The silence inside the Administrative Core was broken only by ragged, heavy breathing.
Beyond the barrier of glowing red bureaucratic tape generated by the [RESTRAINING ORDER] skill, the four women were desperately struggling to scrape together whatever dignity they had left.
The [MALICIOUS EDGELORD RIZZ] had a lethal decay time, but its side effects on the psychological architecture of its targets were nothing short of devastating.
Jeanette was huddled against a bubbling cauldron, her massive bat wings wrapped tightly around her trembling body. She had buried her flushed face in her hands, mumbling a continuous, frantic litany of, "I'm not gay, I'm not gay, why are my knees weak, I'm a dude, I'm not gay."
Cassandra Lex was frantically adjusting her pinstriped skirt and pushing up her fogged-up glasses. Her fingers flew across her glowing tablet as she desperately tried to delete the fourteen drafts of eternal, soul-binding prenuptial agreements she had just written at supersonic speed.
Vera had shoved her bucket helmet back onto her head to hide the thick steam still pouring from her reptilian nostrils, while Pyroas stared at the obsidian floor, her usual aura of arrogant flames reduced to a blush of embarrassment so intense it made her single visible eye water.
Mordecai, standing dead center in the room, adjusted the collar of his dark trench coat.
He felt dirty. Not physically, but spiritually. He had been forced to use the System's most vile, cringe-inducing weapon to neutralize a malware, and the price he paid was an overwhelming sense of humiliation that would require years of therapy to process.
"Ugo," Mordecai commanded via telepathy. His voice was flat, professional, and completely drained of energy. "Open an extraction portal. Coordinates: Fort Blackstone, inner courtyard."
"Right away, My Leader!" the Skeletal Archivist's scratchy voice echoed back. "I see that Dr.Vespera's hostility parameters have dropped to zero. A hostile takeover executed with masterful efficiency!"
"Do not ask questions you do not want the answers to, Ugo," Mordecai sighed heavily.
An oval rift of dark, sizzling energy tore open a few feet from the red tape barrier. With a snap of his fingers, Mordecai dispelled the magical restriction.
"Listen to me carefully," the CEO ordered, looking at his employees. "What just happened in this room will be classified as a Level 5 Biohazard caused by a System anomaly. You were exposed to toxic narrative radiation. No one will speak of this. No one will mention it in the quarterly reports. This is an executive order. Cassandra, have everyone sign a retroactive NDA immediately upon return."
"Y-yes, My Lord," Cassandra stammered, not daring to meet his glowing violet eye for fear of a relapse. "Please... give more orders..." she said, while licking her lower lip.
"Return to Fort Blackstone. You are all on paid leave for the next twelve hours to process the shock," Mordecai continued.
Jeanette looked up, her golden eyes still glossy. "Bro... what about you? Aren't you coming back to base? We need to... I mean, we need to talk. About everything. About us. About... about that truck thing." Her voice cracked. It wasn't the voice of a demonic succubus or an anime waifu. It was the voice of his best friend, trapped in a nightmare of flesh and code.
Mordecai looked away. An invisible, sharp, freezing pain pierced his chest.
"I have... paperwork to file. A final audit to submit to the Adventurer's Guild to formalize the closure of this Meander," Mordecai lied, the bureaucratic excuse slipping from his tongue with a disturbing ease. "Go. I will join you later."
Pyroas tried to take a step forward. "My Lord, it is not safe for you to travel alone. Allow me to escort—"
"I said go," Mordecai's voice dropped an octave—not to activate his Rizz, but projecting pure, freezing authority.
The women obeyed. One by one, they stepped through the portal.
Vera went first, physically dragging a reluctant Pyroas by the shoulder. Then Cassandra, who turned around one last time to offer a perfect, albeit shaky, bow. Finally, Jeanette. She hesitated on the threshold, looking at him with an expression that mixed the sheer terror of this new world with the desperate gratitude of having found a familiar face. She opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, gave a weak nod, and vanished into the dark energy.
The portal closed with a soft pop.
The Administrative Core plunged into absolute silence.
