Failed Night Raid

An hour earlier—

The Nighthawks' two-wheeled carriage traveled through the silent streets of Tingen City's East Borough.

Since they were facing Beyonders, Dunn Smith had not allowed Caesar, who usually drove the carriage, to accompany the team. Instead, Frye sat in the driver's seat while he, Royale Leiting, and Seeka Tron sat quietly in the cabin, taking turns holding the Sealed Artifact to spread out its negative effects.

2-105, the "Blood Vessel Thief," was the name of this Sealed Artifact. The "2" in its designation indicated that it was a Grade 2 Sealed Artifact: dangerous, requiring cautious and temperate use. Its confidentiality level was bishop, Nighthawk squad captain, and above. Tingen City's Nighthawks possessed only three Sealed Artifacts of this grade, and the Blood Vessel Thief was the most suitable one for dealing with Mrs. Sharon.

It looked like a thick, rigid blood vessel. It gave its wearer a chance to steal one of a target's abilities, and even High Sequence powerhouses could potentially fall victim to it. If Sequence 8 Midnight Poet Seeka Tron used it to steal the invisibility ability of Mrs. Sharon, who was Sequence 7 or Sequence 6, there was a high chance of success. Once successful, Mrs. Sharon would lose that ability for ten minutes, while the holder of the Blood Vessel Thief could use it as if they had trained for years, gaining formidable close-combat abilities. A Midnight Poet who could turn invisible would become an opponent Mrs. Sharon would find difficult to handle.

Of course, the other side of a Sealed Artifact's powerful abilities was inevitably equally dangerous negative effects. Whether or not gloves or other protection were worn, anyone who touched it would gradually have their life stolen away. It was not obvious at first, but after half an hour of continuous contact, corresponding outward symptoms would appear. Even a Sequence 5 close to demigodhood could not endure two hours of uninterrupted contact.

However, repeated testing by the Church had shown that as long as there were three or more holders, the negative effects could be greatly slowed.

Inside the carriage, they took turns holding the thick blood vessel. Each person held it for three minutes before passing it to another.

With this rotation, even a Sequence 9 would not suffer fatigue severe enough to affect combat within two hours, much less display physical signs of aging.

Dunn accepted the Blood Vessel Thief from Royale. Even through his gloves, the hand touching the Sealed Artifact felt numb, as though faint currents were flowing through his entire body. The sensation was subtle enough that it would have been almost impossible to notice without paying close attention.

He glanced out the window. Gas lamps slid steadily backward along the pitch-black road. Compared with the noisy, chaotic docks and the bustling yet orderly North Borough, Tingen City's East Borough was tranquil and quiet. Tingen's wealthy merchants and political figures lived here, mostly in villas with gardens. The population density was low, but its status was anything but.

Once they passed the intersection ahead, they would reach Olsner Street...

Dunn knocked on the movable partition behind him, and Frye's deep voice came from the driver's seat. "Captain, what is it?"

"Stop at the intersection. Don't get too close to the target."

"Understood."

At Frye's "Whoa," the horse pulling the carriage obediently stopped, and the two-wheeled carriage came to a halt at one corner of the intersection.

Dunn was the first to step down from the carriage. By the dim gaslight, he observed Olsner Street. Royale and Seeka climbed down after him. Seeing no one nearby, Frye casually tied the reins to a lamppost beside them.

Not far away stood Mrs. Sharon's residence, a two-story house hidden within a garden.

According to the plan, Dunn Smith would first use his Nightmare ability to pull Mrs. Sharon into a dream. Even if she was not asleep at the time, Nightmare would make the unguarded woman drowsy and swiftly draw her into a dream, like coaxing a baby to sleep. If there were other servants in the house, Dunn could also make those ordinary people quickly fall asleep, preventing them from being dragged into the battle.

Once Dunn succeeded, the other Nighthawks would quickly enter the residence and head for Mrs. Sharon's location. Whether they captured or killed her would depend on the situation.

It would be best to kill her... Dunn Smith thought to himself.

When their strength was comparable to—or even weaker than—the opponent's, trying to capture an experienced Beyonder alive was not realistic. For Beyonders, having their hands and feet bound was not an insurmountable problem. They might even retaliate while unconscious. If they clung to the hope of capturing Mrs. Sharon alive, she might escape using an ability they did not know about, or even kill the teammates present in a counterattack.

That was also why he had been unwilling to let Daly come with them. Although Daly had repeatedly expressed her willingness to join the operation, he had decisively refused her, leaving her somewhat dejected throughout the tactical meeting.

Dunn looked around at his teammates. Frye, Royale, and Seeka were all watching him, awaiting his orders.

My teammates trust me so much. I have to protect them...

Shaking off his somewhat chaotic thoughts, he handed the Blood Vessel Thief, which he had been holding for three minutes, to Frye and instructed in a low voice, "Prepare to begin the operation."

The Nighthawks nodded in perfect unison to indicate that they understood.

Dunn bent down and sat on the step beside the carriage door. Clasping his hands tightly, he closed his eyes, and the night around them seemed to deepen by several shades.

He was using the Beyonder Ability of Nightmare. Its effective range covered one hundred meters. All it needed was a little time and an uninterrupted setup to put the target to sleep and draw them into a dream arranged by the Nightmare.

The other three Nighthawks waited patiently beside him. From their experience, it would take the captain around five minutes to silently draw a Beyonder into a dream. Then, he would bring one teammate into the dream to signal that they could begin the attack.

