Startled, he quickly moved toward a secret room beside his bedroom, pushing a hidden button near the lantern by his bed.
Inside the room, numerous screens displayed footage from the CCTV system. This was his private monitoring room, set up to surveil his research facility 24/7, accessible only to him. Every screen showed the same thing: devastation. The facility was overrun with hordes of zombies in lab coats and suits, staggering aimlessly.
Every corner, even the safety room—designed specifically to handle outbreaks like this—was compromised.
The man's face paled as he grasped the gravity of the situation. He swiftly checked the tracker monitor to see if there were any survivors, but the response was a chilling zero.
"No, no, no, no, no! This... this can't be happening! What the hell happened!?" Panic gripped him. He immediately began reviewing the CCTV footage to find the cause, losing track of time, oblivious to hunger or anything else around him.
After hours of sifting through recordings, he found the source. In the footage from the artifact manufacturing room, at around 2 AM the previous night, a mysterious object had suddenly appeared in the corner of the room, remaining still.
"Is that...? Why does it look familiar?" he muttered in confusion, staring at the object. Slowly, the memory came back to him.
The object was indeed familiar. He remembered it vividly. The object looked like a military shipment, encased in a secure metal container—something he had personally handled.
"No... no, no, no! It can't be!" His heart sank as dread washed over him. He desperately prayed that his suspicion was wrong, that he was overreacting.
He fast-forwarded the footage, watching as the clock advanced to 3 AM, then 4 AM. Since it was nighttime, no one had entered the room. His heart pounded as he silently begged that someone had noticed the package, checked it, and removed it. But deep down, he feared the worst.
By 5 AM, still no one had entered the room. Finally, at 6 AM, a lone researcher walked in, but he didn't notice the package. He simply retrieved something he had forgotten and left.
"No, no, no..." The man's panic intensified.
Then, at 7 AM, the morning shift began. By 8 AM, people started noticing the package, and a team was called in to investigate. But before they could even begin their examination, a sudden flare of light erupted from the object, followed by the release of a thick, green, noxious gas.
"No... no! Why is it here!? WHY!?" the man shouted, consumed by disbelief and anger. He knew exactly what the mysterious object was—what he had feared all along. It was the Necro Plague device, containing the deadliest magical plague ever created by mages.
"Evacuate all personnel to Greece. We will start anew there," he said to one of his servants before boarding his private jet.
"Yes, Lord Osman," the butler replied, immediately beginning to carry out his master's orders.
All the servants, personnel, and many others, including mages employed by the man in the owl mask, began evacuating. They boarded either the jet or the large helicopter that had been prepared. The evacuation process took about 30 minutes, during which the guards—ordinary men hired for security—were either devoured by zombies or had already become one of them.
"No! No! Wait for me!" one of the lowly guards, an ordinary man, screamed as he ran toward the planes, a large horde of zombies hot on his heels.
Standing on the plane's ramp, the butler took aim and fired a single shot, killing the guard instantly. They couldn't risk waiting for him and allowing the zombie horde to catch up.
As the zombies continued to advance, the butler activated his insignia, channeling magic through his body. With a wave of his hand, a towering wall of fire erupted from the ground, incinerating the zombies as they touched the flames.
The plane took off, and all of the valuable servants and personnel of the man in the owl mask had successfully evacuated.
In the master plane, the man in the owl mask received a call from his butler.
"My lord, the evacuation is complete. We have 50 casualties, all of them ordinary guards who were stationed at the estate's gates," the butler reported.
"Thank you... You may continue with your duties," the man in the owl mask replied before removing his mask and letting out a sigh of relief.
He needed to inform his allies, the Hightower and the Qing Empire, that their inner circle might have been infiltrated by Daniel's spies.
The man in the owl mask was named Murad Osman. He was the last descendant of the great Ottoman royal family. Though he was an illegitimate child, he was still a demi-god. He had the blood of Zeus running through his veins because his mother, a cultist of the Olympus Cult, had the honor of lying with Zeus, leading to his birth.
He was also the one controlling the puppet known as Cyrus Ashborn, a clone body he used to infiltrate the Hightower. If counting this time, this marked the second time Daniel had ruined his plans.
Murad glanced at the news and saw that the remnants of the once-great Ottoman Empire had turned into a war zone, with its cities engulfed in flames, destruction, and gunfire. He gritted his teeth, swearing that one day... one day, he would get his revenge on Daniel.