Dark Magus Returns - Chapter 1571: Never The Same (Part 2)
Chapter 1571: Never The Same (Part 2)
Raze had told Londo to return to the Underside first.
Even though no one could have overheard their conversation, thanks to the silence spell, Raze knew someone might have seen them together. And that alone could raise suspicion.
Londo was a high-ranking member of the Dark Guild, so most wouldn’t question him openly, but if Harvey, or anyone loyal to him, began to suspect something, there was always the chance they might interrogate him.
Raze doubted Harvey would go that far… but still, the longer they were seen together, the more dangerous it became. He knew from his own experience how weary people could become.
So now Raze sat alone in the quiet restaurant, lost in thought.
If it were me in the past, he reflected, at a certain point in time, I might have done the same thing.
He could picture it clearly, the younger version of himself, full of anger and certainty, convinced that anyone who stood in his way was an obstacle to be removed.
If people were trying to lecture me, he thought, I would’ve seen them as barriers, not allies.
He remembered how he’d once supported Harvey without question, even approving the creation of the Dark Guild. Back then, Kelly had already told him what Harvey was capable of, how ruthless his methods were.
And yet Raze had turned a blind eye.
He told himself it was necessary, that Harvey would do whatever needed to be done anyway. That it wasn’t his responsibility.
It was a lie he had chosen to believe.
Now, sitting in the empty diner, Raze wondered if things could have been different, if he had confronted Harvey earlier, when the man’s actions first began to spiral.
Would it have stopped what happened to Mordain and his men?
He would never know.
But the situation now… Raze thought, his hand resting against the table. That’s something I can still change.
Alen and his team were risking their lives for him. They believed in his cause. They deserved to know the truth about what had happened.
Yet telling them would destroy everything they had built.
If Alen finds out, Raze thought grimly, he’ll never work with the Dark Guild again. He might even try to destroy it.
And if that happened, the alliance would collapse from within.
Even if I convinced Alen to wait, to let me deal with Harvey after all this is over, Harvey might decide Alen’s team is a threat. He could strike first.
The more Raze thought about it, the more one truth became clear: revealing what he knew would only lead to more death.
The Grand Magus was still out there, their influence still intact. They were close, so close, to pinning them down and turning the world against them.
He couldn’t risk losing momentum now.
I can’t tell Alen, Raze decided. Not yet.
It was a selfish choice, but also the only one that made sense.
To prevent more loss.
To stop the alliance from fracturing.
To finish the war against the Grand Magus once and for all.
For now, the best thing he could do was to keep Alen and his soldiers separate from the Dark Guild. And to prepare for what might happen when the truth inevitably surfaced.
That was the burden Londo had passed onto him, the weight of knowledge that could shatter everything.
Raze understood why Londo had hesitated to tell him. In truth, keeping the secret might have been the wiser choice. But he also understood why Londo couldn’t stay silent forever.
There were things too important to keep buried.
After leaving the restaurant, Raze made his way back to the Underside.
By the time he arrived, the underground city was quiet, the faint glow of mana-lamps illuminating the tunnels. He returned to his work immediately, tending to the patients that Beatrix and Alen’s group had rescued from the Cerebus facility.
They were different from the others he’d treated before. The symptoms, the patterns of their mana flow, even the state of their cores, didn’t match the earlier victims.
In each of them, the addiction to the injected substances had manifested differently. The contamination wasn’t uniform; it was as though the experiments had been adjusted from subject to subject, testing different results.
Raze carefully examined one man’s magic core, then another’s. The distortions weren’t random. They were deliberate.
They’re experimenting on variables, he realized. Testing how each body reacts to the enhancement process… or maybe trying to identify a stable mutation.
The thought made his stomach tighten.
Even after purifying their mana and clearing the residual toxins, the patients could tell him little more than what he already knew. Most had been unconscious during the worst of it.
The Cerebus Guild… they’re using special methods to amplify their light magic, Raze thought, his mind spinning. But we still don’t know what Gizin’s true goal in Alterian is. And that, he clenched his hand , that’s what worries me most.
For all their progress, Gizin remained a mystery. His presence in Alterian felt intentional, like part of a larger plan.
Still, Raze couldn’t dwell on it now.
By the time he finished tending to the last of the patients, word had already spread among the ranks: everything was prepared.
The footage had been reviewed, the files copied, and the communication crystals calibrated.
In just two hours, the entire world would know what the Cerebus Guild and Gizin had done, every experiment, every hidden atrocity, every lie they had buried beneath the shining banner of “light.”
For better or worse, the truth was about to break through.
And when it did, Alterian would never be the same again.
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