?<strong>Chapter 730:</strong>


    Hisst memory before cking out lingered on the mafia’s ambush — gunfire, shouts, and searing pain. In the midst of that haze, a hand had pulled him from the brink of death, apanied by an oddly calming presence. It was Alice.


    “Yes… yes, I did,” Allison stammered, her voice trembling as though she had revisited the terror of the moment. “I got scratched by some shards when the coffee can exploded in the break room, so I picked up some bandages. Never thought I’d end up using them on you. What are the odds, right?” Herughter was brittle, her breathing uneven as she struggled to calm herself.


    “I really thought you were going to die back there. Your breathing… it was barely there.”


    Deep down, she knew well that such feats were possible for test subjects. It was like a deeply ingrained instinct, suppressing their breath to diminish their presence.


    He smirked, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m not that easy to kill.”


    But survival was a fleeting luxury, and staying here was courting disaster. If their pursuers caught up, his luck wouldn’t stretch much further.


    “Hand me your phone,” he said, his voice devoid of warmth.


    “Alright.” Allison didn’t argue, her hands trembling slightly as she handed over the device.


    She could already guess that he had someone to contact. Verruckt’s fingers moved swiftly, dialing a sequence ingrained in muscle memory.


    “It’s just as we suspected,” he said into the receiver, his tone sharp enough to cut steel. “Someone sprung the trap tonight, and they didn’t waste any time. What’s the situation on your end? Any idea who pulled the strings?”


    On the other end, Jareth sounded frazzled, his wordsced with unease. “We’ve got leads, but no concrete answers yet. Mr. Shaw, where are you right now?”


    “Southeast of the clock tower, at an abandoned factory,” Verruckt replied. His eyes swept over his bloodied form and then brieflynded on Allison, whose nervous nces betrayed her unease.


    She wasn’t a threat — not to him, at least — so he saw no point in keeping secrets. “Keep going.”


    “Yes, Mr. Shaw. What we know so far is that Immortality Pharmaceuticals, the mafia, and the old forces from the Sanric district were all involved,” Jareth exined. “Oh, and that gang run by the one-eyed man, Yashiro… they’repletely wiped out.”


    Verruckt’s gaze lingered on Allison again, the gears in his mind turning. “I’m aware of the gang’s demise. But the forces at y tonight? They go beyond them.”


    And he was sure that the once-dominant forces from the Sanric district wouldn’t have lifted a finger to save him. This meant someone else must have been on the scene, lurking in the shadows.


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