Cryptomining Supervillain

Chapter 233 233: 233 THE PERFECT RESCUE

233 THE PERFECT RESCUE

Argent shook his head in frustration. "I can't decode a bloody stone."

"Try harder," the old man urged, his tone insistent.

Argent didn't pretend.

He focused on the Pietre Core, not because he was threatened, but because a part of him—curiosity, perhaps—wanted to see if he could unravel its secrets.

But no matter how much he concentrated, the core remained unresponsive, its grooves silent and unreadable.

Days passed. Or maybe weeks.

Time blurred into meaninglessness as he stared at the stone.

Then, suddenly, he decided to try something new.

"I remember the old gramophones," Argent murmured. "They spin a disc to create music."

His gaze fell to the fine grooves etched into the Pietre Core. On a whim, he set it spinning.

To his surprise, something remarkable happened.

His thoughts loosened.

Barriers in his mind thinned. Possibilities unfolded one after another—until he began to dream.

Suddenly, the dream shattered.

A faint hum cut through the silence.

Argent's eyes snapped open as the sound grew clearer—the distant growl of an armored truck was approaching.

A slow smile tugged at his lips.

"Finally," he murmured. "Something I can work with."

The truck's onboard computer systems had a small program running—a simple one, but one that would prove invaluable.

The old man thought he'd outsmarted him by keeping him in a place devoid of any tech, but he hadn't anticipated that the vehicles entering the estate would still have computers inside.

Argent couldn't make a call, but he could do something better.

He embedded a secret broadcast into the vehicle's system—something that would send a signal out of the estate, a quiet message to anyone who could hear it.

Once the truck had left the premises, Argent returned his attention to the Pietre Core…. And started to dream again.

-----

Sienna's eyes sharpened as an idea struck her. "Even if a farm had no external communication, it would still need logistics. Some connection to the outside world… food and supplies would still be needed."

"Trucks," Kail said immediately, lifting his head.

"They'd need vehicles and supply trucks. They can run a prison facility without any computer systems, but they still need humans… and humans need to eat, and the staff must leave the place eventually on rotation."

He rapidly reconfigured his interface, tuning now into the communication systems of every transport and logistics vehicle in Silver City.

Dozens of new feeds blinked into view—truck routes, onboard systems, encrypted broadcasts.

And then—Kail froze.

"I've got something." His voice trembled with excitement. "There's a hidden message in the broadcast signals of several out of city trucks."

Holo-screens shifted, showing feeds from armored transport vehicles traveling to isolated private farms… ones unreachable by rail.

A message appeared across the feed...

"I'm held in the orchard."

It was Argent's message to them.

Sienna leaned forward. "He embedded a broadcast… into the trucks themselves?"

Kail nodded in awe. "There's no communication tech where he's being held. But whenever a vehicle or truck passes the mansion… Argent's mind reaches into its onboard computer and leaves a hidden broadcast message."

Argent had finally been found.

------

[At the unknown farm]

Sienna crouched on the ridge overlooking the farm, the dome of the force-field shimmering faintly like a giant soap bubble under the moonlight.

There were no roads leading to this place—only wilderness and silence, as if the farm itself had been erased from the world.

But Argent was down there, imprisoned somewhere beneath that barrier.

She glanced at her team.

Celadon, Mortuum, Gamboge, and Isabelline stood ready, their psychic auras already pulsing with restrained violence.

"Break their minds," Sienna whispered. "We need answers."

Celadon stepped forward first.

His eyes glazed into a pale green sheen as he wove hismirage. The dome flickered, its energy confused by shadows and phantoms. The illusion surged outward, bending light and thought alike.

"We are being attacked…"

Inside the farm, guards panicked, shouting and sounding the siren as their senses betrayed them. They were attacked by an army of phantom beings.

Mortuum followed, his breath slow and deliberate.

He raised his hand and released a pulse of cold violet energy that seeped through the trembling force-field. Every guard touched by it froze mid-motion, paralysis overtaking muscle and nerve.

"What's happening to us…. we can't move?"

Some toppled like statues pushed from their pedestals; others stood rigid, their eyes darting helplessly as they tried to scream.

Before the survivors could regroup, Gamboge unleashed his power.

A golden mist rolled across the field like a silent storm.

The guards who breathed it in staggered as the world twisted violently in their minds—walls bending, shadows whispering, insects crawling across their skin.

Their hallucinations turned the farm into a nightmare that only they could see.

Finally, Isabelline stepped forward, her aura pale as bone.

She whispered a single word, and fear blossomed.

It seeped through the cracks of consciousness, planting ancestral terrors deep in the psyche of everyone within the dome.

Hardened men dropped their weapons, sobbing as visions of death, abandonment, and failure overwhelmed them. Some tried to claw their way out of the farm itself, desperate for escape.

The force-field flickered again—this time not from Celadon's illusions, but from the collapse of order within.

The controllers were no longer trying to defend the farm… they were trying to escape it.

With a sharp crack, the dome snapped open.

The guards threw the gates wide—fleeing.

Sienna rose to her feet, her eyes burning.

"Go," she commanded.

Dozens of meta-humans surged forward, supported by androids and war machines.

In their wake, the psychics advanced—stepping through the broken barrier as the once-untouchable farm crumbled beneath waves of nightmares, paralysis, and illusion.

"Argent," Sienna said softly, almost smiling.

"Here we come."

-----

Sienna and her army swept across the ground like a silent storm. The mansion at the heart of the farm loomed ahead—grand, old, and utterly out of place in the wilderness.

There were guards everywhere, but as Sienna had suspected, there wasnot a single camera, no drones, no sensors around. They couldn't risk modern tech here….

…. Not where Argent was kept.

The moment they reached the mansion, Isabelline's power tightened its grip.

Guards stumbled, clawed at their chests, then collapsed in heaps of trembling limbs as raw fear strangled their minds. Mortuum's paralysis spread like frost. Celadon and Gamboge trailed behind, ready to bend reality at a moment's notice.

No one stood in their way for long.

They moved through the mansion with ruthless efficiency, heading straight for the basement. The deeper they went, the colder the air became, as if the house itself recoiled from what it held below.

At the end of a narrow corridor was a steel door, heavy, and reinforced,,, but not with tech, but sheer mass. This was a prison for someone who could turn circuitry into a living weapon.

Sienna's heart quickened. She pushed forward.

Inside the cell, illuminated by a single flickering bulb, sat a boy with long silver hair cascading past his shoulders, gleaming like cold moonlight.

"Argent…" Sienna breathed.