The light dipped just enough.
One of the men at the entrance shifted, attention pulling toward the far end of the dock where a cart had stalled. The other followed a second later, not quite in sync but close enough.
Lucien moved.
No hesitation. No rush. He crossed the distance between the crates and the building like he belonged there, hand brushing the metal door just long enough to feel the temperature before slipping inside.
The air changed immediately. Cooler. Still.
Rows of stacked containers lined the interior, spaced too evenly to be careless. No markings on any of them. No obvious inventory. Just structure. Lucien stepped further in, boots quiet against the floor, gaze moving without settling.
Something about it felt arranged. Not wrong. Just waiting.
He moved along the first row without touching anything, reading the space the way Cael had taught him to read a room before committing to it. Exits first. Two that he could see, the door he had come through and a second at the far end, slightly ajar. Sight lines next. The container rows created corridors, regular and predictable, which meant anyone inside would move in predictable directions. Useful to know in both directions.
No sound from deeper in. No movement.
He kept going.
The space opened without warning. No containers. No cover. Just a cleared section of the warehouse, a single overhead light cutting down through the dim.
A desk sat beneath it.
The man behind it was already there. Seated, still, no wasted movement. He didn't look surprised.
Lucien stopped at the edge of the light.
The man lifted his head slightly, eyes settling on him with the patience of someone who had been waiting for that exact moment and had decided some time ago to stop being impatient about it.
"You took longer than the last one," he said.
Lucien looked at him properly. Older than the name on the paper had suggested. Not old, but carrying it in the way people did when the years had been the compressing kind. The desk had nothing on it except a lamp and a folded document he made no move to conceal.
"The last one didn't make it back," Lucien said. "I heard."
"You heard correctly." The man's tone didn't shift. No emphasis, no weight behind it. Just fact. "Does that change anything for you?"
"Depends on why."
A brief pause. The man leaned back slightly, studying him in a way that felt closer to assessment than interest.
"Sit," he said. "Or don't."
Lucien didn't move. The man didn't press.
Silence settled between them, clean and unforced. Lucien's gaze shifted once toward the second door at the far end of the room, still slightly ajar, then back.
"You put your own name on that board," he said.
"I did."
The man rose. No sudden movement, no shift in pace. Just a clean transition from seated to standing, like the conversation had reached its natural limit. He adjusted his cuff once, eyes never leaving Lucien.
"You're younger than most," Daniel said. "They usually come with more noise."
Lucien didn't respond.
Daniel stepped out from behind the desk, stopping just inside the edge of the light. "That doesn't change the outcome," he added.
A faint click broke the stillness.
Lucien's gaze dropped. Daniel's hand hadn't moved much, but something had shifted at his wrist. Metal. Compact. A small mechanism locking into place along his forearm, barely larger than a bracer.
Germa.
Lucien exhaled quietly. So that was how this worked.
Daniel didn't wait. Another click. Then a third. The sound was soft and precise, repeated enough times that it stopped sounding like preparation and started sounding like routine.
"You walked in clean," Daniel said. "Most don't."
Lucien's stance shifted, subtle, weight settling without committing. Something else shifted too, quieter, further inside. He let it open, carefully, the way Cael had drilled into him over a hundred blindfolded mornings on a hill in Lvneel. Not a switch. More like adjusting the aperture on something that was already there.
The room didn't change. But Daniel did.
Not visually. It was more like pressure. The shape of what the man intended sitting just ahead of what his body had done yet, faint and imprecise, like hearing a word a half-second before it was spoken. Lucien had learned not to trust it completely. At this stage it gave him edges, not certainties.
It was enough.
The first shot came.
He was already moving. Not fast. Just early.
The round struck metal behind him and ricocheted into the dark between the containers. Daniel tracked him immediately, arm adjusting with mechanical precision, the next shot lined before Lucien's foot had fully settled. No wasted motion. No hesitation. Not a man improvising. A system executing.
The problem was the system had its own rhythm, and rhythm, Lucien had found, was something Observation Haki read well. Each adjustment telegraphed a fraction before it happened, the intent arriving just ahead of the action. Not enough to be comfortable. Enough to keep him a step removed from where the shots landed.
He kept low and used the container corridors, cutting angles that forced Daniel to adjust rather than simply track, buying himself seconds in small increments.
A shot clipped the container to his left. Close enough to feel the air move.
He had caught the intent on that one late. Filed it away.
Daniel was precise in a way that wasn't entirely natural. Too consistent, too clean. The mechanism at his wrist wasn't decorating him. It was doing part of the work, and the mechanical nature of it made the Haki's read slightly harder, the intent and the execution separated by something that wasn't quite human reflex. Lucien adjusted, focusing less on the arm and more on Daniel's weight, his shoulders, the small shifts in balance that preceded each change of angle.
Better.
Lucien drew his sword.
He moved to the edge of the light and stopped, letting Daniel see him clearly, watching where the arm tracked. There. A half-beat of mechanical adjustment between targets. Small. Consistent. And beneath it, carried on something he couldn't name cleanly yet, the shape of what was coming a moment before it arrived.
Daniel fired twice in quick succession.
The first, Lucien felt before he fully saw it. He brought the flat of his blade up and took the impact on the steel, the force ringing hard up his arm, and stepped inside the second. The round passed his shoulder close enough to graze fabric.
He closed the distance fast.
Daniel didn't panic. He pivoted, brought the mechanism to bear at point blank range with the calm of someone who had done this before, and fired.
The intent arrived clean and sharp, closer than comfortable. Lucien dropped beneath it, one hand on the floor, sword coming up in a single arc. The blade caught the mechanism at the wrist. Metal split. The device sparked once and went dead.
They separated. Reset.
Daniel looked at the dead mechanism on his wrist the way a man looked at a tool he had just been informed was no longer available. No distress. No hesitation. Just a brief, clinical acknowledgment before his left hand came up, a knife appearing without ceremony.
Lucien straightened, blade between them, and let the Haki settle back slightly. Holding it fully open for too long cost him focus he needed elsewhere. He had learned that in sparring. Here it was simply more consequential.
He looked at Daniel properly for the first time since the shooting started.
Not a man improvising.
Still a system executing.
Just a different part of it.
************************************
Remember 1 Chapter For Every 50 Power Stones.