The narrow alleyways of Kronos City's Lower District reminded Alex of the Chicago projects where he'd cut his teeth—all broken dreams and predatory desperation. The main difference was the lack of sirens and the occasional person breathing fire or lifting stones the size of refrigerators.
Magic made everything more interesting.
Alex moved through the shadows with practiced ease, his new Shadowsteel blade providing a +30% concealment bonus that made him blend into the darkness like smoke. The original Alex's memories painted a clear picture of the local ecosystem: a three-way power struggle between the Iron Rats gang, Marcus's Coin Collectors, and the Gray Serpents who controlled the drug trade.
All of them were small-time compared to the academies and noble houses that ruled the upper city, but in the slums, they might as well have been gods.
Time to change that dynamic.
Alex's first target was a Gray Serpent lookout posted at the entrance to Beggar's Row—a kid no older than fifteen with nervous eyes and a rusty sword. The boy's job was to watch for Iron Rat incursions and signal the dealers deeper in the maze of tenements.
**[ANALYZE TARGET]**
**Target:** Tommy "Twitchy" Voss
**Level:** 7 (Commoner)
**Profession:** Scout/Thief
**Skills:** Basic Swordplay (Lv 2), Stealth (Lv 4), Danger Sense (Lv 3)
**Threat Level:** Negligible
Alex approached from the boy's blind spot, stepping out of shadow like death personified. The kid spun toward him, sword half-drawn, then froze as he recognized the face.
"A-Alex? Fuck, man, we thought you were dead! Marcus's boys were looking for you earlier, saying—"
The Shadowsteel dagger punched through the boy's chest before he could finish the sentence. The Bleeding Curse ensured it was quick but messy.
**[LEVEL 7 HUMAN SLAIN]**
**[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 140]**
Alex caught the body before it could hit the ground, dragging it into a pile of refuse where it wouldn't be found immediately. He took the boy's coin pouch—three coppers and a silver—then paused as something else caught his eye.
A small glass vial filled with green powder hung from the kid's neck. Alex recognized it from the original Alex's memories: Serpent's Kiss, a mild stimulant that enhanced reflexes temporarily. Street-level magical drugs, barely worth the glass they were stored in.
But Alex's system didn't care about market value.
**[SERPENT'S KISS DETECTED]**
**[CURRENT EFFECTS: +2 Agility for 10 minutes, mild addiction risk]**
**[UPGRADE AVAILABLE]**
**[PROCEED? Y/N]**
"Yes."
**[UPGRADE COMPLETE]**
**[MULTIPLIER ACHIEVED: 456,723x]**
**[SERPENT'S KISS → ETERNAL EVOLUTION ELIXIR]**
**[NEW EFFECTS:]**
- Permanent +914 to all physical stats
- Unlocks genetic optimization
- Grants immunity to all poisons and diseases
- Enables perfect muscle memory acquisition
- No side effects or addiction potential
Alex stared at the now-glowing vial. A single dose would make him physically superior to most Elite-level warriors. The stat boost alone would let him punch through stone walls and move faster than the human eye could track.
He uncorked the vial and downed it in one gulp.
The transformation was immediate and overwhelming. Every muscle in his body felt like it was being rewritten at the cellular level. His vision sharpened until he could see individual dust motes floating in the air twenty meters away. His hearing became so acute he could distinguish seven different conversations happening in nearby buildings.
**[STATUS UPDATE]**
**Host:** Alex Chen
**Level:** 10
**Strength:** 926 (12+914)
**Agility:** 928 (14+914)
**Intelligence:** 16
**Wisdom:** 11
**Luck:** ???
The power coursing through his enhanced body was intoxicating. Alex clenched his fist and watched his knuckles turn white under pressure that could crush steel. Every movement felt effortless, like he was floating instead of walking.
*Focus,* he reminded himself. Power without control was just another way to get killed.
Alex continued deeper into Gray Serpent territory, his enhanced senses mapping the criminal network with military precision. Drug labs in basement tenements. Weapon caches hidden in false walls. Guard posts disguised as legitimate businesses.
