Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2829

The familiar lobby of the government compound was uncharacteristically empty... except for the corpses.

The walls were cracked and riddled with holes. The furniture was destroyed. The floor and the ceiling were splattered with blood.

Jet regarded the scene of devastation with a distant expression. It seemed like there had been a firefight here recently... mundane soldiers had clashed with each other at first, and were then wiped out by the Awakened. The battle had moved on deeper into the building since then.

Judging by the sounds and the mild tremors running through the floor, only sporadic skirmishes were still happening on the upper floors of the compound, while most of the violence was happening underground.

In all the years since its establishment, the government complex in NQSC had never been breached — yet now, it seemed to have fallen.

However, the compound had not been attacked from outside. The scene of the lobby told Jet that much... it had been compromised from within.

The thralls of Asterion who had been hidden among the government personnel must have finally turned on those of their comrades who still remained loyal to the Human Domain. The Dreamspawn was tired of waiting and had the means to take control, since most of humanity had already fallen to his plague... so, he gave his servants a command to finish the job forcefully. Frowning in displeasure, Jet made her way into the depths of the compound. She grimaced as she walked, the pain of her burns radiating across her body like heat. Her wounds were painful, but not life-threatening. Even if they were, Jet was not quite alive, so they would not have threatened her existence. Still, she wished that Nephis would heal them, already... sadly, Nephis could not heal every minor scrape. If she did, she would have been overcome by an endless, relentless agony. So, Jet had to endure the pain until her Transcendent body naturally repaired itself in a few days. Cursing quietly, she made her way forward.

The emergency systems of the complex had been shut down, so the elevators weren't working. The stairwells had become strategic avenues for control over the building — most of them were in the hands of the turncoats, who were besieging the few underground levels where the remaining loyalists had barricaded themselves.

Jet wanted to help, but knew that revealing herself would only bring death and destruction upon them. So, she simply passed through the closed doors of an elevator and drifted down its dark shaft as a wraith.

The deeper she went, the louder the sounds of the battle were.

Eventually, she exited the shaft on one of the deepest levels of the government complex.

The turncoats seemed to have retreated from here temporarily, leaving behind dozens of corpses. Each of the dead men had been killed by one precise shot that struck the weak points of their armor with eerie precision.

The floor was slick with blood.

Jet coalesced into a human and studied the corpses with a dispassionate expression. Then, sensing an intense gaze, she looked into the depths of the long corridor.

“Do you think your bullets can harm me?"

A woman of unassuming appearance revealed herself from the shadows, lowering a combat rifle. She was wearing a dark suit of enchanted combat armor, and her cold gaze was both piercing and calm.

The woman regarded Jet for a moment, then bowed slightly.

“Saint Jet. I am Awakened Kim. We'be been told to expect you."

Jet headed toward Awakened Kim with measured steps.

"I take it the evacuation is not going well?"

The woman shook her head.

“Everything is on schedule. You are the last one to arrive, though, so we must hurry. Follow me, please."

Together, they left the bloodied corridor behind and proceeded to the doors of a massive cargo elevator. The doors had been locked, but the seal was broken — as were the doors themselves. Something immensely powerful seemed to have torn them apart.

A pair of winches had been installed at the mouth of the vertical shaft, steel cables falling into the darkness.

Awakened Kim proficiently strapped herself to a descender, slung the rifle to her back, and began to rappel down without saying anything. Jet simply turned into a wraith and followed her by levitating in the air. The shaft was quite long. As they descended into the depths of the earth, Jet asked in an ethereal, echoing voice:

"Are members of the Shadow Clan not susceptible to the plague?"

Awakened Kim glanced at her briefly.

"We are, even if our resistance to it is quite high. After all, each of us knows our Sovereign personally — unlike the subjects of the Longing Domain, for most of whom Lady Nephis is merely an abstract symbol. Still, we did lose a few agents to the Hunger Domain, already. It's just that identifying them is far easier for us."

She stopped for a moment to catch her breath and nodded to her forearm, where a small sliver of a serpent tattoo was visible between the edge of her vambrace and the lip of her black glove.

"The Mark of Shadows rejects them. It's hard to miss."

Jet smiled.

A method like that did not guarantee absolute safety, but the Shadow Clan was indeed more immune to the plague than anyone else in the world. Better yet, their lands were separated from the rest of the Human Domain by the Hollow Mountains. There were currently only three ways to reach the Forgotten Shore.

One was to cross the Hollow Mountains — even if Asterion was capable of doing that, it would take him a considerable amount of time. The second was to be carried across the realm boundary by Dark Dancer Revel, who had been marked by the Lord of Shadows.

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