Luke let out a sudden, echoing laugh that cut sharply through the damp, stagnant air of the janitor room. He shook his golden-blond head, his amusement quickly fading into a cold, nostalgic smirk.
"The arms trafficking guild… You really do your homework, 345. Yes, I am Don Anthony's apprentice, and that guild entirely shaped the man I am today. Back then, before all of this, I was just a naive, low-ranked adventurer playing teatime with my former guild. But seeing a second-floor stray like you drop down here demanding secrets of the high-tier syndicates makes me wonder... why do you care?" Luke murmured, his eyes locking onto mine with an intense, calculating focus.
A subtle tension filled the small room. My mastermind instincts flared into high alert. Luke was a highly intelligent operator; his loyalty to Don Anthony made him naturally suspicious of any outsider digging too deep into their logistics. Before completely cutting ties with his past, he had even briefly mentioned his former group… the Yellow Flower Guild. Hearing that name sent a quiet, hidden pang through my memory. That specific guild had truly felt like a home to us back then. But sentimentality is a fatal flaw for an S-rank infiltrator. I immediately buried the emotion beneath my mask. I needed to make a definitive, calculated statement right now to completely neutralize his suspicion and solidify my cover.
I tilted my head, letting a cocky, desperate grin slip onto my face to play perfectly into Keane's low-life pickpocketer identity.
"The reason is simple, 003, I'm slated to be processed and released back onto the streets in a few days. Let me tell you, surviving in the gutters all by myself as a petty thief is a grueling, pathetic existence. I'm entirely done chasing copper coins. I need to make quick, massive money, and the only way to do that is to climb into the big leagues. To do that, I need you… Don Anthony's loyal little dog, right? So stop playing games and tell me everything about the guild. I'm joining."
The insulting, raw ambition in my tone worked flawlessly. Luke's suspicion visibly melted away, replaced by the smug satisfaction of a seasoned criminal looking at a desperate new recruit. He reached into the inner lining of his orange jumpsuit and pulled out a tightly folded, weathered parchment, sliding it across a laundry crate toward me.
I unfolded it, my sharp eyes instantly memorizing the tactical typography. It was a highly detailed, classified mapping of the Town of Carcaka, located directly to the far west of the Caria kingdom. It was a secluded, industrial-style settlement with a minuscule population of barely 200 citizens… the perfect, unmonitored front for an underworld syndicate. Right in the center of the industrial sector, a prominent crimson circle had been drawn, marking the exact, fortified entry point leading to the subterranean base of the arms trafficking guild.
"There's your target, I genuinely hope for your sake that you aren't lying to me, 345. You might be getting let out in a few days, but Don Anthony is notoriously cautious about preserving his true identity. If it turns out you're an undercover cop, a bounty hunter, or whatever... you won't live long enough to spend a single coin. If you're serious about the job when you arrive, don't look for the Don. Instead, seek out my twin brother, Luck Granhart. He is the other apprentice running the operation on the surface." Luke said, his voice dropping into a dark, warning tone as his singular guard shifted his weight behind him.
Luck Granhart. A twin brother.
My mind instantly logged the massive piece of intelligence. The puzzle pieces of the Granhart syndicate were finally falling into place. I had the location of the base, the name of the surface commander, and a map of the town. But my primary objective for this interrogation wasn't complete yet… I still needed a physical sample of Luke's DNA to break through their biometric security. With my hidden spoon ready in my pocket and the 10-stat weakness weighing heavily on both of us, I had to manufacture a swift, subtle way to draw his blood before the three hours ran out.
I carefully slid the folded map of Carcaka into the deep, hidden lining of my jumpsuit, its coordinates permanently burned into my memory. My physical operational objectives on the surface were perfectly mapped, but my immediate biometric requirement remained unfulfilled: I still needed Luke's blood.
As I silently calculated how to extract a biological sample without causing a high-alert security breach, Luke leaned back against a stack of storage crates and gestured toward an empty plastic container.
"Wait, 345. There's still plenty of time left on the watch, Don't worry about your quota. My men on the second tier will dump the remaining kilograms of ore into your treadmill. Just sit back."
I didn't bother arguing. Maintaining my aloof, edgy persona, I calmly took a seat across from him on an upturned laundry bucket.
Luke watched me closely, his sharp eyes trying to peer past my mask.
"So, 345... what's your real name? Tell me your life story. I'm going to be stuck inside this hellhole for a few decades before I can even think about an escape route. I might as well know who I'm dealing with."
My mind rapidly spun into hyper-drive, accessing the classified files I had memorized from the Registry of the Condemned back at the Lulu City police station. I recalled every single dark, sickening metric attached to the host body I was currently inhabiting: Keane Leon. To completely sell the identity of a ruthless, irredeemable street thug, I cold-bloodedly recited Keane's worst criminal milestone.
"The name is Keane, and my life isn't a fairy tale. A while back, I broke into a high-end estate, stole a living, breathing infant right out of its crib, and sold it straight into underworld slavery for a quick payout."
A shadow crossed Luke's face, his lips tightening into a grim, disgusted line.
"You're a fascinatingly twisted pickpocketer, Keane. No wonder you carry yourself with such cruelty."
The cover story was ironclad; he completely believed I was a degenerate parasite. Seizing on the remaining time and the fact that his guard was letting his defense down, I decided to pivot the interrogation to extract his psychological backstory. I needed to understand exactly how the noble adventurer from Town Allure had degenerated into a high-tier arms trafficker.
"So, 003, why did you join the arms trafficking guild in the first place? What drives a former adventurer into the dark?"
