The Industrial Zone didn't just smell like rain. It smelled like spent shell casings and wet, freezing iron.
Above, the sky was a bruised-purple shroud, weeping oily streaks that turned the pavement into a slick, black trap. Liam moved through the skeletal remains of the loading docks, his shadow jumping under the dying orange hum of flickering streetlamps.
His chest was a furnace. Each breath felt like a jagged shard of glass dragging across raw lung tissue. Bradley's stolen power was coiling in his marrow—a heavy, unwelcome weight that his body fought to reject. It was a parasite of silver energy, screaming for release.
Heart's hammering too fast. Ribs feel like thin glass under a sledgehammer. Hold it together. Just five more minutes.
He wasn't the only dog hunting in the ruins of Warehouse 14.
Up ahead, near the heavy rolling doors, a pack of "Scrappers" had huddled. These weren't licensed Hunters; they were bottom-feeders armed with junk salvaged from the gutters. One man was frantically sharpening a notched axe with a handheld stone, the shick-shick-shick rhythm echoing through the hollow street. Another coughed into a rag—a wet, rattling sound. The final stage of mana-poisoning.
"Look at the air," a woman whispered, her finger trembling as she pointed at the warehouse entrance.
Liam watched from behind a pile of rotted wooden pallets. The air near the door was shimmering with a sickly copper tint. A rogue rift. It wasn't just a tear in reality; it was a hungry mouth waiting for someone to trip its teeth.
The Scrappers didn't see Liam. They saw only the hope of a payday that could buy them a month of survival. They forced the door, the rusted tracks letting out a shriek that cut through the rain.
They vanished inside.
Liam waited. He didn't feel pity, only a cold, functional patience. He needed them to walk into the traps first. He leaned against the damp bricks, his knuckles white as he gripped the hilt of his broken skinning knife.
Deep in the gut... I can taste the ozone on the back of my tongue. It's right there.
Ten minutes passed. Then the screaming started.
It wasn't loud or heroic. It was a series of wet, frantic gurgles, followed by a sound like dry timber snapping—the sound of a human spine being folded like a lawn chair.
Liam stepped out of the shadows. He didn't rush. He moved with a predatory deliberate-ness, stepping over the threshold into a tomb of junk. Massive wooden crates were draped in grey dust and thick, black strands of sticky webbing. The only light came from a single mana-lantern rolling on the concrete, casting long, grasping shadows against the rusted walls.
"Help..."
A man was dragging himself across the floor—or the top half of a man. His legs were gone, his lower torso a shredded mess of fabric and white bone. He reached a blood-slicked hand toward Liam's boot.
Liam walked past him. He couldn't afford to waste empathy on a corpse that was still breathing.
In the center of the warehouse, sitting under a leak in the roof, was a silver-bound trunk. It was beautiful, polished mahogany out of place in this rot. It pulsed with a soft, amber light, a siren's call to anyone desperate enough to believe in luck.
Around it, the other Scrappers were... gone. Just piles of discarded clothes and fresh, steaming puddles of red.
C-Rank? If I play by the rules, I'm dead. So I don't play.
"I know what you are," Liam whispered.
He lunged. Instead of the bait, he targeted a rusted steel pillar to his left, his shadow stretching out like a tether. He Shadow Stepped, his body folding through space in a violet blur before reappearing on a narrow metal catwalk twenty feet up.
Below, the mahogany trunk unzipped.
The wood split into hundreds of jagged, yellow teeth. A purple tongue—fifteen feet of dripping, vitriolic slime—lashed out at his previous position, pulverizing the concrete into a cloud of grey dust. The Mimic boiled, its shape dissolving into a nightmare of spindly, spider-like legs and a massive eye right in its throat. It let out a screech like a violin string snapping, a sound that made Liam's ears bleed.
The monster leaped with liquid speed. Liam was pinned against the metal. He gritted his teeth, forcing the Iron Skin into his pores until his skin felt like cold lead.
The Mimic's bone-claw slammed into Liam's forearm. CLANG.
The impact threw him backward. His arm held, but the skin was scorched black. He tasted copper—he'd bitten his tongue halfway through.
"My turn," Liam hissed, a dark, manic grin splitting his bloody face.
He dropped like a stone, coiling every muscle, channeling Bradley's arrogant power into a Heavy Strike. He hit the Mimic's eye.
The impact was visceral—like punching a pressurized bag of warm jelly. The eye ruptured in a spray of black fluid that burned like lye. The creature let out a whistle of pure agony that shook the building.
But it wasn't over. Its tongue whipped around Liam's waist, coiling tight. Corrosive fluid hissed against his flesh, eating through his tattered hoodie. Liam roared, clawing at the rubbery meat. He didn't use a knife; he used his teeth, tearing a chunk of fetid tissue from the monster's tongue.
Wait. Just one second. Feel the pulse.
For a heartbeat, the world went dead silent. Liam's hand drove past the creature's open throat, plunging deep into the monster's frigid, vitriol-laced gut. The acid bit deep, but he didn't flinch.
As his fingers closed around the Heart, a terrifying resonance hit him. The Mimic's dying heartbeat synchronized with his own. A heavy, rhythmic thrum. For a second, he wasn't looking at a monster; he was inside it, feeling its ancient, bottomless hunger and the freezing void where its soul should be. It was a psychic scream that nearly cracked his mind.
Then, he felt something else. A flicker of Bradley's arrogance in his own blood, demanding dominance over this beast.
Liam gritted his teeth and ripped it out.
The Mimic went stiff. Every leg locked. It collapsed into a pile of grey sludge. The stench rose, curling into the cold air.
Liam hit the floor hard, gasping. His clothes were tattered rags, his chest a roadmap of chemical burns. His ribs shifted with a sickening click. In his hand, he held an obsidian organ. It was shifting shapes—from a heart to a stone, from a stone to a key. It was warm, vibrating with a frequency that seemed to lull his own mana into silence.
Hide me. Make me disappear.
A wave of cold washed over him. The violet runes cooled, fading into faint, silvery scars. The "noise" in his soul went silent. Bradley's screaming power settled into a dull, manageable hum.
He looked at his hands. The glow was gone. He looked like a Zero again. A nobody.
A ghost in the machine.
Sirens wailed in the distance. The Association peacekeepers. Liam didn't panic. He picked up a discarded Scrapper's jacket—a grease-stained leather thing that smelled of old tobacco and failure—and threw it over his shoulders. He walked toward the back exit, his footsteps silent.
He passed the dying man from before. The Scrapper was still staring at the ceiling, his breath coming in short, final gasps. Liam stopped. He reached down and took a small, heavy pouch of credits from the man's belt.
"Tax," Liam muttered.
He stepped out into the rain. The hunt was over, but the world wouldn't see him coming. He was the shadow that was going to haunt the guilds.