Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users - Chapter 153

Chapter 153: Liliana Enters The Caves
Sera narrowed her eyes at the glowing map.

“What is all this?” she asked. “When did it start? And why am I only hearing about it now?”

Her brother leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. The tension in his shoulders didn’t go unnoticed.

“It started small. Just a few strange energy spikes showing up on underground scans. At first, we thought it was nothing.

Just background mana—maybe some natural shifts underground. Nothing unusual.”

He paused before continuing.

“But then those energy patterns started to change. They weren’t random anymore. They started to look like activity from monster nests, coordinated surges, pulsing like something alive.

And they weren’t in unexplored regions. These signals came from areas we’ve already cleared. Places that have been stable and quiet for years.”

Another vice president, an older man with streaks of white in his hair, added, “And it’s not just happening in one place.

These nests are showing up all over. No signs. No buildup. It’s like they just… appeared.”

The map table pulsed softly under the low lights of the room. Red zones blinked across the regions like a spreading rash.

Each one marked a threat—deep underground activity, structural distortions, and energy fields that didn’t match any known records.

Sera stared at the blinking lights, her frown deepening. “Appeared how? We have sensors and watchers in every major region. There’s no way this kind of thing slipped through.”

Her brother nodded slowly. “That’s what we thought. But we double-checked everything. These nests weren’t on any older scans.

They weren’t hidden or cloaked. They weren’t in a folded space. They simply weren’t there before.”

A female VP leaned in. “It’s not just their appearance. These places look old—like they’ve been there forever.

The stone layers, the sediment buildup, and even fossil remains. Everything points to natural formation… except for the fact that we know they didn’t exist last month.”

Sera shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. You can’t fake centuries of geological buildup.”

Her brother looked her in the eye. “Exactly. But somehow, these places have it. It’s like the world rewrote itself and dropped these zones in without warning.”

Sera’s gaze drifted back to the map. One red cluster blinked brighter than the rest. “Hollow Root… And it is assigned to Liliana Nocturne?”

“Yeah. She’s at the perimeter,” her brother confirmed. “She hasn’t entered yet. She’s waiting for the drone scans and her team to finish syncing.”

“She’s not going in solo?”

“No, we asked her not to, as these places aren’t normal. The pressure, the mana, everything feels off.”

Another VP spoke up. “So we planned to use the Mark-9 suits, which will be equipped by the special units if deemed necessary.”

Sera raised a brow. “Aren’t those still in testing?”

“Not anymore,” her brother replied. “They were pushed into live deployment. The suits are unstable, but they’re the only ones that can blend into energy fields this weird.

They bond to a user’s mana and make them basically invisible—unless something inside the cave has stronger output.”

Sera folded her arms. “That’s risky.”

“We don’t have many options,” the VP said. “We can’t afford to alert whatever’s down there. If these nests are hostile and intelligent about our true strength, even one wrong move could expose us.”

“And if we wait?” Sera asked.

“They might vanish again,” her brother said quietly. “We don’t know how these things work.

They might shift locations, collapse, or turn dormant. This might be the only time we can safely observe them from the outside.”

The room went quiet. Outside, wind pressed softly against the tower’s high windows, and the sky was starting to darken with thick clouds.

Sera didn’t speak again.

She didn’t need to.

Because even though everything sounded strange, deep down… it felt true.

Whatever was inside that nest—

—It wasn’t just waiting.

It knew they were watching.

Meanwhile, back near the cave.

The breeze near the cave’s mouth was cold. Not freezing. Just sharp—like it came from somewhere deeper than the air around them.

Liliana stood still on a rocky slope, her arms crossed as she watched the drones dip into the cave one by one.

Their blinking lights faded as they entered the dark, leaving only silence behind.

She hadn’t spoken for a while.

The special unit showed up less than twenty minutes ago. There was no shouting, no wasted movement, just a clean setup, gear checks, and quiet syncing.

She liked that.

They were pros.

A gust of wind rolled down from the cliffs and carried a strange scent—earthy and metallic, like damp stone mixed with rust. But beneath it, there was something else.

Rot.

Old rot.

Not the kind from surface death. The kind that settled into the bones of the world.

Liliana narrowed her eyes at the cave’s edge. It wasn’t just a hole in the ground.

It felt like something was behind it.

Something watching.

Footsteps crunched lightly behind her. One of the lieutenants approached with his helmet tucked under one arm.

“Commander,” he said quietly. “Scans show hundreds of routes, but we are not sure which one will lead where as we have never been here and it seems that this place is blocking our drones from scanning.”

Liliana nodded. “We’ll split. I’ll lead a squad down the path that Alpha took. The others follow Beta team trail—track their last known route and see how deep they got.”

“Understood.”

Behind her, the rest of the team was nearly ready. Some adjusted straps, and others synced their suits with the underground relay embedded under the rocks.

She didn’t need to look.

She trusted them.

The Mark-9 suits shimmered faintly as they bonded with their users’ mana. A second later, most of the soldiers vanished from view. Not invisibility—more like the air bent around them.

The suits weren’t common.

They were dangerous to use. You had to be steady. Stable. If your mana core fluctuated too much, the suit either shut down or, worse, fried the wearer.

But these soldiers?

They wore them like a second skin.

That’s why she chose them.

Liliana gave a small nod. “Send in the scouts. No weapons out. Ten meters max. If anything moves, they fall back.”

The lieutenant didn’t even nod.

He just turned, and the scouts were already gone.

No noise. No flash.

Just gone.