Mordecai stood perfectly still for a long, agonizing minute. The crushing weight of the Demon Lord Aura, the incalculable stats, the burden of being the "Boss"... suddenly, it all felt unbearably heavy.
"System," he whispered. "Activate [Totally Hide Status]."
The freezing, oppressive air surrounding him evaporated. The dark coat shrank. The sharp, intimidating shoulders softened. The terrifying height diminished. His violet eye stopped glowing, returning to a normal, exhausted ice blue. The ugly electrician's cap slid down his forehead, as familiar and comforting as an old friend.
Aldmax/Mordecai was gone. There was only Kaitoyama. Or rather, just Kaito.
He shoved his calloused hands deep into the pockets of his work overalls and turned toward the dungeon exit. He didn't have any paperwork at the Guild, and there was no audit to do. He just wanted to walk. He wanted to escape those stares, his own reflection, and the sheer absurdity he had plummeted into.
The journey on foot to exit the Meander of the Damned and cross the Wailing Plains back to Fort Blackstone would take hours. Perfect. It was exactly what he needed.
As he walked through the now-empty, glitched corridors of the dungeon, his thoughts began to spiral.
He raised a hand, staring at his gloved palm.
Level 345. Incalculable stats. Spells capable of removing entire cities from the map.
"What's the point of all these stats," Kaito muttered to the empty air, his voice rough, "if in the end, I can't overcome any of this emotionally?"
He had been reincarnated into the most powerful, feared entity in the region—no, the whole world. He could cheat the System, rewrite the rules, and crush Heroes under the weight of civil law. But the encounter with his old friend made him remember who he truly was.
He stepped out into the open air. The sky above was an unreal, painted blue, crossed by impossibly perfect clouds. Too beautiful to be real.
He began walking down the dirt road that cut across the plains. The world around him buzzed with the usual, annoying RPG activity.
After a few miles, he passed a group of adventurers. A white-haired tsundere girl with twin-tails was punching a clearly dense, oblivious protagonist in the head, screaming, "B-Baka! It's not like I healed you because I like you!" while the rest of the party laughed in the background.
On a normal day, Kaito would have stopped. He would have pulled out his clipboard, cited them for workplace mobbing, and fined the entire party for unprovoked assault and verbal harassment. He would have shattered their trope with a sarcastic monologue.
Today, he didn't stop and didn't even look at them. He just kept walking, a gray shadow in a heavily saturated world, his hands buried in his pockets.
Further down the road, he saw a Knight in shining armor delivering a motivational speech to some peasants, talking about how the "Power of Friendship" would banish the darkness.
Kaito walked past him without a sound, his steel-toed boots kicking up small clouds of dust. He didn't have the energy to be cynical.
Cynicism required effort. It required armor. And his armor had begun to crack the moment Vespera—now Jeanette uttered the words: "We used to fix fuses."
Jean.
His best friend. The only bastard who understood him in the hellhole that was his old life in Tokyo. The only guy he could eat chemical-tasting ramen with at three in the morning, complaining about unpaid overtime.
Jeanette's words from the laboratory kept echoing in his skull like a death knell.
"I saw my best friend turn into a martyr and a murderer on live broadcast... My heart gave out... The last thing I saw was the only guy who ever gave a damn about me, throwing his life away."
Kaito clenched his fists inside his pockets until his knuckles turned white.
He thought he had done the right thing, or at least, the most vindictive, cathartic thing possible. He had grabbed Lucy. He had grabbed Nick. He had dragged them under the wheels of that truck with him to ensure they couldn't enjoy the future they had built on his ruins. He had embraced the darkness to drag them down to hell with him.
But in his rage, in his blinding selfishness, he hadn't considered the collateral damage.
He hadn't considered Jean.
Jean was there. He had watched him commit a double murder-suicide. The shock, the sheer horror of seeing his best friend reduced to a bloody smear on the asphalt, had stopped his heart.
"I killed him," Kaito whispered to the wind. "I killed the only person I had left."
