Rain fell from the polluted sky of Elysium like hard, icy needles, striking the cracked sidewalks and washing away today's blood to make room for tomorrow's.
The streets were nearly empty in this upscale district — the neighborhood of the rich and the great guilds — where cold neon lights shimmered on glass storefronts like stars trapped in boxes.
I walked with steady, silent, measured steps.
My black tactical coat, threaded with fine lines of Eitra, refused the water.
Raindrops slid off the fabric like liquid mercury, leaving no sign of dampness.
My black mask covered my face entirely; the dark blue lines that sketched that mocking, smiling face glowed faintly in the dark, absorbing light instead of reflecting it.
I felt my breath fog the inner glass of the mask — warm and controlled.
"Tears of Diamond."
A luxurious holographic sign floated above an elegant building of black marble and reinforced magical glass.
The shop was still open, catering to elite customers who preferred to shop late for quiet and privacy.
I didn't waste time thinking.
Overthinking kills in this world.
I pushed the heavy glass door — no sound. I stepped inside.
The air was warm, heavy with expensive perfumes, Colombian coffee, and that faint metallic scent that came from concentrated monster cores embedded in jewelry.
There were five people in the spacious shop.
The cashier, a young man in an over-styled suit, stood behind the main display counter.
In the showroom were four customers: a very fat man in an expensive coat, sweating despite the cold; a short-haired blonde carefully groomed, porcelain skin without a pore or flaw, maybe in her mid-twenties, studying a necklace set with a fire core; a woman near her in very fine black clothes, a silk coat hugging her lithe figure, jet-black hair barely touching her neck, eyes as deep and black as a bottomless well, pale as snow, also in her twenties.
Next to the woman in black stood a handsome man with an athletic build — her companion or lover — whispering something to her.
I passed them all with fluid, shadowlike steps.
They didn't notice me.
That's my private magic: stealth honed by hunger and necessity.
In a fraction of a second I materialized behind the cashier.
Before he could blink or even register that the air behind him had changed, I raised my right hand.
I pressed the muzzle of my Glock 19, saturated with black Eitra, hard and rough against the back of his head, right where the skull met the spine.
The cashier's whole body stiffened. His breath stopped.
With my left hand I tossed a black cloth bag onto the glass counter in front of him.
"Fill it."
My voice came from the mask. It was not the voice of Kyle Valtier, the miserable young man.
It was mechanical, deep, coarse, echoing with a demonic resonance as if from the bottom of an abyssal well — a voice that made blood congeal in the veins.
The cashier trembled violently and tried to open his mouth to scream.
"If you want to live to see tomorrow's sunrise, open that glass vault and put every monster core and every gold piece into this bag. One stupid move and I'll spray what's left of your brain over these beautiful marble walls."
My tone was calm but carried a real, unquestionable threat.
The terrified cashier obeyed, his trembling hands opening the magical locks and dumping bracelets and necklaces set with monster cores into the bag.
I turned my head slightly toward the showroom. The four customers were frozen. They slowly turned to face me.
"Better not move," I said in my terrifying mechanical voice, directing my gaze at them from behind the smiling mask while the pistol still aimed at the cashier's head. "Raise your hands slowly where I can see them. I'm here for the stones, not your lives. Don't force me to change my mind. Until I finish what I came for, you are statues."
The fat man raised hands ring-laden. The blonde raised hers, eyes wide with fear. The handsome man did the same. The woman with the black hair — she raised her hands too, very slowly.
Silence ruled the scene.
The cashier closed the bag after emptying the most valuable shelves and pushed it to me, crying silently.
"Obedient boy."
I gripped the bag with my left hand and slung it over my shoulder. I began to step backward in measured strides toward the door.
But, as a Hunter used to expecting the worst, I scanned the place with a quick sweep.
My mind worked like a cold calculator.
Cashier… one.
Fat trembling man… two.
Blonde woman… three.
Handsome man… four.
Wait… there were four in the showroom. One, two, three… where's the fourth? The black-clad woman? She had vanished from my sight! When? How? I hadn't even blinked!
At that pinpoint of time, I felt a change in the air pressure right behind me.
A sensation like a guillotine blade approaching my neck. An alarm screamed in my head.
Damn!
