Gardener of Eden

Chapter 47: Chapter 47: Commence

Seraphina’s sharp eyes caught three familiar figures moving discreetly through the crowded canal marketplace. With a subtle flick of her hand, she signaled Barney, Caelen, and Mirei toward a narrow, shadowed alleyway tucked behind a row of stone warehouses.

Rowan followed her lead, slipping out of the main street into the quiet gloom of the passage. Within moments, the five members of Squad 07 were reassembled, standing in a tight circle out of sight from the market traffic.

”We spotted them,” Rowan informed the three returning squad members in a low whisper. ”The tracking compass led us straight to an unmarked basement cellar right down the canal. Two disguised guards are posted at the iron entry door.”

”Good timing,” Caelen replied, lowering his visor slightly. ”The Sector 1-E site remained quiet on our end—no one returned to the clearing, so they must be concentrating their efforts here in the city.”

Before finalizing their assault, Rowan pulled up his academy mobile device and opened a secure channel. He typed out a brief, encrypted tactical alert detailing their precise grid coordinates, the suspect location, and the confirmed chemical match, routing it directly to Head Dean Sterling’s private terminal.

[SQUAD 07 TACTICAL REPORT: Order of Humanity suspected cell located. Grid 1-C Canal District, Sub-level 01. Proceeding to breach and secure. Reinforcements requested at coordinates.]

With the message sent, Rowan turned back to his team. ”Here’s the plan. Barney, you inspect the door first. Find the stress points or latch weaknesses so we don’t waste time trying to pick an enchanted lock.”

Barney nodded, pulling a small brass inspection eyepiece from his toolkit. ”Give me ten seconds at the frame. Iron doors always have structural flaws where the hinges meet the masonry.”

”Once Barney breaks the breach, Caelen takes point,” Rowan continued, looking at the Thorne twins. ”Brace for immediate resistance as soon as the door gives. Seraphina, Barney, and I will push in right behind Caelen to secure the central room, control the space, and neutralize any chemical stores. Mirei, you hold the entry threshold as our rearguard—keep the doorway clear, cover our backs from street ambushes, and snipe any cultists trying to escape.”

”Clear,” Mirei said, adjusting her quiver and resting her finger on her bowstring. ”Nothing gets past the doorway.”

”Let’s move,” Caelen said, unslinging his heavy tower shield and locking his grip on his broadsword.

Gliding out of the alley in tight formation, Squad 07 closed in on the basement cellar.

***

Sliding down the stone steps in total silence, Squad 07 took their positions against the damp cellar wall. The two disguised guards posted by the entryway didn’t even have time to shout before Caelen stepped forward, slamming their heads together in one swift, iron-visaged motion and dropping them cold.

Barney immediately stepped up to the heavy iron door. He fitted his brass eyepiece, scanning the rusted hinges and the reinforced latch. ”Rivet alignment is off on the top left,” Barney whispered, pointing his forge hammer at a hairline stress fracture near the frame. ”One strike right here will shatter the locking bar.”

Barney drew back his heavy hammer, channeling a short burst of forge mana into the iron head.

BOOM!

The heavy iron door buckled inward with a deafening screech of rending metal, flying off its hinges and crashing onto the stone floor inside.

”BREACH!” Caelen roared, plunging through the billowing dust with his tower shield raised high.

The basement opened into a sprawling, subterranean network of stone archways illuminated by flickering chemical torches. Dozens of figures dressed in coarse grey robes turned in shock, dropping glass vials, manifestos, and wooden crates.

Most of the cultists gathered in the outer chamber were unawakened civilians—disillusioned urban recruits brought in from outside the Tower. Armed with nothing more than iron daggers and makeshift clubs, their movements were painfully slow to the trained academy students.

With their enhanced attributes as Awakeners, Squad 07 swept through the outer room with effortless precision. Caelen used the flat of his broadsword and the broad face of his shield to throw three cultists back into the stone wall, knocking them out instantly. Behind him, Rowan wove through the crowd, delivering precise palm strikes to nerve points that dropped four more attackers before they could even draw a weapon.

As they pushed deeper into the central corridor, however, the resistance shifted dramatically.

Four heavily armored figures wearing dark steel breastplates stepped out from behind a line of wooden pillars, their weapons glowing with distinct, refined mana paths.

”Awakeners!” Caelen warned, bracing his shield as a heavy warhammer slammed against his iron defense, sending sparks flying across the stone floor. ”Tier 1s! They’re guarding the back chamber!”

”Caelen, take this!” Seraphina called out, her hand blurring as she plucked a crimson glass vial from her waist belt and tossed it over Rowan’s shoulder.

Caelen caught the potion mid-air with his sword hand, popped the cork with his teeth, and downed the glowing liquid in a single gulp.

[Item Consumed: Standard Strength Elixir (Grade-E)]

Effect: +20% Physical Strength for 1 Hour.

A surging, red-hot aura erupted around Caelen’s arms and shoulders. His muscles bulged under his steel vambraces as his raw physical stats spiked.

With a fierce roar, Caelen swung his broadsword in a sweeping arc. [Vanguard Cleave]! The sheer kinetic force of his boosted strength shattered the front defender’s iron shield, lifting the heavy Awakener off his feet and throwing him ten feet back into the wall. Turning his momentum, Caelen drove the base of his tower shield straight into the second fighter’s chest, cracking his breastplate and sending him crumpling to the floor.

Behind them, Mirei’s bowstring hummed like a tuned instrument from the threshold. Thwip! Thwip! Two perfectly aimed blunt-tipped arrows struck the remaining Awakener guards directly in the temples, knocking them unconscious where they stood.

Within two minutes, the entire corridor was silent, littered with unconscious cultists and broken weapons.

”Path clear!” Caelen panted, his strength-buffed shoulders rising and falling as he wiped his blade.

