Chapter 137: The Plan In Motion
A few cars had driven to a halt at a corner several blocks away from their target location, stopping in a tight cluster along a narrow side street.
The street they had stopped on was deliberately chosen for its isolation, cut off from the main roads and well out of sight of the seemingly abandoned Clyn family house that served as the League’s current hideout.
Joe Sanderberg was in the middle of the pathway ahead of them with one hand raised, signaling them to stop moving forward.
His first job in this operation was to halt their advance here and give further passage directions that would keep them concealed until the moment they needed to strike.
The doors of the vehicles opened and everyone climbed out, gathering around Joe as he addressed them.
"Everyone will go on foot from here," Joe began. "As instructed, the demon will go in first."
He was referring to Albedo when he said that.
Joe continued, "Due to the link we share with our summoner, I can direct her through the right path. Everyone will follow her lead after she’s completed her task."
It seemed everyone was in agreement with this plan as there were nods from each of them.
With that settled, Joe turned away from the group and walked several paces down the street.
Then he raised Katarina in its compact mode toward the top of a nearby building and fired.
The grappling mechanism activated with a sharp THWIP sound as the hook shot upward and latched onto the edge of the rooftop.
The line then pulled Joe off his feet, yanking him up through the air until he landed on the building’s edge several stories above them.
From there, he would have the elevated vantage point needed to observe the compound and guide Albedo remotely while also keeping watch for his true target to appear.
Down below, Albedo started walking forward and everyone followed behind her.
They reached a certain point where the street curved and Albedo stopped and turned back toward the group, raising one hand to signal them to halt.
"I’m going forward from this point until I deal with whatever is cloaking the house," she said simply.
The rest nodded in understanding and quickly moved to take hidden positions in corners and behind cover some distance away.
Albedo vanished from sight as she activated her Stealth skill, concealing both her magical and physical presence so completely that even the sound of her movements disappeared.
She continued down the path toward certain raised fence. This was roughly maybe 7 feet tall, and just beyond the same fence were several large trees.
Albedo then launched herself upward in one smooth leap that carried her easily over the mildly high fence, and landed silently on the other side in the grass beyond.
Normally, the moment she crossed the fence line and entered the property itself, she should have been detected by the barrier spell that had been set up to alert those inside the house of any intruders.
But due to her Stealth skill concealing both her magical signature and physical presence, not even the detection barrier was able to register her entry at all.
And just like Joe had said during the briefing, the real house was indeed cloaked from view.
Albedo could see nothing before her, except trees and grass.
However, she immediately turned and began moving along the interior fence line, her eyes scanning carefully for anything that would serve as an anchor for the cloaking and detection spells.
According to Ethan, maintaining both a barrier spell and a cloaking spell at the same time for a long shouldn’t have been possible for anyone.
Which meant there had to be physical anchors somewhere on the property that were sustaining both spells.
Joe had also been watching from his elevated sniper position on the distant rooftop. Through the scope of Katarina, he could see the fence line even if he couldn’t see Albedo herself anymore due to her stealth.
He understood exactly what she was looking for since their minds were connected. Then his vision caught something.
"I see flower vases at some of the corners of the fence, hidden behind those trees." Joe said into Albedo’s thoughts.
He was currently watching one at the other end of the land.
Albedo’s head turned immediately toward the far edge of the fence to her left, and ran over quickly to that corner point.
Behind one of the large trees was a large flower vase. But it wasn’t a normal vase at all.
There were glowing runic markings of pink light inscribed across its ceramic surface.
This was definitely an anchor.
With that confirmed, Albedo punched straight through the center of the vase with enough force to shatter it.
But when Albedo looked around, the house still didn’t reveal itself.
That meant she either had to travel to all three remaining corner points and destroy the other vases, or eliminate enough anchors to overload the rest and cause the spells to collapse on their own.
Either way, she needed to move fast.
Albedo quickly darted off toward the next corner to her right, moving along the fence line.