Luke went quiet for a moment. He glanced up at the singular, heavily armored faction guard standing by the door. With a slow wave of his hand, he commanded,
"Leave the room for a minute. Secure the outer corridor."
The guard nodded wordlessly and stepped out, letting the heavy iron door click shut behind him.
Perfect.
We were completely, utterly alone in the claustrophobic janitor room. The ultimate tactical window to harvest his DNA had just opened. My plan was to use the friction-polished spoon hidden in my pocket to swiftly draw blood, allowing me to ingest a portion of his fluid matrix so my primordial vampiric biology could perfectly mimic his genetic code for future infiltration. However, a major structural problem remained: with our physical stats compressed down to a pathetic baseline of 10, my arm lacked the raw kinetic force to cleanly slice through his thick, calloused epidermal layer using a blunt piece of cafeteria cutlery.
My sharp eyes systematically scanned his body for a biological vulnerability, finally locking onto his face. The thin, highly sensitive skin right at the corner of the eye socket… near the tear duct, required almost zero physical pressure to puncture. I would wait for him to lower his guard completely during his monologue, then execute a lightning-fast, low-stat precision prick to draw a single, pure droplet of blood.
Luke sighed, staring blankly at the flickering mana-lantern as he began to lay out the tragic sequence of his past.
"Like I told you earlier, I used to be part of a low-ranking adventurer group, but everything changed after the catastrophic attack on the Bronze Coin Guild. The Flower Manor was completely incinerated to ashes, and the Yellow Flower Guild collapsed entirely. A lot of terrible things happened in the aftermath... our leader, White Flower, suffered major, life-altering injuries. And our vice-leader, Roxy, was brutally killed in Tata."
He clenched his fists, the memory visibly painful.
"With the guild shattered, my remaining circle had only one real choice: we had to start entirely fresh. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the surviving members… myself, my twin brother Luck, and Maine… were aggressively recruited by an unknown, highly funded organization. We joined them completely cluelessly, desperate for a lifeline, until we finally realized we had walked straight into a massive criminal syndicate."
Luke looked up, a trace of dark pride breaking through his sorrow.
"By then, it was too late to back out. Luck and I quickly proved our worth, becoming Don Anthony's most trusted apprentices. As for Maine, she became our premier arms designer… the mastermind behind the mass production of our most lucrative stolen product: the Death Chant Tommy Gun, a lethal blueprint originally stolen from the Blessed Blade, Alta. We became incredibly successful over the past few months following the collapse of the Yellow Flower Guild... until the Bureau finally cornered me. And now, I'm rotting down here."
Hearing him utter my old nickname, Roxy… sent a violent jolt straight through my core. He truly believed I was dead, brutally slaughtered back at the Town of Tata. The grief in his voice was real, but little did this traitor know that his former vice-leader was standing right in front of him, breathing, calculating, and wearing a dead man's skin.
To deliver the ultimate, crushing psychological blow, I leaned in close, shedding Keane's crude accent entirely. My voice dropped into its true, chillingly familiar cadence.
"Luke, I am Roxy."
Before his eyes could even widen in shock, I struck. Weaponizing the absolute limits of my sluggish 10-stat agility, I drove the friction-polished spoon forward in a tight, merciless arc, plunging the jagged metallic tip straight into the delicate corner of his eye socket.
SQUELCH.
Luke let out a muffled, agonizing groan, his hands instantly flying up to his face as the sheer shock of the betrayal and the puncture wound caused his knees to buckle. He collapsed heavily onto the damp stone floor of the janitor room, blood welling rapidly from the injury.
I violently ripped the spoon free, completely unfazed by his pain. Dropping my main-character mask for a split second of primal necessity, I brought the blood-stained metal to my lips and aggressively licked the crimson fluid from the spoon. The metallic taste of his genetic matrix flooded my palate, instantly bonding with my primordial vampiric biology.
[DNA copied you can shapeshift into Luke Granhart]
The sudden wet thud of Luke's body hitting the floor instantly alerted the faction guard stationed right outside the thin door.
"Inmate 003?! What's happening there?!" the guard yelled, the heavy iron doorknob suddenly rattling violently.
Moving with every shred of momentum my compressed 10-stat body could muster, I scrambled across the small room and slammed my body weight against the heavy iron door, throwing the deadbolt just as the handle began rotating sideways. The guard on the other side began frantically forcing his weight against the frame, trying to breach the room. But because the entire third level was a level-10 suppression zone, his physical strength was just as castrated as mine. The door held, the handle twisting uselessly as he struggled against the locked mechanism.
"Roxy..." a choked, venomous hiss echoed from the floor behind me.
I cut a glance back over my shoulder. Luke was pushing himself up against a laundry crate, one hand clutching his bleeding, ruined eye, his golden-blond hair matted with crimson. His remaining eye burned with a terrifying, unhinged hatred.
"Roxy... I will kill you! I swear to God, I will tear you apart!"
I didn't bother offering a reply. An S-rank mastermind doesn't waste breath on an adversary who is already trapped in a cage.
I rapidly pocketed the classified map of Carcaka and the blood-stained spoon into the deepest recesses of my orange jumpsuit. Turning my back on his hollow threats, I leaped onto a stack of chemical barrels, tore open the iron ventilation grate, and hoisted myself back into the dark, narrow shaft. I slid the grate back into place just as the janitor room door began to splinter, leaving Luke bleeding in the dark as I vanished back into the winding belly of the ventilation system, heading straight back to the second floor. The mission was a flawless, total success.