Vex's vault was not filled with gold or jewels.
It was a small, cold room, its walls lined with racks of crystalline data-slates. Each slate was a secret, a piece of leverage, a life he had controlled or destroyed.
It was the library of a master manipulator, the blueprint of his shadow empire.
Joric moved with a feverish intensity, his datapad connecting to the vault's central server.
He wasn't just copying files; he was downloading a lifetime of conspiracy.
Here was the full, unredacted list of Vanguard moles in every clan, a document that would shatter the city's political landscape.
Here were the financial records, tracing the flow of money from shell corporations to corrupt officials, to mercenary groups, to Vex's own hidden accounts.
Here were the scientific records from the Correction Center, the horrifying details of the human experiments, the failures, the successes, the monstrous birth of the Praetorians.
But the most important file, the one buried deepest in the vault's core memory, was a folder labeled "Project Chimera." It was Vex's endgame.
The information scrolled across Joric's screen, and the old medic's face went pale.
"My god," he whispered.
"He's not just trying to steal the ChainForce. He's trying to replicate it." Project Chimera was a plan of breathtaking arrogance.
Vex had been studying Ryu, the anomaly, not just to capture him, but to understand the fundamental principles of his power.
His goal was to create an artificial ChainForce, a synthetic version that could be controlled, manufactured, and bestowed upon anyone he chose.
He was not just trying to create super-soldiers; he was trying to create an army of artificial gods, their loyalty hard-coded, their power absolute.
Ryu, the only known natural vessel for the true ChainForce of Legends, was the key, the missing variable in his equation.
His body, his DNA, his very spirit were the template Vex needed to perfect his creation. This was why he was so obsessed, why he was willing to risk a civil war within his own organization.
The inter-clan conflicts, the political destabilization—it was all just a grand distraction, a planetary-scale smokescreen to keep the clans busy while he completed his true, blasphemous work.
Kiera stared at the data, a cold, horrifying understanding dawning on her.
"This is the real threat," she said, her voice barely a whisper.
"The world-ending threat the ChainForce awakens to fight. It's not a monster from the stars. It's him. It's a man trying to make himself a god." The Vanguard's original mission, as Charon had hinted, may have been to contain a chaotic, dangerous power.
But Vex had corrupted that mission, twisted it into a quest for personal apotheosis. He was not trying to prevent a catastrophe; he was trying to become one.
They now had everything.
The proof of the clan infiltrations, the details of the assassination plots, and the final, terrible truth of Vex's endgame.
They had the weapon that could not only destroy the Vanguard but could potentially unite the clans against a common, existential enemy.
They downloaded everything, creating multiple encrypted copies. Then, as they prepared to leave, Ryu paused.
He looked at the data-slates, at the library of secrets. With a single, focused thought, he unleashed a pulse of pure, destructive energy—not a chaotic blast, but a precise, surgical strike of data-corrupting resonance.
The crystalline slates shimmered, then turned a milky, opaque white. The data was not just erased; it was turned to digital dust.
They had taken the truth, and they had burned the library behind them. They slipped out of the apartment, leaving behind an empty vault and the ghost of a plan that could have remade the world.
Their gambit had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. But now, they were in possession of a truth so dangerous that it could get them killed by every faction in the city.