The Elusive Sorcerer

Chapter 179

Arsène Lupin, stay alert for any sudden attacks from the enemy and don't act recklessly. He had no idea whether there was a Receivers or a Hollow among them.

Within seconds, he managed to come up with three plans that would allow the artifacts to reach the main body.

First, make small talk, ask for their identities, and secure their cooperation. However, that plan had a ninety-nine percent chance of failure.

Second, tell them that he had no ill intentions and admit that he was a thief who wanted to take something from the underground auction.

Third, and last, slaughter them all and make sure none of them escaped.

For now, he wanted to confirm the second plan.

"...Just a simple man stealing to survive," Arsène Lupin replied, raising his hands.

Doubt filled their minds for several seconds before one of them gestured.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll do it," the brown-haired man said reluctantly.

Then he carefully stepped closer. Three steps away from where he had been standing, the brown-haired man froze on the fourth.

"I don't know what trick you're pulling," the man said hesitantly. "Take off your coat, right now!"

Arsène Lupin obeyed and removed his coat without asking any questions. Then he gently tossed it several meters to the right.

"I've done it," Arsène Lupin said, still keeping his hands raised.

"Good."

After the brown-haired man expressed his satisfaction, the five men immediately approached him.

'I'm going to die.'

Arsène Lupin held his breath as the footsteps of the five men drew closer.

He concluded that the five men belonged to the same group he had fought before.

A vague recollection of the four men he had killed while those two powers controlled his body surfaced in his mind.

Although he had never seen their faces, his instincts told him it was true.

Arsène Lupin remained composed while the five men simply walked past him after noticing that the vault door was wide open.

'They're not killing me?'

While anticipating a surprise attack, Arsène Lupin stepped to the left, grabbed his coat, and skillfully put it back on.

'What a waste of time.'

After moving away from that place, he created several mole entities after finding a safe location to carry out his plan.

While the three moles remained by his side, Arsène Lupin created two foxes, caused one mole to fade away, and detonated the gray marble beneath it.

The explosion sounded like a gust of wind, but it had no effect on his strength.

As he observed his surroundings, Arsène Lupin quickly carried out his reckless plan, ordering the mole entities to dig and retrieve the two artifacts shaped like a star and a crescent moon, both of which emitted a bluish glow as they absorbed spirituality from his body.

Once the hole was deep enough, the mole carried the artifacts and took them out of the auction building. Before doing so, however, it returned the displaced soil to its original place. Then that mole vanished, leaving behind two entities with no flesh, no blood, no skin, only a grayish-white aura forming their shapes as they carried the artifacts to a safe location.

Although he did not know the type or abilities of the artifacts, Arsène Lupin had his own way of understanding them.

Based on their shape, design, and aura, Arsène Lupin concluded that the artifacts were far older than the current era, specifically crafted in the year 500 according to the Lunar Calendar.

He was not entirely certain, but based on those three clues and the reaction of the crescent moon and star artifacts when held together, he reached one final conclusion regarding their abilities:

The star artifact absorbed spirituality, while the crescent moon artifact could create crescent-shaped light-based attacks using the absorbed spirituality.

The hypothesis did not entirely match the facts, so Arsène Lupin intended to investigate the abilities of both artifacts after the auction ended.

As he walked, he chuckled to himself as though something were amusing.

Nothing more than a know-it-all fool.

Inside the vault, the five looters finally breathed a sigh of relief after surviving the ordeal and taking several auction items.

They had chosen to take the risk after learning about the Ountakana Auction and decided to sneak in to search for gold and other valuables.

Their attempt had nearly failed, even though they had managed to slip past many guards, because the vault was heavily protected, claiming several more guards in the process.

Not a single guard had noticed their presence, as though they were highly skilled.

Reality, however, said otherwise.

Their luck continued when they turned a corner near the vault and witnessed a man who could suddenly release smoke and attack twenty guards indiscriminately with his bare hands, despite the guards being fully armed.

