The river mist grew thicker as I followed the elf gatekeeper through the narrow, dark alleys of the northern sector. The damp cobblestones slicked under my heavy leather boots, and the only sound was the distant, rhythmic rushing of the continental divide river.
As we approached the heavily gated perimeter of the town's primary water supply station… a massive stone complex housing the filtration wheels and hidden subterranean air intake shafts… the elf slowed his pace. He glanced back over his shoulder, his pointed ears twitching nervously as his eyes scanned my tattered crimson trench coat, my empty left sleeve, and the calcified lines of the Leech's Hollow Mask.
"Hey, Bounty Hunter… Is it true? What the capital bulletins say about you?" the elf whispered, his voice cutting through the damp silence of the night.
I didn't give him a sound or a nod, keeping my solitary green eye fixed on the looming shadow of the ventilation building ahead.
He swallowed hard, clearly unnerved by my mechanical, silent aura, but his curiosity got the better of him.
"The rumors rolling in from the central networks... they say you single-handedly dismantled three S-rank bounties back-to-back. Oksana, the untouchable drug lord who poisoned half the lower districts. Don Anthony, the arms trafficker supplying illegal siege weapons to the border factions. And..."
The elf paused, a genuine shudder running through his leather-armored frame.
"...and what is absolutely shocking is the Immoral Knight Commander himself. A high-tier titan of the military, turned into a corpse by your hand. Not only that, the merchant guilds are saying your liquidation of those black-market assets saved the country's entire economy from a catastrophic deflation crisis. The capital is printing your silhouette on every high-alert board from here to the coast." he added, his eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated awe as we stopped right before the iron access door of the water station,
Behind the bone mask, my expression remained frozen. The world saw the Crimson Phantom as an economic savior and a legendary, one-armed executioner who had purged the kingdom's deepest corruption. They didn't see the reality… the desperate, broken human vanguard named Roxy who had traded her humanity away, nor the volatile, accelerated demonic pregnancy currently pulsing beneath her ribs, driving her to secure a retirement fund before her two-month clock ran out.
I didn't answer his praise. Reaching down with my pale right hand, I gently shoved the iron door open, my eye locking onto the massive, iron ventilation grates humming softly in the dark interior.
The elf gatekeeper let out a long, ragged breath that misted in the damp air of the water station's interior. He leaned his back against the cold stone masonry, his fingers trailing idly along the pommel of his shortsword as he looked away from me, staring down into the darkness of the lower mechanical shafts. The heavy, rhythmic thrumming of the massive water-filtration wheels echoed from the deep chambers below, providing a somber, industrial metronome to the midnight hour.
"You know, Bounty Hunter, ever since my childhood, I absolutely despised humans and demons alike. Especially your kind. I was born and raised deep within the interior of the Milky Way Continent, in an isolated enclave entirely free from the touch of mankind. I grew up surrounded only by my own elven kind, fed on stories of human greed, human fragility, and the endless, destructive wars your kingdoms wage across Andromeda." the elf murmured, his voice dropping into a reflective, quiet tone that carried the heavy weight of old, deeply ingrained prejudices.
He paused, a self-deprecating smile pulling at the corner of his lips as his pointed ears pinned back slightly in a gesture of genuine humility.
"I came to a lawless border town like Balka thinking it would only confirm my hatred… seeing the worst of the continents collide in the mud. But standing here tonight, looking at the wreckage left behind by monsters like Laulif Flower, and seeing the shadow you cast... I realize I was completely and utterly wrong. Humans aren't a monolith of malice. Many are kind, resilient, and fiercely protective of the weak. And better yet... it is the good humans who step forward into the dark to defeat the bad ones, just like the three S-rank titans you slaughtered to keep the innocent from bleeding out."
He turned his head back toward me, his gaze locking onto the unyielding, calcified lines of the Leech's Hollow Mask. He didn't see the weaponized canisters of pressurized tear gas resting silently within my spatial inventory ring, nor did he comprehend the horrific, suffocating choice I was about to make regarding the ventilation system beneath our feet. To him, I was simply an immaculate, one-armed avatar of absolute justice… a legendary vanguard who had sacrificed her body to purge the world's deep corruption.
"The world doesn't need fewer humans, It just needs more people like you. Do what you came here to do, Hunter. The gateway to the Bloom Syndicate is yours." the elf finished softly, stepping back to give me full, unhindered access to the massive iron intake grates humming in the dark.
Behind the hollow mask, my single green eye stared at him in absolute, freezing silence. The profound irony of his praise burned hotter than any arrow. He saw me as a savior, completely blind to the fact that the "good human" standing before him was about to intentionally condemn dozens of captive slaves to a brutal, agonizing death in the dark just to ensure the absolute eradication of the Syndicate's network. I didn't offer him a nod, a sign, or a single scribbled word of comfort. I simply stepped past him, my tattered crimson trench coat brushing against the cold iron of the intake shafts as I prepared to unleash the chemical storm.
I stepped deeper into the cold, industrial heart of the town water supply station, leaving the elf gatekeeper behind in the shadows of the entrance. I offered him a final, silent wave of my pale right hand to acknowledge his assistance, my heavy leather boots clicking quietly against the damp stone floorboards as I approached the massive, primary ventilation shaft.
As expected for this hour of the night, the facility was completely deserted. The roaring, mechanical hum of the massive water filtration wheels downstairs drowned out any subtle noise, providing the perfect acoustic cover for an executioner.
Standing before the wide, reinforced iron intake grate… which was drawing a massive, continuous current of fresh night air down into the subterranean slave auction hub… I focused my thoughts on my spatial inventory ring.
With a silent pull of my mana, I retrieved three specialized, heavy canisters of weaponized tear gas from my storage, instantly decreasing my total inventory burden by precisely 1.2 kg.
Unlike standard civilian deterrents, my tactical tear gas was stored as a highly concentrated, volatile liquid contained within three heavy, reinforced spherical glass bottles. The fluid inside swirled with an unnatural, sickly amber hue… a dense chemical agent engineered to instantly vaporize into a heavy, suffocating cloud the moment it contacted a high-velocity airflow.
I knelt beside the intake grate, using my teeth to firmly rip the thick wooden cork out of the first bottle, since my left arm was entirely missing. The sharp, bitter, and eye-watering sting of the raw chemical immediately wafted up, but my Leech's Hollow Mask and my half-vampiric resilience kept the fumes from affecting my focus.
Without a trace of hesitation, I tilted the spherical bottle forward and poured the poisonous liquid directly over the humming intake blades.
HISS!
The moment the amber fluid hit the spinning iron rotors, it violently atomized, transforming instantly into a thick, invisible, and devastatingly toxic fog. The powerful downdraft caught the chemical storm, violently sucking the suffocating agent deep into the subterranean veins of the Bloom Syndicate's stronghold. Down below, the clock had just run out for everyone in the dark.