Alex kept the cube back on the table. He then held his hand towards the cube's general direction, willing it to come to him and the cube turned into a beam of light and appeared in his hand.

Alex took out the Snow Seal card which had sealed up the snowflake and asked it what the cube was.

"Where did you find this thing?" The snowflake cried out in delight.

"Just what is it?" Alex asked again.

"It is a Vessel." The Snowflake said. "It can hold fragments of higher ent.i.ties outside of the sealing door."

Alex raised his eyes. He realized how the fragment earlier must have escaped the door. However, how did it acquire this item? Was it from Negima?

Alex had learned some information from the Cube that worried him. One of the officers at Negima had been heavily corrupted by dark attribute energy. Alex wasn't sure what the specifics were, since the officer gained power, what did he pay in exchange?

For now, he didn't seem to have any use for this cube that was floating around him. He willed it to enter his inner world as a test and it disappeared from in front of him.

Alex now had a grade A Dark Shadow. Even dim lights would not interrupt his invisibility in the darkness and completely hid his presence.

He creeped around the headquarters in the depths of night. As a result of his investigations, he found, shockingly enough, that Negima corporation had some dealings with the Scarlet tide.

What was this rich company doing working with scarlet tide? Alex wanted to investigate deeper, but he had a conundrum. The moment he revealed himself to be alive, the two remaining officers would immediately know that he was related to the failure of their search for snowflake as well as the disappearance of the black cube. At this point, he could only consider acting dead.

Instead, Alex went through all the records at the headquarters within the Highland shelter and destroyed all of them, hoping to eliminate his own history with the organization.

Alex was curious about the secret trades that Negima was conducting with scarlet tide. Surprisingly, he found details about locations back on earth, where Negima would conduct trades.

"Does that mean Scarlet Tide is hidden in those places?" Alex thought to himself. "I also have the keys of three officers which I can probably use to enter the Negima Corporation on Earth."

Alex quietly decided to leave the company, but at the last moment considered leaving one little souvenir. This was especially because he was worried of potential cards that might track him using energy. So he took out the purple core of the gigantic stone mother golem, about the size of Alex's head and activated it to detonate, right at the foundation of the building.

He walked to the defensive perimeter surrounding the headquarters and actively triggered it, quickly disappearing into the Night, thanks to dark shadow.

As people from the Negima corporation rushed to the entrance to defend, a loud explosion rocked behind them, exploding away the pumice roof of the mansion like building and causing several pillars to crumble. Slowly, the members of the Negima corporation who were at the headquarters saw in horror as the entire building fell apart and destroyed itself.

The commotion instantly ignited the fear in the Highland Shelter and powerhouses from several of the other alliances arrived to look at the scene.

One of those people was Qianyu. She saw the destroyed building and her eyes glinted. She hadn't been able to establish contact with Alex and after Negima sent him and some others on a mission, there was no news even from other intelligence sources from Negima.

However, looking at the destruction of the building now, and the lack of any of the officers from Negima arriving or handling the chaos, her mind began working quickly. "Could it have been him?" She wondered.

Alex himself made his way out of the shelter. He did not decide to stay within because the sun would rise soon. Instead, Alex decided to hide and explore the unexplored environments. At this moment, he could only stay as far as possible from the chaos.

His eventual goal would be to kill the remaining two officers, but from the cube's testimony, it actually gave tremendous power to the officer who discovered it. He also wanted to investigate the traces of the scarlet tide, but for now he couldn't try and leave the Card Dimension as the portal would register his exit.

On Earth, a message quickly reached the Negima Corporation. Two officers who were sitting in the conference room stood up in horror when they received the news.

There were three other individuals, who appeared to be Card Novices aka having rank 3 cards in their active deck.

"We have been working hard to establish a foothold in the second card dimension. How did you manage to lose the only shelter where we are a stronghold?" One of those three asked.

The two officers were stunned and unsure what was going on themselves. One of those officers eyes were actually black. He emanated an eery presence that intimidated even the Card Novices despite the officer being only a peak Card Apprentice.

"We will investigate what happened." His eyes had a chilling look of hatred as he and his co officer left the building, ready to enter the Card Dimension immediately.

The three card novice officers discussed among themselves. "Do we send all our peak card apprentices to the Highland Shelter? It is the only stronghold we have, we can't let it fall, or all our potential influence will decay quickly."

"We will need to purchase three pa.s.sage cards. The cost would be extreme." Another of the officers said.

"We need all of our remaining officers in the first card dimension at Highland Shelter. Immediately organize for three pa.s.sage cards."