Schedule Update
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From now on, the release schedule here will be daily.
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The clinic interior was exactly the same.
Ren stood in the doorway and looked at it. Two floors, white tile on the ground level, black walls, black everything. The reception desk sitting where it always sat. The examination room off to the left. The hallway stretching back into darkness with the faint red glow at the far end that meant the grafting room was exactly where it had always been.
He had last walked out of this clinic in the Azareth Empire. He was now standing inside it in the forty-fourth floor of the Dao Guild in Qintara.
It moved the whole thing, he thought. Interior and all.
Spatial reconstruction. The interior geometry was preserved as-is. Only the exterior received modifications.
The exterior has veins on it.
Premium modifications.
I got a modern makeover and it kept the black walls.
You love the black walls.
That is not the point. He looked at the grafting room door at the end of the hall, still red, still leaking mist. Is the grafting room still functional.
Fully operational. Red mist regulation, sterile field, thirty percent critical evolution chance intact. I preserved all prior upgrades.
At least you did one thing right.
*I did many things right. Applaud my supreme power.
Ren looked at the ceiling. At the white tile. At the familiar shape of the whole place, unchanged down to the layout of the chairs in the waiting area.
"What a spatial wonder," he said, to no one in particular.
Applaud. My. Supreme. Power.
"How about I fucking clap my ass cheeks for you instead."
Do it. I have prepared a recording device.
"Fuck you."
The applause offer stands. Indefinitely.
Ren walked to the reception desk, pulled out the chair, and sat in it. He looked at the room for a moment, the same room he had treated two hundred and thirteen soldiers in, the same room Malvick Siven had walked into alone with no insignia, the same room he had locked up for the last time before everything went wrong.
It felt like coming home to a place he had not expected to miss.
.
.
.
The children arrived at the guild an hour later.
Ren had gone back to the hotel to collect Lily and Martinez and their things. Martinez had packed with great thoroughness. Lily had packed with great selectivity, leaving three items behind and bringing a book she had found in the hotel lobby without asking.
"Is this where you work now?" Martinez said, looking up at the Dao Guild building from the pavement.
"Yes."
"It's very tall."
"It is."
"Is that a vein on that clinic wall," Martinez said, pointing at the forty-fourth floor through the glass exterior of the building.
"Those are load-bearing," Ren said, and kept walking.
The staff accommodation on the forty-fourth floor was separated from the clinic space by a short corridor. Two bedrooms, a shared bathroom, a small kitchen. The ceilings were high. The beds were larger than anything Lily or Martinez had slept in outside of their one night at Lu Changcheng's guest room.
Lily looked at the room for approximately one second before running at the bed and launching herself onto it. She bounced twice, landed on her back, and stared at the ceiling in silence.
Martinez sat on the edge of his bed, tested it once by pressing down with both hands, and then also launched himself onto it. His landing was less graceful than Lily's. He ended up sideways with his feet in the air.
"This is better than the hotel," he announced, from this position.
"It is a guild penthouse," Ren said. "Yes."
"Does it have room service?"
"No. It has a kitchen. You make your own food."
"Oh." Martinez considered this. "Can you cook?"
"Adequately."
"What does adequately mean."
"It means the food will be hot and correct and you will not complain about it."
"That is not reassuring."
"Go to sleep," Ren said.
.
.
.
He checked the door beside the children's room on his way out.
A small placard: VICE GUILDMASTER CHU XINGHE.
So that's the neighbor, he thought. He should leave something. A greeting. It seemed appropriate, moving into someone's floor without warning.
He reached into his inventory and pulled out a B-rank dagger from Kael Dorn's collection. Well-balanced, practical, the sort of item that was useful rather than decorative. A reasonable gift.
He needed to write a note.
There was a notepad on the small table near the lift. He picked it up, looked for a pen, found one, and pressed it to the paper. Nothing came out. He pressed harder. Still nothing.
He clicked it. Shook it. Held it at an angle.
Dead.
"Fuck it," he said.
He bit his finger. Blood welled up immediately, and he used it to write on the notepad. His finger healed between letters, so he had to bite it again. And again. The healing was fast enough that he needed four separate bites to get through two lines, each one spattering a small amount of blood onto the page that he had not entirely anticipated.
The note, when finished, read:
Greetings from the Doctor. We are neighbors now.
He looked at the door. He needed to attach the note. He patted his pockets for tape. He checked his inventory. Nothing suitable.
He picked up the dagger.
He stabbed the note to the door.
