Nautilus turned on his heel, his formal administrative robes snapping as he led the way through a series of restricted, heavily guarded corridors. We bypassed the standard staff rooms and ascended a private spiral staircase until we stood before a pair of reinforced iron doors at the apex of the fortress.
When he unlocked them, I realized where we were. He was leading me straight into the Principal's Office.
A flash of understanding crossed my mind. While Nautilus Cotton was the High Secretary of the Capital Knights Bureau Association, he also held a secondary, incredibly prestigious title: he was the Principal of the Caria Mastery Academy. It made perfect sense. The military school was a direct pipeline for the kingdom's finest combatants, and the CKBA kept a iron grip on its development.
We stepped into the massive, austere office. Nautilus walked behind a heavy obsidian desk and gestured toward a leather chair opposite him. I sat down, the metal of the Death Chant Shotgun scraping lightly against the backrest.
"Take your hood off, Eirene, we are entirely secure here."
Nautilus said smoothly, his sharp eyes locking onto my covered face as he activated a series of magical security runes along the doorframe.
I paused, my single green eye scanning the perimeter of the room. The office was deep within the stone fortress… there were absolutely no windows, no balconies, and not a single shred of natural sunlight could penetrate the walls. It was a fortress of shadows.
Satisfied that no prying eyes from the courtyard could see me, I reached up with my right hand and slowly pulled down my heavy merchant hood, unraveling the thick canvas mask to expose my face.
Nautilus leaned forward, his analytical gaze instantly tracing the new state of my appearance. My skin was deeply, violently tanned from the scorching sun of the southern deserts, a stark contrast to my usual pale complexion, and the jagged edges of my Glasgow smile looked raw against the darkened skin.
He hummed softly, nodding to himself.
"A brutal trek to Sisiphon, I see. You look like you've been through an oven. But considering you dismantled a multi-district drug syndicate and brought back Oksana's head in less than a week... a tan is a small price to pay."
He dismissed the observation with a wave of his hand, pulling a thick, black leather folder bound with glowing crimson wax from his desk drawer. The light hum of executive-level security magic radiated from the parchment. Nautilus continued, his voice dropping into a cold, deadly serious register as he slid the file across the obsidian surface toward my hand.
"None of that matters right now,w hat matters is the investigation you came here for. The Caria Mines."
The moment the words left his mouth, the air in the windowless room turned ice-cold. My right fist clenched, my lone eye staring intensely at the classified seal. The memory of my mother's death six years ago flared in my chest like a volatile spark of blood magic. The time for hiding was over, the hunt for the monster in the abyss was officially on the table.
Nautilus tapped his finger against the black leather of the folder, breaking the suffocating silence of the windowless room.
"During your hunt for the drug lord of Sisiphon, we did our best to investigate the sector during your absence, and let me tell you, Eirene... it was absolute hell during those four days you were gone."
Nautilus said, leaning back into his heavy leather chair. He picked up a cup of black coffee from his desk, taking a slow, calculated sip as his eyes remained locked on my lone green eye.
I sat perfectly still, the cold ghost of my mother's departure six years ago still clawing at my chest. I could still smell the cold iron and sawdust of the old meat shop. I could still hear Elicia's voice naming our unborn sister Evelyn. And I could still feel the phantom weight of the world tilting on its axis when those three grim knights delivered the news that Linera Rynd was gone, slaughtered and unrecognizable in the dark, leaving no trace of the baby she carried.
"We deployed multiple Capital Knights directly into the Caria Mines while you were dismantling the Emerald Spire, and you know exactly what happened to them. They are dead. All of them."
He set his coffee cup down with a sharp clink against the obsidian desk.
"I deployed six of our finest high-tier knights into those shafts. Every single one of them was found flayed and horribly corroded within hours of descent. The source of the attack isn't a typical subterranean beast. The lower levels are completely infested with Bio Slimes."
My right hand subconsciously tightened into a fist against my knee.
"These aren't the docile creatures you find in the lowlands, these bio slimes are violently hostile to human life and will spread, melt, and consume everything in their path. Their secretions are highly corrosive… capable of melting through reinforced steel breastplates and dissolving flesh to the bone within minutes. They are classified as high-level, A-rank beasts."
Nautilus explained, sliding a detailed, hand-drawn sketch from the file across the table. He tapped the sketch, pointing to the shaded, pulsing core of the drawn creature.
"You can identify them by their distinct bioluminescence. They glow in the absolute pitch-black of the deep tunnels, radiating an unnatural, vibrant blue-green light. It's the only warning our knights had before they were swarmed and digested."
Nautilus leaned forward, his hands folding over the obsidian desk as he stared straight through me.
"Six years ago, your mother, Linera, went down there on a classified final mission. The report claimed she was unrecognizable. Looking at what these A-rank bio slimes did to my six knights in just four days... it's highly probable she ran into the exact same corrosive nightmare."
The air in the room grew heavy, a volatile surge of blood magic faintly rippling beneath my skin. The creatures that had flayed the Capital Knights were the very same entities that had turned the Caria Mines into a tomb for my mother and my unborn sister, Evelyn.
Nautilus slid the heavy, wax-sealed folder fully into my hand.
"These aren't just the scouting logs from this week, Eirene, these are the original, classified recovery files from six years ago. The ones the Bureau kept locked in the capital vaults. I think you have a right to see them before you go down there."
With a trembling right hand, I flipped open the thick leather binding. Inside were documents stamped with high-quality photo magic… a rare, advanced human skill mechanism that captured exact, unyielding images of reality, functioning precisely like the Polaroid pictures from my past life on Earth.
