Seth, Ejiro and Gabriella were in the second layer, Etheria City. As the three walked in the busy street, they wondered how they could infiltrate the Tech-Think building.

The young vampiric queen, forced to act as their guide despite being a hostage, reviewed the plan. “Tech-Think governs all of the information inside the guild. If I’m right, there’s a way to get above the Obscure Guild’s roof. But, Seth, you can sneak anywhere with your shadow magic or whatever the name is. Couldn’t you just sneak us over the gates instead of doing such a risky thing?”

Seth Rayn frowned. “Oh, I could sneak us in without being seen by the cameras and guards, but the Obscure Guild’s mana sensors surveil every gate. I can’t get us past those.”

“Alright, you said earlier that we can also get intel here. How?” Ejiro asked Gabriella, skeptical.

“It’s just based on what I’ve heard about Tech-Think. I don’t know how you’ll get it,” Gabriella responded, breathing quickly, “I’ve never been there myself, but I know of a few buildings like this one, and they generally have a way to get above the roof. Even nobles don’t normally go there if only to take a small dose of sunlight.”

Gabriella was scared of revealing too much information to the DA. The Obscure Guild was her home, and her father would be disappointed in her if things leaked, and he had gotten scarier ever since his wife died. However, contacting the outside world was impossible from the guild, and she was sure that Seth and Ejiro wouldn’t get far in life.

‘Once we get to Vamp City, my father will kill them.’ with this in mind, she chose to cooperate until then.

“The problem is that we’ll get lost in this endless concrete desert without a GPS and a map.”

Gabriella sighted.

They had arrived in the parking lot at the foot of the Tech-Think tower. The building’s sliding doors closed behind a few workers who had just gone inside. Construction noise echoed from a distant building, and the large pipes near the street rattled loudly.

“Take this,” Seth handed Gabriella a communication device to conceal in her ear.

“You’ll be able to communicate with Ejiro and I. I’ll move in the shadows and start from the lower floors. You two will fly up and scout the upper floors.

“If you find something, report it to me. We’re looking for anything important, but our goal is finding a map of the Obscure Guild that we can use with a GPS.”

“That seems simple enough.” Ejiro flew up in his vampiric form.

Seth watched Gabriella and Ejiro each find their way up. The roofscrapper was gigantic, no doubt one of the biggest ones in the Obscure Guild. Moreover, it was well-guarded. Yet, Seth Rayn didn’t see it as a threat. He and Ejiro probably wouldn’t get caught and could easily escape if they did. The only variable was if Gabriella would cooperate.

…

The first floor was spread across a thousand square metres but separated into different sections. There was a cafeteria and an entrance. The other rooms had games, such as a pool, and places to lounge during a break from work.

There weren’t many people there since it was three in the afternoon. Seth came out of a dim square room and spotted someone passing by. Without hesitating, he pulled him inside the dark room and shut the door.

Laying on the floor, the employee was terrified and confused as he attempted to scream, yet not a breath came out. As soon as the lights turned on, he saw an old mage in a dark robe pointing his steel staff at him. “Hey, do you want to live?”

The worker trembled as he nodded his head.

“Alright,” Seth went straight to the point. “Tell me everything about this building’s layout.”

Avoiding eye contact, the research employee raised his hand as he slowly shrunk back. “T-the building is big.”

After contemplating his choices, he realized that cooperating was the only option.

“There’s the research and development department on the second and third floor, t–the outer intelligence gathering department on the fifth floor, the behaviour and influence department on the 7th to 9th floors, cybersecurity on the 10th, 11th and 12th floors, um… the legal department on the 16th floor.”

“Talk slower. What else is there?”

“Oh… There’s the marketing and public relations on the 19th floor. Um… I think, on the 20th floor, there’s the inner intelligence department.”

The master magician approached closer and a tall shadow formed behind him. “Inner intelligence?”

“Yes, they gather anything that happens inside the guild! I don’t…. I think that’s all I know about the tower. I only began working a month ago, you see…”

“You sure? Isn’t there a basement? What’s hidden in there?” The room suddenly grew darker as the ominous aura behind Seth radiated.

“I don’t know much! It’s just things they don’t want anyone to know about… Oh. There’s a data center in there! I heard even guards don’t go in!”

Seth straightened his posture. “On which basement?”

“The fourth, I think. Most servers are in the fourth basement.”

