Supreme Warlock System : From Zero to Ultimate With My Wives-Chapter 425: The Central Vault

Warlock Ch 425. The Central Vault

Their bodies slipped through the shadows like whispers in the wind—silent, coordinated, surgical. Damian led the charge, his footsteps barely touching the ground as [Spectral Surge] carried him forward. The massive iron gates weren't their entry point—not tonight. No, they had scouted the area earlier. There was a crack in the northern wing, high up, where a crumbled stone beam had dislodged one of the secondary maintenance access points. It wasn't big. It wasn't stable. But it was unguarded.

And more importantly? It led to the upper corridors.

The ones below the vault tower.

Cassius flicked his wrist mid-run. Shadows burst out of the ground in three directions—his summons moving fast, chaotic, loud. Screeching like banshees and clashing against barriers, they scattered into the city like wild spirits. From afar, it looked like they were attacking different senatorial safehouses. A calculated misdirection.

Damian joined him, unleashing his own set of shadow servants. Taller. Hungrier. Built to intimidate, not just confuse. They roared, letting out hellish echoes that spiraled through the alleys like warning bells. Already, wards began to shift. Lights flared in the distance. Guards diverted. Mana flared in angry spikes across rooftops and defensive towers as Ralvek's forces scrambled to figure out where the real threat was.

It wasn't here.

Not yet.

"Move!" Damian hissed, cutting into the side path.

They didn't need a ladder. They had Victoria. She planted the bottom edge of her glaive into the wall and used the shaft like a makeshift vaulting pole. She leapt, flipped, landed silently on the upper ledge with inhuman grace, then reached down.

Evelyn blinked next—using a spell that warped the space just enough to lift her like a gust of wind. She rolled onto the stone ledge and nodded.

Cassius shadow-stepped halfway and scaled the rest with raw muscle and levitation runes on his boots.

Selena hesitated. Just a fraction of a second.

She looked up at the others, then back over her shoulder. The moonlight made her braid shimmer like silver, her breath visibly fogging in the cold night air. Her fingers twitched near her sword.

Damian landed beside her, watching her.

"This isn't your world," he said gently.

She blinked at him. "I know."

"But we need you in it. Right now."

Her lips parted like she wanted to say something—wanted to admit she was scared. Or maybe angry. Or just confused. But instead, she reached out, and he caught her wrist.

"Hold on," he said.

Then he launched both of them upward with [Telekinesis], boosting his jump with a burst of mana. They cleared the wall, rolled over the edge together, and landed with a soft thud beside the others.

"Show off," Cassius muttered.

"You're just mad you used your boots," Damian shot back.

They pressed forward.

The inside of the vault complex was nothing like the outer perimeter.

It was older.

Darker.

Worse.

The stone here pulsed with ambient magic—red veins that ran across the walls like something half-alive. The air was thick, and it smelled… wrong. Like burnt incense and blood that had been dried, ground into powder, then scattered into every breath they took.

Evelyn cast a quick [Mystic Veil] around them, dampening their sounds, cloaking their signatures. It didn't make them invisible, but it blurred the lines enough that unless someone was staring directly at them, they'd miss the movement.

They slipped down the first corridor.

Two guards stood at the next intersection—one reading a half-burned scroll, the other picking at his nails with a dagger. Both wore sigils of Ralvek's house.

Cassius nodded to Damian.

Damian snapped his fingers.

[Dark Chains]

The floor split. Blackened tendrils shot upward, wrapping the guards in silence. They didn't even have time to gasp. The chains crushed their throats and yanked them into the shadows. No sound. No blood. Just gone.

"Clear," Victoria whispered.

They kept moving.

Staircases led upward in a winding pattern, curling around a hollow core that ran the length of the tower like a broken spine. Each level had more guards. More arcane traps.

Victoria disarmed a mana rune by dragging her glaive's flat edge across the threshold, diffusing the energy in a single graceful sweep.

Evelyn used [Dispel] twice to neutralize tripwires made of floating glyphs—traps that would've detonated if touched by anything living.

Cassius flicked his wrist again and again, creating miniature shadow decoys to lead scouts astray.

Selena was quiet. Too quiet. Her footsteps made no noise, but she moved like she was walking across broken glass. Every creak of wood or groan of ancient stone made her twitch.

Damian fell into step beside her during a brief pause.

"You okay?" he asked, eyes scanning ahead.

She nodded once. But her voice, when it came, was tight. "This isn't what I trained for."

He understood.

Fae princesses weren't assassins. They didn't infiltrate blood towers under cursed moons and silence their enemies in the dark.

But she was here.

Because she chose to be.

"Doesn't matter what you trained for," Damian said, not unkindly. "You're doing it now. That counts."

She looked at him, expression unreadable—then gave a tiny nod.

"Thanks."

More stairs. More blood wards.

And then—

One guard turned the corner ahead, eyes wide, sensing something.

He opened his mouth to shout.

Selena moved.

A flash of metal.

A spray of light.

He fell, a thin line of blood on his neck. Her twin short swords gleamed in the crimson light as she stepped back into the shadows.

Victoria raised an eyebrow.

Evelyn whistled under her breath.

"Okay, Princess," she murmured. "Didn't see that coming."

Selena didn't smile. But her grip on her blades looked just a little steadier.

They reached the third floor—nearly at the vault antechamber.

Here, the walls changed.

Old inscriptions covered the stone, written in ancient fae and something far darker. The letters pulsed faintly, like veins beneath thin skin.

Cassius growled under his breath. "Whatever they're waking up in here… it doesn't want to sleep."

"Let's not give it a reason to fully wake up," Damian muttered.

They encountered two more guards near the central stairs. These ones were tougher—enchanted armor, glowing weapons.

Victoria stepped forward this time.