The fortification order, announced with grim finality by Karl, settled over the warehouse not as a shield, but as a new set of chains. For Lutz, it was a complication that required immediate analysis. The loose board in the back wall, his phantom's gateway, would now be watched. Coming and going as he pleased was over. He was trapped inside the cage he was building for everyone else.
'A problem,' his mind whirred, 'A recently near-fatally wounded man shouldn't be eager to brave the Church's tightened cordon. It breaks the narrative. It invites suspicion from Karl. I am now a prisoner of my own performance.'
He stood in the dim light of his corner, watching the Vipers begin their frantic, disorganized preparations. Crates were dragged to barricade windows; weapons were distributed from the armory with desperate seriousness. The atmosphere was a toxic brew of fear, paranoia, and brittle resolve. They were building their own tomb with commendable diligence.
But as Lutz turned the problem over, he saw not a constraint, but the final, missing piece of his design. The Baron, in his desperation, had herded all the remaining pieces onto a single, cramped game board. The Church was the outside force. The Vipers were the defenders. Sett was the wild card, lurking in the shadows. And he, Lutz, was the player who knew every square.
'They're all coming here,' he realized with cold, crystalline certainty. 'The Church, to deliver the final blow. Sett, to claim his pound of flesh. They will all converge on this warehouse. The final battle won't be out there in the city. It will be in here. Right here.'
He didn't need to go out much. He just needed to make sure they all came in. And he needed to be ready.
But how to ensure it? The Church was methodical. They would besiege, probe, and wait. They wouldn't storm a fortified position without overwhelming cause. He needed to give them that cause. A reason to attack immediately, with everything they had.
The idea came to him fully formed, rising from his own carefully laid lies. The "Dream-eating Rat's Heart." The mystical artifact from the Ocean Snake's Bane that he had already planted as the central MacGuffin. The Baron was hoarding resources, pulling back. What greater reason to retreat than to perform a delicate, vulnerable, and powerful ritual?
He would spread a rumor, but frame it as the Baron's own brilliant stratagem: that the "ascension ritual" was a feint, a grand theatrical trap designed to lure the overconfident Church into a final, decisive ambush within the fortified warehouse. It was a perfect, self-reinforcing lie. The Vipers would believe it because it painted their Baron as a master strategist. The Church would believe the "feint" was a desperate cover for the real ritual, and would feel compelled to strike immediately to prevent it. Both sides would be acting on the same information, but drawing opposite, fatal conclusions.
'That's it,' he thought, a predator's smile touching his lips. 'I will fabricate the ultimate rumor. Not just that the Baron has the heart. But that he is using it. Now. Here. That he's retreating to ascend to the next Sequence, protected by his entire gang.'
The logic was flawless. It explained the fortification perfectly. It would be an irresistible lure for the Church—the chance to interrupt a high-level, unsanctioned Beyonder advancement and seize a powerful item. For a Church obsessed with order, it was intolerable.
And for Sett? The thought was delicious. The Rose Bishop, humiliated and hungry, would hear that the man who had taunted him was attempting to use the spoils to grow stronger. His pride would never allow him to stay away. He would see the Church's assault as perfect cover for his own entry, a chance to steal the heart and slaughter Lutz.
'They will all come,' Lutz mused. 'The Church with their scalpels and steam. The Aurora's order attacker with his flesh and blood. They will crash against the Vipers' defense. And in the middle of it all...'
His eyes drifted toward the wall separating his space from the Baron's office. The hidden treasury. The real prize.
'...I will be a fucking rat in the walls. I will not fight their war. I will let them bleed each other white. While they are distracted by the grand spectacle, I will be taking.'
But he wouldn't be passive. He would be the stage manager for this bloody act. He began to plan his preparations, subtle and deadly enhancements to the warehouse itself.
First, the rumor. He had to find a way to got out unnoticed as well as use whoever he could. The boy, Peter, was terrified, eager to please, and had just avoided interrogation. He would be overflowing with nervous energy. Lutz would feed him a carefully crafted story, a "secret plan" the Baron made against the church, a false rumor about him performing a ritual to get stronger, in order to make the church come in, but it would be a trap, and then they would take out the Church, taking back control of Indaw Harbor. Peter, in his innocent nature would probably believe it, the rumor would spread through the Vipers and the outside like a plague, reaching the Church's ears within hours.
Second, the traps. The warehouse was his home field. He knew its flaws intimately. He would spend the coming hours "helping" with fortifications while weaving his own web.
The Rooftop Access: He would discreetly weaken the latch on the rooftop hatch. An easy, unguarded point of entry for a stealthy operative like Sett.
The Crimson Charms: He had the ritual for the Degeneration charms. He would place them at key chokepoints—near the main entrance, at the base of the stairs to the Baron's office. When the Church breached, mere contact could turn a charging squad into rapidly decaying flesh, sowing terror.
