Ethereal Ascendance: A Journey of Transformation

"Taking it easy is so hard! This is my first time using Earth weapons in real fighting. To be honest, they're much better than bows and arrows! ... I wish I had bent the gun barrel a bit before starting!"

Adrian, running wild in the building, explained over the radio. He quickly took care of a few IAA staff trying to stop him.

"Never mind that now! You've already dealt with most of the guards around! Keep a close eye on the radar. If you see the Vampire Ancestor coming, run away fast!"

Nobody knew if the Vampire Ancestor had noticed something wrong. My mind was a mess as I kept warning Adrian.

There were plenty of well-armed people guarding the IAA headquarters. It should be enough to deal with Earth people. If they notice that place has fallen, it will make them very suspicious. The Vampire Ancestor will surely come, just like when they attacked Wayne Peng before. Even if Adrian is strong enough to win, he must avoid meeting the Vampire Ancestor. Adrain can't kill him quickly, and we can't let the Vampire Ancestor feel any real danger to their life before the other teams finish their jobs.

"I don't understand what Number 14 Feliciana is thinking! If she had come to quickly kill the main culprit from the start, we wouldn't be in this mess now!"

The situation had become quite dangerous. I hit the table hard in frustration and complained, "I don't get it at all!"

"Careful..." The old table in the gangster hideout couldn't handle the hit and started shaking. Luke Channing quickly steadied the expensive computer equipment. As he warned me, he suddenly looked confused.

"Can Number 14 Feliciana really kill that Vampire Ancestor so easily?"

"Maybe. You don't know?" I looked at him, annoyed. But thinking about it more, it made sense that Earth people might think Number 14 Feliciana was about the same level as me.

"Of course I don't know! The mission details only said that she volunteered to General Lee. She said she learned a special magic that could kill many low-level enemies quickly. Her other selves from other worlds can't do it. Plus, she showed it using animals, so we agreed to her mission idea!"

Luke Channing looked confused. I wasn't surprised. The whole mission was Number 14 Feliciana's idea. It was probably to achieve her goal of "fixing the world line" or something. Everyone was just a piece in her game!

But being used is fine! As long as we all want the same result in the end, it's okay. Even if I wanted to object, I don't have the power to do so.

So even if things are tough, we have to follow the plan step by step and try to do our part as best we can.

"Next, we need to find the jail and rescue people. The IAA headquarters is very complicated inside. The floors above ground are mostly offices and labs..."

Luke Channing took out a map and skillfully guided Adrian through the headquarters building over the voice channel. "Based on the information we got before, the intelligence department's jail cells are probably underground. You need to find an elevator or emergency stairs going down first!"

This process would take several minutes. Plus, there were always people in the building trying to shoot at Adrian. As someone who had never been there before, Adrian would likely take even more time.

"Wait a second, I think someone just... came online! Is that what this light means?"

I suddenly noticed that a green dot had lit up on the video overview screen.

"That's the video signal from the rescue team. It means someone on their team just turned on their camera!"

Luke Channing quickly switched the live video feed.

It was really them! We saw Cyra and Reed right away. Of course, this Reed wasn't from our world, but probably from World 12.

But the rescue team didn't look like they were doing well. Most of them were covered in wounds. They must have been in a very fierce battle before.

"This is bad. They can't hear us!"

Luke Channing tried calling on several voice channels but got no response. This meant the rescue team's communication equipment was either lost or broken. Luckily, we could at least watch remotely to understand their situation.

"This is crazy! Who would have thought this abandoned military base had so many vampires? It's completely different from the information we got before! Are your people reliable at all? Even angels have a hard time dealing with bullets, not to mention having to watch out for grenades and other heavy weapons!"

This was Reed from World 12 complaining. Her background looked like it was in front of a row of military warehouses.

From the others' conversation, we learned that several people on the rescue team had died soon after the mission started, including the communication personnel like Luke Channing!

"It's not so bad. This is just a small matter in our world's adventures! Besides, we've already made it through, right? The enemies are all cleared out now, aren't they? But we haven't seen any sign of Wayne Peng. We can only head towards the dock area next. There seems to be a very big submarine stopped out there on the sea... So that's a nuclear submarine?"

Cyra, with six wings spread behind her back, was the Cyra from our world. She still had that carefree attitude, making the sign of the cross on her chest and bragging. But compared to when she first left Edenmere, she was much stronger now.

The rescue team was probably the strongest of all the teams. After all, their main goal was to rescue people. They had the most angels, and they also had a few H-country soldiers with lots of fighting experience.

In a way, the Vampire Ancestor guessed right that the H-country army would come to rescue, so they set a trap on purpose. But unfortunately, they guessed wrong about the target. H-country's rescue target wasn't the IAA headquarters, but this abandoned base.

But now it looks like even with two six-winged angels and one two-winged angel in charge, the rescue team still ran into big trouble - they had casualties, and the people who died included the important communication officer!

"How did this happen? Are you sure your information is correct?"

I couldn't help feeling worried and turned to ask Luke Channing. Even though everyone knew from the start that there would be casualties, it would be one thing if it happened to some other teams. But this was the rescue team, with three angels!

"That place has always been an abandoned military base! We can only guess that after M-country was taken over by vampires, it was secretly put back into use. With a nuclear submarine docked there, it makes sense that they would increase security. But we didn't expect it to be this strong..."

Luke Channing looked confused too, having seen the angels' terrifying fighting power firsthand. Since we could only watch one way and couldn't ask questions through the voice channel, we had no idea what kind of battles they had been through.

No matter how you look at it, this abandoned military base is definitely not a normal place, to have so many vampires gathered there! Suddenly I had a bad feeling, thinking Cyra might run into even bigger danger later...

"Why did you take that thing out? Using a camera means the H-country headquarters can see everything. I don't mind, but are you sure the others won't care?"

Obviously, Cyra noticed someone turning on the camera. She came right up to look curiously at the lens, blinking her big eyes, which was quite cute.

"Uh... it's required by the higher-ups. If the situation allows, we must always wear the camera! Unfortunately, all the communication equipment is broken, so we can't contact the command center for now. But they might be able to understand our situation through the camera!"

The person wearing the camera must be one of the surviving H-country soldiers. Their voice was shaking a bit after surviving the danger. Although we couldn't see their face in the video, we could hear them speaking clearly.

"Don't worry! If you don't want to be filmed, I'll try not to put you in the camera frame!"

Seeing that the others didn't respond, he quickly added this.