The last stream of the thick, amber liquid hissed as it splashed against the rapidly spinning iron rotors of the intake fan. The mechanical blades acted as a violent catalyst, atomizing the final 400 g of weaponized chemical agent into a localized, invisible storm of respiratory destruction. The powerful downdraft caught the vapor with a low, hungry roar, pulling the toxic fog down into the subterranean veins of the sewage hub where Laulif Flower's illicit empire thrived.
I knelt there in the dark, my singular right hand gripping the empty, cold glass bottle. In the heavy, industrial silence of the deserted water station, a crushing weight settled over my chest.
What have I done?
Behind the rigid, calcified lines of my Leech's Hollow Mask, my solitary green eye stared blankly into the vibrating metal grate. The echo of the elf gatekeeper's voice returned to haunt me, bouncing off the damp stone walls of my mind.
"Humans are kind... it is the good humans who step forward into the dark to defeat the bad ones."
He had looked at my tattered crimson trench coat and seen an immaculate savior… a legendary vanguard who sacrificed her own flesh to purge the kingdom's deepest corruption. He thought I was the hero of Town Allure, a shield for the innocent.
He didn't know the monster I had actually become.
Right now, beneath the floorboards, that very same chemical agent was creeping through the iron ventilation pipes and spilling into the iron-bar holding cells. I could vividly picture the scene: the initial confusion, the sudden, searing heat in the throat, and then the absolute, suffocating panic. The Syndicate guards would choke and drop their weapons, but the malnourished, chained slaves… the very people I was supposed to be liberating… would be trapped. They would have no escape from the blinding, burning fog. Their lungs would blister in the pitch-black darkness, their desperate, silent pleas muffled by the heavy stone foundations of the town. I was murdering the victims to ensure the absolute eradication of the executioner.
The guilt was a physical ache, throbbing in tandem with the phantom pain of my severed left arm and my gouged right eye. For a fleeting second, the heretical, demonic life expanding within my womb pulsed with a faint, cold ripple of mana… a stark reminder of the accelerated two-month timeline ticking away inside my body. I didn't have the luxury of a clean conscience. I didn't have the time for a prolonged, heroic siege.
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the weakness out of my mind.
"It is a necessary sacrifice, If I don't rip this syndicate out by its roots tonight, Laulif will slip into the Milky Way Continent. He will establish a permanent stronghold. Thousands more will be stolen from their homes, processed like cattle, and sold into a lifetime of unrecorded agony." I told myself, my inner voice hardening into cold concrete.
To guarantee that none of this would ever happen again in the future of the province, I had to be willing to let the blood of the innocent dry on my hands. I had to become the executioner the world needed, not the hero it wanted.
I stood up, letting the empty glass container shatter against the stone floor. I adjusted the thick cloth wrap over my missing right eye, pulled the heavy hood of my trench coat low over my mask, and checked the grip on my hidden Death Chant firearm. The upper level was fully poisoned. The trap was sprung.
Turning my back on the humming ventilation shafts, I slipped out of the water supply station and melted back into the dense midnight river mist. I navigated the dark, winding alleys of the northern sector with predatory speed, my heavy leather boots making no sound against the damp cobblestones as I moved toward the western perimeter walls. Laulif Flower would be fleeing for his life through the sewage escape route right about now, desperate to escape the suffocating tomb below. I needed to reach the outer pipeline immediately to ensure Mochi had successfully intercepted the target and claimed the S-rank head for my retirement fund.
I glided through the dense midnight river mist, navigating the narrow, treacherous gap between the towering stone town walls and the jagged cliffs of the outer perimeter. The air here was thick with the heavy stench of the river and the sharp, metallic tang of the impending slaughter. Soon enough, I reached the designated coordinates… the massive, iron-reinforced mouth of the outer sewage pipeline that emptied into the roaring currents of the continental divide.
Standing perfectly composed in the gloom was Mochi. He was guarding the exit with lethal focus, his fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt of his signature luminous longsword. The polished blade caught the faint, watery moonlight, gleaming with a sharp, disciplined aura.
As my tattered crimson silhouette emerged from the fog, his golden feline ears twitched sharply, and he turned his head toward me.
"Done already, Bounty Hunter? That was fast. You truly live up to your reputation." Mochi said, a look of profound, professional respect crossing his features beneath the shadow of his helm.
BOOM!
