Snoid had told the four that the Dark Faction placed a curse on him, which would explode his head if he revealed sensitive information about the faction.

“Ah? Do you expect us to believe this?” Luo thought he was lying.

Isaac approached Luo Ren. “I believe him,” he said. “Something similar happened in my first mission for the Snowrider faction back in the Tremblay Guild. I was up against people conducting illegal experiments on humans. But they all fell dead on the floor after we had won the fight.”

Isaac couldn’t confirm that the experiment led on him was the Dark Faction’s doing. However, he was sure of it because red magic was a magic category created by the faction in secret and regarded as a myth. No one else knew to make this magic.

Recovered from his fight in VR, Aaron walked towards the snake humanoid and set himself next to Jenna. “Then, Snoid, what ‘can’ you tell us?”

Snoid grinned. “Oh, how about this? The Vampiric Queen and two people from the Democratic Alliance got sighted in one of my Tech-Think company’s buildings!”

“Really? Who else knows where they are?!” Aaron was shocked by the sudden revelation. Isaac and Aaron aimed to rescue Gabriella from the DA agents but didn’t know how to find her.

“It happened when you were training in virtual reality. They were sighted half an hour ago, and I’m the only one in control of this information.”

Isaac clenched his fist. “Where are they? Where is Gabriella?”

“Normally, it would be difficult to find them, but they decided to go above the Obscure Guild’s flat roof. I’ve been tracking them from satellites and can tell you their coordinates. Moreover, my secret passages can allow you to get to them quickly. Or wherever in the guild, actually.”

Isaac’s hand hardened, quickly conjuring a red spear and smashing it into the wall, a centimetre from Snoid’s skull.

Shocked by this sudden move, everyone stared at Isaac. He was frowning. “Did you just tell us that there are secret passages that can get us anywhere in the obscure guild?”

“Oh, umm, yes?” Snoid understood he only wanted to threaten him as he shook his head. ‘Dammit, I shouldn’t have mentioned the hidden tunnels. Now they’ll ask-’

Snoid’s thoughts were interrupted when Jenna tore off the map of the Obscure stuck to the wall. She pointed at it and asked with a blatantly faked smile, “Fantastic! Then why don’t you mark everything we need to know on this map? Including the location of each of the Seats, of course.”

“Well, I do want to kill the other Seats too,” the fifth Seat shook his head, “but if I gave you such valuable information right now, then you wouldn’t think you needed me anymore.”

“Oh, I think you’ll open up soon.” Luo agitated his hands and threatened to burn him.

Snoid’s two guards looked at him for an order. The Creator made eye contact with one of them. Aaron proved more observant than his three companions and noticed the carefully hidden signal.

“Watch out!”

The guard aimed his assault rifle at Jenna, but Aaron pushed her away, yet a few bullets grazed him instead.

However, Aaron didn’t flinch and looked at the guard, preparing to use wind magic. Suddenly, the room started twirling, which confused Aaron. Then, he saw double, and once that stopped, his vision became green.

The guard, a snake humanoid, a cursed species, flicked his tongue. While vampires could sprint fast, fly, and eat souls, snake humanoids could hypnotize. In the Tech-Think tower, Gabriella had saved Ejiro from getting caught by one.

However, not one of the four guests knew about its ability. Just like vampires, snake humanoids didn’t make their presence known. Most cursed species stayed in the Obscure Guild. In consequence, most strangers didn’t know much about them.

Aaron swiftly grabbed his pistol from his holster and shot. But he didn’t shoot at the guards, nor Snoid. He fired straight at Jenna, who blocked the bullet with her plasma daggers and fell down near the computers controlling the STM.

Aaron Amon had gotten hypnotized.

“Aaron?” Perplexed, Isaac couldn’t believe his friend would attack Jenna so suddenly. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t done anything wrong.

Before Isaac understood what was happening, a hot wave of blue fire came from behind. Isaac ran to the back of the room. One of the guards fired at him, but Isaac didn’t care as he could heal himself.

Isaac wasn’t surprised when he saw it was Luo who attacked him. ‘Something strange is going on,’ he thought.

“Isaac, give me some time and don’t look into Snoid or the guards’ eyes!” Jenna had also gotten caught in the fire and ran to his side.