And now, as cosmic punishment, the System had taken Jean's soul and crammed it into the body of a hyper-sexualized demon, biologically forcing him to fall in love with the murderer who traumatized him.
Kaito looked up at the blue sky, a wave of nausea rising in his throat. "You are one sadistic son of a bitch," he said to the System. No notification replied—just the indifferent silence of the digital world.
The walk took a long time, not because of the distance, but because of his slow pace. He was savoring every single moment and thinking about everything, occasionally kicking the grass and stopping to stare into the distance.
Despite the long walk, Kaito didn't feel the physical fatigue. The further he went, the more the memories of his old life assaulted him. Smells, sounds, fragments of conversations. The rain on the Tokyo asphalt. The crackle of electricity when he spliced cables. The smell of cheap coffee.
And then, memories of her.
He didn't want to think about it, but the dam had burst.
He arrived within sight of Fort Blackstone just as the sun was setting. The sky had turned a sickly, bruised purple. The skeletal towers of the stronghold stood against the low clouds, as menacing and depressing as a Monday morning commute.
Kaito sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Alright. Put the mask on. Back to work."
"System," he thought. "Deactivate [Totally Hide Status]."
The cold shadow enveloped him once more. The coat lengthened. His stature grew. His eye flared with a cold, violet ruthlessness. Mordecai, the (fake) Necromancer CEO, was back online.
He passed through the heavy wrought-iron gates, expecting a salute from Ignis the Great Wizard Lamp or the dead silence of the courtyards.
Instead, he was greeted by an explosion of poorly cut confetti.
POP!
Mordecai froze, a piece of colored paper landing squarely on his nose.
The main courtyard of Fort Blackstone had been... decorated. Or at least, someone had tried with the limited resources of an undead faction.
There was a banner strung between two pillars of skulls, written in incredibly neat, formal calligraphy: [CONGRATULATIONS ON THE SUCCESSFUL ACQUISITION OF NEW ASSETS AND EXCEEDING QUARTERLY SURVIVAL GOALS].
Standing beneath the banner was Niel. The blonde Archer Elf, now the Junior Public Relations Intern, was holding an incredibly lopsided cake. The cake looked like it was made of magical mud and berries foraged from the nearby woods, but it had a single, flickering candle burning on top.
Behind her, a dozen low-level skeletons were wearing ridiculous paper party hats and bibs labeled 'Intern (Probationary Period) (clearly folded from old contract drafts or random souls summoned by Ugo from the [Sword of Eternal Damnation]). Pyroas, Vera, and Cassandra stood off to the side. They had the look of employees forced to attend unpaid, mandatory team-building, but there was a veil of genuine relief in their eyes at seeing him return in one piece.
Jeanette was leaning against a wall, arms crossed. She was still wearing her stained lab coat. When she saw him, her gaze softened, a tired but genuine smile touching her lips. She gave him a tiny, subtle nod—a greeting from a bro.
"S-Surprise, Boss!" Niel stammered, her voice filled with excitement. "I know... I mean, I know you hate parties and frivolities. But we thought, since you conquered an entire dungeon and brought back a new Chief Scientific Officer... the company should celebrate this corporate milestone! It's... It's for troop morale!"
Mordecai looked at Niel. He looked at the mud cake. He looked at the skeletons in their cone hats. He looked at that ridiculously bureaucratic banner.
His CEO instinct told him to fire them all for wasting time and resources, smash the cake, and order everyone to do 20 hours of mandatory overtime in the mines.
But beneath the mask, Kaito looked at this dysfunctional scene. They were monsters, broken programs, condemned souls, employees trapped in a nightmare. And yet, in that moment, they were the only real family he had ever had. None of them wanted to betray him. None of them wanted to stab him in the back for a better opportunity.
Mordecai's lips trembled. The terrifying aura of the Dark Lord flickered, almost imperceptibly.
The muscles in his face, accustomed only to cruel sneers or expressions of pure disdain, pulled upward.
Mordecai smiled. A real, warm, human smile. It reached his eyes, illuminating the unnatural violet of his iris with a spark of genuine emotion.