Before I could offer a silent nod, a violent, desperate crashing sound echoed from deep within the stone sewage pipeline. A choked, agonizing scream tore through the damp air as someone scrambled blindly through the filthy water, coughing hysterically and gasping for oxygen.
It was him.
Laulif Flower burst from the darkness of the pipe, his expensive aristocratic clothes soaked in filth, his lungs completely ravaged by the weaponized tear gas I had poured into the vents. He stumbled into the moonlight, his face contorted in sheer panic. As his hood fell back, my single green eye locked onto his features. The resemblance was undeniable… his striking silver hair and piercing blue eyes were the exact genetic mirrors of his daughter, White. He was the monster who had abandoned his family to orchestrate an empire of flesh, now reduced to a suffocating rat fleeing a trap.
"I'll handle this," Mochi stated, his voice instantly dropping into a freezing, ironclad tone.
With the explosive, predatory speed of a high-tier beastkin, Mochi charged forward. He didn't offer a trial, a lecture, or a moment of mercy. His signature longsword cut through the midnight air in a single, immaculate silver arc.
SLASH!
The blade severed Laulif's head in one clean, fluid stroke. The body collapsed heavily into the shallow river water with a dull splash, while the severed head of the Bloom Syndicate's leader rolled across the damp earth, his blue eyes frozen forever in a state of absolute terror.
Mochi smoothly flicked the blood off his blade and sheathed the longsword in a single, practiced motion. He stepped over the corpse, picked up the high-value asset by its silver hair, and turned back to me, offering the S-rank target to the Crimson Phantom. The head of the serpent was officially ours.
Mochi stepped forward, holding Laulif's severed head by its blood-drenched silver hair, and extended his arm toward me.
"Your S-rank quarry, Bounty Hunter, a flawless tactical execution. You flushed him out precisely according to plan, leaving him with no defenses and nowhere to run. It is an honor to assist an operative of your caliber." Mochi said, his golden feline ears twitching as he offered a deep, formal nod of profound professional admiration.
I reached out with my pale right hand, taking the heavy, cold asset from his grip. With a silent pull of my mana, I slipped Laulif's head directly into my spatial inventory ring, the weight instantly registering in my system as exactly 4 kg.
The Bloom Syndicate was shattered. The main target was eliminated, and my retirement fund was finally secure.
Mochi smoothly sheathed his longsword, letting out a breath that misted in the midnight air as he looked back toward the dark mouth of the sewage pipeline.
"Let's go home, Bounty Hunter. The Luminous Knights and the local neutral authorities will handle the recovery of the slaves inside the sewers now. We've cleared the path for their rescue."
Behind the rigid, calcified lines of my Leech's Hollow Mask, my remaining green eye stared at him in absolute, freezing silence.
Mochi didn't know. He had no idea that the "rescue" team would find nothing but a subterranean tomb of suffocating horrors. He didn't comprehend that the weaponized chemical agent I poured into the vents had already blistered the lungs of every single captive chained below.
But I kept my silence ironclad. I would not voice the truth, nor would I ever take the blame for their deaths. In this era, chemical warfare and weaponized tear gas were completely unknown technologies. When the authorities finally breached the inner chambers and discovered the piles of suffocated, eye-burning corpses, they wouldn't look at the legendary Crimson Phantom. They would assume Laulif Flower had cynically executed his own human cargo in a desperate bid to destroy evidence before fleeing. My reputation as an immaculate savior was perfectly preserved, and the secret of my true identity remained buried in the dark.
Breaking the heavy silence, Mochi raised two fingers to his lips and let out a sharp, piercing whistle that echoed across the rocky river cliffs.
Within moments, the rhythmic clatter of hooves broke through the mist as his magnificent, armored warhorse trotted forward from the shadows of the outer wall. Mochi grabbed the leather reins, turning back to me with that familiar, disciplined warmth.
"Let's go back to Caria, Bounty Hunter," he said, swinging himself smoothly into the saddle.
I didn't waste a single moment. Vaulting up behind him with a silent, fluid motion, my tattered crimson trench coat billowed over the horse's flanks. I held on tightly with my singular right hand, my core pulsing faintly as the heretical life inside my womb settled. Mochi snapped the reins, and the powerful mount charged forward into the dark border passes, leaving the grim, toxic ghosts of Town Balka far behind us as we began our journey home.