Chapter 78: Bust

Letting the man fall to the floor with a sigh, Sora got to his feet as he walked in the apartment corridor. Zatanna had gone ahead to clear a path for him.

He had dug through the man's memory only to find nothing. The only thing the man himself knew was that something important was happening and it wasn't happening in the apartment. It was happening below it.

Walking down the stairs of the building, he passed several unconscious men as he let out a low whistle.

'That girl…They're basically braindead the way they are.' He thought as he looked to some of them that had a bit of drool leaking out of their mouths with a look of utter disgust.

It only took him descending a few flights of stairs to catch up to her. He found her kicking a young man unconscious as his body slammed to the side. Oddly enough, the impact made no noise at all, surely due to her magic.

He didn't spare the unconscious man any more attention as he looked to the mistress of magic. She gave him a questioning look only for him to shake his head.

"He knows next to nothing about what's going on here." He said as a look of frustration appeared on her face at the thought of them going in blind.

From the outside of the building, she could easily feel the mana being emitted from the building but that stopped the moment she entered. It was something that mildly concerned her.

"What now?" She asked him as he lead the way downstairs.

"Though he didn't know anything concrete, he does know that something big is going on below this building. Other than that, his mind's a mess." He explained as she scoffed.

"Mind magic, no doubt." She commented as they descended the stairs, knocking out whoever they came across.

A few minutes later, they walked into the apartment elevator. Zatanna had a look of mild confusion on her face as the doors closed shut.

"If you knew there was an elevator, why didn't we use it sooner instead of having to climb down on foot?" She asked as Sora pushed the button that read 'Employee Only', the elevator slowly going down.

"To cut off their reinforcements. Who knows how many people are down there or how strong they are. This way, their chances of winning should a battle occur has been reduced." He explained as the lights above the elevator door that displayed the floor they were on hit zero.

Despite that, the elevator didn't stop as it continued going down. It took about a minute for the elevator to come to a complete halt as the doors opened slowly.

Two hooded figures stood in front of the elevator, armed with rifles as they focused on the opening doors.

Before they could lift the guns to fire, they froze in their movements as their eyes made contact with Sora's sharingan.

As the duo exited the elevator, the two hooded figures fell to the ground with a silent thud. Zatanna walked forward, pulling down their hoods for Sora to see.

'Nobody important.' He noted as he didn't recognize their faces.

With his perception spread, he could feel the bountiful mana in the air as well as the taint that it carried. A taint that he was somewhat familiar with.

"Come on." He ordered as he rushed forward to the source of it. They were in what looked like an underground lair. It was barren as it looked just like a primitive cave with a lot of room.

It took barely a minute of running for him to meet the source of the ambient mana. A large crowd of hooded figure, not unlike the two he knocked out earlier stood in a large circle around a giant magic circle that was etched unto the floor.

"This is…" He started with some degree of exasperation in his voice before stopping.

"We've seen enough. I'll take care of this." He said, taking a deep breath as Zatanna took a few steps back.

'Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation!' He intoned internally as he spewed a large and wide stream of fire from his puffed cheeks.

The crowd was barely given enough warning before they were consumed by the flames. Their deaths weren't silent as they screamed in pain as they were burnt to ashes.

Sensing no signs of life other than his and Zatanna's, he stopped the flow of chakra as flames stopped emerging from his lips.

Even with them dead, Sora's eyes narrowed, his sharingan scanning the environment.

"The mana in here is disgusting." Zatanna commented with a disgusted look on her face.

"It's to be expected. He's a demon after all." He said, his eyes still seeing the tainted mana filling the room and not reducing in the slightest.

His eyes then moved to the magic circle on the floor, observing its workings.

"It seems we were right. Abbadon is trying to come back and it seems these were his thralls. Their minds were gone from the moment he chose them." He said as he pulled out a red gourd container with a combination of tubes and seals inscribed all over its body from his inventory.

[Item: Devil's Pot]

[Durability: 100%]

[Type: Magic Item]

[A high grade magical item with the ability to capture and seal anything the user wishes. It appears in the shape of a traditional gourd.]

Another one of his many works that were being put to good use. He realized that there were different methods to deal with different situations.

'If you can't kill something immortal, you can always seal it.' There was always a solution. They were in an underground lair that reeked of Abbadon's mana that they couldn't freely touch.

You couldn't exactly destroy mana, you could simply disperse it too far apart for it to even be felt. Eventually it would fade on its own but this was demonic mana.

Dispersing it could lead to other problems. There was the fact that he didn't know the exact effects and abilities of demonic mana to deal with it careless. With that in mind, he intended to seal it.

Taking the lid off the gourd, a powerful force emerged from the gourd, seemingly attempting to suck everything around it into itself. The lid disappeared from his grasp but he didn't seem bothered about that.

Despite that, the only thing that was affected by the suction was the mana as he watched it get completely sucked into the gourd, leaving no trace of it behind.

Just as it finished taking it in, a new lid appeared over it, covering it and ending the powerful suction.

"You know I can't help but wonder how many toys you made all this time. Every time I think I've seen them all, you just pull out another one." Zatanna complained with a pout.

"You can't blame me. I got bored a lot during the years. Creating this stuff is fun. You never know when they could come in handy." He defended with a chuckle.

"You say that you but I think you just enjoy causing trouble." She chastised amidst his chuckling.

"There's also that." He said before turning to the magic circle on the floor.

Throwing the gourd into his inventory, he stretched his hand towards the magic circle. A purple rune appeared in front of his hand as a red energy was pulled from the magic circle as it began fading.

With that done, he turned to a glaring Zatanna with an amused look on his face as he saw her.

"There's no need to look at me like that." He said, trying and failing to hide his amusement causing her to glare even harder.

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With their investigation done and with barely any worthwhile result, the duo left apartment and Bludhaven in general but not before leaving behind a present.

The building was deathly silent after there infiltration and had remained so as the guards and thralls were still unconscious.

Had they been awake it would have changed nothing as the building violently exploded in a burst of flames, destroying it and the corpses of its inhabitants.

Strangely, the shockwave didn't affect the buildings surroundings it as a blue barrier shimmered around the apartment just as it exploded before disappearing.