Ten days later, on a stormy autumn night, lightning snakes writhed across the sky while fat raindrops poured from the heavy clouds, hammering against the eco-friendly pavement and kicking up a misty veil of spray.
Orange streetlamps blurred in the rain, draping the slick streets in a hazy halo of light.
Clad in a wide black raincoat, Yvette stepped into Jarde City’s most bustling Greenvine District. The neon lights around her seemed to sink into a black hole upon touching her, swallowed without reflection. She looked like a wandering shadow, melting seamlessly into the darkness along the roadside. Without careful attention, no one would distinguish her from the night.
This was the effect of her Light-and-Shadow Magic disguise. With the help of height-boosting shoes, she pulled her frame back to 1.65 meters. Even if she was forced to fight, at worst the identity of “Nameless” would be exposed—certainly no one would connect her to Zero.
The rain grew heavier. Pedestrians hurried, vehicles streaked past, turning the rainy mist into a prism of color. Yvette’s gaze lingered briefly on Lingman Corporation’s headquarters, the towering “Greenlight Tower.” Yet in the next instant, her attention was stolen by the even more breathtaking sight looming behind it.
That was Lingman’s famed Source Rune Tree—the largest cloud container in the world. Every second, billions of data streams were stored and circulated through it, making the massive tree glow constantly with green, yellow, and silvery-white currents of magic—brilliant and dazzling.
But ordinary magitech terminals couldn’t link to the Source Rune Tree. Only Lingman’s proprietary “Heart of Nature” could.
It looked like a seed inscribed with glowing runes. Once swallowed, it would sprout inside the body, rooting as a biotic terminal bound to flesh.
Yet because of sinister rumors—that the Heart of Nature tampered with souls or rewrote memories—outsiders distrusted Lingman and generally refused it. Yvette was no exception. Nᴇw novel chapters are publɪshed on novel~fire~net
She would use necromancy’s Soul Fragment Possession to temporarily seize a Lingman employee’s body. Through the Heart of Nature already implanted inside, she could leap into the Source Rune Tree’s network. Problem solved.
Her eyes swept over the rain-shrouded Greenlight Tower and the radiant Source Rune Tree before she strode toward Lingman’s heavily guarded Industrial Park.
With the cover of night and Shadowmeld, she soon reached the circular building that housed the Project Codename: Life team.
By possessing an employee walking out of the building, she successfully hijacked the internal system—logging her own vision feed and marking herself as a senior staff member.
The possession inflicted some damage to the victim’s Spirit, but under Yvette’s careful control the effect was minimal.
Once inside, she passed the armed guards as nothing more than a shadow, slipping through the circular building without obstruction. She infiltrated the top floor—the project director’s office—without meeting a shred of resistance.
The ease unsettled her. Even if she was an exceptional hacker, Lingman was still a super-corporation; its defenses couldn’t possibly be so lax. Even the internal security systems were strangely sparse.
When she extracted all data from the office’s devices, the oddity finally became clear.
The files were far too clean. All of them were mundane development documents for Project Codename: Life, a network game—design frameworks, art assets, program scripts, even work logs. Every line brimmed with the developers’ passion and effort.
Yvette didn’t believe the Firebearer’s “intel” was baseless. She combed the files again with meticulous care, and at last her gaze settled on the division of responsibilities.
Lingman Corporation was the publisher. The content came from a development team dispatched by Gravity Group. And the game was to be released only on the Jadeite Continent.
“Only on Jadeite” already felt suspicious. More so, Gravity Group itself was the world’s dominant publisher of virtual games and hardware—selling the bestselling VR pods and vision terminals worldwide.
For Gravity Group to hand publishing rights to Lingman and voluntarily abandon the off-continent market—there had to be more behind it. The project team employees clearly knew nothing.
If Yvette didn’t want to hand the Firebearer shallow intel, nor trek all the way to Gravity’s Silvermirror headquarters, then one place remained: Lingman’s headquarters—the Greenlight Tower.
Rain lashed violently against the skyscraper’s towering glass windows hundreds of meters high. Lightning tore the heavens, white bolts ripping open the night like an apocalypse unfolding.
Unlike the weathered leaders of other super-corporations, Lingman’s chairman Imogen Ashford appeared as a refined, handsome middle-aged man.
At that moment, he stood in his massive office overlooking the city, a steaming cup of tea in hand, watching the storm.
Then suddenly, his movements froze. His deep green eyes shifted stiffly, piercing the storm, locking with precision onto that inconspicuous circular building in the Industrial Park below.
“…A bug slipped in,” Imogen said suddenly, to no one in particular. “I caught its trace.”
“I caught it too—high skill level. Without Green Crown watching, we’d never have noticed,” he added, as though conversing with himself.
“Someone actually paying attention to that project? Who could it be? Rebels?”
“No. They’re not that capable. And they’re distracted by the Greenfield Church matter. Soon, we’ll wipe them all out.”
“The intruder is a top-tier hacker, likely also a powerful mage. Regular armed troops aren’t enough.”
“Who should handle it? What about the ‘Green Angel’?” Imogen quipped, half in jest.
“Don’t joke. The Green Angel is always the final trump card,” he replied in another tone.
“Send Eugene. We’ve kept him long enough—this is exactly his purpose.”
The eerie, schizophrenic dialogue ended. Imogen returned to calm.
The “Eugene” he spoke of was Lingman’s chief mage, Eugene Moyad—one of only twenty-five known sixth-tier mages in the world. With two fallen from the Holy Spirit Sect, and the addition of the mysterious mercenary girl Nameless, the number was now twenty-four.
Trusting completely in Eugene’s power, Imogen’s order was as good as a death sentence for the “bug.” He thought of it no more.
Lifting his teacup again, he gazed at the drifting tea leaves, lost in thought.