This was also the greatest limitation of Nightmare. To draw a Beyonder of comparable strength into a dream, the Nightmare user also had to enter the dream. If the Nightmare interrupted the dream and woke up, the target would awaken as well and receive a spiritual warning because of it.

Yet this time, in less than a minute, Dunn Smith opened his eyes and stood up under their astonished gazes.

Facing his teammates' puzzled looks, Dunn wore an equally strange expression. Frowning, he explained, "There are only two maids in the residence, both ordinary people. I've already put them to sleep, but Mrs. Sharon isn't home. I questioned the servants in the dream. She hurried out half an hour ago."

"Could Miss Granger have lied? Perhaps Mrs. Sharon never invited her here tonight?"

Royale Leiting, with her black hair, blue eyes, and slender brows, immediately suspected that their so-called informant, Angel Granger, had deceived them.

"Probably not. In my dream, and with Daly using the Truth-Telling Goblet, it would have been difficult for her to evade both our tests if she had been lying." Dunn rejected that possibility.

"Then Mrs. Sharon must have had something come up and gone out? It could have been a banquet held by some political figure, or an invitation from a lover. After all, this is the busiest weekend night in high society." Seeka Tron, the white-haired woman skilled at devising novel plots, proposed another possibility.

That did make some sense... Upon hearing it, Dunn felt that given Mrs. Sharon's standing in Tingen City, there was a considerable chance she had received a last-minute invitation to some event hosted by a political figure.

So what now?

Everyone's gaze focused on Captain Dunn Smith.

Dunn rubbed his temple with his gloved right hand and fell into thought.

"I told you, we came all this way. Are we really going back empty-handed?"

Working together, they climbed over the wall, scaled the balcony behind the small building, and entered Mrs. Sharon's residence through the second floor. As Seeka pulled Frye—the only one among the four not on the Sleepless pathway—up onto the balcony, she spoke softly.

"You sound like a petty burglar breaking into a house." Royale climbed up to the second floor behind Frye and whispered back.

After learning that Mrs. Sharon was not home and that the servants were all asleep, the four Nighthawks did not hide themselves. Instead, they strode forward as though they were in their own home. Based on the information Dunn had obtained by questioning the servants in the dream, he led the way directly to Mrs. Sharon's bedroom door.

After looking to either side and confirming that his teammates were ready, he turned the handle and opened the bedroom door.

The bedroom curtains were tightly drawn, but the gas lamps had not been extinguished. Under their glow, the room's furnishings were extraordinarily luxurious, utterly at odds with the plain exterior of the small building. A large bed stood in the middle of the spacious room, its velvet bedding piled messily to one side. The vanity against the wall was covered in all sorts of cosmetics, and jewelry boxes lay casually open, revealing jeweled ornaments gleaming with different colors. Suggestive sheer clothing and stockings had been tossed carelessly onto a rocking chair, while dresses of varying styles filled the wardrobes in the half-open dressing room.

The air was filled with an intoxicating fragrance that set one's blood racing.

The most eye-catching thing in the room was a full-length mirror placed in the center of the carpet. Some unknown dark-red liquid had been smeared across its surface. An extinguished candle stood before it, with petals Dunn did not recognize scattered around it.

"It looks like Magic Mirror Divination."

Corpse Collector Frye's hoarse voice sounded. He was on the same pathway as Spirit Medium Daly and knew quite a bit about spirit communication and divination.

They immediately tensed up, standing back-to-back as they cautiously scanned their surroundings.

Divination was a method Beyonders both loved and hated.

A teammate's divination could help them learn about dangers ahead of time, find overlooked items, or even speak with the dead like a Spirit Medium. But attacks against enemies capable of divination often could not be considered sudden. Diviners could see through their ambushes or surprise assaults in advance, or even lay traps in return, causing the official Beyonders' operations to end in failure.

Had Mrs. Sharon divined the Nighthawks' actions tonight and fled in advance?

Fleeing would be one thing. The real danger was that she might have used divination to gain an intelligence advantage, then set a trap and turned them into prey.

Frye pressed a hand to his forehead and entered Spirit Vision, carefully examining the surroundings.

"I found no spiritual radiance. She should have fled."

Only then did everyone relax. Frowning, Royale muttered to herself, "Mrs. Sharon wouldn't have used Magic Mirror Divination for no reason. Who warned her?"

"It was probably when the captain brought Miss Angel Granger back this morning. Quite a few civilians witnessed it. If Mrs. Sharon had an information network, it wouldn't have been difficult for her to learn about it," Seeka analyzed.

Dunn opened his mouth, intending to explain that he had told the surrounding civilians they were merely investigating Cole Granger's disappearance. But when he thought back on it, he also felt that he should not have worn a police uniform or used a police carriage to go to the Granger residence. Following his usual habits, he should have brought Angel Granger back to Blackthorn Security Company for protection in the latter half of the night, while remaining as inconspicuous as possible along the way.

But the Nighthawks' own carriage had been out at the time, and he had also wanted to use the police identity to intimidate Angel Granger... No, none of those reasons held up. How had he thought his actions were reasonable at the time?

No matter what, this operation counted as a failure. Now they could only gather as much evidence of Mrs. Sharon's crimes as possible, then notify the Church and Tingen Police upon returning and issue a wanted notice.

"...Then she must have asked the Magic Mirror questions like, 'Has Angel Granger betrayed me?' and 'Where is she now?' Naturally, we would have been exposed right before her eyes." Seeka mimicked the tone of divination, gesturing with both hands before the mirror as she continued.

Dunn's expression froze.