After Rudy landed near the last check-post, the guards standing there rushed to him and attempted to attack him. But they lowered their guns when they noticed it was Rudy.
Rudy asked the guards to open the door of the estate, but one of the guards responded that they hadn't been receiving a response from the other side.
Rudy kicked the massive door open without wasting any time and shattered it into pieces.
"No way… that door is not only bulletproof, but it can also survive several explosions…"
Rudy dashed inside, hoping to encounter more guards and expecting something worse as his mind made various theories about it. However, much to his surprise, the estate was empty.
When he came the last time, there were dozens of maids and butlers roaming around, but now it was empty with no sign of a single soul.
Rudy used electrification and hacked into the estate's security system to see the live footage, but that was also empty. He looked into the database to fetch the past footage, but everything was deleted.
"...."
Rudy's anxiety was growing immensely every passing second. Without caring for anything, he activated 'all vision' and scanned the entire estate and the surrounding areas.
Thermal vision, infrared vision, array vision, X-Ray vision, and see-through ability at once. When he tried that last time, he got blind, and he had to pay for it by plucking his eyes out.
However, he didn't have time to worry about that. Fortunately, he only used 'all vision' for a mere second, and nothing happened to him or his eyes.
"It's empty. Everything is empty. No one is here!"
The guards finally arrived at the estate with weapons and stood behind Rudy.
"Is everything alright?"
"They are not here."
"That's impossible. Everyone should be here! No one has left this estate!" the chief guard yelled in panic.
"Is there any other entry or exit to this estate? Perhaps for emergency cases?"
"No! You are underestimating the security of this estate. No one can break in and stay alive after stepping a foot on the syndicate ground," the chief responded.
"Well, I did. And someone else did too."
"..." the chief guard was left speechless as he had nothing to say in response.
"If anything happens to Maria and Lilim, then I will bury the underworld."
Rudy once again hacked into the estate's security system and began recovering all the files. Meanwhile, he tried to connect to Lilim's phone again.
'It's more than strange. I was talking to her a while ago, and when I used my 'find my prey' ability, I saw her in the estate… wait, was it actually this estate? I only saw a room and thought she was still in the estate. So there are chances that she might not be here, and I was mistaken. However, what about her phone? I was talking with her, and she kept me updated with what Maria was doing.'
Rudy used 'find my prey again', but he couldn't see anything. Unlike the last time, everything was dark.
'Usually, I should be able to see in the dark, unless what I am looking at is actually black… as in space?'
After a few minutes, the files began to recover one by one from the last three hours to the current time. Rudy played the first footage, which was of three hours ago, while the later footage recovered rapidly.
Everything seemed normal. The maids and butlers were doing their work. Rusher was in his office, handing paperwork. Maria was supposedly sleeping in her room, and the rest of the members were also doing what they had to do.
Lilim was patrolling the estate while trying to contact Rudy, but at that time, Rudy was in the bathroom (having sessions) with Angelica.
That footage lasted thirty minutes, and there were over ten thousand cameras located on the estate, watching everything from every angle and spot. Had Rudy watched each of them in playtime, thirty-minute footage from ten thousand cameras would have made footage worth 300,000 minutes footage, which was equivalent to five thousand hours, or one could say, over two hundred and eight days.
Similarly, three hours of footage would have six footage of thirty minutes, which would mean it could take Rudy more than three years to review all of them, and that too without taking a second long break.
Of course, Rudy didn't have any time, so he played ten thousand footage of each thirty minutes at once and then fast-forwarded them by sixteen times at first, but changed the speed to thirty-two times and later at sixty-four times.
Everything was processing so fast in Rudy's brain that it began to ache. He was watching over ten thousand videos at once and inspecting all the details simultaneously. A thirty-minute-long video ended in less than a second.
By the time all the other footage was recovered, Rudy was done watching the rest of them.
"The first two hours of footage has nothing wrong. So something must have happened in the third one."
A minute later, the footage was ready, and Rudy saw what had actually happened.
Lilim had just finished her patrolling and was heading towards Maria's room to wake her up. She knocked on her door but didn't get a reply, so she assumed Maria must be in a deep sleep.
Maria's door was obviously locked with tight security such as a pin code, hand, and pupil scanner, so even if someone had managed to break in, or if someone from the syndicate had decided to betray the Ross and kill them, they would never be able to enter their private rooms, which were located in the inner area— the safest and the most secure place area in the syndicate.
Lilim entered the pin and scanned herself to gain permission to enter Maria's room. Once that was done, she opened the door and walked inside Maria's room.
She looked at the bed and saw the air conditioner was on at the coolest temperature, and Maria had covered herself in the blanket.
SIGH!
Lilim turned off the air conditioner and pulled the blanket from Maria, only to see it was empty with pillows on it.