Environmental Hazards: A carefully placed barrel of lamp oil near a support beam. A stack of crates precariously balanced above a narrow corridor. These were weapons he could trigger with a shot or a shove.
Third, his own kit. He would prepare his harness for mobility, theft and combat. Lockpicks, climbing gear, his dust bombs. Throwing knives, Creed and the revolver for immediate threats. The shotgun for violent exits.
He saw it all unfolding like a play. The Church would launch their raid, believing they were stopping a heretic ascension. They would be met by Viper resistance and his hidden traps. Sett would drop from the shadows, intent on the Baron and the heart, adding another layer of chaos. The Baron and Karl would fight for their lives, believing this was the final battle for their empire.
And Lutz? He would be a ghost. Slipping through crossfire, using noise and bloodshed as cover. He would bypass the fighting, pick the lock to the Baron's office, and loot the treasury clean. He would take the gold, the formulas, the artifacts. He would take everything the Baron had killed for, everything built on the bones of his family.
He would take the Vogler legacy and grind it to dust.
The plan was audacious. It required perfect timing, ruthless efficiency, and no mercy. It meant using the Church and Sett as wrecking crew.
A profound calm settled over him. The anxiety of the past days fell away. This was the endgame. The path was clear. He was orchestrating an apocalypse, and from the ashes, he would steal his future.
He looked around at the frightened men preparing for a war they couldn't win, for a cause that was a lie. They were props on his stage. The Baron was the doomed king. Karl the loyal knight. The Church the righteous invaders. Sett the vengeful demon.
The fortification wasn't a prison. It was a kill box. And he had just designed the perfect trigger.
'Let them come,' he thought, the Marauder's core philosophy burning bright. 'Let them all come. They think they are here to fight, to win, to claim. But they're wrong. They are here to be robbed. Every last one of them.'
The time for whispers was over. It was time to prepare the stage for blood and fire.
But haste was the enemy of a perfect design. To launch this now, while the fortifications were fresh and Karl's suspicion was high, was too soon. He needed time. Time for the Vipers to grow weary in their vigil. Time for the Church's frustration to mount. Time for his own "wounds" to heal plausibly. And time to prepare every last detail.
He would use the rest of the fifth day, the entire sixth, and the morning of the seventh. Then, he would pull the trigger.
Satisfied with the revised timeline, Lutz retreated to the relative privacy of his partitioned corner. The frantic energy outside was a resource to be managed, not joined. He had more valuable work to do than moving crates.
He laid out his few remaining books on his cot. The dense, illustrated biology text bought from the whispering market, and Henrik's well-worn manuals on sharpening and metallurgy. These were his only remaining knowledge sources.
He opened the biology text first. This was not academic curiosity; it was a study of structural failure. He pored over detailed diagrams of the human musculoskeletal system. He focused on the points of greatest vulnerability: the brachial plexus, a network of nerves in the armpit that, if struck with precision, could paralyze an arm. The femoral artery, a river of life in the thigh that, if severed, could drain a man dry in minutes. The precise angle to drive a blade upwards under the rib cage to pierce the heart, avoiding the sternum. He cross-referenced this with his own senses, his Superior Observation allowing him to intuitively sense the "value" of a target—which, in combat, translated to its structural weakness. He was learning to see the living body as a system of flaws, a collection of locks waiting for the right pick.
He practiced the motions slowly, without a weapon, his Agile Hands tracing the paths in the air. A quick, jabbing thrust to the philtrum (the groove below the nose) to stun and disorient. A slash to the inside of a wrist to disable a sword hand. A low, powerful kick to the common peroneal nerve on the outside of the knee to buckle a leg. He was building a library of violence in his mind, each technique a specialized tool for a specific kind of theft—the theft of function, of mobility, of life itself.
Then, he shifted his focus to Henrik's manuals. He spent hours with his whetstones and oils, not just on Creed, but on every blade he owned. He studied the journals' passages on the crystalline structure of steel, learning how to hone an edge that was not just sharp, but resilient, less likely to chip or roll in a hard fight. He practiced disassembling and reassembling his revolver and shotgun blindfolded, his enhanced tactile sensitivity allowing him to feel the wear on individual springs, the slight burr on a firing pin. He treated his integrated harness, checking every stitch, every buckle, ensuring it was a second skin that would not fail him.
Throughout this, he remained a ghost in the machine of the fortifying Vipers. He offered the occasional, soft-spoken suggestion about sightlines or barricade stability, always framed as helpful, never commanding. He let the men see him studying, sharpening, preparing—the image of a dedicated operative honing his tools for the coming defense. It reinforced his cover perfectly.
Time passed and the sun came down, Lutz went to sleep that day thinking of nothing else but how the events would unfold on the final night.