In a distant island to the north of Country Y, both Hunter and Knight were on a mission.
He and Knight had pursued the lead with relentless precision, chasing the shadow of the man who had once dared to attempt Luna’s assassination.
At first, they believed Luna’s lab had malfunctioned, that the explosion was nothing more than a tragic accident.
But their certainty wavered when Country Y’s officials moved with unusual silence, deliberately withholding the truth.
The news of the blast spread like wildfire within certain circles—whispers of fire tearing through the lab, of research reduced to ash.
Yet the irony was sharp: not a single word of death was released to the public. No mourning, no acknowledgment.
Instead, the officials swept the incident under the rug with a sterile statement: a minor accident, nothing more.
According to them, Dr. Lia and her team were safe and sound, carrying on their work as if nothing had ever happened.
When Bishop, as her legal guardian, questioned the officials about Dr. Lia’s death and the true cause of the explosion, they dismissed him coldly.
The incident, they insisted, was nothing more than a technical fault.
His concerns were brushed aside without hesitation, and he was told to keep the matter of her death under strict wraps.
Only a select few—the Rex team and those working within the lab facilities knew the truth.
To everyone else, silence was enforced.
And when Bishop pressed for answers, demanding the real reason, they spun a story of convenience.
Dr. Lia’s death could not be revealed, they argued, for she had been a scientist of extraordinary brilliance—a researcher whose loss would be felt not only by her country but by the entire world.
And more importantly, the Queen of Country Y, whose health was already fragile, might not survive the shock of hearing such news.
It was a fabrication, carefully constructed, and it almost succeeded.
Her genuine followers from Rex, along with her fellow scientists who respected her deeply, accepted the story.
They knew the truth of her passing, yet they chose to believe that the authorities had hidden it for reasons beyond their understanding.
They convinced themselves that if the crime branch withheld the announcement, it must have been for valid, greater reasons.
But not Hunter. Not Bishop.
For them, the story had never sat right.
First of all, Luna was cautious to the point of obsession. Her lab was airtight, her protocols unyielding.
To say she had died in an accident was an insult to her genius.
And the second—was the Queen of Country Y.
The officials had claimed her health was fragile, her heart too delicate to withstand the shock of Dr. Lia’s death.
But that, too, was a lie dressed as truth. In reality, the Queen was neither weak nor ailing.
Years ago, her life had been saved by none other than Dr. Lia herself, though under the concealed identity of Dr. Elena
No one outside the Phantoms knew of this connection.
They alone carried the secret of how Lia, as Elena, had quietly restored the Queen’s health and hidden the truth beneath a veil of discretion.
To the public eye, the Queen stood tall, her steps steady, her life seemingly untouched by frailty.
So when the officials spoke of her fragile heart, it was a fabrication—an excuse too thin to hold weight.
They lied boldly, even while the Queen walked in perfect health, and in doing so, only revealed the cracks in their story.
Their explanations stretched too far, their reasons flimsy and unconvincing.
And the more they insisted, the clearer it became: there was something they were desperate to bury, and Dr. Lia’s death was at the center of it.
So, after the crime branch concluded their "investigation," the Phantoms began their own. The Rex had barred all outsiders from the site, but Phantoms had their ways.
What they uncovered was chilling.
It wasn’t an accident. The blast had been caused by hydrogen, released into the air and sparked into flame.
To ordinary eyes, it seemed plausible enough. But Bishop had shaken his head immediately.
"Luna never uses flammable gases," he said coldly. "Especially not in her high-tech lab. That place is for research, not brewing."
They combed the security archives, but three days of footage were missing.
Hunter hacked until his vision blurred, digging into firewalls, patching corrupted files—but even his mastery wasn’t enough. Whoever erased it was better.
And then Bishop remembered.
"There’s still the pinhole camera. The one the boss installed. Only I know where it is."
Slipping in and out like a ghost, Bishop retrieved it without a trace. For days, they pored over the tiny device’s footage.
A man in a hood and mask, moving through the lab as if it belonged to him. Calm. Calculated.
He slid small devices beneath tables, rewired the circuits, and disabled every safety extinguisher.
Then, with a few precise keystrokes, he overrode the lab’s AI operator.
On the day of the explosion, he locked the doors. He cut off the exhaust. He turned the lab into a coffin.
They never saw his face. But when he reached forward with his right hand, the camera caught it—an inked serpent’s head, its fangs bared, coiled across his knuckles.
The mark of a predator.
For months they chased it, following whispers, interrogating shadows, never allowing the trail to grow cold.
Each clue was a fragment, each lead a dying ember, but they pressed on relentlessly.
At last, their pursuit converged on Estria’s Summer City, where a name kept surfacing in the underworld—the Blue Vipers.
On the surface, the gang appeared small, almost insignificant, the kind of group dismissed as local thugs scrambling for territory.
But beneath that disguise, their reach stretched far wider than appearances suggested.
They were like a disease scattered in fragments, embedded in different corners of the world under the guise of small cells, each operating quietly yet connected to a much larger web.
What bound them unmistakably together was their mark—the same tattoo inked into every member’s skin.
A serpent’s head, its fangs bared, poised on the knuckles as if ready to strike.
It was not just an emblem of loyalty, but a signature, a silent proclamation of the brotherhood they belonged to.
And the tattoo on the masked intruder’s hand matched it perfectly.
Bishop had hunted countless groups before—syndicates, mercenaries, cartels.
But this one was different.