The morning sun crawled up over District 9's horizon like a debt collector arriving too early—pale, cold, and unwanted.
Its light illuminated the remains of The Glitch Shop's skeleton, still releasing thin wisps of black smoke. What had once been a two-story building where I'd stored thousands of cards and early retirement dreams was now just a pile of wet charcoal and twisted iron resembling the broken teeth of a monster.
I sat on the edge of a neighboring building's roof ventilation, legs dangling below. In my hand, a cup of cheap instant coffee that Miri had somehow managed to salvage from my nearly empty dimensional pocket, steam rising thinner than the smoke from the ruins below.
"Boss," Miri's voice broke the post-disaster silence. She was licking her fur, singed in several places. "Are we homeless now?"
"Homeless is a crude term, Miri," I replied without turning, my eyes dissecting the ruins not with sadness, but with forensic analysis. "We're now... free agents without fixed assets. That sounds more modern."
"That sounds like a polite way of saying we're broke."
"Correction: We're not broke in terms of liquidity. We have 80 gold coins. That's enough to rent a room in a flophouse for a week."
I sipped the cold coffee. It tasted bitter, like ash.
"But we're not going to a flophouse. The Merchant Alliance has probably spread spies in every rat hole in this district. They want to make sure I'm truly finished. If I show up at a flophouse, tomorrow morning my corpse will be found floating in the sewers."
I set down the cup, then stood. My knees cracked, protesting last night's acrobatics.
I stared at my shop's ruins again. To ordinary eyes, it was garbage. But to mine—to the eyes of a Cardsmith who manipulated concepts—it was a goldmine.
There was emotion left behind there. Thousands of hours of hard work, the desperation of watching fire devour assets, and pure hatred toward the arsonists. All of it was residuum energy.
"System," I commanded, my voice flat. "Initiate Infinite Grimoire. Target: The Glitch Shop Ruins."
Golden mana chains launched out from empty air around me. Usually these chains gleamed brightly, but this morning, their color was dull, as if they too felt their master's loss.
[TARGET ACQUIRED: Ruined Shop (Personal Asset)]
[CONCEPT TRACE DETECTED: "Total Loss", "Arson", "Vengeful Grief"]
[EXTRACTION CHANCE: 100%]
"Pull," I hissed.
The chains plunged into the pile of charcoal below. They didn't pull physical objects. They pulled feelings from that place. I watched black and red mist get sucked out from the debris, spiraling upward, and condensing before my face.
It felt like pulling out my own tooth. Painful, but with a strange relief when the root came free.
A blank card made of obsidian material formed in the air. The mist entered it, screaming softly—the sound of wood cracking in flames.
[CARD CREATED: The Merchant's Martyrdom]
[RANK: Unique (Growth Type)]
[EFFECT: Curses one business target or property. Every profit they gain within 24 hours will transform into physical loss (structural damage, sudden rot, or metal corrosion).]
[COST: Consumes user's "Assets" (the greater the sacrifice, the stronger the effect).]
I caught the card. It was hot, as if fresh from a furnace.
And then, the backflow hit.
This time it wasn't dramatic tears or noble arrogance. This was the concept of 'Total Destruction' and 'Cold Vengeance'.
Suddenly, my heartbeat slowed. My empathy for the surrounding world went numb. I saw a sparrow perched on a power line, and my brain immediately calculated the trajectory to kill it with a pebble—not out of hatred, but because it could be done.
The world became a monochrome chessboard. No morality. Only winning moves and losing moves.
"Boss?" Miri backed up a step, her hackles rising. "Your eyes... they're dead gray."
"Efficient," I replied. My voice lost its human intonation. Flat. Mechanical. "Emotion is an unnecessary variable in revenge calculations."
I slipped the new card into my breast pocket, right next to my now slowly-beating heart.
"Miri. Who's the chairman of the Merchant Alliance who signed that threat letter?"
"Gorman Iron-Fist," Miri answered quickly, as if afraid that if she answered too slowly I'd sell her. "Owner of Iron Ledger Warehouse. Biggest storage facility in the northern sector."
"Warehouse," I repeated. The corner of my mouth lifted slightly, forming a smile that didn't reach my eyes. "Perfect place to sleep. And perfect place to start a disaster."
***
Iron Ledger Warehouse was a red-brick fortress the size of a soccer field. Surrounded by a three-meter-high iron fence with barbed wire carrying light shock magic. Guards patrolled with Hellhounds whose muzzles emitted sulfur smoke.
To ordinary thieves, this was an impenetrable fortress.
To Rax under the influence of 'Destruction' backflow, this was a low-difficulty logic puzzle.
We crouched behind a pile of empty shipping containers at the dock, 200 meters from the warehouse's main gate.
"Three guards at the gate. Two patrol circuits. Rotation every 15 minutes," I muttered, my eyes recording their movement patterns. "Those dogs are the problem. Their noses can smell fear."
"Good thing I'm not scared," Miri said, trembling. "I'm just... highly alert."
"We're not sneaking through shadows. We're walking through the front door."
"Has Boss lost it? They have spears!"
I reached into the small black box—the Emergency Prototypes box I'd saved last night. Inside were experimental cards too dangerous or too weird to sell.
I pulled out one neon green card flickering unstably.
