The Vengeful Extra's Ascension-Chapter 215: What to Do!

With that conversation finished, the world folded back into itself with a soft, almost courteous pull, blood-aspected pressure releasing him rather than throwing him out, and the next thing

Albedo felt was familiar linen beneath his fingers and the faint hum of a mana-insulated ward embedded in the walls.

He was back in his hotel room. The bottle in his hand was still half-full and the folder that Raven gave him was still tucked under his arm.

The late afternoon light slanted through the tall window exactly as it had before he’d left, dust motes drifting lazily in the golden glow like nothing monumental had just occurred.

Albedo stood there for a moment, unmoving.

Then he let out a long breath and rolled his neck once, tension bleeding out in a slow wave. "Tch," he muttered quietly. "Vampires."

He set the bottle down on the small table by the window and tossed the black folder beside it, the blood-sealed crest pulsing faintly before settling into dormancy.

He didn’t sit immediately. Instead, he paced once around the room, boots silent against the polished floor, mind already pulling threads together as he thought about how he would approach this path.

A week. That was the timelimit he had to complete this task.Not a soft deadline, not a suggestion or a hard edge.

Either he brought Raven something worth carving an ancient house apart over, or he walked away having failed a woman who could erase him and everyone he cared about without raising her voice.

And that wasn’t even the part that bothered him.

Albedo stopped near the window and looked out over the Northern Capital, eyes unfocused as his thoughts sharpened instead.

Disappearances. Tourists. Merchants. Adventurers. Spread wide enough to look random, funneled tightly enough to point somewhere specific if you bothered to really look.

Everglade territory.

Transit routes. Border districts. Neutral zones.

"Not opportunistic," he murmured to himself. "And not sloppy."

He picked the folder back up, flipping it open again, scanning the reports not for what they said, but for what they avoided saying.

No gore. No witnesses who saw too much. No bodies returned unless they were convenient. Clean enough to dodge panic, dirty enough to feed something.

Bodies for something big. His jaw tightened slightly.

And then there were the eight shadows.

Albedo’s gaze drifted toward the far wall, not because he could see them, but because he could feel them, faint, patient, irritatingly careful. Magnus hadn’t called them back. He hadn’t escalated either.

Albedo assumed Raven used some sort of illusion magic to make them not freak out when he disappeared.

He exhaled slowly and closed the folder again.

Raven wanted discretion, nothing to trail back to him, but discretion didn’t mean passivity. If anything, it meant control.

Albedo turned away from the window and finally dropped onto the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees as his fingers interlaced loosely. His expression was calm, but his eyes were cold with calculation now.

A week meant he didn’t have time to let information come to him. He’d have to pull it out. Which meant the people Magnus had sent weren’t just liabilities anymore he could ignore and move on with his day.

They were assets.

"They already marked themselves," Albedo muttered. "Might as well put them to use."

They knew routes. Drop points. Safe houses. Who they reported to. Even if they weren’t directly involved in the disappearances, they were close enough to smell the rot.

And unlike Everglade nobles hiding behind titles, these eight didn’t have the protection of a council chamber.

They were expendable.

Albedo leaned back slightly, gaze lifting to the ceiling as his thoughts accelerated. He didn’t need to kill them. Not yet. Raven hadn’t ordered a massacre. Lilian had asked for restraint.

But pressure? Pressure was definitely allowed.

A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, humorless and sharp. "Guess I stop pretending I don’t notice you," he murmured.

One by one. Quietly. Separately.

He’d peel them off, isolate them, force mistakes. See who panicked first. See who tried to run. See who tried to bargain.

People always talked when the balance of power shifted.

And if any of them crossed the wrong line—

His fingers tightened briefly, then relaxed.

Kill on sight.

Raven’s words echoed without heat, without emotion. Not a threat. A rule.

Albedo stood again, the decision settling cleanly into place.

"Alright," he said softly to the empty room. "Let’s see what the Everglades are really hiding."

Albedo didn’t move immediately. He reached into his coat and drew out a thin, coin-sized disc etched with layered runes. With a flick of his thumb, it dissolved into pale motes that drifted toward the bed.

The illusion bloomed silently.

To any mundane sense, and most magical ones, Albedo Neverwinter had kicked off his boots, lay down, and gone to sleep. The illusion even radiated the faint haze of fatigue, mana cycling into rest-state patterns.

Albedo himself was already gone.

Space bent around him without spectacle, light folding inward as his body slipped between moments rather than places.

He reappeared crouched on the exterior ledge of the hotel three floors below his room, fingers already gripping cold stone as he absorbed the shift without a sound.

Wind tugged at his coat. The city stretched beneath him in layered terraces of light and shadow.

Eight shadows had become six.

Two had peeled away less than ten minutes ago, subtle, cautious, following patterns that pretended to be coincidence.

