The heavy iron door groaned on its rusted hinges as it swung wide open, revealing the stunned face of the syndicate guard. He stepped back, his eyes darting frantically between my blonde face and the dim corridor behind me, his hands trembling with a mixture of awe and nervous energy.
"Luke… you're the escaped prisoner from the newspaper yesterday! Inmate 345... the one who has a 10 gold bounty on his head!"
I stepped into the brighter light of the underground facility, keeping my posture rigid and my expression completely unreadable, letting the cold, calculating aura of an elite operative settle over my stolen features. I looked down at him with Luke's voice, steady and devoid of fear.
"Yes, now lead me to Don Anthony." I replied, my voice cutting through the damp air of the vault.
The guard nodded frantically, slamming the security door shut and sliding the heavy bolts back into place to secure our perimeter.
"Right away. Follow me. Look, Luke... we wouldn't betray you. You're his apprentice. If the Don sees that you managed to escape the inescapable prison known to mankind, you're more than just an apprentice to this guild now."
A dark, invisible thrill of satisfaction rippled through my thoughts beneath my calm facade. It was playing out precisely as I had calculated back in the quiet safety of Room 102. The criminal underworld didn't care about the law or the Bureau's rules; they cared about power, prestige, and results. By presenting myself as the legendary Inmate 345 who had just broken the unbreakable shackles of the Dodorant Citadel, I had instantly elevated Luke's status from a mere subordinate to a legendary asset.
As expected, the thought of betraying me to the Luminous Knights for government gold hadn't even crossed their minds. To an ambitious arms trafficking guild operating out of a stolen mint, a ghost who could breach the tightest security networks in Andromeda was worth far more than a flat 10 gold payout. They wouldn't sell me out. Instead, they were already salivating at the chance to weaponize my survival skills, eager to use me as the ultimate tool for their black-market expansion and smuggling operations.
They thought they were welcoming back a brilliant, hardened weapon to elevate the Granhart family legacy. They had absolutely no idea that the tool they were so eager to exploit was actually the Crimson Phantom, and that I was walking straight into the heart of their empire to dismantle it from the inside out.
"Move, the Don is waiting." I commanded quietly, adjusting the heavy folds of my cloak to ensure the Death Chant Shotgun remained perfectly hidden against my spine.
I fell into step behind the eager guard, our boots echoing sharply against the reinforced stone of the subterranean corridor. The sheer scale of the old Ford minting industry's underground network was staggering. As we progressed deeper into the complex, the damp chill of the earth mixed with the distinctive, lingering odor of industrial sabotage. I could literally smell what Bernard Callus had done to this place five years ago; the scent of long-stagnant chemical agents used to corrode the coin-pressing machinery, charred wood from the original ledgers, and the unmistakable metallic tang of an asset frozen, ruined, and stripped by a tyrant's decree. But the vacancy left by the legitimate mint had been entirely filled by a far more hazardous enterprise.
My single eye narrowed beneath my calculated facade as we walked past the open archways of the old vault rooms, which had been converted into makeshift assembly lines and armories. There stood dozens of syndicate foot soldiers, proudly holding mass-produced, black-market copies of Alta's signature weapon: the Death Chant Tommy Gun.
Seeing these weapons in the flesh proved that the arms trafficking guild's reverse-engineering operations had progressed much farther than I had initially expected. In the grand architectural hierarchy of this world, all genuine Death Chant artifacts are manifested as real-world modern firearms, possessing a uniform, unmistakable aesthetic identity: a flawless, sleek matte-black chassis paired with an elegant, running silver lining.
The syndicate's copies, however, lacked that supreme, otherworldly craftsmanship. To cut costs and mass-produce the design, the Mafia had swapped out the sleek black composite materials for polished local wood, retaining only a crude approximation of the silver trim. As I cataloged their layout, a brilliant, opportunistic thought sparked within my strategic consciousness: when I eventually tore this empire down and salvaged their inventory, I could easily give Alta one of these high-tier wooden copies to throw off her pursuers, while I kept her original, true Death Chant artifact secured within my personal cache.
What made the sight truly fascinating from a mastermind perspective was how the underlying metaphysics of the Death Chant lineage interacted with these bootleg firearms. A genuine artifact acts as a perfect conduit for a wielder's innate magical affinity. The running silver linings etched across the frame of the weapon are not merely decorative; they serve as an arcane circuit board. When a user channels their internal energy into the firearm, the silver lining glows intensely with the specific color signature of their magical element, allowing the weapon to fire specialized, conceptual projectiles instead of conventional brass ammunition. The guild had somehow managed to replicate this specific mystical conduit within their wooden copies.