[CARD: The Bureaucratic Nightmare (Glitch)]
[Concept: Red Tape + Confusion]
[Effect: Creates a "Mandatory Administration Zone" within a 10-meter radius. Anyone entering must fill out imaginary forms before performing any physical action (including attacking).]
"Watch," I said.
I walked casually out from hiding, heading straight for the main gate. Miri scurried behind me, trying to hide her tail.
"HALT!" one guard shouted, pointing his spear. "This is Master Gorman's restricted area! One more step and we release the dogs!"
The Hellhound growled, fire dripping from its mouth.
I didn't stop. I flicked the green card.
[GLITCH ACTIVATED]
The air around the gate shimmered. The world's colors appeared slightly desaturated, as if we'd just entered a boring municipal office.
"I'd like to file a complaint about this fence's quality," I said flatly.
The guard opened his mouth to shout 'ATTACK!', but what came out was: "Sorry, have you taken a queue number?"
His eyes widened in shock. His body stiffened. His hand tried to throw the spear, but his muscles refused to move before 'procedures' were completed.
"What... what's happening?" the second guard whispered, suddenly feeling an irresistible urge to look for a pen.
"Form A-38 hasn't been filled out," I continued, stepping past them casually. The Hellhound sat, tilted its head, then began licking its paw as if waiting to be called. "And the security department stamp isn't wet yet. Please wait at counter three."
The guards were trapped in a cognitive loop, arguing with each other about who brought the stamp ink, while I opened the iron gate and strolled in.
"Horrifying," Miri whispered once we were inside the courtyard. "That's more evil than killing them. You turned them into... civil servants."
"Death is quick. Bureaucracy is eternal," I replied coldly.
We reached the main warehouse door. A complex magic lock glowed there. I placed my palm against it, using the Grimoire to crack the code in seconds.
Click.
The door opened. The aroma of wheat, expensive spices, and silk textiles rushed out.
This was Gorman's treasure trove. The product of sweat from hundreds of small merchants he'd squeezed. And tonight, this was my bedroom.
"Find a soft spot on top of those silk piles," I ordered Miri. "I have work to do."
While Miri happily made a nest atop a pile of Persian carpets, I walked to the warehouse's center. There stood a giant iron safe two meters tall. Where Gorman stored liquid gold and guild ledgers.
I wouldn't steal it. That was too vulgar. And Gorman surely had magic trackers on his coins.
I would do something more painful.
I pulled out the [The Merchant's Martyrdom] card I'd just made from my shop's ashes.
"Gorman burned my assets," I muttered to the echoing empty space. "So it's only fair that his assets consume him."
I pressed the black card against the safe's wall.
The card didn't physically stick. It seeped into the metal, like ink dropping into water. The safe's iron hissed softly, then black color spread like diseased veins across the entire surface of the safe, then crawled to the floor, to support pillars, and to stacks of crates around it.
[CURSE PLANTED]
[Target: Iron Ledger Assets]
[Trigger: Next Transaction]
[Effect: Asset Decay set to 100%]
Tomorrow morning, when Gorman tried to move a single coin, or when he tried to send out a single crate of goods, this curse would activate. Gold would turn to liquid lead. Silk would turn to moth dust. Wheat would rot instantly.
He wouldn't lose money from theft. He'd lose money from asset depreciation accelerated a million times over.
"Sleep well, Gorman," I whispered.
I turned and climbed the stack of crates toward the 'nest' Miri had made at the very top of the warehouse, near a skylight. From here, I could see the entire district.
Miri was already snoring, her belly full of mana biscuits she'd found in one of the crates.
I lay down on the pile of stolen silk. It felt more comfortable than my bed at the shop, but my heart couldn't be at peace. The destruction backflow slowly faded, leaving a cold emptiness.
I opened the system interface to check my status.
[NAME: RAX]
[CLASS: Glitch Cardsmith (Unique)]
[TITLES: Prince's Nemesis, Enemy of the Guilds, Homeless Vagrant]
[CURRENT QUEST: None]
Suddenly, a new notification appeared. Flashing static red. Node #7 again.
[MESSAGE FROM NODE #7]
"Sleeping in the wolf's den? Nice guts. But careful, Rax. Prince Eldric just hired 'The Silent Walkers' to hunt you. They don't need eyes to see you. And they don't need doors to enter."
I stared at the message. The Silent Walkers. Elite assassins who used shadow magic.
I wasn't surprised. A prince with wounded ego was a dangerous beast.
"Let them come," I muttered, my eyes staring at the dark warehouse ceiling.
I reached into my pocket, pulling out one more prototype from the black box.
[CARD: The Schrödinger's Trap (Experimental)]
[Effect: Creates an area where probability of existence becomes uncertain. Target can be both present and absent simultaneously until observed.]
I placed the card beside my head, like a gun under a pillow.
Tonight, I slept atop my enemy's wealth, hunted by the kingdom, and watched by a universe admin.
And strangely, for the first time since the fire, I smiled genuinely.
Because I realized one thing: I no longer had anything to lose. And a person with nothing to lose is the most dangerous person in the world.
"Starting tomorrow," I whispered to the darkness. "We're not just surviving. We're bringing the roof down on their heads."
I closed my eyes, letting the sound of Miri's breathing become the only lullaby music in this enemy fortress.