The heavy mana currents of the evaluation room finally settled, leaving a cool, quiet stillness in the administrative hall as the automated scanning arrays shut down. I reached out with my right hand and pulled my S-rank status card out of the pillar slot, slipping it back into the pocket of my crimson trench coat.
With the measurement officially complete, Nautilus Cotton, Evelyn, and I moved into the spacious central lobby of the Bureau. We took our seats around a heavy, polished oak table situated right in the middle of the main hall, entirely isolated from the bustling traffic of the lower-ranking squires. Despite the comfort of the chairs, I kept my single right hand firmly anchored to the handle of my wooden alchemical crate; the volatile precursors for my weaponized tear gas were far too dangerous to leave unattended.
Nautilus dipped his silver fountain pen into an inkwell, his sharp eyes evaluating the light-swallowing void of my Leech's Hollow Mask.
"Eirene, In the official public listings of the Luminous Knight leaderboard, we will strictly display your name under the placeholder 'Bounty Hunter.' Since you are operating from the underworld, you wouldn't want to expose your true identity to the corrupt syndicates or the public eye, correct? Based on our raw statistical data, your baseline combat efficiency puts you at the 7th rank of the entire leaderboard." Nautilus began, his smooth, measured voice carrying the absolute weight of his administrative office.
I offered a slow, silent nod of my deep canvas hood behind the barrier of my visor.
"As the 7th-ranked operative, you will technically be assigned specialized knightly missions. Because of your status, you will be expected to occasionally coordinate with other squads and socialize within the upper echelons. However, your contract is highly irregular. You are entirely permitted to continue your private bounty hunting. But remember… if the Bureau formally summons you, it means your duty as a Luminous Knight takes absolute priority over your personal crusade."
Evelyn, sitting directly across from us, tilted her head, her jade-green eyes sparkling with intense curiosity as her brown locks shifted over her shoulders.
"Nautilus, let me see that leaderboard!" she chirped, her voice carrying that eerily fluent, stolen cadence.
Before the meticulous secretary could object, Evelyn casually reached across the table and snatched the heavy leather-bound ledger right out of his hands. Nautilus let out a sharp, irritated click of his tongue but didn't attempt to pull it back. I leaned my frame forward slightly, my single jade-green eye peeping directly over Evelyn's shoulder to scan the glowing, magically updated lines of the kingdom's elite vanguard.
The leaderboard didn't lie.
There it was, printed in flawless golden script: Evelyn sat comfortably at the apex in 3rd place due to her terrifying hybrid biology, corrosion traits, and explosive magic. My own masked persona followed shortly behind in 7th place. But my gaze instantly locked onto the name sitting right between us.
Leaderboard
[...]
[...]
[Rank 3: Evelyn Rynd… ]
[...]
[Rank 5: Elias Rynd… ]
[...]
[Rank 7: Bounty Hunter…]
A wave of pure, unadulterated cynicism washed over me beneath my mask. The sheer, hilarious irony of the family rankings was almost too much to bear.
Elias was hailed as the absolute prodigy of dark magic across the three continents. He possessed three legendary, god-tier Death Chant artifacts… the devastating revolver he had just pulled on Nautilus minutes ago, a high-caliber sniper rifle, and a heavy tactical rocket launcher. He was a seasoned black-ops commander who had spent his entire adult life wading through blood and shadows. Yet, despite that massive, apocalyptic arsenal, he had somehow managed to get completely outperformed by our little sister, a girl who had spent the last six years merely surviving in the damp, toxic depths of a gold mine. It was absolutely pathetic.
But then again, my own placement was just as absurd.
I was officially ranked 7th in the entire kingdom. For the vast majority of my eighteen years in this world, my entire life had revolved around dusty library books, historical archives, and playing the role of a quiet, eccentric item appraiser. I had only been operating as a true physical adventurer for barely four months, and I had literally faked my own death just last month to shed the vulnerability of the Rynd name.
The system thought I was an eighteen-year-old prodigy, but they were missing the core calculation. My chronological body was young, but my mental age was at least thirty-five. The only reason I was standing in seventh place, wielding a three-gun arsenal against my demon wings, was because I had systematically weaponized the brutal, high-stakes muscle memory of my previous life's kendo practices, combining Earth's tactical geometry with a dark, high-tier demonic evolution.