I observed the ranks of guards closely, analyzing the flashing array of colors illuminating the dim underground corridors as they ran weapon diagnostics:
Several Tommy guns glowed with a vibrant, flickering orange lining, indicating a fire affinity that compressed raw thermal energy into incendiary rounds.
Others radiated a crisp, deep blue glow, channeling a water affinity to shoot pressurized, hydro-kinetic armor-piercing slugs.
A few frames emanated a subtle, misty beige light, signifying a wind affinity that shot silent, high-velocity vacuum bullets capable of slicing through iron shields.
A dense, solid green glow signaled an earth affinity, condensing heavy, rocky matter into high-impact kinetic payloads.
I had to suppress a twitch of dark amusement under my Luke disguise when my memory cataloged one of the more absurd magical anomalies of this system. A specific shade of lime green represented healing magic. If a user channeled that element, the Tommy gun's linings would glow like fresh moss, and the weapon would fire "healing bullets" designed to mend flesh and close wounds upon impact… a literal medical paradox converted into rapid-fire ordnance.
The elemental deviations continued to flash through the gloom:
A sharp, crackling neon blue light represented a lightning affinity, firing high-voltage electro-magnetic pulses that could fry a target's nervous system.
A pitch-black, light-consuming dark lining signaled the manifestation of dark magic, firing corruptive, gravity-wells of dark energy. This was the exact terrifying element my own older brother possessed, which he routinely channeled through his signature Death Chant Revolver to leave trails of ash in his wake.
A blinding, radiant white-gold lining channeled light magic, firing coherent, laser-like photons that could blind entire squads while boring holes through concrete.
There were various other manifestations rippling down the line… deep purples for gravity manipulation, heavy browns for specialized metal alloys… representing an entire spectrum of magic I hadn't even fully categorized yet.
But then, my gaze locked onto a hulking guard stationed right outside the primary command sector. The wooden frame of his bootleg Tommy gun suddenly ignited with a sinister, pulsing crimson lining. The air around him grew instantly metallic and suffocating. That specific color didn't belong to the standard elemental charts; it was the unmistakable signature of blood manipulation magic. As he pulled back the bolt, the crimson circuits hummed, actively drawing from his own biological essence to manifest solid, hyper-dense blood bullets that would rupture a victim's veins upon contact.
"Impressive, isn't it? The Don's investment in the old Ford foundries is finally paying off. We're turning every element in Andromeda into a lethal mag-round."
"It's efficient, but let's see if the Don's personal security is as impressive as his toys."
I replied smoothly using Luke's voice, my single eye memorizing the elemental distribution of the forces ahead of me. Every colored glow was an indicator of a vulnerability I could exploit later.
The guide guard pushed open a massive set of double-reinforced vault doors, and I finally stepped into the absolute inner sanctum of the Ford Industry complex: the grand throne room of Don Anthony.
I saw the syndicate leader directly for the first time. In the Bureau's registry of the condemned, his file only features a blank, shadowed silhouette because his true identity has always remained entirely invisible to the high-ranking officials in Caria. Yet here he was, sitting comfortably in the middle of his stolen minting empire, perched upon an opulent throne crafted from welded iron and melted coin-press machinery.
My immediate predator instinct flared. I could pull the Death Chant Shotgun from beneath my cloak right now, blow him off his seat, and claim his head to secure my contract. But my analytical single eye quickly scanned the room and calculated the structural tactical disadvantage. Standing in flanking formations around the throne were his elite personal guards, all tightly gripping their reverse-engineered Tommy guns. The barrels were already humming with ominous green, fire-red, and pulsing crimson blood-magic glows. If I made a sudden offensive move, the sheer volume of rapid-fire elemental ordnance would tear through my current disguised matrix before I even had the physical time to react.
I needed to execute the exact same psychological strategy I utilized when I successfully hunted down Oksana. I had to play the part of the loyal apprentice, completely gain his trust, wait for the perfect moment when his guard dropped, and then ruthlessly behead him before vanishing into the night.
I stopped a few paces from the throne, bowing my head slightly so the shadow of my hood obscured any lingering tension on my face.
Don Anthony leaned forward, resting his chin on his intertwined fingers as a slow, calculating smile spread across his face.
"Luke, the ghost of the Dodorant Citadel returns. Tell me, my boy... how did you break Captain Friedrich's unbreakable chains?"