Chapter 80: The Shadow Behind the Rift

Chapter 80: Chapter 80: The Shadow Behind the Rift

The mana facility was unusually quiet. Outside one of the reinforced recovery rooms, Seraphina sat alone on a sofa with a book open in her lap, having gotten permission to wait there since early morning.

The reason was simple enough, Felix was in the final stage of stabilization after his breakthrough, and she wanted to be the first one he saw when he came out.

She turned a page, expression calm, composed, every bit the picture of a woman absorbed in a good book.

She wasn’t, not really, her attention kept splitting between the words and the sealed door in front of her. She’d already been told the breakthrough was going fine, no danger involved.

She still wanted to see for herself.

Another page turned, and then footsteps reached her: light, uneven, familiar. Her eyes stayed on the book, but her fingers stopped moving. She looked up slowly as pink hair came around the corner.

Liora.

Seraphina’s expression cooled instantly. Liora spotted her at almost the same moment and froze, eyes going wide. Neither moved for a few seconds before Seraphina lowered her book slightly.

Liora glanced at the empty sofa across from her, then at Seraphina, then back at the sofa, clearly wanting to turn around and leave. But Felix was behind that door, so she made herself walk forward anyway, step by step, until she finally sat.

Her hands went straight to fidgeting with her sleeve. Seraphina went back to her book, and silence settled in.

Liora glanced over once, looked away fast, and the quiet stretched out: a page turning here, more fidgeting there, her shoulders climbing tighter with every second of it. She didn’t understand why Seraphina disliked her so much. She knew better than to ask.

Seraphina kept reading, expression unchanged on the surface. Underneath it, one word kept surfacing.

*Dangerous.*

Not because Liora was stronger: she wasn’t, not by a wide margin. Not because of the Darkness she carried. It was simpler than that.

She was getting close to Felix. Too close. Seraphina had clocked every bit of it: the way Liora trailed him, held onto his sleeve, looked at him, trusted him without reservation.

And Felix just let it happen, completely unbothered, seemingly oblivious to how fast that girl was attaching herself to him.

Seraphina’s grip tightened slightly on the book’s spine. She’d spent years learning to read people: attachment, dependence, trust, and eventually, given enough time, something closer to love.

This girl was headed exactly that direction, and the thought that followed arrived without any real effort at all.

*I need to do something about this.*

Eliminate the problem. Remove the threat.

Killing intent leaked out of her, the temperature in the corridor dropping a few degrees. Liora felt it immediately and went rigid, looking over: the jammers on her wrists should have capped how much pressure anyone could put out, and yet the weight coming off Seraphina was unmistakable.

Liora swallowed hard, fingers twisting into her sleeves, and dropped her gaze.

*Please open the door. Please.*

She didn’t want to sit here anymore. Didn’t want to look at Seraphina. Definitely didn’t want to find out what that expression actually meant.

Then —

*click.*

Both of them froze, heads snapping toward the door as it opened. Felix stepped out, hair still damp, dressed in a plain black shirt and loose pants, expression relaxed but his presence had changed completely, and both of them felt it the instant he appeared.

Every trace of tension between them evaporated at once. The cold around Seraphina vanished. Liora’s nerves disappeared along with it.

"Oh," Felix said, smiling. "You both waited?"

"Of course," Seraphina said, already standing.

Liora stood a moment later, eyes shining. "You’re okay."

"More than okay." He stretched his arms overhead. "I feel amazing."

Seraphina crossed to him and looked him over carefully: no weakness, no instability anywhere. His mana felt entirely different now, dense and powerful and perfectly stable.

"Congratulations, Felix," she said, voice gone soft. "You reached S-rank."

"Thanks, Sera." Her eyes softened completely at that, right up until she noticed Liora stepping forward from behind her.

"Felix," Liora said, nervous, and he looked at her. She smiled: small, but entirely genuine. "Congratulations."

He blinked. "That’s it?"

"You worked really hard." Her eyes flicked briefly to his chest. "I know you’ve been pushing yourself for a while."

"Thanks, Liora."

She ducked her head.

"I’m just glad you’re okay." Just plain relief.

He reached over and patted her head lightly. "Don’t worry about it." Her cheeks went pink instantly.

Seraphina watched, her own smile staying put, though it had gone noticeably thinner. Before she could say anything, footsteps approached from the corridor, and a guard stopped a few meters off.

"Felix Valerius."

He looked over.

"Director Voss wants to see you." The guard’s eyes moved to the two women. "All three of you."

"Why?" Seraphina asked, eyes narrowing.

"It concerns the dark elf your team captured."

Felix’s expression sobered instantly. "Let’s go."

---

They followed the guard through the security corridor, Seraphina walking confidently at Felix’s side while Liora hung a step behind, glancing around now and then.

