[Vorn's Apartment - Late Night]
The token sat on the kitchen table. Its glow had changed from steady light to glowing every one secondVorn stared at it while his soldiers remained quiet in the shadows around the apartment.
The city sounds outside felt distant tonight, like someone had pressed mute on the world. Even the usual traffic noise seemed muffled, as if the air itself was holding its breath.
"It's getting warmer," the slime observed quietly.
Vorn nodded without taking his eyes off the pulsing metal. Something was building toward activation, but he wasn't sure he wanted to see what came next.
---
[Token Activation]
Without warning, the token projected a thin beam of light upward that spread into something like a holographic telegraph display. The technology felt old and new at the same time - not quite magical, not quite electronic.
A distorted voice began speaking, words appearing as text alongside the audio:
"Token recognized. Bearer classification: Unaffiliated Independent. Message begins."
The voice was deliberately altered to hide gender, age, and accent. Professional anonymity.
"This token represents voluntary entry consideration for task-based operations. Organization designation: Masked Society. Membership structure: Individual contractor basis."
Vorn leaned forward, listening carefully to every word.
"Available tasks range from standard information gathering to high-risk elimination contracts. Payment scales with difficulty and time requirements. Risk assessment and task selection remain contractor discretion."
The projection flickered slightly before continuing.
"All members maintain complete anonymity through provided equipment and identity protection. Real name disclosure to other members results in immediate termination from organization. Real identity exposure to task targets constitutes contractor liability, not organizational responsibility."
"Tasks categories include: Information acquisition, material procurement, target elimination, territory disputes, and specialized requests. Warning: Predatory-class tasks carry ninety-seven percent casualty rate. Selection remains voluntary."
Vorn's jaw tightened at that statistic.
"If you survive assigned tasks, payment and acquired materials remain your property. If you die during operations, your existence is forgotten and no assistance is provided to associates."
The message paused, then continued with something that felt like a personal address rather than recorded text.
"Choose well, rookie. Time remaining for decision: Seventy-two hours."
The projection disappeared, leaving the token dark and cool to the touch.
---
[Soldier Discussion]
The apartment was quiet for several minutes after the message ended. Vorn could feel his soldiers processing the information, each one reaching different conclusions.
"Sounds fun," Ash said with bitter sarcasm. "Let's gamble our lives for pocket change."
"It's a leash disguised as freedom," Scarlet added, her voice carrying cold analysis. "They give you choices, but every choice benefits them more than you."
"But it's also access to information networks and resources we can't get otherwise," Grain pointed out pragmatically. "Legal procurement channels won't provide what we need for serious development."
Mire's voice joined from near the window. "Underground contacts confirm the organization exists. Reputation is solid - they honor contracts and don't betray members. But the mortality rate for ambitious contractors is... significant."
Vorn stood up and walked to his desk, pulling out his planning notebooks. "We need intelligence before we decide. No one moves until we know exactly what we're stepping into."
"And if we do join?" Dusk asked.
"Then we need to be strong enough to walk away afterward. On our terms, not theirs."
---
[Personal Preparation]
Vorn spent the night working instead of sleeping. He dismantled his artifact card and began upgrading its structure using techniques learned from studying monster biology. The modifications were subtle but significant - improved mana channeling, enhanced durability, integrated storage for additional materials.
His medical notebooks received new diagrams, more detailed than anything he'd drawn before. Human-monster hybridization procedures that went beyond simple enhancement into complete physiological reconstruction. Plans for systematic improvement that would push his capabilities far beyond normal transcendent limits.
His soldiers watched from the shadows, understanding that their master was preparing for something that would change everything about their operations.
"If we join this organization," he muttered while calibrating new silk production glands, "we need to be strong enough to survive whatever tasks we choose. And smart enough to choose tasks that make us stronger rather than just richer."
The work continued past dawn, each modification bringing him closer to capabilities that would allow genuine independence rather than just survival.
---
[Parallel Scene - Hajime's Journey]
Two hours outside the city, Hajime sat in his parked car at a highway rest stop. The drive back felt like moving toward something that would either provide answers or get him killed. Possibly both.
He stared at the steering wheel, remembering the voice that had called him. Professional, careful, carrying information that suggested significant personal risk to obtain. Either a trap designed by the same people who had arranged Vorn's death, or someone genuinely trying to expose what had happened.
The smart choice was to keep driving away from the city and never look back. But the conversation had suggested that what happened to Vorn was part of something larger, more systematic than bureaucratic negligence or simple corruption.
He started the engine and pulled back onto the highway, heading toward the city he'd fled.
When he parked at the meeting location an hour later, he found a white envelope tucked under his windshield wiper. Inside was a single card with a black mask drawn in simple lines. No words, no signature, no indication of what it meant.
But something about the mask design felt familiar, like he'd seen it in intelligence reports or security briefings years ago. Before he could place the memory, his phone rang.
"Riverside Park, east entrance, five minutes," the same voice from before said without preamble.
The line went dead. Hajime pocketed the mask card and began walking toward his appointment with information that might get him killed.
---
[Strange Visitor]
Dawn was approaching when Vorn finally finished his equipment modifications. The apartment smelled of heated metal and the ozone scent of mana-enhanced materials. His enhanced senses felt sharper than ever, his reflexes more precise, his tactical awareness expanded.
The token had remained dark since delivering its message, but something about the air pressure in the apartment suggested another communication was incoming.
Three soft knocks echoed from his apartment door. Not loud, but deliberate, spaced exactly two seconds apart.
"No one was near the building thirty seconds ago," Dusk whispered from his position monitoring the street.
The knocks echoed too long, carrying a metallic resonance that seemed to vibrate inside their heads rather than just their ears.
Vorn signaled his soldiers to hold defensive positions and slowly approached the door. His enhanced hearing detected no breathing, no heartbeat, no indication of human presence beyond the barrier.
---
[The Choice Delivered]
When he opened the door, the hallway was empty. But on the floor lay a mask unlike anything he'd seen before.
Not cheap plastic or simple cloth, but crafted from dark material that seemed to absorb and reflect light simultaneously. The design was elegant but unsettling - features that suggested humanity while hiding every trace of individual identity.
He picked up the mask carefully. The material felt warm despite having been left in a cool hallway, and the craftsmanship was extraordinary. Every detail perfect, every surface smooth as glass.
Inside the mask, carved into the inner surface where it would rest against the wearer's forehead, was a single word: "Choose."
Vorn held the mask up to the morning light filtering through his apartment window. The eye openings seemed to look back at him with empty awareness.
His soldiers gathered around him, studying the artifact with expressions ranging from curiosity to concern.
"Membership token," Scarlet observed. "Put it on, and you're committed to whatever comes next."
"Don't put it on, and you stay where you are," Grain added.
Vorn set the mask on his kitchen table next to the metal token. Two artifacts, two choices, both carrying consequences that would reshape his future in ways he couldn't fully predict.
"Seventy-one hours remaining," he said quietly.
The mask seemed to watch him from the table, waiting for a decision that would determine whether he remained a small player avoiding attention or became something that could operate at levels where real power was traded like currency.
Outside his apartment, the city was waking up to another day of normal problems and ordinary solutions. But inside, Vorn was considering a choice that would take him far beyond the boundaries of normal human experience.
The question wasn't whether the Masked Society was good or evil - it was whether joining them would give him the tools he needed to eventually transcend the need for any organization's protection or control.
Time would tell. But first, he had to choose.