447 Chapter 447: Infiltration again

As expected, both Adrian and Melina recoiled at the gruesome sight, but credit to them, they held their nausea or horror back with typical stoicism.

"Did everyone die?" Adrian asked, his voice clearly shaken despite him putting on a brave front. I shrugged.

"We'll find out."

Deeper into the facility, we came across survivors. The Dark Church members had pulled together and slaughtered the Barbaric Baboons that had escaped, gathering in tight knots and covering each other. There were very few Barbaric Baboons left, but they continued to recklessly hurl themselves at the solid lines of the Dark Church, gaining more casualties with each wave. At first I was surprised by their suicidal charge, but then I realized it was only a diversion. There was another group of Barbaric Baboons that were flanking the humans from the side, climbing along the walls unseen.

I didn't bother to warn the Dark Church. These were the zealous idiots who thought it was a good idea to murder the entire human race in exchange for monsters. Well, let them deal with the monsters they so dearly loved then.

"Don't cast any magic," Melina reminded me when I tensed as a Barbaric Baboon passed by in front of us. She must have noticed my hand tightening on the hilt of one of my swords. "The moment you cast a spell, or make physical contact with a target, the stealth field will automatically switch off, or you will be visible to the target."

That made sense. Given how you needed to emanate as little mana as possible, and that you might disrupt the stealth field if you began gathering mana to start casting a spell (but not fully cast it), it made sense that the stealth field would deactivate when you coalesced such a huge amount of mana and manifest it in a spell. Also, the stealth field would end up encompassing the target if you touched it, so it was pointless to try and do stealth kills. Even if you successfully kill the target, its comrades were likely to notice one of their brethren disappearing right beside them. Even if they didn't notice, it was still too big of a risk to take for so little gain. So what if I kill one dude? That wasn't the goal here.

The goal was still to locate Ling Dan and confirm whether he had been taken hostage by the Dark Church or not. Or joined them.

Taking a deep breath, I scanned the tightly knotted group of Dark Church members, all of whom were wearing black robes. My glasses allowed me to zoom into their faces and identify them visually, or at least confirm that they didn't resemble the photograph of Ling Dan that Doctor Dorden gave me earlier. After sweeping through the entire group, I confirmed that Ling Dan was not among them, and turned to nod at the kids.

"Let's go. He's not there."

"All right."

"Where are we going?"

Melina acknowledged my order, but Adrian raised a legitimate question. I honestly had no idea, but fortunately the base was pretty straightforward. There was very few directions in which we could proceed.

"Forward. Deeper into the base."

We advanced deeper into the base, and when there was the occasional Black Church member hurrying about to respond to the assault, I had Adrian and Melina flatten against the wall to ensure we didn't physically bump into the guy or vice versa. A few Barbaric Baboons would climb overhead, only to be shot down by defensive turrets spewing mana bullets, but the automatic guns' sensors didn't track us thanks to the hi-tech stealth field that Melina's device generated.

How on earth did her family get their hands on such an insane device? Oh, right. One of the ten great families. Of course.

"Don't worry, they can't sense us," I assured the kids as I stepped in front of the turrets. Not directly in front – even I wasn't reckless or stupid enough to take such a huge risk. "Let's hurry and get behind them."

As it turned out, there were even more turrets behind those turrets, but these were manning the cages. I could see a row of turrets that had been badly mauled, a row that had been watching over a series of empty cages before their demise. A good number of monster corpses lay strewn in front of the turrets, evidence of how the pack of Barbaric Baboons had lost a significant portion of their forces before they eventually overwhelmed the guns.

Yet there were many monsters housed within the reinforced cages, remaining under the cautious sensors of whirring sentry guns that swept their barrels in a 180 degree arc. I still thought the Dark Church was stupid for even trying to capture monsters. That never ended well.

Then again, I highly doubted anyone gullible enough to join such an insane organization would have watched sci-fi movies. Honestly, religion was fine. Even in the 31st century, religions still remained to provide spiritual aid and a community of belonging for the majority of the population. It was only fanatic extremists like these who resorted to terrorism and abused the good name of religion for their own benefit. Hell, I doubted the higher-ups who ran the Dark Church were actually all that religious. Most likely the majority of them were atheist edgelords who held a childish grudge against the world or humanity, and wanted to massacre people because…I don't know, they got rejected by society or something. And not because they truly believed monsters as their saviors.

Then they preyed on the mentally or spiritually weak, or those discarded and callously abandoned by society, and persuaded them to join their cause, to unleash monsters on the very society that had ostracized them, while pretending it was for a religious cause.

We got past the monster cages and deeper into the facility, and from a damaged blueprint, I could make out the direction of the laboratories.

"Let's get to the labs," I suggested. If there was any place where Ling Dan might reside in, it was definitely the laboratories. I wondered what the Dark Church was researching on. First, a vast cargo of herbs and medicinal flowers, and then a bunch of monsters trapped inside cages. Given what I had seen of them so far, I had no doubt that they were researching on ways to up the lethality and killing power of monsters, particularly after what Dad and I found in the mountains all those months ago.