After seeing the madman enter, one of them, the brown-haired man, tried to intimidate him with a question.

Judging from his earlier actions, Arsène Lupin remained completely calm despite facing five people.

One of them instructed the brown-haired man to take the lead because he was skilled at handling such situations.

That brief exchange, hiding their true feelings, paid off in the end.

The infiltration was a success.

They were delighted when piles of wooden crates filled the room, while a metal chest contained exactly what they wanted. After taking enough jewelry from the vault, they decided to follow Arsène Lupin.

This attempt succeeded because several guards were busy confirming Arsène Lupin's identity, while the path on their right was open, allowing the five of them to escape the Ountakana Auction building.

The five men were confirmed to have escaped, while Arsène Lupin was being interrogated by a man among a group carrying long-barreled firearms slung over their shoulders.

....

After realizing their target had escaped, the auction security guards were shocked and felt as though they had been toyed with.

Arsène Lupin had played them for fools, running from one corridor to another, laughing at their behavior, then disappearing without a trace.

The guards were bewildered, wondering how he had managed to escape.

"Find him!"

One of them noticed something strange along the central passage, the route leading to the auction hall.

They were supposed to be guarding it, but the corridor was unusually quiet. Whatever they were thinking, it prompted the guards assigned to that corridor to investigate.

Then, upon seeing the vault door standing open and twenty trained guards unconscious on the ground, the three high-ranking corridor guards were stunned.

"Who did this? Were they...?"

Just as one of them said that, the 'Intersection Society' arrived.

Ten people, including Celina, carefully observed the three guards before their attention shifted to the pile of twenty unconscious men in front of the vault.

"What happened?" one of them asked, clearly panicked after realizing something had gone terribly wrong.

The situation worsened, causing one of them, Xerun, to kill the three guards within seconds.

Of the ten people who had arrived, four were the same individuals who had previously been brutally killed by Arsène Lupin using the Hoisline Fan Artifact.

"Don't overthink it. Get inside and take what we're looking for."

The squad leader stepped into the open vault, his shoes scraping against the gray marble floor and producing a faint squeak.

Followed by the other nine, they entered and noticed that the interior remained intact and showed no unusual signs.

"...Quickly find the valuables."

Then failure appeared right before their eyes when they discovered that the valuable items were gone. All that remained were piles of jewelry and other auction goods; the artifacts had vanished.

The search team from the 'Intersection Society' hurried out of the vault. Before leaving, however, they destroyed the interconnected chain gears on the left side of the room, carrying the scent of lubricating oil, as one of them carried out the act before exiting the vault.

The mechanism lost its function, and a continuous hissing sound echoed through the area.

Its purpose was simple: to shut the door completely.

Naturally, the people below were startled when they heard the sharp and continuous roar of escaping steam.

Panic immediately spread throughout the auction hall, including the auctioneer, who was worried that the person assigned to bring the ninth item would not arrive.

He assumed the man had been killed by intruders whose presence had gone completely undetected.

Reluctantly, given the critical situation and knowing that this place was about to become a battlefield, the auctioneer raised his megaphone.

"Please stay calm, gentlemen. It seems there's a problem up there."

"Calm your bald head. There's nothing up there except the vault."

Since the rooms numbered 1 through 8 were still under the same roof as the auction hall, while the vault was located above the stage with a corridor behind the narrow passage connecting Room 4 to Room 1, they decided to leave the auction building and seek safety.

The room was nearly out of control. Only the guards from the lower corridor and the guards stationed at the right-side entrance of the auction building remained.

The situation worsened with every passing second, and Zavi decided to leave together with Evelina through the upper exit.

As the door opened and he pushed it forward, a familiar sensation flashed through his mind.

'What was that?'

For a moment, he did not realize it: the death of Arsène Lupin at the hands of a woman, and Arsène Lupin killing four members of the 'Intersection Society'.