He stepped back and assessed the result. A blood-spattered note pinned to the Vice Guildmaster's door with a B-rank dagger at chest height.
"That should be right," he said, and walked back to the clinic.
.
.
.
Chu Xinghe arrived at the Dao Guild at nine in the morning.
He was thirty-one years old, graceful from years of genuine ease rather than performance, and extremely handsome in a way that people noticed and then quietly stopped mentioning because it had become background fact. Despite being Vice Guildmaster, he greeted the janitor mopping the lobby floor with the same directness he gave executives: by name, with genuine attention.
"Morning, Uncle Pei. How's your knee?"
"Better, Vice Guildmaster. The medicine you sent helped."
"Good. Let me know if it flares up again."
It was a festival week, and he had brought small gifts for the front desk staff, the cleaning crew, and the two guards posted at the entrance. He handed them out without ceremony, giving being simply a habit for him rather than a gesture.
The guards thanked him with genuine warmth, not the stiff gratitude people show a superior but the kind that comes from being treated well consistently over time. Two of the administrative staff passing through the lobby paused to wave. A junior hunter near the door actually bowed, and Chu Xinghe stopped to ask about his recent gate assignment by name before moving on.
The two guards at the front desk straightened as he approached.
"Vice Guildmaster. Good morning."
"Good morning." He paused. "I heard there's a new doctor on the forty-fourth floor?"
The guard on the left hesitated for half a second. Chu Xinghe noticed it.
"He arrived yesterday, sir. The Guildmaster made the arrangement personally."
"Good." Chu Xinghe smiled. "If the Guildmaster brought him in, he'll be worth knowing."
The same guard hesitated again. "He's, um. The mask is a bit... it makes my skin crawl, sir. I couldn't help it."
Chu Xinghe's expression stayed warm but his voice became direct. "Don't judge someone by how they look. The Guildmaster chose him personally, which means his character is worth far more than your first impression."
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."
"When you have the chance," Chu Xinghe said, "go and introduce yourself to him properly. And apologize directly. Not to me, to him."
The guard straightened. "Yes, Vice Guildmaster."
Chu Xinghe stepped into the lift.
Behind him, the guard exhaled slowly. "Vice Guildmaster really does set the standard."
"Every time," the other agreed.
.
.
.
The forty-fourth floor was quiet when the lift opened.
Chu Xinghe stepped out and immediately stopped.
The clinic had not been there yesterday. He was certain of this because he had been on this floor two days ago and there had been no clinic. There was now a clinic. Two stories, obsidian black, modern lines, the sign above the entrance reading CLINIC OF THE RUIN GOSPEL in clean white letters.
And on the walls, green and red veins, thick as fingers, pulsing faintly.
He stood very still for a moment.
Then he walked up to the nearest vein and looked at it closely. It was organic. It was definitely organic. It was growing on the side of a building on the forty-fourth floor of the Dao Guild and it appeared to be alive.
Medical ability of some kind, he thought. Unusual but not necessarily dangerous. The Guildmaster approved this.
He stepped back and looked at the whole facade. Clinic of the Ruin Gospel. A slogan underneath: As long as you're not dead, I can make sure you will live on.
He nodded slowly. Unconventional. Certainly unique. But the slogan was reasonable, and the building, despite the veins, had a professional layout. The doctor would be an interesting person.
He continued toward his own door.
He saw the dagger from six meters away. Then the note pinned beneath it. Then, as he got closer, the dark reddish-brown colour of whatever had been used to write it.
He stopped.
That, he thought, is written in blood.
He looked at the dagger. B-rank blade, well-maintained, currently embedded in his door at chest height.
"Who," he said quietly, to the empty corridor, "sent an assassin after me."
He read the note.
Greetings from the Doctor. We are neighbors now.
He stared at it for a long moment.
Then he looked at the clinic sign down the corridor. Then back at the note. Then at the dagger still in his hand. Then at the blood-written greeting from his new neighbor who had apparently decided that a B-rank weapon was an appropriate substitute for tape.
Chu Xinghe had worked in the Dao Guild for eight years. In eight years he had maintained composure through gate break emergencies, through inter-guild political crises, through the time a S-rank hunter destroyed the fourth floor training room over a scheduling dispute. In eight years he had never once raised his voice, never slammed a door, never said a word that would have made anyone in his vicinity uncomfortable.
He looked at the note one more time.
"What the fuck," he said.
He stood in the corridor for a moment, blinking, faintly surprised at himself.
Then he pulled the dagger out of the door, tucked it under his arm, and went inside to put on some tea.