One drifted east along the merchant avenue. The other cut south, toward a service corridor that threaded beneath a theater district.

Albedo smiled faintly.

"Good," he murmured. "Split up for me."

He dropped. His boots kissed the stone once, then again, momentum absorbed through joints and mana reinforcement, until he melted into the alley below like he’d always belonged there.

The first target was closer.

Albedo moved through the city without haste, but without waste. Every step was measured. Every turn preselected.

He didn’t cloak himself completely, that drew attention from the wrong kinds of wards, but he slid just far enough out of notice that people’s eyes slipped past him without registering.

The shadow ahead of him was competent. Average height. Neutral clothing. No visible insignia. Mana signature deliberately muted, though not enough to vanish entirely. A professional observer, not an assassin. Someone trained to watch and report, not fight gods.

They ducked into a narrow service passage behind a closed apothecary. The passage was dim, lit by a single cracked mana-lamp that buzzed faintly overhead. The watcher slowed, sensing something, not danger, but absence. A wrongness in the air.

Albedo stepped out of space behind them and struck once. Two fingers slammed into the base of the skull, flooding the nervous system with a controlled surge of mana that shut the body down like a snuffed candle.

The watcher collapsed without a sound, never even finishing the turn. Albedo caught them before they hit the ground. He dragged the unconscious body into the deeper shadows, then vanished again.

The second target lasted longer.

They were sharper. More paranoid. They doubled back twice, checked reflections, brushed wards along their route like a spider testing silk. They noticed when the city’s rhythm shifted, when footsteps stopped echoing quite right.

They broke into a run, darting down into the service tunnels beneath the theater district, boots hammering against stone as they passed through a maintenance door and slammed it shut behind them. Wards flared briefly as the lock engaged.

Albedo appeared on the other side an instant later. The watcher spun, hand already reaching for a signaling crystal, and froze.

Albedo stood three paces away, hands in his pockets, expression calm and mildly curious.

"...You’re slower than the others," Albedo said. "I’ll give you points for noticing, though."

The watcher’s mana flared reflexively, defensive barriers snapping into place as they lunged backward, drawing a short blade etched with Everglade sigils.

Albedo sighed.

"See, that?" he said, stepping forward as the blade slashed toward his throat, "That’s why this is going to hurt more than it needs to."

He leaned just enough to let the blade skim past his collar, then drove his knee upward. The impact folded the watcher in half.

Before they could even gasp, Albedo twisted, caught their wrist, and snapped it with a sharp, economical motion. The blade clattered to the stone floor. A second strike slammed into their solar plexus, emptying their lungs and dropping them to their knees.

Albedo crouched in front of them, eyes level, voice quiet.

"You scream," he said calmly, "and I remove your tongue. You try to run, and I remove your legs. You lie to me, and I’ll know."

The watcher choked, clutching their chest, eyes wide with shock and pain.

Albedo reached out and tapped their forehead with one finger. Mana surged, not violently, but insistently, locking down their muscles and sending darkness flooding in.

They slumped forward.

Albedo exhaled once and stood.

"Two down," he murmured.

He opened a spatial fold beneath his feet and stepped through.

***

They woke in a place without windows.

Stone walls, old and thick, layered with suppression arrays that hummed at a frequency designed to disrupt mana circulation without causing permanent damage. Chains of dull-black alloy pinned both watchers to opposite walls, arms spread, feet barely touching the floor.

Their mana was bound. Their voices were not.

Albedo sat on a simple chair between them, coat draped neatly over the back, sleeves rolled to his forearms. He held a small device in his hand, a crystal recorder keyed to truth-fluctuation, its surface glowing faintly.

The first watcher groaned as consciousness returned, head lolling.

The second stiffened immediately, eyes snapping to Albedo with naked fear.

"Good," Albedo said pleasantly. "You’re both awake."

He leaned back slightly, crossing one ankle over his knee.

"Let’s establish a few things," he continued. "You work for Magnus Everglade. You were assigned to observe me, track my movements, and report deviations from expected behavior. You were not authorized to engage."

Neither spoke.

Albedo smiled thinly. "Silence is fine. This isn’t a conversation yet."

He activated the recorder. The crystal chimed softly.

"Name," he said, nodding toward the first watcher.

No response.

Albedo stood, walked over, and pressed two fingers into a precise point just below the collarbone.

The watcher screamed.

Albedo withdrew his hand immediately, expression unchanged.

"That was me interrupting your mana flow for half a second," he said calmly. "Next time, I won’t stop it."

He turned to the second watcher. "Name." 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"...Kerris," they rasped.

Albedo nodded and glanced back at the first.

"...V–Vane," the other gasped out.

"Excellent," Albedo said, returning to his chair. "Now we can begin."

He folded his hands together, blue eyes sharpening, not with rage, not with cruelty, but with focused intent.

"Tell me," he said softly, "what exactly is the Everglade Family using those missing people for?"