Squad 07 stepped past the fallen guards and rounded the final corner, entering a vast, vaulted chamber lined with iron distillation tanks, chemical cauldrons, and crates of synthetic pollutants.

At the far end of the room, sitting quietly behind an oak desk under the dim glow of an enchanted lantern, sat a tall, lean man in an embroidered black tunic. Unlike the chaotic cultists in the hallway, his posture was entirely serene. He didn’t reach for a weapon, nor did he flinch as five Awakeners invaded his sanctuary.

He simply looked up, his eyes glowing with an eerie, condensed violet light that sent an immediate wave of suffocating pressure across the room.

[SYSTEM THREAT ASSESSMENT]

Target: Order of Humanity Branch Leader

Status: Awakener (Tier 2 / Level 20)

Threat Level: Severe (Stat Disparity Detected)

The air in the room grew heavy, making it noticeably harder to draw a full breath. Rowan felt the dense mana radiating from the man like an invisible weight pressing down on his chest—the distinct signature of a fully ascended Tier 2 Awakener who had long cleared the upper floors.

”So,” the man said softly, closing a leather-bound ledger on his desk. ”Head Dean Sterling sent first-year children to clean up her mess. How disappointing.”

Caelen immediately stepped in front of the group, raising his shield, but the physical strain was obvious—a Level 20 Tier 2 Awakener possessed stats far beyond what a group of Level 5 first-years could handle in a direct head-on clash.

Rowan held up a hand, signaling his squad to hold their ground without breaking formation, his mind racing as he calculated their options.

Rowan subtly tapped his Sol-Aethel pass behind his back, confirming that the distress beacon was transmitting a continuous live location signal. Stepping half a pace in front of Caelen, he met the Branch Leader’s suffocating aura head-on, keeping his expression neutral.

”You call it Head Dean Sterling’s mess,” Rowan said, his voice measured to draw out every second. ”But if the Order of Humanity’s grand vision is to free humanity from the Tower’s corruption, why start by sabotaging small supply outposts and poisoning agricultural soil? That isn’t liberation. That’s starving the very civilians you claim to protect.”

The Branch Leader’s lips curled into a faint, disdainful smile. He leaned back in his high-backed chair, tapping his fingers against the leather ledger. ”Fools tied to the leash of stats and system notifications. You see soil and crops; I see the poison of foreign mana rotting the human lineage. A little starvation today breaks humanity’s addiction to the Tower tomorrow.”

”And what about the unawakened recruits you brought into this basement?” Seraphina added smoothly, catching onto Rowan’s play and stepping forward to draw his attention. ”You used them as meat shields in the corridor while you sat back here in safety.”

”They are stepping stones for the greater baseline,” the man replied coldly, rising slowly from his desk. The violet aura around him flared, casting long, menacing shadows across the stone arches. ”I have humored your little delay tactic long enough, children. Your passes are glowing with emergency transmissions. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?”

He raised a single hand, his Tier 2 mana condensing into a sphere of crackling violet pressure. ”Sleep now. You won’t live to see your backup—”

BOOM!

The entire ceiling of the subterranean vault shattered inward in a cascade of pulverized stone and iron beams.

A hurricane of razor-sharp gale currents erupted through the breach, instantly flattening the Branch Leader’s mana sphere. The immense atmospheric force slammed Squad 07 backward, the sheer weight of the kinetic backdraft knocking Rowan, Caelen, Barney, Seraphina, and Mirei off their feet and rendering them unconscious as they hit the stone floor.

Through the settling dust, Head Dean Sterling descended from the shattered ceiling, suspended on a vortex of howling green wind. Her eyes burned with incandescent rage as her gaze swept across her downed students, verifying their faint, steady breathing.

”They are alive,” Sterling said, her voice echoing like thunder inside the ruined vault. ”Which is the only reason you are still breathing.”

The Branch Leader’s eyes widened in sheer panic. He lunged backward toward a hidden escape latch in the far wall, channeling every drop of his Level 20 mana into a desperation sprint.

Sterling didn’t even raise her staff. She simply flicked her right wrist.

SWISH-SWISH-SWISH-SWISH!

Twenty micro-thin blades of condensed wind materialized in the air, flashing across the chamber in a fraction of a millisecond. With surgical precision, the wind blades severed the tendons in the Branch Leader’s wrists and ankles, pinning his limbs to the stone floor before he could even process the pain.

He collapsed onto his stomach with a heavy thud, blood pooling beneath his severed joints.

”You will answer for every sabotaged node on Layer 1,” Sterling said coldly, stepping over the debris toward his motionless form. ”The Tower Security Committee will tear your mind apart piece by piece until we have every cell location in the lower districts.”

The Branch Leader, pinned helplessly to the ground, turned his head sideways against the cold flagstones. Blood trickled from his lips, but his bloodshot eyes fixed on Sterling with a chilling, fanatic grin.

”For... the old ways...” he rasped out.

CRACK.

A faint crunch echoed from inside his mouth as his jaw clamped down tightly on a hidden cyanide capsule embedded in his molar.

Sterling’s eyes narrowed as she realized what he had done. She closed the distance in a blur, pressing her hand against his neck to purge the toxin with mana, but the rapid-acting poison had already swept through his nervous system. Within seconds, the Branch Leader’s body spasmed once, his eyes rolled back, and he went entirely limp.

”Dammit,” Sterling muttered, withdrawing her hand as the last trace of life vanished from his eyes.

She stood up slowly, looking past the dead cultist to the five unconscious students lying amidst the rubble. Pulling out her communication amulet, her voice cut through the quiet destruction of the basement.

”Medical team to Grid 1-C immediately,” Sterling ordered coldly. ”The target is dead, but Squad 07 has secured the site.”