"Hello," a smiling man said as he arrived in front of Aegis' headquarters.
"Welcome, please, identify yourself," one of the guards asked politely.
"Sure thing!" the man said, activating his Barrier.
"Welcome back, researcher Mandurian," one of the guards said.
Mandurian just nodded and walked into Aegis' headquarters.
He casually walked down to the bottom level and made his way to the research and development department.
With his credentials, he easily opened the door to the secure area and entered.
"Hey, how did the mission go?" one of the Protectors in the department asked.
"Regular," Mandurian answered. "Nothing special."
The Protector nodded. "I'll wait for your report."
"Yep," Mandurian said, walking past the Protector casually.
Mandurian watched all the researchers being at work.
There were some extremely advanced machines down here.
Mandurian walked to one of the machines that nobody was working on and pulled a small metallic device out of his pocket.
He placed the device on the machine and walked to the next one.
"What are you doing?" one of the researchers asked after Mandurian placed another device down on a machine.
"Testing something. This will be great if it works as expected," Mandurian said with a smile.
When he approached another device, the researcher working on it looked at him with furrowed brows.
"I would ask you not to include my machine in whatever experiment you're running," the researcher said.
"It's going to be fine," Mandurian said.
He placed another couple of devices on some machines before he stopped in the middle of the lab.
Several researchers were looking at him with raised brows.
"Now, I just have to activate it," he said as he typed away on his Barrier.
He accessed the database and added a new registry.
The next moment, he typed in a bunch of complicated symbols.
Some seconds later, he hit publish.
Nothing happened.
"Hey, can you access the database?" one of the researchers asked, looking at his Barrier with furrowed brows.
The other researcher tried to open it, but his Barrier just said that there was an error connecting to the database.
Mandurian happily looked at his Barrier.
"And now, for the final touch," he said.
He pressed a button on his Barrier.
BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!
All the devices he placed on the machines exploded at the same time.
Even more, this was not just a normal explosion but one that scrambled the Zephyx.
All the materials were altered beyond recognition, deleting all the knowledge inside the machines while also destroying them.
The lab fell into chaos as everyone jumped away from the explosions.
Luckily, the explosions weren't strong enough to get through their Barriers.
Nobody died.
BANG!
A Shield burst through the door.
She was a small woman with red hair.
Her aura was soft, and she looked at the lab in shock.
Over half of their machines had been destroyed!
All the researchers knew what had happened.
The devices Mandurian planted exploded!
This was a deliberate sabotage.
The new Shield, the Tinkerer, glared at Mandurian, who just turned to look at her with a smile.
"Greetings, Tinkerer," Mandurian said with a smile. "I am envoy of my master, Julian Winter, and I have come to deliver a message and to be suppressed."
The eyes of the researchers shot open with shock.
Julian Winter!
He was back!
He hadn't shown himself in over ten years!
Everyone looked at Mandurian with shock, sensing his aura.
He completely felt human!
But this was a Specter, right?
"Would you please escort me to the Champion of Light?" Mandurian asked. "I have a message for him from Julian Winter."
The Tinkerer narrowed her eyes at Mandurian.
"What did you do to the real Mandurian?" she asked.
"I didn't do anything," the fake Mandurian answered. "I have been given this identity by my master."
The Tinkerer gritted her teeth.
She remembered the bright soul that was Mandurian.
He had given his everything to Aegis.
And now, he was dead?!
The Tinkerer resisted the urge to kill the Specter on the spot.
The next moment, the Specter slowly pulled a device from its chest, and the room was immediately filled with Specter Zephyx.
When they felt the density of the Specter Zephyx, they opened their eyes.
Initial Fallen!
"This is a present," the Specter said with a smile, placing it down on the ground. "My master created this device, and he believes that it will help you quite a bit."
"It uses Star Energy to mask Specter Zephyx as human Zephyx."
"My master believes you will enjoy analyzing this device."
The next moment, Mandurian's appearance changed.
He turned into a six-armed human with three masks on his face.
A laughing mask on his left, a crying mask on his right, and a peacefully smiling mask in the middle.
"You may suppress me now," the Specter said.
The Tinkerer narrowed her eyes.
BANG!
She immediately reached the Specter and blasted its body apart, only leaving the Specter Core.
Then, she put Zephyx Suppressors around the Specter Core.
Finally, she snorted. "You destroyed quite a bit of our progress, but all of our advances are gathered in the database. We just need to recreate the machines."
"Eh, about that," one of the researchers said. "We haven't been able to access the database."
The Tinkerer's eyes widened, and she quickly typed away on her Barrier.
She used her administrative access and moved the database into a secure mode.
Yet, even in the secure mode, she couldn't access any of the database entries.
The next moment, she ran out of the research and development department and entered the physical location of the database.
It was a humongous room filled with complicated computers.
She retrieved several devices and started to scan the physical Zephyx inside the machines.
She found the Zephyx to be completely scrambled!
It was still there, but everything was in a complete mess!
It was like all the numbers had been gathered and randomly distributed!
Everything was still there, but it was all in the wrong place!
'He encrypted our database!' the Tinkerer realized in horror.
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