After binding the five black-robed priests at the altar, Charles stepped up to that same altar, feeling around for the hidden lever. Thoughts of his own transformation flickered through his mind—the changes he had sensed since siphoning a bandit's consciousness in the forest. He could already tell that his own power had advanced. He could now dominate multiple minds at once without pouring all his focus into it.
'So this is the proper way to fully absorb the Neuro-Melder's ability,' he thought, his fingertips gliding over the stones. 'It doesn't matter who the victim is... good, evil, man, woman—just swallow their consciousness, and the power grows.'
That realization sent a chill down his spine. 'If someone with no moral compass possessed this ability, they'd hunt down innocent people just to devour their sense of self.'
Now he understood more clearly why the special units pursued rogue Elevation Bearers—not only because of the risk that they themselves might be consumed by their own powers, but because developing such power posed a direct threat to others.
A phrase rose unbidden in his mind: "Cast away your humanity to grasp power beyond measure." His probing fingers finally found the hidden lever beneath the altar.
Charles took a deep breath, pushing aside the unsettling thoughts. Focus on the job at hand. Slowly, he pulled the lever down.
A low grind of metal gears echoed from below, followed by the scrape of stone. The floor in front of the altar began sliding open, revealing a steep stone staircase descending into the depths.
He peered down. The flicker of the torches above didn't penetrate far, showing only rough-hewn walls and the top steps. Yet faint light was coming from the bottom, hinting that someone—or something—awaited below.
'Ten or so people,' he recalled the guard's warning, 'and there's an alarm bell.'
'Looks like I'll need magic again,' he thought.
At least down there, the thick walls and the roar of the rain would help muffle any sounds of conflict. But a new problem presented itself: after binding everyone upstairs, he had run out of rope from the storage room. If he couldn't restrain the people below, they'd eventually wake up and cause more trouble.
'If this really is a secret lab, they must have some sort of sedatives on hand,' he reasoned. 'They'd need it to keep their test subjects under control—maybe I can use it to keep them down for good.'
Step by step, Charles moved down the staircase, each step measured so as not to make a sound. Voices echoed faintly from below. He slowed his pace, pressing his back against the rough stone wall, careful of each footfall.
At the final turn, orange light spilled up from the chamber beyond. The corridor split in three directions.
Charles considered the three passages, each vanishing into gloom. 'Which way?' he thought, then settled on a silent maxim. 'Left is safe, right is trouble.' He took the left corridor, hoping luck was on his side.
He crept down the passage, guided by a few widely spaced oil lamps. Soon, he spotted the silhouettes of two guards standing before a large wooden door. Lowering himself, Charles sized up the situation. The two men stood talking quietly, looking calm, with no sign they expected an intruder. A quick glance revealed no one else in the vicinity.
He unleashed his power, nudging both guards into a momentary daze. Then, in a single fluid burst, he rushed forward and knocked both unconscious. It happened so fast and so silently that neither had the chance to cry out.
He eased their bodies to the floor, then cracked the door open just enough to peek inside. By the soft glow of an oil lamp hanging in the center, he saw shelves lining the walls—loaded with glass jars, wooden crates, and assorted instruments.
'Lucky,' Charles thought. This appeared to be the storeroom he was searching for.
Dragging the guards inside, he quietly shut the door. Then he quickly but methodically scanned the shelves, eyes flicking over the labels on each glass container.
Bottle after bottle contained various colored liquids, each labeled in precise handwriting: extracts from poisonous plants, anesthetics, acids, and all sorts of mysterious chemicals he'd never seen before. At last, there—a bottle marked "Sedative."
Charles knelt beside the unconscious guards. He pried open the mouth of the first, carefully tipping the sedative in so the man wouldn't choke, gently rubbing his throat to encourage him to swallow. He repeated the procedure on the other one until he was sure both had ingested enough to keep them unconscious for hours.
'That'll keep them out of the way.'
Next, he cracked the door to see into the adjoining chamber, where more light shone through. It looked like a laboratory with four guards posted inside. They stood at different points in the room, speaking quietly among themselves.
Charles weighed his options. 'Four in the lab... and if each of the other two corridors also has a pair of guards, that fits the total of ten or so. I've already dealt with two. Now I'm looking at four here, leaving four more somewhere else.'
Deciding to prepare more thoroughly, he resumed searching the storeroom. 'There has to be something in here,' he thought, not wanting to rely on trickling sedative down throats one by one.