Elias thought he was the ultimate master of strategy, but as I sat at the table watching Evelyn play with the edges of the ledger, I knew the truth. The Rynd family dynamics had just become a catastrophic powder keg, and I was the one holding the match.
The administrative stillness of the main hall hung heavy in the air, the rhythmic scratching of Nautilus's fountain pen serving as a stark reminder of the bureaucratic machinery locking my new double life into place. But as the ink dried on the ledger, a sudden, sharp spike of cognitive clarity pierced through my analytical mind beneath the absolute psychic barrier of my Leech's Hollow Mask.
I had completely forgotten. Amidst the chaotic whirlwind of dodging Elias's fragile ego, measuring my S-rank parameters, and uncovering the Holy Church's apocalyptic ninety-day isekai countdown, my primary tactical objective had briefly slipped through the cracks. I needed to track down the other reincarnated being hiding within the metropolis .. the specific brunette-haired boy with the crimson eyes that Father Columbia's soul-resonance magic had flagged.
A cold, calculating cost-benefit analysis rapidly spun through my brain. My current operational calendar was a logistical nightmare. My ledger was utterly overflowing with high-priority tasks that required my immediate, hands-on attention:
I still need to cook tear gas, I had a massive crate of volatile chemical precursors resting by my boots that needed to be carefully cooked and distilled into weaponized tactical tear gas to neutralize the Katt siblings' underground networks.
I still need to access Vanessa's restricted files were burning a hole in my trench coat, demanding hours of meticulous decoding to map out the corrupt syndicates' next movements.
Artifact Testing, the high-tier, stolen magical artifacts I had violently ripped away from Don Anthony's corpse during the warehouse raid were still entirely uncalibrated, requiring controlled field tests to integrate them into my combat rotation.
The bounty was still open, I still had to claim Cameron's severed head to properly preserve and process to claim my monumental 10 gold coin bounty, a critical milestone in my grand strategy to systematically dismantle the leadership of the Immoral Knights.
With only twenty-four hours in a day, I simply did not have the luxury of time to execute Father Columbia's tracking mission today. I needed to delegate the initial legwork, leveraging the vast, institutional surveillance net of the Capital Knights Bureau Association to do the heavy lifting while I focused on my alchemical warfare prep.
Pulling a pristine piece of parchment from the table, I dipped a nearby quill into the inkwell. Moving with a sharp, deliberate fluidness, I wrote out a highly specific, authoritative directive to the administrative desk:
"Locate a male juvenile. Visual markers: Brunette hair, distinctive crimson eyes. Target area: The 5th District, deep within the lower tenement sectors. Pinpoint his exact residential grid. I will arrive tomorrow morning to execute the extraction."
I slid the parchment across the polished oak table directly toward Nautilus.
The bitchless secretary picked up the note, his sharp eyes scanning my elegant, precise handwriting. He absorbed the parameters within seconds, recognizing the critical nature of tracking irregular souls in the lower sectors. He looked up at my light-swallowing visor and gave a single, professional nod of compliance.
"The Bureau accepts these parameters as part of your specialized 7th-rank jurisdiction, our scouts will have the tenement grid completely mapped and secured by dawn. Your deployment is cleared for tomorrow." Nautilus stated smoothly, pulling out an official dispatch stamp to route the order to the 5th District investigative squads.
With the deal finalized, I turned my attention toward Evelyn. Since my missing tongue rendered me completely mute, I didn't waste energy trying to formulate a vocal goodbye. Instead, I gave my little sister a slow, deeply respectful nod of my shadowed canvas hood… a silent acknowledgement of our shared, unspoken understanding of the family's chaotic dynamics.
Evelyn caught the gesture, her twin jade-green eyes narrowing into a sharp, affectionate smirk as the bioluminescent tips of her brown hair shimmered in the ambient light of the hall.
"See you on the field, big sister, try not to break the 5th District before I get there." she murmured, her synthesized, melodic voice carrying a trace of genuine pride.
Gathering my gear, I gripped the heavy wooden alchemical crate with my single right hand, balancing the delicate glass titration flasks against my frame. With my three-gun arsenal resting silently against my hidden demon wings beneath the crimson trench coat, I turned away from the table and marched out of the grand administrative wing. My leather boots clicked firmly against the white porcelain tiles as I exited the obsidian fortress of the Bureau, stepping back into the shifting shadows of Caria City to prepare my chemical wrath for the trials ahead.