The high-pitched, rhythmic clicking of the Silver Hound drone was the sound of an approaching death sentence. In the narrow, rain-slicked alleyway outside Old Jack's clinic, the red sensor light of the machine swept across the corrugated metal walls, seeking the specific bio-signature of a wounded, one-armed boy.
Alex Kane stood in the absolute dark behind the clinic's heavy secondary door. He didn't breathe. His right hand remained steady on the hilt of a rusted combat knife, while his left, encased in the thick grey handler's sleeve, hummed with a suppressed, violent heat. Through the walls, God's Eye allowed him to see the drone's internal mechanics—the spinning cooling fans, the high-capacity battery, and the C-Rank thermal lens currently struggling to penetrate the cooling dampness of the storm.
The drone hovered for a moment, then moved on, its clicking fading into the sound of the downpour.
Alex didn't relax. He knew the drone was just the vanguard. The Drakes wouldn't rely solely on machines in a place as labyrinthine as the North District slums. They would send humans—people who knew how to squeeze information out of the cracks in the pavement.
He retreated into the main room of the clinic. Old Jack was frantically stuffing medical supplies into a tattered canvas bag, his hands shaking so violently that he dropped a glass vial of antiseptic, which shattered on the concrete.
"We have to go, Alex," Jack hissed, his voice cracking with panic. "The Silver Hounds mean the Vulture Gang is close. The Drakes hired them as local bloodhounds. They know these sewers better than the rats do."
Alex looked at the shattered vial. Through his new passive, Chrono-Residual Perception, he could see the faint, glowing timestamp of the glass.
Death Residual Time: 42 seconds.
The structural reality of the glass was gone. The 'Life' of the object had ended. He looked toward the clinic's main entrance.
"Too late," Alex said.
A second later, the reinforced door of the clinic didn't just open; it was blown off its hinges. The explosion wasn't large, just a localized breaching charge that sent a spray of hot sparks and metal fragments into the room.
Five men stepped through the smoke. They were dressed in mismatched tactical gear—scuffed ceramic plates over dirty street clothes, their faces hidden behind gas masks decorated with the white skull of the Vulture Gang. The leader, a massive man with a cybernetic eye that glowed a sickly yellow, stepped forward, a heavy-caliber Magnum revolver held casually in his right hand.
"Well, well," the leader growled, his voice distorted by his mask's vocoder. "Look at this. A secret little nest. And here I thought we'd be digging through trash heaps all night to find the Drake family's little runaway."
Old Jack froze, his hands raised in a frantic gesture of surrender. "We don't want any trouble, Boss. We're just scavengers. The kid... he's just a patient."
The leader ignored Jack. His yellow cybernetic eye locked onto Alex, who was sitting in a darkened corner on a wooden crate, his duster draped loosely over his frame.
"One arm, just like the bounty said," the leader chuckled. He raised the Magnum, aiming it directly at Alex's forehead. "The Drakes said you were dangerous, kid. Said you were a 'saboteur'. But you look like a half-dead rat to me. Maybe I'll take your other arm too, just to make sure the delivery is easier."
Alex didn't move. He didn't even look at the gun. He looked at the air between him and the barrel.
"You're the Vultures," Alex said, his voice flat and devoid of fear. "You work for whoever has the most credits. Right now, that's the Drakes. But the Drakes are paying you to find a corpse. If you kill me here, you only get the bounty. If you let me talk, you might live through the next five minutes."
The Vultures erupted in laughter. The leader stepped closer, the barrel of the Magnum now inches from Alex's face.
"Bold talk for a cripple," the leader said. "How about I give you a different choice? You give me the mana cores you stole, and I'll make the first bullet quick."
"I didn't steal mana cores," Alex said. "I stole something much more valuable."
"Yeah? What's that?"
"Perspective," Alex whispered.
In a move so fast it defied the visual processing of the gang's lower-rank augmentations, Alex stood up. The leader's finger tightened on the trigger.
BANG.
The heavy-caliber round erupted from the barrel, the muzzle flash illuminating the room for a fraction of a second. The bullet, a jacketed lead slug designed to pierce light armor, screamed through the air toward Alex's skull.
Alex didn't dodge. He raised his left hand—the one hidden beneath the grey handler's sleeve.
There was no sound of flesh hitting metal. There was a sound of a void being filled.
Alex caught the bullet.
He didn't just catch it; his obsidian fingers closed around the slug in mid-air, the Destruction attribute in his limb instantly neutralizing the kinetic energy of the shot. The grey fabric of the sleeve smoked and charred at the point of impact, but the hand beneath was unharmed.
The room went deathly silent. Even the rain outside seemed to hesitate.
The Vulture leader's cybernetic eye whirred frantically, trying to recalibrate. "What... what the hell are you?"
Alex opened his hand. The lead bullet, now twisted and glowing with a faint, dark-red heat, fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
"My turn," Alex said.
He ripped off the grey handler's sleeve in one violent motion. The obsidian limb was revealed, its dark-red veins pulsing with a rhythmic, terrifying light. The air in the clinic began to grow cold—not the cold of winter, but the cold of an absolute vacuum.
The four gang members behind the leader panicked. They raised their submachine guns, their fingers fumbling for the triggers.