Whether near or far from the auction house, they were connected to one another, as if by an electric current flowing through a lamp capable of emitting light: the captain, the disguised woman, the four of them, all raising their eyes toward the sky.

Although those four people were observing the sky through a ventilation shaft, including the disguised woman, their memories were trying to process what had actually happened.

....

Faced with a difficult choice, Zavi received only fragmented memories of the fierce resistance from the bespectacled man. He was forced to prioritize escape and Evelina's safety before investigating the strange phenomenon himself.

As they arrived outside the auction building, the people there, especially the black market merchants in the lower district, realized that something was wrong. Thin strings, almost invisible, seemed to be hanging from the underground ceiling, lifting people one by one.

"What the hell is that?"

One of them panicked, confused and curious. Naturally, some fought back with their weapons: knives, daggers, revolvers, pistols, and rifles, all with a single goal: destroy the strange writhing strings descending from above.

Bang... Bang... Bang...

Some rushed toward the exits but were blocked by crowds flooding the steam-powered elevators.

The stairways, which should have been empty, were now packed. The vast underground world, a place filled with light and technology like the cities above, now faced destruction after being painstakingly built.

Zavi could only stare in shock at the bizarre scene.

Taking something from his suitcase, the fan artifact, he spoke softly, "Go. Find Luis and the others."

Seeing the hesitation in Evelina's eyes, he added:

"I won't die before I receive that money."

'Besides, my life's goals are still far ahead, and it'd be stupid of me to sacrifice myself for strangers.'

He smiled, urging Evelina to leave immediately.

Reluctantly, Evelina obeyed and prayed that both she and Zavi would survive this disaster.

The strings hanging from the underground ceiling reminded him of Aaron's earlier statement.

'A ritual? Or an attack by someone else?'

With the black market merchants already gone, leaving behind only tents and their stalls, Zavi decided to retrieve the two artifacts before leaving this place.

Meanwhile, the captain of the Ghost Skull Syndicate fought against the strings controlling humans who attacked like the undead.

"Just cut the strings," he said calmly, almost devoid of emotion.

The eight people following him nodded and followed their captain's orders.

One string after another was severed, causing the control over the humans to break.

Just as they were about to form a circle, they encountered something unexpected when the people previously controlled by the strings stood up again.

However, there was a significant difference in their strength and physiques, resonating into strange forms.

"Help..."

"It hurts..."

"Kill me..."

Hearing those pleas, the captain casually granted their request by throwing a curved dagger, instantly destroying them.

The targets were destroyed, but they recovered quickly, driven by the strings hanging above that continued searching for more people.

He knew killing them would not be that easy, especially underground in Block C, where their movement was limited and clearing obstacles required effort.

"Damn it," one man complained. "Captain, they won't stay down no matter how many times we kill them."

What had begun with three humans had now become more than thirty people attacking them simultaneously.

The captain was faced with a difficult choice: do that and throw them upward.

"Do whatever you can," the captain said while twirling his curved dagger.

They hesitated for a moment before following his orders.

Several meters away from the auction house, Zavi was digging through a mound of earth by swinging the fan artifact.

Whoosh...

The powerful yet steady wind effortlessly dug through the soil.

He was startled when the two artifacts began to glow rapidly, their light catching the corner of his eye.

'What is this...?'

After observing carefully and noticing the familiar pattern of their blinking, Zavi's pupils widened as he slowly turned around and saw the nearly invisible strings rushing toward him.

'Not good.'

He grabbed the fan artifact floating in the air, opened it, and swung the Hoisline Fan Artifact with force.

Whoosh...

The powerful wind naturally tore through the strings, which continued resonating into strange forms while releasing agonized screams.

Yet Zavi pretended not to hear them and continued swinging the fan artifact indiscriminately.

Wusssst...

The two artifacts reacted by flying out from their buried positions, each hovering at ear level beside Zavi, one meter apart.