The passageway to the labs was surprisingly empty and unguarded. Most of the personnel had been running around, dealing with the escaped Barbaric Baboons, and so they left the corridor to the labs bare. That was good for us, but I refused to take any chances and had Melina and Adrian continue activating their stealth devices.

It wasn't over until it was over.

"Where's everybody?" Adrian asked when we strode past, looking into the labs. Several of them had clearly been broken in, but the monsters that had smashed their way in looked dead. I caught sight of several scientists in white lab coats lying beside the monsters, the once pristine fabric of their signature coats now stained crimson with blood.

"Dead," I muttered.

"All of them?" Adrian asked, his complexion ashen. I shrugged.

"That's what we're here to find out."

As a precautionary measure, I scanned the dead, though several had their heads torn off or their faces mauled so badly it was hard to recognize them. Thankfully, they all had ID tags or something pinned to their coats, though some evidently had their ID badges shorn off when the Barbaric Baboons butchered them. Even so, it wasn't that difficult to confirm whether they were Ling Dan or not, based on the physical attributes provided in his data.

"Not here…and not here."

I was going through the first couple of labs, but that was as far as the carnage went. The other labs seemed untouched by the slaughter, their doors sealed tightly.

"What do we do now?" Melina asked, staring at the sealed doors, perturbed.

"We enter," I replied.

"How?" Melina fidgeted as she grasp her stealth device. "As I said, we can't make any physical contact…we can't hack into the doors and force them open, can we?"

"We might not have to," I replied as an idea formed in my mind. Returning to the first two labs, which were still open because the Dark Church had not gotten around to securing the sites and locking them down – they were still too busily dealing with the Barbaric Baboons that ran about the base, I picked up a bloodied ID that had been thrown to the side after one of the monsters' claws ripped into the poor owner's chest. Grimacing as I wiped the blood off the surface, which revealed a photo of a young-looking research assistant, and her name, Joanne Olsen, I then straightened up and turned back toward the kids. "Let's hope this works."

We then returned to the locked laboratories, and I gingerly raised the ID to the scanner. The stealth field had to be adjusted to allow the scanner to sense the ID card while still keeping us hidden, but as a precaution I had the kids stay some distance away from me. If I get caught, I didn't want them to get dragged into it too.

In fact, I had left very clear instructions that they were both to escape as quickly as possible, by themselves under the stealth cloak, without me. I would deal with the fallout on my own, and while they were unconvinced I reminded them that I couldn't fight at my best if I had to take care of them as well. There was no argument after that. Neither of them wanted to be a burden.

The scanner clicked green, and then the door slid open. Sighing a breath of relief, especially after glancing around and seeing that there was no security personnel barreling down the corridor to check the intrusion (and the alarms were already going off because of the Barbaric Baboons' assault), I peeked inside.

"Who…who's there?"

"Everybody, get back!"

The scientists gathered inside the room were retreating from the suddenly opening door, frightened as hell. I strode in, and with a gesture, had Melina and Adrian retreat so that I would be out of range of the cloaking field.

"It's just me."

"Oh, one of the assistants, huh?" An elderly scientist – a man with frizzly white hair and a mustache – looked at me in relief as I walked in, becoming visible. "You survived the Barbaric Baboons, eh? Good, good."

Evidently they had mistaken me for one of the research assistants. Thanks to me wearing glasses and looking like a nerd most of the times, I managed to fool them. The blood splatters and stuff I got onto my clothing during combat earlier made that impression a lot more convincing. However, they noticed my swords and went tense.

"Actually, I'm part of security," I quickly assured them, and they relaxed at that with a big sigh of relief.

"Are the Barbaric Baboons still out there? Has security finally dealt with them?"

A female scientist was posing the question. I shook my head.

"We're still fighting." As if to punctuate my sentence, gunfire and the roar of an explosion from a spell resounded from the corridor. "They're pretty tough."

"Then shut the door! We can't let them in!"

"Yeah, I will. But I've been tasked to search for Ling Dan. Do you know where he is?"

"Huh? Ling Dan?" the scientists exchanged confused glances. The old man in particular, was astounded. "Wasn't he locked up in the prison cells below? Why would he be here?"

"He escaped in all the chaos," I replied. Good thing I was adept at ad-libbing or I would be found out here. "So we are looking for him right now. You know how it is…he's a high-value prisoner, after all."

"Yeah, we can't let him get away." The old man was nodding. "His knowledge of receptary is invaluable. We'll need him to cooperate if we want to develop a new batch of combat drugs, and the psychoindoctrination drugs to bring the monsters under our control." His expression hardened. "Make sure you find him at all costs."

"I will," I promised, and then I left the lab, making sure to shut the door and sealing the scientists back in. Turning to an awaiting Adrian and Melina while disappearing back into the stealth field, I grinned. "We have a location."