The original Alex had been too weak and naive to understand what he was seeing. The transmigrator Alex had spent years navigating similar operations in Chicago.
He found his next target three blocks deeper: a Gray Serpent lieutenant named "Razor" Quinn, a Level 19 Aura user who controlled six blocks of prime dealing territory. Quinn was exactly the kind of mid-level predator Alex had dealt with in his previous life—too successful to be careful, too paranoid to be stupid.
Quinn's headquarters was a reinforced tavern called The Bleeding Crown. Two guards at the front door, probably more inside. In the old world, Alex would have spent weeks gathering intelligence before making a move.
But in the old world, Alex couldn't punch through walls.
He circled to the tavern's rear entrance, where a single guard leaned against the wall smoking something that made his eyes glow faintly red. The man looked bored, confident in the reputation that kept rivals away from his boss's territory.
Alex stepped out of the shadows behind him.
"Evening."
The guard spun, hand flying to his weapon, but Alex's enhanced speed made the movement look like slow motion. The Shadowsteel dagger opened the man's throat before he could draw breath to shout a warning.
**[LEVEL 13 HUMAN SLAIN]**
**[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 260]**
**[LEVEL UP! 10 → 11]**
**[CONGRATULATIONS! ELITE RANK ACHIEVED]**
**[NEW ABILITIES UNLOCKED:]**
- Mana Sight: See magical auras and energy flows
- Improved Regeneration: Heal minor wounds in minutes
- Stat Growth Bonus: +2 to all stats per level instead of +1
Alex felt the familiar rush of increased power, but more importantly, his Mana Sight activated automatically. The world suddenly blazed with invisible colors as magical energies became visible to his enhanced perception.
The tavern itself was warded—crude defensive enchantments that would alert anyone inside to magical attacks. But Alex's blade was physical, and his enhanced strength was biochemical rather than magical. The wards wouldn't even notice him.
He slipped through the unlocked rear door into a storage room filled with barrels of cheap ale. Voices drifted through the thin walls: Quinn's nasal whine arguing with someone about territory boundaries, punctuated by the occasional laugh from his bodyguards.
Alex counted four distinct voices, plus Quinn. Five targets in total.
Through his Mana Sight, he could see their magical signatures: Quinn blazed with the golden aura of an experienced Aura user, while his men showed the dim flickers of low-level fighters. None of them were looking in his direction.
Time for a grand entrance.
Alex picked up an empty barrel—solid oak, probably weighing two hundred pounds normally. With his enhanced strength, it felt like a baseball. He hefted it experimentally, then hurled it through the wall separating the storage room from the main tavern.
The barrel exploded through the wooden barrier with the force of a cannonball, showering the room in splinters and stone dust. Quinn's bodyguards scrambled for weapons while their boss rolled behind the bar, cursing creatively.
Alex stepped through the hole he'd created, Shadowsteel dagger gleaming in the tavern's dim light.
"Razor Quinn," he said conversationally. "We need to talk."
The nearest bodyguard—a scarred brute with arms like tree trunks—charged him with a war cry. The man's club whistled through the air in a devastating overhead swing that would have caved in a normal person's skull.
Alex caught the weapon one-handed, his enhanced strength stopping the attack cold. The bodyguard's eyes went wide with shock.
"My turn."
Alex's return swing lifted the man off his feet and sent him crashing through a table. The club, stressed beyond its breaking point by forces it was never designed to handle, exploded into splinters.
**[LEVEL 16 HUMAN SLAIN]**
**[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 320]**
The remaining bodyguards attacked simultaneously—a woman with twin daggers and a thin man wielding a spear. Alex moved between their strikes like water flowing around stones, his enhanced agility making their coordinated assault look clumsy and predictable.
The dagger-wielder thrust at his ribs. Alex leaned aside and grabbed her wrist, applying just enough pressure to shatter every bone in her forearm. She screamed and dropped her weapons.
The spearman tried to skewer him from behind. Alex spun and caught the spear shaft, then yanked the weapon forward, dragging its wielder into range of his blade. The Shadowsteel dagger punched through the man's chest armor like it was made of paper.