"You okay?" Felix asked her.

"Yes," she said quickly.

Seraphina glanced over at her once, and Liora immediately looked away.

They reached Elena’s office, where she sat behind her desk with Dr. Hart nearby, documents and tablets spread across the table between them.

"Sit," Elena said, gesturing at the chairs. Felix took one, Seraphina the seat beside him, Liora the other side.

"We’ve got several things to go through," Evelyn said.

"The dark elf," Felix said. It wasn’t a question.

"Yes." Elena activated the display, and an image of the captive filled the air above the desk. "It’s been under observation since you brought it in. We’ve learned very little."

"Because it won’t talk?"

"Because we can’t identify its language," Evelyn said. "We’ve run it through everything; ancient monster dialects, every modern human language on record, known elven tongues, mana-based linguistic analysis. Nothing matches."

"Not even the Association’s translation systems caught anything?"

"We tried everything available to us."

"So it’s not using a known language," Seraphina said, arms folding.

"Correct."

"Can it understand us, at least?" Liora asked.

"We don’t know. No response at all, even under direct questioning."

Felix frowned slightly, crossing his arms. "That’s strange. The leader, the S-rank elf spoke to us directly in our language right before we fought. Clear as day."

​Elena and Dr. Hart both looked up, surprised. "It spoke human language?" Elena asked.

​"Fluently," Felix said, leaning back. "Which means their leadership is educated enough to communicate with us, but the subordinates don’t have that privilege. The leader knew our language, but its men do not."

​"A clear hierarchy," Seraphina murmured.

"Specialized roles. The officers interact with external entities, while the foot soldiers are kept ignorant."

​"Or isolated," Felix agreed. "Interesting."

Elena switched the display to a different image, the pills from the battle.

"These came off the captured elf. Seven of them."

"We’ve run a full analysis." The display shifted to complex mana-structure diagrams. "They’re not conventional potions."

"Compressed mana catalysts," Felix said, studying the diagrams.

"Exactly. They force a user’s output past their natural limit."

"That’s what happened to the S-rank elf."

"Right," Elena said, pointing to the first diagram.

"The first pill pushed it to the ceiling of S-rank." She moved to the second. "The second pushed it temporarily into SS-rank."

Liora remembered the fight and tensed. "But its body couldn’t handle it."

"Exactly. These don’t permanently raise anyone’s rank," Evelyn said. "They force the existing core to put out far more than the body can safely process."

"Which explains the instability," Felix said.

"And it’s borrowing power it doesn’t actually have," he added.

"That’s one way to put it."

"How dangerous is repeated use?"

"Extremely," Elena said, expression hardening.

"It destroys the user’s mana channels. The higher the forced output, the worse the damage."

Silence settled over the room. Felix thought back to the elf: two pills, taken even after catastrophic injury, willing to push itself into SS-rank territory despite what it would cost.

That hadn’t been desperation. That had been preparation. Somebody had handed it those pills expecting exactly that fight, knowing exactly how much power it would need.

"Somebody manufactured these," Felix said.

"Yes, and that’s the real problem," Elena said, pulling up another readout. "The chemical structure doesn’t match any registered potion formula anywhere."

"So someone’s working with technology we don’t know about," Seraphina said, cold.

"Could the dark elves have made these themselves?" Liora asked.

"That’s one possibility," Elena said.

Felix shook his head slowly. "Maybe, but if they built this themselves, that means they understand human-style rank mechanics in detail, and they know exactly how to manipulate breakthrough-level mana on purpose."

"Which makes them intelligent," Seraphina said.

"Very." Felix sat back, pulling the pieces together in his head: the B-rank boss, the foreign mana signature, the artificial elevation, the dark elves, the pills, the forced jump to S and SS-rank.

Too many coincidences stacking up in the same place. Something was running experiments inside these rifts, and whatever it was had enough knowledge to manipulate both monsters and awakened beings alike.

"We’re increasing surveillance on every newly opened gate," Elena said.

"And also pulling the historical gate records, looking for anything similar."

"If you find anything," Felix said, standing, expression entirely serious now, "I want to know first."

"You will."

He glanced at Seraphina, then Liora. "Because if something’s deliberately modifying creatures inside rifts on purpose, this stopped being a normal monster problem a while ago."

For centuries, humanity had treated rifts as a simple equation: go in, kill the boss, take the cores, leave, repeat. Something had shifted. The monsters were adapting. Someone was handing them the means to do it.

And for the first time, humanity might not be the only side actually learning something from all of this.

Felix looked at the closed door, a thin smile crossing his face.

"Looks like things are finally getting interesting."

And deep inside Acheron Deep, the captured elf sat in total silence.

The real fight hadn’t started yet.