Niel's jaw dropped. Pyroas gasped, bringing a hand to her chest. Even Cassandra Lex dropped her stylus pen in shock. They had never seen the Boss smile like that. It wasn't a smile that promised death or legal loopholes. It was just... nice.
The smile lasted exactly 1.5 seconds.
Then, Mordecai's mask snapped back shut like a steel trap. The temperature in the courtyard plummeted by ten degrees. The aura became oppressive again.
"This is a blatant violation of food safety protocols and an outrage to workplace efficiency," Mordecai thundered, his voice cold as death once more. He pointed at Niel's cake. "That mud construct has not passed quality control."
Niel deflated, terrified. "I-I apologize, Boss, I—"
"However," Mordecai interrupted, adjusting his yellow hard hat. "I appreciate the proactive initiative in attempting to boost corporate morale. For this one time, I will not issue formal warnings. The cake will be preserved as physical evidence in our archives. Now..."
Mordecai's eyes narrowed, glaring down at the entire crowd of employees.
"BREAK'S OVER! GET BACK TO WORK! RAVENLOFT DOES NOT GENERATE REVENUE ON CONFETTI!"
The crowd scattered in absolute panic, running in every direction to flee the CEO's wrath. Niel sprinted away, hiding the cake, while the skeletons threw their hats at each other in a frenzy.
Mordecai watched them run, his hands clasped behind his back. Beneath his scowling expression and rigid posture, a thought made its way into his tired mind.
'Maybe, it's not so bad. Maybe I can build something real here.'
Then, out of nowhere, Larry came out.
Clack Clack Clack
He happily walked towards Mordecai, holding a bag full of clean spoons.
Mordecai immediately moved his gaze towards him and smiled.
"Oh, hey there. Is everything alright?" He asked, his voice being normal and... fatherly?
Larry stopped and gave him a thumbs-up. 👍.
Without any other words, Larry put his bag down and picked one of the clean spoons from it. Then, he proudly handed it to Mordecai, like a child bringing a drawing to their parent.
Mordecai chuckled for the first time and then grabbed the clean spoon to give it a look.
'Scrik Scrik Scrik' Larry scratched his head, like he was asking, 'Did I do well? Are you proud of me, Master?'
Mordecai then looked at the skeleton janitor in front of him and spoke. "Good job, Larry. You're amazing, you know?" He said, before giving the spoon back to him.
Larry gently took the spoon back, cradling it against his dark chest as if it were a Mythic-tier artifact.
Inside the dark void of his face, two perfectly round, glowing white eyes suddenly shifted, curving upwards into two bright, happy crescents.
He began to vibrate. It wasn't a terrifying, dark-magic vibration; it was the pure, unadulterated trembling of a golden retriever being told it was a good boy.
Larry then put the clean spoon back into the bag and began cleaning the floor with his newly summoned mop. He had finally completed his mission: showing his master the results of his work, and it made him happy.
Scrik-scrik-scrik-scrik!
The phantom sounds of his mop sped up into a frantic, joyful rhythm. A literal aura of sparkling, sterile white soap bubbles began to form around his skeleton, completely neutralizing the grimdark, depressing atmosphere of the undead courtyard.
Mordecai couldn't help it. The last lingering remnants of the CEO's strict corporate policy melted away. He reached out with a gloved hand and gently patted the top of Larry's skeleton head.
"Keep up the good work," Mordecai added softly, giving the skeleton a few reassuring pats. "The company relies on you."
If Larry had a mouth, he would have been grinning from ear to ear. He aggressively holstered the perfectly clean spoon into his utility belt like a gunslinger, snapped a crisp, overly enthusiastic military salute, and then threw up a double thumbs-up.
👍👍
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: MINION MORALE MAXIMIZED. LARRY HAS ACQUIRED THE 'EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH' BUFF.]
With a newfound spring in his step, the skeleton janitor picked up his bag of cutlery and literally skipped away, clack-clack-clacking down the corridor to find more things to sanitize.
Mordecai watched him go, his smile lingering just a second longer before the cold winds of Fort Blackstone reminded him of where he was.