In the rainy night, Greenlight Tower stood like a spire-shaped crystal pillar covered with moss. Raindrops drumd against its mirror-smooth walls, scattering into countless tiny splashes before rging into rushing sheets that poured down, watering the greenery clinging to its surface.
From a few blocks away, hidden within a shadowy alley, Yvette observed calmly for a mont. Then, she lted into the darkness and silently advanced toward Greenlight Tower.
Monts later, she reached the shadow of a drainage channel beside the wide road at the base of the building. She adjusted her stance and began sprinting vertically up the steep, slick crystal wall of Greenlight Tower. Before long, she had climbed more than a hundred ters into the air.
But the tower’s defense system was far from simple. From the seemingly harmless bands of “moss” embedded in the façade, countless greenish pea shooters sprang forth, their dark muzzles aid at her. A dense barrage of seeds rained down like a storm of bullets.
It was troubleso. She couldn’t just destroy those defensive plants—at worst, they were a nuisance if left alone, but taking them out would set the entire tower’s defenses ablaze.
Yvette was forced to spend quite a bit of ti painstakingly weaving past the concentrated defenses before she finally reached the spire platform, hundreds of ters above ground.
Ti was pressing. Without a shred of hesitation, several strands of Ash-White Touch extended from the shadows, transforming into razor-sharp blades that sliced through the heavy tal door of the stairwell.
No explosion, no sparks—only precise cutting. The door fell smoothly, revealing a narrow tal ergency shaft descending below.
She slipped inside, quickly resetting the severed door back into place to block the storm outside, then leapt down.
Soon, faint footsteps echoed from below. Yvette pressed against the cold wall, keeping to the shadows as she maintained her shadow-stealth form. Her gaze swept over the markings on the corridor wall: “Strategic Data Backup Zone.”
But she didn’t make a move. The defenses here were far tighter than in the industrial park—any physical intrusion ant certain exposure. Theoretically, she only had one shot at stealing data, so she had to choose the most valuable target.
Continuing down, the atmosphere on the second-to-last level was utterly different from the spire above. The cold industrial lights gave way to warm golden hues simulating natural sunlight, soft in brightness and evoking a tranquil forest. The air was dry and clean, carrying a faint, elusive scent of plants.
After inspecting the few entrances on that level, Yvette’s gaze locked on one door—“Green Crown Council.”
This was the very heart of Lingman Corporation’s board of directors. According to her intel, the current chairman and CEO, Imogen Ashford, was an enigmatic figure. A few years ago, he had suddenly risen to the position at only about thirty years old, his background a mystery—unlike Black Tower Pharmaceuticals’ Oga Family or Lin-trans Bio’s Cyrus Family, which had clear lines of succession.
Yvette harbored no contempt for him. Rumor had it that the leaders of the Eight Major Corporations were all deeply hidden top-tier powerhouses. Without strength at least on par with a Level Six Mage, it was impossible to hold such a high-profile seat.
She kept descending via the ergency shaft. After slicing open a locked door with Ash-White Touch, Yvette found herself in a corridor leading to a brightly lit hall at the far end, silhouettes moving within.
With a thought, Yvette split off fragnts of her soul, transforming them into invisible Wraiths that glided silently into the room. Inside, at the center, stood a small tree encased in a pristine crystal cover. Intricate, glowing runes were carved into its branches, surrounded by shimring magical streams, pulsing like an ocean of information.
Found it. Yvette allowed herself a faint sense of satisfaction. For a Rune Hacker without the Heart of Nature, connecting to the Rune Source Tree—or the Rune Source Mother Tree—was impossible. Besides using Wraith possession as a dium, there was another universal solution to hack into the Rune Source Tree: direct, zero-distance contact with the server-like plant itself.
After all, the Rune Source Tree was a special type of magical plant; the terminal was rely a ntal relay station. With her face practically pressed against it, why bother with interdiaries?
Deciding instantly, Yvette released more soul fragnts, sending them like a silent tide toward every staff mber in the room.
Without a sound, their bodies went limp, collapsing into slumber—this was a gentle variant of Wraith possession, putting hosts temporarily to sleep with almost no damage to their spirits.
Yvette stepped inside at once. Though still in shadow form, the magical plants in the room were unusually sensitive, seemingly able to sense an intruder’s presence, and they began attacking her.
Those pea shooters and vine-like magical plants—if Yvette had fully mastered Nature Magic, she could have seized control of them outright. Unfortunately, she’d only just begun learning Nature Magic and couldn’t pull off anything that advanced. Her choice was simple: unleash Fire Magic and reduce the plants to ash.
Besides, the mont she stepped in, the alarms throughout Greenlight Tower had already blared to life. All she needed was to hack into the Rune Source Tree, breach the layered firewalls, and find the data she wanted before Lingman Corporation’s elite forces arrived.
Soon, the hacking began. Unfamiliar with the platform’s hardware and software, even Yvette—a top Rune Hacker—found herself facing rare difficulty. Much of her previous experience was useless here.
Ti ticked by as the alarm shrieked ever louder. Focused to the extre, Yvette drove her ntal energy at full throttle until she finally broke through, uncovering the critical data stream of Project “Code Life.” There was no ti to read; she began furiously copying the massive, possibly vital files, which included fragnts related to the Eight Corporations’ secrets and cutting-edge magical technologies.
At that tense mont, a calm voice sounded from the doorway: “So Eugene has fallen… You must be the legendary Naless?”
Yvette jerked her head around and saw Lingman Corporation’s chairman, Imogen Ashford, standing quietly at the entrance to the Control Room.
His face was impassive. Even knowing Yvette’s formidable combat strength, there wasn’t a trace of tension or fear on his features—instead, he appeared as indifferent as a puppet.
Yvette t his emotionless gaze in silence, not replying.
The air inside grew oppressive until, after more than a minute, Imogen’s lips twitched. His expression darkened as he spoke: “Stealing in front of the host, Naless—don’t you think that’s rather shaless? Are you so dismissive of as your host?”
Yvette sped up slightly, thinking, What else am I supposed to do?
Seeing the thief still copying data without pause, Imogen finally lost patience. On the composite-tal floor, a mass of green light appeared out of thin air, forming in seconds into a towering gray bear over three ters tall. Its body was sheathed in a thick rocky layer marked with Earth Magic traces. With a thunderous roar, the beast lunged at Yvette.
This ti, Yvette was genuinely stunned, her crimson eyes blinking blankly.
With all her vast knowledge, she couldn’t comprehend how Imogen had conjured a gray bear from nothing.
What was even more shocking was that this bear wielded Earth Magic—a so-called Magical Beast. Among all known records of Origin Civilization, there was no ntion of such a creature. It was as if an entirely new lifeform had been created from thin air!
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