Chapter 154: The Perfect Plan
"Everything is going as planned..."
Inside a nearby shuttle, Leopard sat before a direct feed displaying the progress of his operation.
This was his first assignment since joining the dangerous organization, and his first opportunity to prove himself. The masked man had entrusted him with a group of skilled assassins, leaving Leopard with only one task: provide them with a way into Silas’ training platform.
And Leopard believed he had devised the perfect plan.
His eyes brightened when the feed showed the fat teacher approaching the shuttle. Moments later, the vessel descended to pick him up.
He had considered countless approaches, but every one of them had failed for the same reason: the academy’s rules.
"Who knew the training platforms were sealed tightly enough to be completely isolated from the academy’s monitoring systems?"
An insidious grin spread across his face. Discovering that little detail had cost him a whole day of research in the academy library, doing one of the things he hated most: reading. There, in many books, he had searched for any loophole in its surveillance and security.
Fortunately, he had found one.
Even more fortunately, he had noticed the fat teacher.
Leopard had no idea who the man was and had not bothered to investigate him. He only needed what the teacher represented: a Trojan horse capable of entering Silas’ training platform and carrying his assassins with him.
"Luckily, they just sent the shuttle."
Leopard glanced at his wristwatch, where a message had just appeared. He had paid the shuttle drivers handsomely to keep quiet, avoid raising any alarms, and allow his men to board.
As for the teacher, they simply accompanied him by force.
"If only I could see what’s happening in there..."
The moment the shuttle entered the training platform, the feed only showed an empty platform.
Leopard could do nothing about that. Still, he remained confident in his plan.
"He told me these are the best assassins in the entire organization..."
He recalled the masked man’s words during their meeting. Leopard had initially been skeptical when he learned that assassins would be sent to assist him, and he had every reason to be.
The first time he had heard of the assassins was after their previous assassination attempt failed. Yet the masked man had reassured him that those assassins had been nothing more than low-ranking members.
This time, however, he had sent some of their strongest.
Leopard had recognized it the moment he met them. These people were different. They were the real deal.
"They have nowhere else to hide the blood except up there."
He had spent considerable time thinking about where Silas and Cher might have stored the dragon blood. Their portable devices were an obvious possibility, but Leopard dismissed them almost immediately.
They were too unreliable. One theft was all it would take for the blood to disappear forever.
There was only one place secure enough to protect something that precious.
"If it were me, I’d definitely store it up there."
He cast a long glance through the shuttle window at the distant training platform. For a moment, everything remained eerily silent.
"Even if they didn’t put it there..."
"The assassins will force them to bring it out."
Leopard was certain his plan had no holes. Every possibility had been accounted for, and yet he refused to celebrate before seeing the result.
"First, I’ll take the blood and ingest it..."
His expression darkened slightly.
"But those assassins will still be a problem."
He had deliberately kept his true objective hidden from everyone, including the masked man who had assigned the operation. All he had told them was that Silas, Cher, and their team had obtained something extremely precious during their expedition to the mine.
He wasn’t foolish enough to believe the assassins wouldn’t recognize dragon blood when they saw it. That possibility had been troubling him from the beginning.
"What if they become greedy and decide to keep it for themselves?"
His thoughts spiraled through the possibilities.
"Or worse..."
"What if they give it to their leader?"
If that happened, Leopard would have no way of forcing the masked man to return the dragon blood to him.
"And even if they give it to me..."
"They could come after me later and steal whatever remains."
Leopard knew there was a limit to how much dragon blood a person could safely ingest. If the amount they obtained was large enough, he intended to preserve the rest for future use.
With the assassins involved, however, he could only hope there would be enough for him to consume once.
"They’re out..."
The moment the feed returned and the shuttle emerged from the training platform, every doubt and fear vanished from Leopard’s mind.
He shot to his feet, barely able to contain his excitement.
"They must have gotten it, hahaha!"
Leopard immediately activated his wristwatch and opened a channel to the shuttle pilots.
"Take me down. Hurry..."
BOOM!
A deafening explosion interrupted him, powerful enough to shake his entire shuttle. Leopard’s expression changed the moment he looked at the direct feed.
The shuttle carrying his assigned assassins, along with the dragon blood he had dreamed of getting his hands on, had been engulfed in flames.
