Jarl's workshop no longer smelled merely of ozone and grease; it carried the sharp, coiling stench of a violently cauterized wound.
The old man didn't look up as Liam kicked the reinforced steel door shut, staggering into the cramped space. Jarl remained hunched over his workbench, the mechanical eye whirring with an invasive zzzt-click as he filed down a shard of black polymer—an object curved with the unsettling anatomical precision of a human rib. A single flickering fluorescent tube overhead cast long, jerky shadows across the grease-slicked floor.
"You're late," Jarl grunted, the words nearly lost beneath the shriek of metal on metal. "And you smell like you've been swimming in a monster's gullet."
Liam didn't waste the breath to answer. He collapsed into the rusted surgical chair at the center of the room, the ancient leather screaming under his dead weight. With a hand that refused to stop trembling, he reached into his tattered jacket and produced the obsidian heart.
The organ still pulsed—heavy, sluggish, and cold. Its presence alone seemed to thicken the air, turning the room's atmosphere into something viscous and suffocating.
Jarl finally turned. His organic eye squinted while the mechanical one snapped into a high-magnification zoom, glowing with a predatory crimson hue. "A Greater Mimic. And it's still warm. You're either the luckiest bastard in this hellhole or the most cursed."
"Just do it," Liam rasped, his voice sounding like sand scraping over bone. "I'm not here for the commentary."
Jarl offered no further words. His heavy boots thudded against the floor in a funereal rhythm as he gripped the heart with silver-plated tongs. "This isn't just a skill core, boy. It's a biological bypass. We aren't just giving you a fake ID; we're grafting a lie directly onto your soul."
He leaned in close, the stench of cheap tobacco and machine grease stinging Liam's nostrils. "No anesthesia. The mana in this heart has to recognize your nervous system as its own home to take root. If you pass out, the graft fails. You'll die as nothing more than a pile of discarded meat on this slab."
Liam's fingers dug into the armrests, his nails clawing through the cracked leather. "Start."
Jarl moved with the brutal efficiency of a black-market butcher. He ripped away the remains of Liam's blood-soaked hoodie, exposing the angry violet ruins of the Skill Devourer carved into his chest. Bradley's residual silver energy still thrashed beneath the skin, giving the marks a sickly, translucent glow.
"This is going to feel like someone poured molten lead into your veins," Jarl muttered.
He bypassed the scalpel, reaching instead for a long, serrated needle connected to a network of glass tubes. He traced the violet runes with the tip, slicing just deep enough for blood to well. As the red spilled, it was instantly swallowed by the black, shimmering slurry Jarl had ground from the Mimic's heart.
"Inhale."
The needle pierced deep.
Liam's world shattered. It wasn't merely pain; it was a fundamental violation of his senses. It felt as if a sub-zero void was being forcibly stitched into his nervous system. The Mimic's black filth collided with Bradley's silver essence, and Liam's chest became a lightless arena.
Fire. Ice. Teeth. Something gnawed at the marrow of my bones, coiling and twisting as if the world itself had turned inside out.
"Don't fight it!" Jarl's voice echoed as if through deep water. "Let the beast eat that arrogance! Let the shadow bury the truth!"
Liam's back arched violently, his muscles locking so hard the steel frame of the chair groaned in protest. He felt the black fog of the Mimic coiling around Bradley's loud, buzzing ego, smothering the silver sparks until the noise in his head finally went silent.
For a heartbeat, Liam forgot his own name. He was the rain, he was the shadow, he was the silent trunk in the warehouse. His very existence as a 'human' was being diluted into something unrecognizable.
"Steady," Jarl hissed, his mechanical hand moving with surgical precision despite the sweat pouring down his face, sewing the blackened skin shut with threads of conductive silver.
Then, the pressure snapped.
Liam fell back into the chair, gasping for the stale workshop air. He looked down to find the ornate violet runes gone. In their place sat a single, thin scar stretching from his collarbone to his ribs—dull, smooth, and dead. It looked like a crack in an old mirror.
Jarl wiped a blood-stained rag across his brow and tossed it into the trash. "It's done. You're officially a glitch in the system."
Liam raised his arm, noting a faint blue flicker beneath the skin of his wrist as the embedded chip synchronized with his new frequency. Any scanner that swept over him now would see nothing but the mundane profile of an E-Rank Emitter. Common. Invisible.
"E-Rank..." Liam muttered, testing the weight of his own body. The explosive power of the Skill Devourer was still there, coiled and ready, but it was muffled beneath a layer of absolute stillness.
"It's the best armor you'll ever wear," Jarl said, tossing a set of black tactical gear and a heavy, cowled cloak onto the chair. "Nobody looks twice at the background noise."
Liam dressed in silence. In the black cargo pants, the face-concealing mask, and the heavy shroud of the cloak, he was indistinguishable from the thousand nameless mercenaries prowling the Slums.
"The info you wanted," Jarl added, sliding a cracked tablet across the workbench.
The screen displayed a high-resolution photo of a man in polished chrome armor. Captain Marcus Thorne. He was standing on a podium, chest puffed out, receiving a medal from the Association. Behind him, his squad members wore the triumphant smirks of heroes who had survived a tragedy.
The sight was as grotesque as it was absurd.
"The Gilded Lily, tonight. A private victory gala for the survivors," Jarl said quietly. "The place will be crawling with guild elites. Even for a ghost, this is a suicide run."
Liam deactivated the screen and tucked it into the inner fold of his cloak. He stepped toward the heavy steel door, his hand closing over the cold handle.
"Liam," Jarl called out, a rare note of hesitation in his voice. "That heart... it changes how you think. Don't let the mask grow into your face. Don't forget who you are."
Liam didn't turn. He merely tilted his head, his voice devoid of any human warmth.
"Liam died in that vault, Jarl."
He stepped out into the night. The rain was still falling, but it didn't feel cold anymore. It felt like a shroud.
In the neon-stained puddles of the Slums, his reflection was nothing but a void. He finally had a name for his first kill, and the hunger in that name burned colder than the rain, a silent predator stalking through the neon-stained streets, promising a reckoning the city would never see coming.