If Claude found out someone in this operation was seriously plotting to kill me, there was a good chance he would call off the mission himself just to drag me back to headquarters. He wasn't that unreasonable... probably. But he would certainly spend the entire raid glued to my side, glaring at every person who so much as breathed in my direction.
As much as the thought was oddly comforting, it wasn't practical.
Not with twenty-three other people depending on each other. Not with an S-Class vortex waiting ahead.
The winding trail eventually opened into a vast clearing where the forest abruptly gave way to towering limestone cliffs. The moment I stepped out from beneath the shade of the trees, I instinctively looked up.
Then I stopped walking.
The vortex was much larger than it had appeared from afar.