Opening cabinets and drawers, he finally came to a dark wood cabinet in the corner. Inside lay a polished box. He flipped it open to reveal a neatly arranged set of syringes and several vials of highly concentrated sedative.
He took up a syringe, scrutinizing it. High-quality metal, clean and well-maintained. A single jab in the arm or neck would be instantaneous. No need for a struggle.
He chose a syringe of suitable size, carefully drew out the drug, watching for air bubbles. He prepared several syringes, each loaded with a dose strong enough to knock out one person, then placed them within easy reach in his bag.
Returning to the door, Charles slipped it open enough to watch the lab once more. The four guards, still oblivious, stood at their stations—two were conversing in one corner, one was resting at a table, and the last patrolled back and forth.
His fingers brushed the metal barrels of the syringes, sensing their cool surface through the fabric of his bag. 'I can't let any of them trigger an alarm. I have to strike the right spot so the drug hits the bloodstream quickly.'
He observed their positions. The pair in the corner, the one at the table, the roving guard. Waiting for the roving guard to turn away, he stealthily opened the door and slipped out, moving like a shadow along the back of a large cupboard. His first syringes poised in his hand.
He unleashed his power on the two guards standing together, momentarily throwing them off balance. Charles lunged in, plunging a syringe into the first guard's neck and depressing the plunger in one swift motion. He spun, driving another syringe into the second man's neck in nearly the same instant. Both collapsed in near unison.
The soft thud of the two bodies made the guard at the table glance over. Charles reacted at once, sending a surge of mental interference that caused the man's mind to fog. He darted forward, injecting the sedative into the guard's neck before he could fully realize what was happening.
But that sudden motion caused enough noise for the final guard to snap his head around. Eyes wide, he saw his fellow guards crumpled on the floor.
"Th-there's—" he started to yell, but Charles cut him off with another psychic blast. The guard's shout died in his throat as he forgot momentarily what he was doing.
Charles took advantage of that hesitation. He surged forward, though the guard, more experienced than the others, managed to draw his sword even while dazed.
"Who are you?" His voice was thick with fatigue, the mental disruption still scrambling his thoughts, yet he stood ready, sword raised, stance unsteady but resolute.
Charles didn't reply. He stepped back once, sizing up his opponent. The guard swayed, grip on his weapon uncertain. Still, he was no novice.
Clutching the syringe, Charles waited for the right opening.
The guard made a slow, clumsy swing. Charles dodged easily, then closed the distance. He seized the guard's sword hilt, prying it from his weakened grip, and jabbed the syringe into the side of his neck, injecting the entire dose. The guard collapsed. Charles caught him, along with the sword, to prevent any loud impact with the floor.
'If the other four guards are posted elsewhere, they shouldn't have heard this,' he thought, placing the sword down gently. 'I need to hurry.'
He rifled through the lab, scanning documents laid out across tables—papers detailing things Charles had already discovered through the abandoned clinic records: victim lists, chemical formulas, but nothing that pointed to the true mastermind.
So he ventured deeper. A narrow passage led from the lab into a dimly lit tunnel of cold, moist stone, water seeping through cracks in the walls. It sloped steadily downward until he reached a heavy iron door streaked with rust. Surprisingly, it wasn't locked.
He pushed it open. The ancient hinges groaned, revealing another laboratory even deeper underground—darker, too, with only a single candle on a desk to cast light. Papers lay scattered, glass containers filled with unknown substances resting in the shadows. Most of the chamber lay veiled in darkness, so Charles couldn't be sure what lurked just beyond his vision.
Behind the desk sat a man, slumped in a tattered lab coat spattered with grime. His hair and beard were overgrown, as if he hadn't groomed in weeks. He looked up from his work, eyes reflecting the candlelight beneath round spectacles. Seeing Charles, he froze for a moment, trembling slightly before carefully setting his quill aside and rising, movement slow and cautious.
Something about him seemed oddly familiar, though Charles couldn't place it. He wracked his memory but found no exact match.
"Who…who are you? Did they send you?" the man asked in a raspy voice, marked by exhaustion and deep-seated fear.
Charles quickly realized this was no guard or warden. He seemed more like a captive researcher. For now, Charles decided not to reveal who he was.
"Before I tell you who I am," Charles said gently, "why don't you tell me who you are? And why you're locked away in this place?"
The man studied Charles with weary, frightened eyes, then spoke, voice trembling. "My name is Michael Berg. I'm…a doctor. A researcher."
For a moment, time seemed to stand still. "Michael"... The missing doctor—exactly the person Charles had been searching for all along. The one whose disappearance had first drawn him into this hidden world.