The erratic pulse of Rift Cluster 05-B provided the perfect acoustic and spatial camouflage. Standing entirely exposed before the churning violet-red event horizon, Markus slightly shifted his left heel. Through his 100% Space Mastery, he didn't just feel the local spatial fabric; he actively rewrote its gravitational coefficients.
With a precise twist of his mind, Markus inverted the local spatial pressure tensor within the treeline four hundred meters behind him.
The spatial pocket holding the five cloaked operatives violently imploded. Their military-grade optical and magical cloaks shattered like cheap glass under the sudden, immense gravitational drag, exposing five elite mercenaries clad in carbon-reinforced tactical suits. Before they could even trigger their short-range displacement runes, Markus snapped his fingers.
The space around their limbs crystallized into absolute stasis bands, dragging them kicking and screaming through the vacuum straight to his feet.
The five operatives lay pinned to the cracked asphalt, their bones groaning under a localized fifty-times gravity field. Markus looked down at them, his silver-blue eyes completely devoid of human warmth.
From the shifting shadows, Nagini's colossal, ink-black form erupted into the physical plane, her dual crimson eyes burning with a manic, unhinged hunger as her spectral coils wrapped around the mercenaries, crushing their armor until the metal bit into flesh.
"Identify yourselves," Markus commanded, his voice a flat, freezing current.
The leader of the retinue, his faceplate cracked and dripping blood, spat at Markus's boots. "Independent contract... screw your family lineage, Blackwell. You won't live to see the eastern ports—"
Markus didn't let him finish. He casually extended his hand, engaging his 20% Time Law mastery directly on the speaker's right arm. He didn't just break the limb; he forced the temporal state of the arm to rapidly cycle backward and forward between a state of perfect health and shattered, rotting necrosis within microseconds.
The agonizing temporal friction tore a blood-curdling shriek from the leader's throat as his nervous system melted under the paradoxical stress.
"Oh... look at how loud the little mouse sings, Master," Nagini purred with liquid, low-frequency malice, her spectral tongue licking the cold sweat from the leader's forehead. "His little heart is beating so fast... boom-boom-boom... like a tiny drum. Shall I peel the skin off his thoughts? I can taste the name of his master hiding right behind his teeth... it smells so beautifully rotten."
"Extract the data, Nagini," Markus ordered coldly.
Nagini plunged her spectral fangs directly into the leader's cranium, bypassing the physical skull to feast entirely on his cognitive neural pathways. Within seconds, the mercenary's eyes rolled back into his head, his memories forcibly audited and projected directly into Markus's system ledger.
[INTELLIGENCE EXTRACTION: COMPLETED]
>> Origin Syndicate: The Solar Coalition (Aurelian Rogue Faction)
>> Earthside Proxy: Black-Vanguard Private Security
>> Operational Directive: Eliminate Markus Valerius to Stash Guild Assets
>> Funding Source: House Vermillion Central Ledger
"House Vermillion," Markus noted, his features remaining an unyielding mask of flawless stone as the data settled into his archive. "An uncreative variable."
With the information successfully logged, Markus turned his back. He didn't waste another word. He simply closed his fist, executing a total spatial compression on the five coordinates where the mercenaries lay.
Crunch.
The space containing the five operatives collapsed into a microscopic singularity, instantly crushing their bodies, armor, and gear into harmless atomic dust before the paradox evaporated entirely.
With the hostile variables deleted from the equation, Markus turned his full processing capacity toward the unstable regional portals. The extra-dimensional ink bleeding from Rift Cluster 05-B was actively corroding the West Coast's deep-water tables, a structural inefficiency he could no longer tolerate.
He drew his blade, his Level 70 crystalline core erupting with a massive output of purified primordial energy.
TEMPORAL SLASH.
Instead of striking a physical target, Markus targeted the literal timeline of the spatial tears. His silver-gold crescent arc sliced through the empty space, targeting the portals as they were five minutes ago—before their systemic structural stability had degraded into volatility.
The timeline snapped shut. The three colossal, flickering violet-red tears violently convulsed before imploding inward, their jagged edges weaving back together into a flawless, sterile sky. The toxic black particles dissolved into nothingness, leaving the coastal highway completely cleared and securely stabilized.
[MISSION LEDGER: ZONE-05 MAINTENANCE]
>> Objective Status: 100% CLEARED
>> Extracted Assets: Tier 6 Rift Core x3 (Secured)
>> Spatial Network Status: Secure / Repaired
Without a moment of hesitation, Markus activated the cross-continental spatial highway he had previously anchored within the database. A clean, gold-rimmed transit portal opened directly before him, swallowing his silhouette.
A millisecond later, Markus stepped out into the pristine, absolute-zero warmth of the House of the White Frost back in the Aurelian Capital.
The grand fireplace was roaring with white-hot primordial flames, completely vaporizing the lingering cold of the room. Sitting at the long obsidian dining table were Sloane and Isolde Aurelian, a massive stack of permanently archived imperial court ledgers and officially stamped adventurer guild manifests resting between them.
Sloane looked up, a fierce, rumbling laugh escaping his chest as he took a sip of amber wine. "The court lawyers are still weeping in their offices, Markus. We turned their own administrative regulations against them so hard the Grand Regent had to personally sign the guild's regional exemption tax forms."
"The political theater is entirely paralyzed," Isolde Aurelian added, her ice-blue eyes gleaming with absolute, regal satisfaction. "They cannot touch our assets, and they cannot challenge our sovereign standing without triggering a continent-wide guild war. Welcome home, Grandson. How was the West Coast?"
Markus calmly removed his leather gloves, tossing a spatial vacuum container filled with the freshly harvested Tier 6 rift cores onto the table.
"The West Coast front line is stabilized," Markus noted flatly, his dark coat settling around his shoulders as he took his seat at the head of the lineage. "And House Vermillion has officially outlived its utility in our ledger. Let us begin the liquidation protocols."