However, on the rooftop of the still-cloaked house in the middle of the land, one of the League members on lookout duty caught something unusual.
His werewolf ears twitched sharply, picking up a sound from behind the trees near the fence corner Albedo had just left.
Due to the distance from the house itself and that point, it was barely audible to anyone without enhanced hearing.
Donovan, a brown-haired werewolf turned his head toward that corner but couldn’t see or sense any unnatural disturbance around it.
"I heard something from over there," Donovan said his lookout partner beside.
Reyener, the female ranger shrugged casually without much concern on her face.
She was only human and didn’t have the enhanced hearing that werewolves or vampires possessed.
"I’ll check to see what it is," he said after.
"Yeah, alright," Reyener nodded, adjusting her bow slightly as she turned her attention to watch him.
Donovan dropped from the rooftop and moved to where the sound had originated. In that moment, he became visible moving across the open lawn.
Joe’s finger rested lightly on Katarina’s trigger as he watched the werewolf approach. However, this was merely observation for now as Donovan wasn’t his true target, at least not yet.
Donovan was a few paces away from reaching the tree when suddenly another sharp sound of a ceramic vase shattering reached his enhanced ears from an entirely different direction.
He quickly turned his entire body to face that point, as genuine concern appeared on his face. Something was definitely wrong here.
But that wasn’t all.
By breaking the second anchor vase, Albedo had finally tipped the balance of the cloaking spell past its sustainable threshold.
The spell couldn’t maintain itself on just two remaining anchors. The empty space where nothing had been visible suddenly shimmered like heat waves, and then the Clyn family mansion revealed itself as the cloaking effect collapsed.
Reyener also noticed Donovan’s body movements and began following his sight as she scanned the environment with growing suspicion.
Down in his distant sniper position, Joe smiled and shook as he watched both lookouts. "Reyener and Donovan on lookout duty..."
But he still didn’t fire as the right target still hadn’t surfaced yet.
-
Albedo had already crossed back over the fence, then quickly dashed to the hidden corner where the others waited.
"The cloaking is gone," Albedo said, then added with a devious grin, "Now it’s your turn, fat ass."
She was referring to Valerie, who simply nodded. Albedo then took Valerie’s and turned briefly with an even wider grin as she spanked Valerie’s backside.
Her eyes widened in mortified embarrassment. But right then, they both disappeared in a burst of black smoke.
They reappeared very close to one of the fenced sides of the property, at an angle that concealed them from any viewable point from the house itself.
Valerie didn’t waste a second asking Albedo why she had done it, especially since she already knew perfectly well how unhinged this particular summon could be.
Instead, she prepared to cast the spell they had come here for.
Red magic circles materialized and hovered infront of her palms. Then she turned toward Albedo and said, "I’m ready."
Albedo turned her head toward the distant high point where Joe was positioned, and although she couldn’t actually see him from this distance, she sent the message through their thoughts. "Ready."
"Hold," Joe’s voice came back immediately.
Right then, his target finally walked out into view.
Greta.
The mind mage had been inside the house when she suddenly sensed that the cloaking effect over the property had dropped unexpectedly.
That shouldn’t have been possible, especially as the mana reserves in those anchors were more than sufficient to sustain both spells for at least another full day before needing to be recharged.
So she had come outside immediately to investigate what the problem was.
As she stepped through the front entrance, her gaze swept across the area and quickly settled on Donovan, who was moving through the compound with suspicion in his body language as he searched for whatever had destroyed the vases.
But in that unfortunate moment when Greta came fully into view in the open doorway, Joe pulled Katarina’s trigger.
The bullet traveled so impossibly fast from his elevated position and struck through Greta’s forehead.
Her head snapped backward from the impact as a massive spray of blood and brain matter erupted from the exit wound and splattered on door frame behind her.
Her body crumpled to the ground instantly.
"Now," Joe said.
——
A/N: I had to quickly post this in a rush. Two more following up in an hour+