Chương 278: Chapter : 278

Iris appeared at the top of the stairs. The princess descended quickly, her boots clicking on the cracked steps. She pushed past the others and peered into the dark opening. Her magical senses tingled immediately. Powerful shielding. Very powerful shielding. This chamber had been hidden not just physically but mystically as well, warded against detection by spells of considerable skill.

"This room does not exist on any official blueprint," Iris said, her voice tight with controlled excitement.

"The magical locks are Grandmaster-class. Only a mage of extraordinary ability could have built them." Sayma pushed forward, her eyes glittering behind her round glasses. She looked like a child who had just found the ultimate Easter egg.

"A secret chamber hidden from records, protected by Grandmaster-level magic, in a murdered scientist's lab?"

"This is exactly what we came back for," she finished, practically vibrating with anticipation. Her fingers were already twitching toward the darkness. Ken reached into his jacket and pulled out a small flashlight.

"Allow me. I have extensive experience with dark, creepy rooms." He clicked the light on and stepped through the doorway before anyone could stop him. The secret chamber was small but densely packed. Shelves lined every wall, crammed with glass vials containing substances of various colors, from pale gold to deep violet. A narrow desk sat in the corner, covered in scattered notes.

And in the center of the room, resting on a stone pedestal like an artifact in a temple, lay a massive black journal bound in leather that had been treated with preservation spells. Ken picked it up like it was a lost puppy waiting just for him.

"Hey, look! A book! I love books almost as much as I love not being impaled by rusty pipes!" Sayma snatched it from his hands before he could do something foolish, which was a reasonable precaution given his track record with important objects. She opened the cover and immediately frowned. The pages were covered in dense, encrypted text. A cipher so complex that it would take an ordinary codebreaker weeks to crack. Fortunately, they did not have an ordinary codebreaker. They had Sayma.

"Triple-layer encryption," Sayma muttered, flipping through the pages rapidly.

"Carrion was paranoid. Extremely paranoid. But I've seen this cipher pattern before in intercepted Black Magician communications." She looked up at Iris with barely contained excitement.

"Give me two hours. I'll crack it open like an egg." Iris nodded firmly.

"Take whatever time you need. Zinia, assist her with the cross-referencing." Zinia was already pulling out her reference notebooks before Iris finished speaking. She and Sayma exchanged a brief, professional nod, the kind that passed for a pep rally between two serious scholars. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. While Sayma and Zinia retreated to the main lab with the black journal, the rest of the team swept the secret chamber centimeter by centimeter.

The vials on the shelves contained rare botanical extracts. Each one was meticulously labeled in the same encrypted script as the journal. The desk notes were fragmentary, but a few words appeared in plain language that even Ken could understand.

"Synthesis," Iris read aloud.

"Stabilization compound." Then she stopped, her violet eyes widening.

"The cure must survive." She repeated the phrase, her voice barely a whisper.

"Carrion wasn't just researching. He was protecting something. Something he believed was worth dying for." Laxmi crouched near the doorway, examining the shattered magical lock. She traced the remains of the spell pattern with her fingertip, her expression growing more puzzled by the second.

"This is sophisticated work," Laxmi said slowly.

"The lock was designed to resist both physical force and magical detection simultaneously. The only reason it broke is because Ken hit the exact structural weak point." She glanced up at Ken, who was examining a vial of glowing green liquid with entirely too much curiosity.

"The precise spot where the spell anchor was embedded in the brick. One inch in any direction and nothing would have happened."

"Did you calculate the impact angle?" Laxmi asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. Ken scratched his head.

"I calculated that Risa was going to get hurt, so I dove. The wall part was just good luck. Or bad luck, depending on how you feel about sore shoulders." Naomi stared at him, her green eyes searching his face for any sign of deception.

"You accidentally hit the one spot in the entire wall that would break a Grandmaster-level lock?"

"Accidents are my specialty," Ken said with a bright, shameless smile.

"That and shoulder injuries, apparently." Naomi opened her mouth, closed it, and decided she didn't have the energy to process that information. She turned back to the chamber and continued cataloging vials with focused determination. Risa found a small leather pouch hidden under the desk. Inside were dried flower petals of a deep crimson that seemed to shift and shimmer in the light. She held them up for Iris to see. The princess examined them briefly, then shook her head.

Another mystery for the encrypted journal to solve. Risa tucked the pouch carefully into her medical bag, making a mental note to analyze them later. Risa found Ken sitting on the floor outside the chamber, reading his mystery novel again while he waited. She sat down beside him on the dusty floor, still a little shaken from her near-miss with the pipe. Her hands were trembling slightly, and she pressed them flat against her knees to steady them.

The reality of what had almost happened was starting to sink in, and it made her feel cold inside.

"Ken?" she said softly.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you for saving me. From the pipe. You didn't hesitate at all." Ken closed his book and grinned at her. It was his usual goofy grin, but something underneath it was warm and genuine.

"Anytime. That's what the 13th Unit does. We trip over things and somehow save the day." Risa smiled. It was a small, grateful smile, the kind that made the cold, dusty corridor feel a little less grim.

"You're very brave. Even if you pretend not to be." Ken blinked, caught off guard by the sincerity in her voice. Then he laughed and ruffled his own hair awkwardly.

"Nah, I'm just very clumsy. There's a big difference between brave and too dumb to dodge." Risa wasn't convinced, but she let it go. She had seen how fast he had moved when she was in danger. Clumsy people didn't move like lightning. They just didn't. Two hours later, Sayma emerged from the main lab looking like she had just stared into the abyss and the abyss had blinked first. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, and her hands trembled from the intensity of the work.

She gathered the team in the corridor and held up the decoded journal with fingers that shook slightly. The others gathered around her in a tight semicircle, their faces illuminated by the dim corridor lights.

"I know what Carrion was hiding," Sayma said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"The encrypted journal reveals his true obsession. It wasn't Eternal Youth."