**[LEVEL 14 HUMAN SLAIN]**
**[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 280]**
**[LEVEL 15 HUMAN SLAIN]**
**[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 300]**
**[LEVEL UP! 11 → 12]**
Quinn rose from behind the bar, golden aura flaring around his body like liquid fire. His hands glowed with condensed Aura energy—enough to punch holes in stone walls.
"I don't know who you think you are, kid," Quinn snarled, "but you just made the biggest mistake of your short fucking life."
Alex tilted his head, studying the man's magical signature. Impressive by local standards, but nothing compared to what the system had given him.
"My name is Alex Chen," he said calmly. "And you're about to become my first business acquisition."
Quinn's Aura-enhanced fist rocketed toward Alex's face with enough force to decapitate a normal person. Alex caught it bare-handed, his enhanced strength easily overpowering the magical enhancement.
The crime lord's eyes went wide as his most powerful attack was casually negated.
"Impossible," Quinn whispered. "You're just a Level 8 nobody. The watchers confirmed it."
Alex smiled—the cold, predatory expression that had made grown men nervous in his previous life.
"I got an upgrade."
He squeezed. Quinn's enhanced bones cracked like twigs, and the man's scream echoed through the tavern. Alex released the ruined hand and watched the crime lord collapse to his knees, cradling his mangled fingers.
"Here's how this works," Alex said, stepping closer. "Your territory is mine now. Your dealers answer to me. Your protection rackets pay me. Your drug labs produce for me. In exchange, I let you live."
"You're insane," Quinn gasped through tears of pain. "The Gray Serpents have connections. People who'll hunt you down and—"
Alex's dagger stopped an inch from Quinn's throat. The man's words died in his throat as he felt the weapon's supernatural sharpness pressing against his skin.
"Let me be clear about something," Alex said quietly. "I'm not some desperate street rat looking to climb the ladder. I'm not some noble-hearted fool trying to clean up the neighborhood. I'm a professional who understands that fear is more valuable than love, and death is cheaper than loyalty."
He leaned closer, letting Quinn see the absolute lack of mercy in his eyes.
"Cross me, and I won't just kill you. I'll make you watch while I butcher everyone you've ever cared about. Then I'll hang your corpse from the highest tower in the upper city as a reminder of what happens to people who waste my time."
Quinn's face had gone pale. Whatever he saw in Alex's expression convinced him that this wasn't idle posturing.
"W-what do you want me to do?"
"Send word to your dealers. Territory boundaries are changing. Anyone who has a problem with the new management can discuss it with me personally." Alex straightened up, sliding the dagger back into its sheath. "Oh, and Quinn? The next time someone comes asking about Alex Chen, you tell them he's under new management. Very powerful, very dangerous new management."
Quinn nodded frantically, still cradling his destroyed hand.
Alex turned to leave, then paused. "One more thing. I'll be collecting my first payment tomorrow at sunset. Twenty percent of everything—drugs, protection, smuggling, the works. I suggest you have it ready."
He walked toward the hole he'd punched in the wall, stepping over the corpses of Quinn's bodyguards.
"Oh, and Quinn?" Alex called over his shoulder. "Welcome to the new food chain. Try not to get eaten."
Alex disappeared into the shadows of the Lower District, leaving behind a crime lord who suddenly understood that the rules of his world had changed forever.
In his pocket, the Celestial Fortune Coin grew warm against his leg, and Alex smiled. Luck manipulation was a wonderful thing when you were building an empire.
He had six hours until dawn. Time to pay visits to the Iron Rats and Marcus's Coin Collectors.
After all, he needed to make sure everyone understood the new hierarchy.
**[STATUS UPDATE]**
**Host:** Alex Chen
**Level:** 12 (Elite Rank)
**Experience:** 1,120/1,300
**Territory Controlled:** 6 blocks (Gray Serpent holdings)
**Criminal Network:** 1 lieutenant, 12 dealers, 8 enforcers (inherited)
**Liquid Assets:** 3 silver, 47 copper, 1 Celestial Fortune Coin