Isaac broadened his arms as a crimson-red glow appeared in his eyes. He formed a wide transparent red magic barrier to protect themselves and leaned against the metallic wall of the room. “Alright! From what I can tell, these snake humanoids have the cursed power of hypnosis. If I don’t look at them, I’ll be fine!”

The dual mage suddenly realized something. Touching the metal wall, Isaac tried using electricity to attack, but nothing happened.

So, he focused for a few more seconds.

‘I can’t find a single mana point of electricity magic!’ He then remembered his time in the virtual world. His other magic had disappeared when the red magic overcame him.

Jenna sat on the ground and meditated. Her body soon started levitating.

On the other side of the barrier, Snoid, Aaron, Luo and the two guards concentrated on breaking it. Snoid wasn’t good at fighting, so he was only controlling Luo. His intention wasn’t to kill them anyway. He only wanted to teach his guests he was someone not to be messed with

Isaac and Jenna had forgotten about the other one in the room. The robot DP20-X, while trying to run from combat, had unintentionally gotten caught with them. Isaac was busy keeping the barrier up, so even when he realized the robot was about to kick Jenna, he couldn’t get to her in time.

However, just before the robot’s metallic foot struck Jenna, a strange sensation overtook him. It felt like gravity had shifted as he suddenly found himself rotating around Jenna rapidly.

Jenna Angel opened her eyes. She couldn’t use soul manifestation because the room was too small. However, by flying, she could move faster.

The woman grabbed the droid by the leg and prepared to throw him. “Isaac!”

Coordinated, Isaac Tremblay removed the barrier, and less than a second later, the droid flew across the room thanks to the force produced by turning around Jenna. It landed perfectly on the guard that hypnotized Aaron, knocking him out instantly.

“Huh?” Aaron blinked as he regained his normal vision.

“Aaron, don’t look into their eyes!” Isaac warned him.

“Luo, why are you attacking Isaac?!” Not having fully grasped the situation, Aaron turned towards the fire mage.

Snoid was angry. His plan was falling apart. While he wanted to prove his worth by beating the four mages, he only embarrassed himself.

‘I can’t let them win!’ Luo made the fire mage switch his focus to Aaron and scaled up his fire output despite the risk of burning the room and the expensive virtual machine.

Aaron struggled but managed to avoid the flames with wind magic. Then, Jenna flew behind Luo in an attempt to immobilize him, but hypnotized by Snoid, Luo turned his focus to her instead.

As Aaron and Jenna fought against Luo, Isaac quietly walked over to the last guard and killed him without anyone noticing.

Snoid knew that Luo would eventually lose to Jenna and Aaron, plus he couldn’t hypnotize two at a time.

He had messed up.

‘I have to get out of here!’

The fifth Seat made his way to the elevator, but Isaac was already waiting for him when he struck a spear into his leg.

“Remove your cursed magic,” Isaac ordered him.

…

After stopping the fire, Isaac and Aaron went up the elevator to look for a vehicle. Luo and Jenna stayed with Snoid and interrogated him. He wouldn’t say anything about the Dark Faction, but they managed to force other information out of him.

Snoid told them where to find the secret passages and the other rulers by marking them on the map. He also gave them a tracker to find Gabriella, Ejiro and Seth.

After that, Luo knocked him out and placed him in the STM’s ring. After some trial and error, Jenna found out how to activate the machine and locked Snoid’s soul in the white waiting room.

“No one will be able to save him without rupturing his soul. I changed the password. We’ll come back here before leaving the Obscure Guild.”

-Ding!

The elevator’s doors opened. Isaac jingled the keys that he had picked off a guard. “Let’s go,

guys. Aaron and I found a decent vehicle in the garage.”

Luo Ren and Jenna Angel had decided to follow Aaron and Isaac, assisting in saving Gabriella. However, although believed to be missing in action and presumed dead, Luo and Jenna worked for the Democratic Alliance. They hesitated to help since DA agents had taken Gabriella and weren’t sure why they did.

…

Ejiro Sani looked around. All he could see was the sky and the endless, flat concrete roof of the Obscure Guild he was walking on.

“This view is… bizarre. How much longer do we have to walk?”

Seth Rayn glanced at his watch, looking at the map. “Vamp City is near the centre of the guild. We have 50 kilometres ahead of us. Since you two can run and fly pretty fast, if you carry me, Ejiro, we should arrive there in about two hours.”

Gabriella Rivampe followed behind quietly.