn’t inteo grab the on with his teeth—it was an instinctive rea he couldn’t resist. When the on had been thrust in front of him, Jake simply couldn’t help but bite through it. Now, however, it posed a bit of a problem. He wao frame the massacre as the act of human assaints, but it was clear at first ghat no human could have inflicted such damage on the on. Jake o minimize any evidence linking him to the guards’ deaths. So, he made the decision to take the remnants of the rifle with him. He bent down, picked up the pieces from the floor, and clutched them tightly in one hand. It was the better option. While Miller could quickly notice the destroyed rifle, his mind might not eveer the absence of the on, too stuo fully and immediately process the massacre that had take HQ.

  Before stepping onto the rooftop, Jake activated Cloak, being invisible once more. After the skirmish at HQ, his mana reserves were critically low. While he was eager to get out of the bandit base as quickly as possible, he khat rushing would be terproductive. To avoid dete by the turrets, he o move slowly to prevent causing any disturbances in the air that the 360-degree sers on those turrets could immediately notice.

  He cautiously approached the edge of the roof and took a moment to survey the area. He noticed that Dominic, Minh, and Patrick were located in different parts of the base. They obviously weren’t stantly together, which perfectly aligned with Jake’s pn. As he tio s his surroundings, he saw that Miller’s vehicle was still missing, suggesting that the base leader had not returned yet.

  Jake also noticed something intriguing. The damaged maes that Minh had designated for repair from the security trol room were now encased iransparent blue boxes. When he focused on one, he sarogress bar that dispyed the time left for the structure to be fully restored.

  Jake then g the watchtowers overlooking the perimeter walls of the base. The turrets positioop the towers had a clear view of the entire base and the surrounding area. The alert lights were green, indig that none of the turrets were currently aware of his presence. Jake inteo keep it that way. So instead of jumping off the roof of the two-story building, he crawled down the wall, moving slowly and carefully to avoid creating any air disturbahat could catch the turrets’ attentioill gripped the pieces of the broken rifle in one hand, but it didn’t hinder him much.

  When he reached the ground, he began moving toward the gates, which still hadn’t been repaired. He wao get out of the base as quickly as possible, but he knew he o avoid dete. He wished he could have deactivated the turrets because doing so would have allowed him to aplish two goals at once: facilitate a quicker escape and make it look like it was an outsider who had stolen the Skeleton Key.

  Jake was vihat Miller would attribute the theft of the key to one of his sub-bosses, who then, in Miller’s opinion, tried to pin the bme on an outsider by breaking into the safe instead of entering the code. Deactivating the turrets would have aligned perfectly with this pn because it would have suggested that the actual thief had disabled them to make their getaway faster, further supp the idea of an outsider’s involvement.

  Oher hand, since Jake didn’t know how clever Miller actually was, he might have refrained from deactivating them after all, because it might have made Miller actually buy into the narrative his sub-bosses would push—that whoever infiltrated the HQ had e from outside—while Jake wahe bme to fall on the sub-bosses themselves.

  What would really support Miller’s version that his subordinates were responsible for the massacre at HQ, as well as the disappearance of the Skeleton Key, was the fact that all the guards had been killed in cle bat, without having the ce to fire a single shot. This would indicate that whoever elimihe guards was well-known at HQ, which expined why the guards had been rexed and allowed the assaint to approach without raising any suspi.

  Sure, there would still be lots of questio in Miller’s mind—why the culprit did this and why they didn’t do that—but all this fusion would only add to the perplexity of the situation, which would only work to Jake’s advahe more time Miller spent trying to piece together what had actually happe HQ, the better it was for Jake.

  His line of thought suddenly came to a halt as he realized something: his mana level was critically low. The st time his mana dropped to this level, Cloak had shut down to serve what was left. That meant it was about to happen again.

  He immediately stopped moving. He was still halfway across the base, too far away from the gates. If he tio move, Cloak would deactivate in a few seds, exposing him to the guards and turrets surrounding him. He was stranded in the heart of the bandit base!

  Even remaining still drained mana, though at a slower rate. It wouldn’t be long before Cloak shut down pletely. Ag fast, he gnced around. To his right were several tents. Without wasting a moment, Jake made his way toward them. Just as he reached the one—a rger tent that provided enough space to stand—Cloak deactivated.

  Just a fra of a sed before he became visible, he dashed ihe tent, pushing the fp aside with one hand. He noticed that none of the turrets’ green lights had switched te, which meant “Caution”, suggesting that, fortunately, none of the turrets had detected him. However, he wasn’t sure about the guards. That’s why immediately after entering the rge tent, he spun around toward the entraraining to listen for any sounds that might indicate he had been noticed.

  However, no suspicious sounds from outside reached him. It looked like he was lucky enough to have avoided dete. But what was he going to do now? Without Cloak, slipping out of the base unnoticed was literally impossible. Was all his meticulous pnning to steal the Skeleton Key and frame Miller’s three sub-bosses for nothing?

  Suddenly, a sharp gasp echoed from behind. Jake realized he wasn’t alone ient!