Insomniac Player

The clearing site opened at 23:51.

Its outer doors offered no resistance.

That frightened Rook more than a locked fortress would have.

"Exit One remains open," he reported. "Two and Three clear. Four has movement."

Nova Corps entered the abandoned bank through separate levels. Marble counters stood beneath dead lights, dust thick enough on the surfaces to show that nothing legitimate had touched them in years. Old currency symbols remained carved into the pillars, relics from before Gold replaced national money entirely.

Damien wore Nightglass Armor beneath Duskveil. His footsteps produced no sound at all, swallowed the instant they touched marble.

No guards appeared.

No prisoners called for help.

Daria sensed mana beneath the central vault, her staff angled toward the floor like a divining rod. "Large formation. Dormant."

"Do not wake it," Hamari said.

"An insightful tactical contribution."

They descended.

The first trap activated the moment Grace crossed the lower stair.

A colorless barrier snapped shut around her, nearly invisible except for the faint distortion it left in the air. Every strike she delivered returned as force against her own armor, the prison built specifically for a counterattacking defender who couldn’t help but hit back.

The second trap filled Hamari’s sight with a thousand false targets all at once, the whole corridor suddenly crowded with duplicates that flickered and shifted. Stillpoint Lenses removed the emotional disturbance, the rising panic that should have come with it, but not the visual copies themselves. Her synced weapons aimed in different directions, unsure which target was real.

Grounding rods rose around Daria in a ring. Each element she summoned fed its opposite instead of striking outward: fire strengthened water, wind hardened earth. Her own Legendary Class had become the formation’s power supply.

Doctor Smoke’s corridor filled with a sweet vapor that reacted to nicotine and medical mana both, curling toward her like it recognized exactly what she was.

Floodlights erased every usable shadow around Damien, the whole chamber suddenly blinding white.

Tailored traps. Every single one of them.

"They have our profiles," Daria said.

"More than profiles," Damien replied. "They know how we fight."

He dismissed Duskveil before the lights could burn through its active duration entirely. Nightglass protected his eyes when the intensity doubled a second later.

Eli’s Pathfinder marks began disappearing one by one, blinking out of his vision like candles being pinched between someone’s fingers.

Someone was destroying exits from the outside inward.

Eli crouched beside the last fading mark and pressed his coin against it. A map opened across his vision, the routes fraying at the edges even as he watched. The original water tunnel had been severed in three places. Whoever was doing this wasn’t merely blocking the routes; they were following his marks in reverse, hunting them down.

"They have a Pathfinder," he said. For once, there was no joke in his voice at all. "Or something that eats paths."

Rook swore softly. "Can you rebuild?"

"One route. It won’t stay open if the anchor moves."

"Make it."

Eli ran toward the western wall without another word.

Damien registered the detail even as it happened. The trap knew Eli’s Class, knew exactly what to target, but its timing still followed Corvin’s midnight schedule rather than their actual arrival. Their early entry had bought them nine minutes before the outside attacks fully closed the net.

Nine minutes was not safety. It was only enough to prevent immediate slaughter.

Rook’s voice cut into the channel. "Exit Four lost. Government Squad Two under attack above ground."

"Withdraw them through One."

"One just closed."

The central vault opened ahead of them.

It was empty.

No Gold, contracts, or prisoners waited inside. Just a single chair facing a projection wall, and on it, the image of a tall man carrying a broad executioner’s sword over one shoulder like it weighed nothing at all.

His black hair was tied back at the neck. A line of old burn scars crossed one side of his face, pale against his skin.

➤[Varek Morn, Level 59]

"Nova Corps," Varek said. "Thank you for arriving early."

Damien studied the projection. "You expected midnight."

"We expected whenever your leader became nervous about the clock."

The image tilted, looking past Damien as though it could see straight through to Corvin’s briefing room.

"Your secrecy is impressive," Varek continued. "Six routes. Compartmented squads. One provisional member building paths no map records."

Eli’s coin stopped mid-flip.

"They know about me."

Explosions shook the bank, close enough that dust drifted down from the ceiling in a fine, steady rain.

Three government staging sites came under attack at the same instant. The collection house holding Benny lost power entirely. A convoy carrying rescued borrowers was struck on the northern road.

The clearing site had never been a financial center.

It was a place chosen to hold Nova Corps still while Neva attacked everyone connected to them, all at once, before anyone could react.

Grace broke one hand against her reflecting barrier and smiled anyway, delighted despite the obvious pain of it.

"Permission to become unreasonable?"

"Granted," Damien said.

Her black halo ignited. Instead of striking the barrier, she placed both hands flat against it and simply held, absorbing the force building on the other side to protect Damien from it. Wrathbound activated a heartbeat later. Her next attack went downward into the floor instead, and the barrier’s anchor cracked clean through.

Daria stopped feeding the elemental trap entirely. She dismissed every element she’d been holding and used the staff as a physical lever against one grounding rod, brute mechanics over magic. Doctor Smoke activated the ventilation system with an emergency tool rather than mana, refusing to give the trap anything more to work with. Hamari closed her eyes and fired according to Damien’s directions alone, trusting his read of the room over her own sight.

One floodlight shattered.

A shadow appeared in the sudden gap.

Damien used Shadow Dash to cross into the control chamber before the light could fill back in. His dagger cut the formation operator’s hand away from the panel without killing him, a clean, deliberate wound.

The traps failed one after another after that, collapsing like a chain reaction finally running backward.

Varek’s projection smiled through all of it.

"Good," he said. "Come upstairs."

Damien did not obey. He ordered Hamari to fire at the projection’s left edge instead. Her round passed straight through the image and struck a narrow observation slit hidden behind it. Blood appeared on the wall behind that slit a moment later.

One hidden observer fell. A second fled.

"He wants our attention forward," Damien said. "Check behind."

Grace tore open the empty vault chair. A contract bomb waited inside, tied to the heartbeats of the trapped civilians being transported on the northern road. Breaking it outright would kill them. Leaving it active let Neva trigger it remotely whenever they chose.

Doctor Smoke read the pulse pattern in seconds. "I can keep it from recognizing a change for perhaps six minutes."

"Do it. Daria, isolate the signal. Hamari, find the transmitter."

The three of them moved before Damien had even finished the sentence. That was what a team became once trust had already survived enough fear to stop needing to be told.

Daria encased the chair in alternating layers of earth and ice. Hamari fired straight through two walls and destroyed a transmitter carried by a fleeing observer three streets away. Doctor Smoke severed the contract while its signal remained frozen between heartbeats.

No notification praised them for it.

Somewhere on the northern road, civilians continued breathing without ever knowing how close they’d come.

Varek’s projection watched the whole exchange with genuine, almost professional interest.

"You notice the small blades," he said.

"They still cut."

The delay had cost Varek another full minute. In an ambush built around seconds, that minute had carried real civilians beyond the reach of the bomb entirely.

The wall in front of them vanished.

Varek stood behind it in person now, sword resting easy across his shoulder.

Dozens of Neva Players waited with him, filling the space beyond in silent, patient rows.

"Let us see," Varek said, lifting the executioner’s sword, "whether the new hero of Region 21 knows how to lose people."