Alex didn't give them the chance. He lunged.
He didn't use a weapon. He didn't need one. He grabbed the nearest gang member by the chest. His obsidian claws sank into the man's ceramic armor as if it were wet cardboard.
Void Hand: Attribute Stripping—Pain Receptors.
The man's eyes went wide, but he didn't scream. He couldn't. Alex wasn't just killing him; he was dismantling his biological reality. With a flick of his will, Alex stripped the 'Sense of Pain' attribute from the man's entire nervous system.
Then, he began the settlement.
Using the terrifying strength of his demonic limb, Alex systematically dismantled the man's physical form. He snapped the man's radius and ulna, then the humerus. He did it slowly, deliberately. The gang member watched his own arm being twisted into a grotesque, jagged mess of bone and muscle, but because the attribute of pain had been removed, he felt nothing but a horrific, sickening sense of detachment.
The other gang members watched in a paralysis of pure terror. This wasn't combat. It was a vivisection performed by a god of the ruins.
"Kill him! Kill him now!" the leader screamed, falling backward and scrambling for his fallen Magnum.
The three remaining Vultures opened fire. The basement was filled with the deafening roar of automatic weapons and the smell of cordite.
Alex didn't hide. He utilized the 'Heavy Armor' attribute he had fused into the obsidian limb. He swung the black arm in a wide arc, creating a localized field of 'High-Density Defense'. The bullets didn't bounce off; they disintegrated upon contact with the demonic energy, turning into a fine grey mist of lead powder.
He moved through the gunfire like a shadow through a forest.
He reached the next two men. He grabbed them by their throats, his obsidian claws digging into their carotid arteries.
Attribute Extraction: Gravity Orientation.
The two men suddenly lost the ability to perceive which way was down. Their inner ears were stripped of the attribute of balance. They collapsed to the floor, vomiting uncontrollably as the world seemed to spin in a thousand different directions. Alex stepped over them, his gaze fixed on the leader.
The leader had managed to find his gun. He pointed it at Alex with trembling hands. "Stay back! I'm a C-Rank Awakened! I'll blow your head off!"
Alex stopped three paces away. He looked at the leader's cybernetic eye.
"C-Rank," Alex said, his voice sounding like two stones grinding together. "The Drakes gave you that eye, didn't they? A 'gift' for your loyalty."
"It... it sees everything," the leader hissed.
"It sees what they want you to see," Alex said.
He reached out with his right hand—the Void Hand. He didn't touch the man's face. He touched the air in front of the cybernetic lens.
Extraction: Optical Clarity.
The leader let out a choked sob. His cybernetic eye didn't go dark; it began to broadcast a static-filled, distorted nightmare. The 'Clarity' of his vision had been stripped away, leaving him with a sensory input that was pure, unfiltered chaos.
Alex stepped forward and grabbed the leader's throat with his obsidian hand. He lifted the massive man off the floor as if he weighed nothing.
"Where is the ticket?" Alex asked.
"What... what ticket?" the leader wheezed, his legs kicking uselessly in the air.
"The Grey Market entry pass. The Drakes gave it to you so you could track me into the underground. Give it to me, or I'll strip the 'Solidity' attribute from your skin and watch you melt into the floor."
The leader fumbled at his belt with shaking fingers. He pulled out a small, black plastic card with a glowing violet microchip embedded in the center. The 'Grey Market Invitation'.
Alex took the card with his right hand. He didn't let go of the man's throat.
"Jack," Alex called out without looking back. "Are you packed?"
Old Jack emerged from behind the surgical table, his face as white as a sheet. He looked at the three men on the floor—one mutilated and silent, two vomiting in a gravity-less hell, and the leader dangling like a broken doll.
"I... I have the gear," Jack stammered.
"Good. We're leaving."
Alex looked back at the Vulture leader. "You told the Drakes I was a half-dead rat. Tell them one more thing when they find you."
He leaned in close, the dark-red glow of his arm illuminating the leader's terrified face.
"Tell Victor that I'm thankful for the delivery. The 'Vulture Gang' was an excellent source of attributes. I'll be sure to use them well when I see him at the tournament."
Alex dropped the man. He didn't kill him. He wanted the Drakes to see this. He wanted them to see the clinical, absolute efficiency of his work. He wanted them to feel the first chill of a hunter who was no longer playing by the rules of the System.
He turned toward the exit, the grey handler's sleeve discarded on the floor like a snakeskin. He didn't hide his arm anymore. He didn't need to. In the shadows of the underground, this arm was his scepter.
"Let's go, Jack," Alex said. "The Grey Market is waiting. And I have a sword to find."
They stepped out into the rain, leaving the ruined clinic and the broken men behind. As they vanished into the fog, the only sound left was the rhythmic clicking of the Silver Hound drone, which had returned to the clinic only to find its masters dismantled and its prey already gone.
Alex Kane walked through the storm, his right hand gripping the violet entry card, his left arm pulsing with the power of a dead god. He had cleared his first debt. Now, he was going to buy the future.
As they reach the reinforced hatch of the Grey Market entrance, Alex notices a faint, glowing trail of 'Law Fragments' leaking from a passing courier's bag—a trail that leads directly to a shop owned by a girl with fallen noble eyes.