I looked at the first image, and a wave of pure, visceral disgust and horror surged through my chest.
The photo magic had captured the grim aftermath of my mother's final party. The veteran knights she had traveled with were unrecognizable. Their faces were horribly corroded, their features melted away into grotesque, hollow masks of exposed skull by the acidic secretions of the slimes. Their flesh had been flayed, stripped from their bones in jagged, dissolved strips.
But the next image made the world completely halt on its axis.
It was my mother, Linera Rynd.
The photo showed her body lying in a pool of dark, dried blood amid the glowing blue-green bioluminescence of the cavern. Her beautiful head had been completely decapitated, her silver hair matted with gore. But the most horrifying, heart-wrenching detail lay at her midsection. Her heavy armor had been frantically cut open from the inside out. Extending from her stomach was a severed umbilical cord… jaggedly and desperately sliced through by the steel of her own family sword.
A choked, silent sob caught in my scarred throat as the brutal reality of her final moments laid itself bare before my lone eye. She hadn't just been ambushed. In the pitch-black abyss, swarmed by A-rank corrosive horrors and realizing her own death was inevitable, Linera Rynd had used her final agonizing breaths to perform an emergency cesarean section entirely by herself. She had cut her own womb open to give her child a chance to breathe.
My eye tracked the severed cord in the photo. There was no baby beside her. There was no trace of little Evelyn. Looking at the corrosive slime trails covering the stone around her body, the agonizing truth was undeniable. A helpless, newborn infant wouldn't have lasted a single second in that acidic swarm. Evelyn had been devoured by the bio slimes the moment she entered the world.
A blinding, cataclysmic fury exploded behind my eyes. A dark, suffocating wave of blood magic rippled violently out of my frame, causing the inkwells on Nautilus's desk to rattle furiously. The creatures down there hadn't just killed my mother, they had dissolved her memories, slaughtered my unborn sister, and fed on their flesh.
Nautilus watched me, his expression grim but unsurprised by my rage. He leaned across the desk, tapping the modern maps pinned to the blotter.
"Control your magic, Eirene. Save that wrath for the dark, because right now, those bio slimes are no longer contained to the deep abyss. Over the last forty-eight hours, they have begun scattering upward, infesting the nearby secondary mineshafts. They are multiplying at an exponential rate."
He locked his sharp eyes onto mine, his voice turning into a stark, military order.
"My primary goal right now is to stop these slimes from spreading any further into the mountain range. Yesterday morning, scouts reported that the bio slimes were actually seen breaching the surface boundaries near the lower pavilions. If they leak out into the residential districts or the academy sectors, Caria City will face a catastrophic bio-corrosive plague. I need an S-rank killer to go down there and cauterize the source. Burn them all, Eirene. Leave nothing but ash."
I pulled the folder tightly against my chest, my right hand gripping the leather binding so hard the knuckles turned white. My face was unmasked, the raw, jagged lines of my Glasgow smile exposed in the dim room, but my expression was carved from solid ice. The image of the severed umbilical cord and the glowing blue-green slime trails was burned into my mind forever. I turned on my heel, ready to sprint out of the fortress, unfurl my wings in the dark, and descend into that abyss to slaughter every last corrosive beast.
"Hey, Eirene. Don't leave just yet."
Nautilus's smooth, administrative voice cut through my localized fury, halting me right at the heavy iron threshold. I paused, my single jade-green eye glaring back at him over my shoulder.
Nautilus leaned back in his leather chair, a faint, knowing smirk playing on his lips as he gestured toward my empty belt loop where my leather purse usually hung.
"I know you have no money right now. I have eyes all over this academy, Eirene. I saw what you did at the Registrar's Office. So, I need to support my premier asset."
The words hit me like a splash of cold water, snapping me out of my bloodlust. The money. I forgot. A wave of harsh reality washed over me. I had just willingly thrown away all four of my royal gold coins… the entirety of my payout for Oksana's head, just to secure Zenni's four-year scholarship and dorm room. I was completely, utterly broke. In a high-security, hyper-militarized metropolis like Caria City, walking around without a single coin was a death sentence for an investigation. The gatekeepers at the district borders didn't care if I was an S-rank bounty hunter or the Shadow Walker's sister, without a toll payment, they wouldn't let me cross into the mining sectors. I'd be trapped in the civilian zones.
I slowly walked back toward the obsidian desk, my heavy boots thudding softly in the windowless room.
Nautilus reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a heavy, embroidered velvet pouch. It let out a loud, metallic clink as he dropped it onto the table.
"There are fifty high-grade silver pieces in there, it's not a royal fortune, but it's more than enough to cover your district tolls, secure your transport to the lower pavilions, and keep you stocked on supplies while you're in the field. Consider it an official Bureau advance for the containment mission."
I reached out my right hand, my fingers wrapping around the cool, heavy velvet. I tucked the pouch deep into the inner linings of my layered traveler's cloak, right next to my bound wings. I gave Nautilus a single, sharp, respectful nod.
"Good luck down there, Eirene, the slimes are breaching the surface. I'm counting on you to burn the source before this city dissolves from the inside out."
I pulled my heavy merchant hood back over my messy dark hair, wrapping the thick canvas mask tightly around my jaw until only my lone green eye was visible. With the Death Chant Shotgun secure on my back, the silver in my pocket, and the classified files in my grasp, I slipped out of the Principal's Office and vanished into the shadows of the corridor. The mother figure was gone. The S-rank executioner was back, and the Caria Mines were about to run red with the blood of the things that stole my family.