“Is that all?”

The worker made eye contact. “Yes, I promise!”

Seth clenched his fist then a shadow put the employee into a deep sleep.

After which, he talked out loud, eager to start investigating. “Ejiro, you heard that? Get to the inner intelligence department. I’ll go check out that data center.”

Ejiro had stolen a security guard’s navy blue uniform. “Alright,” he said as he tightened his cravat.

Gabriella, who had also heard everything from the communication device, was still flying outside while skimming through the windows. “Then I’ll try to find a way to go above the roof.”

Ejiro Sani entered the 20th floor. It was smaller than the first floor, but a single room span across many cubicles, interrupted only by a single bathroom, stairs and three elevators. "I’m in. There are a lot of people in this inner intelligence department. I’ll try not to get caught, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

The silence made him uneasy. Everyone was completely immersed in augmented virtuality, inside their soundproof cubicles, busy with their work.

The floor was big, so the faraway guards did not pay much attention to the new face. At the centre of the room was a human-sized droid reflecting blue light, which Ejiro walked towards, rubbing his shoes on the grey carpet leading to it.

He had already come up with a plan. “Hey, I’m here to perform a security check. The cybersecurity department sent me. Where can I access the computer network?”

The AI was skeptical and began a lie detection test on Ejiro’s body language. “Judging by your sword and clothes, you are a guard. Why did the cybersecurity department send you?”

Ejiro had expected this. He covered his face with light magic, making his expression undetectable, and affirmed his place confidently, “As I said, there’s a security concern.”

[Facial expression unrecognizable, no lie detected.]

The android frowned, confused. However, since it didn’t find any lie, the algorithm forced it to let Ejiro pass. “Go to your right. You may enter any free cubicle to do your work.”

Ejiro walked away and spoke softly in his ear. "I have someone's keycard, and I got authorized access to the network.”

“Good job.” On the first floor, Seth put his hand on an elevator door and closed his eyes, trying to feel every shadow within the basement.

His eyes opened wide. “I found the data center, going in."

Suddenly, a circular shadow formed on the elevator’s door. Seth could control shadows and could even make portals with them. He walked inside and immediately arrived at the other side of the portal, emerging from the dark spot of a cold room filled with computers.

As he explored the dimly lit one-kilometre square data center, his gaze fixed on the labels. “This will take a while.”

There were multiple sections, each labelled differently.

Seth traversed the halls while reading the labels. ‘Research & Development, Marketing & Sales, Cybersecurity, Financial Records, Trade Data, HR Records, Customer Data, Logistics, Operations, Archives, Backup Data, Disaster Recovery, financial records…’

He stopped. “Trade Data! That’s not what we’re here for, but that would be interesting for the DA-”

“Oh, hi there.” Seth narrowed his eyes.

The mage had gotten told that there weren’t any guards. However, the data centre was kept under surveillance by something else, robots. There was a small compact metallic robot with several arms and tools rolling toward him. It glanced at Seth, a single sensor acting as its eye.

In a monotone voice, it alarmed the company. “UNRESTRICTED ACCESS. BEGINNING SECURITY PROTOCOLS.”

Seth forcefully shut down the robot with a blow from his staff. However, it was already too late. “It seems this robot raised an alarm.”

He plugged his dark watch into a wire which connected to the server. “I hope this works.”

[Beginning data transfer.

1%...2%...3%...ERROR! The data is encrypted.

Attempting to decrypt available data.

4%... 5%... 6%... success.

7%... 8%... ERROR! Faulty data detected]

Seth looked at his surroundings while his all-purpose watch attempted to extract as much data as possible from the Trade Data server. He spotted two robots down the hall. The metallic noise of a foot hitting the floor alerted him of another coming from behind. One was cylindrical and half as tall as the average human, another was a giant box, and the latter was a machine with a 2 metres long mechanical arm sticking from the top.

[Analysing error…

The system is in lockdown, initializing safe mode.

Attempting safe eject… ERROR!

Unable to safely eject from the system. Data loss may occur.

Creating backup… ERROR! Unable to do a backup… attempting-]

“Quiet down! I don’t have time for this!” Seth forcefully unplugged his watch as a group of robots entered his view. “Staying here is pointless. I can’t bypass the security protocol.”

He left inside a shadow right before the robots got to him. The three robots looked at each other in confusion.