The rhythm of life aboard The Unburnt was a stark, purposeful cadence. Mornings were for reviewing the automated burn reports from The Forge—the tonnage of scrap metal melted, the obsolete machinery dismantled. The system's daily quota of $250,000 was met with industrial efficiency now, a background hum to her existence. Her personal wealth grew steadily, a war chest approaching ten million dollars.
Afternoons were for strategy. With Kraken gone, the power vacuum in the shadow world was creating chaos. Warlords, syndicates, and rogue intelligence agencies were scrambling for territory. Mo Chen watched it all through a web of data feeds and intercepted communications, her [Thermal Sense] now so refined she could almost feel the heat of ambition rising from the globe.
She was not a peacekeeper. She was a capitalist of chaos. Her new enterprise was "stability through deterrence," sold to the highest bidder.
Her first client was a beleaguered Southeast Asian nation whose shipping lanes were being terrorized by a new pirate fleet armed with Kraken's cast-off weapons. The government couldn't—or wouldn't—act. They contacted Phoenix Holdings through a convoluted series of cutouts.
The price was $50 million. The deliverable: the pirate fleet, eliminated.
Mo Chen didn't send soldiers. She sent a bill of lading. Using her personal funds, she purchased the pirates' own flagship from a corrupt official in a neighboring country. It was a physical asset. The moment the title was transferred to a Phoenix shell corporation, she activated the [Scorched Earth Protocol].
A million dollars vanished from her account. Seventy-two hours later, the pirate flagship suffered a "catastrophic engine failure" and sank in deep water, taking the pirate lord and his top lieutenants with it. The rest of the fleet, leaderless and terrified of the unseen hand that could sink their flagship from afar, disbanded.
The client paid in full. Mo Chen had turned a profit of $49 million, plus the system's conversion from the burn. It was clean, untraceable, and utterly ruthless.
The Sovereign's ledger was in the black.