The explosion had come without warning and with such violence that it tore apart a large section of the shuttle. What remained spiraled toward the ground, trailing a thick column of black smoke behind it.
Leopard collapsed onto both knees, staring at the burning wreckage with widened eyes and an ashen face.
The shuttle had not even reached the ground.
It had simply exploded out of nowhere, taking his hopes and ambitions with it and shattering them as completely as glass against stone.
"Dammit..."
For several moments, he remained frozen there before slowly regaining control of himself.
The shock soon gave way to a bottomless rage.
"Whoever the hell did this..."
His hands clenched tightly as his eyes filled with murderous fury.
"I swear..."
"I’ll make you pay!"
His final words erupted into a roar, sounding less like a threat and more like the cry of a wounded beast or a broken general watching his army fall around him.
***
"They did it! Hahaha!"
Far from the explosion site, Rachel sat inside another shuttle, watching the destruction through a direct feed.
Her face was twisted with excitement, and her eyes shone with a feverish light. The moment the damaged shuttle crashed into the ground and erupted into a massive fireball, she shot to her feet and raised a fist triumphantly.
"Hahaha! No one could survive an explosion like that..."
"Not even an Avaron princess."
Her laughter was so loud that it nearly drowned out the emergency sirens filling the shuttle.
She had spent days planning this attack, carefully arranging every detail until she was certain that nothing could go wrong. Now, watching the flames consume the shuttle, she felt that every hardship she had endured had been worth it.
"I can’t wait to tell my father..."
"And those idiots sitting among the clan elders..."
She resisted the urge to send them the news immediately. It would be far more satisfying if they heard about the princess’s death from someone else, only for Rachel to return afterward and claim the credit herself like a victorious queen.
She could already imagine the ceremony, the praise she would receive, and the prestige that would be restored to both her and her father within the clan.
With such a victory, she was certain that no one would dare question them again.
"All I need to do now is wait."
Rachel dropped back into her seat and stared playfully at the display, admiring the distant ruins and spreading destruction as though they were the most beautiful sight in the world.
"Once the confirmation comes, I’ll use that loser to send the message to my clan."
She thought of Montar and smiled.
He would serve his purpose perfectly.
She continued watching as chaos spread across the area, with teachers and students rushing toward the explosion site. Even Dean Carlos eventually appeared, yet Rachel remained completely confident. An explosion of this scale would destroy any evidence connecting her to the attack, leaving no trace that could lead back to her.
But then, in the middle of her intoxication with victory, Rachel suddenly froze.
Her smile vanished.
Slowly, she leaned toward the display and zoomed in on a distant area.
At the platform where Silas, Cher, and the others had been training, a shuttle was approaching.
"They must be going up there to investigate..."
The explanation sounded convincing enough, but Rachel herself did not believe it. Something felt terribly wrong.
She watched in silence as the shuttle descended toward the platform, her unease growing with every passing second. The wait lasted only a few minutes, yet to Rachel, each one stretched into an eternity.
Finally, the shuttle landed, and its doors opened. A group of students stepped out, led by Cher. And a fat teacher followed behind.
Rachel stared at the screen, unable to comprehend what she was seeing.
"W-What the fuck...?"
For several long moments, she simply stood there, her mind desperately trying to reconcile reality with what she had believed to be certain.
Then the truth finally struck her.
"You weren’t on that shuttle?"
Her voice trembled.
"Then why the fuck did it go up there? Wasn’t it supposed to take you back to the ground?"
Her confusion quickly turned into rage.
Rachel grabbed the nearest object and hurled it against the wall, then another, until her fury became completely uncontrollable. She smashed anything within reach, overturning furniture and eventually striking the display itself until the screen cracked beneath her fists.
It took a long time before exhaustion finally forced her to stop.
Rachel dropped onto her knees, her strength and spirit completely drained, while her disheveled hair fell across her face.
For a while, she remained there in silence. Then she slowly raised her head.
"This isn’t over..."
Her voice was barely a whisper, yet the hatred behind it had not diminished.
"I will have my revenge."
Her trembling hands slowly clenched into fists.
"One failure won’t stop me, Cher Avaron."
The despair in her eyes gradually disappeared, replaced by a cold and bottomless determination.
She had failed, but she was not finished.