My instinct, sharpened by thousands of deadly situations, made me twist at the waist so fast it almost tore my abdominal muscles, raising my left arm as a shield and pointing the Glock with my right.
Boom!
It wasn't a normal blow. A side kick loaded with concentrated Eitra, blue and glowing, targeted my neck to break it in a single strike.
My left arm collided with the leg of the black-haired woman.
The impact was monstrous! It felt like a speeding truck had hit me.
The thunder of the Eitra blast shattered the shop's reinforced glass windows in an instant; glass rained down like a storm.
I slid backwards several meters, my shoe gouging a groove in the fine marble. The bone in my left forearm screamed in pain, nearly breaking if not for the tactical suit and a last-second focus of Eitra.
"Damn!" I cursed in my mechanical voice and, without hesitation, pulled the Glock's trigger.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Three black Eitra-infused rounds raced like dark bolts toward her head and chest.
But the black-haired woman was not a mere customer.
She was a monster.
Her body arched back with an inhuman suppleness; the bullets missed her by millimeters and punched through the marble walls behind her like they were warm butter.
She balanced instantly, her black eyes staring at my mask with icy, emotionless calm.
Suddenly the world around me began to warp.
I looked at the fat man who had been trembling.
His body literally melted! Flesh and fat vanished like candle wax beneath flame, and in his place stood a young man in his late twenties, muscular, wearing light tactical armor beneath his coat, two daggers pulsing with green Eitra in his hands.
"What the hell is happening?" I whispered behind the mask. Disguise and Eitra masking? A metamorph?
The handsome man (who'd been posing as her partner) pulled a tiny radio from his jacket and spoke in a crisp military tone.
"Central, this is Alpha Team. The bait swallowed the hook. Black Joker is in the box. Seal the perimeter. Authorization: lethal force."
No sooner had he finished than alarm sirens wailed outside.
Not the regular guild police sirens.
Deeper, fiercer. I looked through the shattered façade.
Four black armored SUVs, bearing an emblem of a silver eagle pierced by a sword, slid on the wet asphalt to close the street from both directions.
"The Eitra Intelligence FBI?!" I shouted inwardly as my mind spun.
"This whole shop… a trap! They studied my pattern, anticipated my next target, and set up a full squad ambush!"
There was no time to think. The black-haired woman lunged at me like a missile. Her speed was impossible for my G rank.
She had to be at least A or B rank.
She struck me with a straight punch aimed at my heart. Her blue aura flared violently. I barely dodged by twisting, but the air pressure around her fist tore part of my coat.
I retaliated with a heel strike from the pistol toward her face, but she lifted her arm and blocked the blow with a metallic-sounding clang — hidden forearm guards beneath her silk coat!
With a nimble acrobatic motion she turned, used my hand as a pivot, and slammed a knee into my chin.
I stumbled back and fired at her midair belly.
She anticipated it.
She twisted in the air like a cat, avoided the bullet, and landed right in front of me, delivering an open-palm strike charged with Eitra into my chest.
Boom!
The hit connected. I couldn't evade.
It felt like a hydraulic hammer crushing my ribcage.
I flew through the air, smashed through another glass display, shredding it into thousands of shards, and slammed onto the marble floor amid debris and scattered jewelry.
"Ugh!" I spat blood inside the mask. The metallic tang filled my mouth.
My ribs — freshly healed by the System — screamed in pain again.
I lifted my head with difficulty. The woman approached in slow confident steps.
Oddly, the young man (formerly fat), the radio man, and the blonde did not intervene.
They stood as guards sealing my escape routes, watching with cold detachment as if watching a lion tear at a mouse in a cage.
They knew she alone could crush me.
It was an intended humiliation.
"This all you've got, Joker?" the woman spoke for the first time. Her voice was cold silk — lethal and beautiful. "Just a rat with cheap tricks and a modified pistol? I expected more from your reputation."
"Cheap tricks keep you alive…" I muttered painfully, pushing up on my hands to stand.
I focused the remaining black Eitra in my legs. In an instant I exploded forward — not toward her, but toward the broken shop window overlooking the street.
"You won't get away!" I shouted and lunged with blinding speed.
I leapt through the window, rolled on the wet asphalt, rain lashing my body like whips.
I scrambled to my feet and ran into a narrow dark alley beside the shop.
The woman was right behind me, her cold breath nearly on my neck.
Suddenly…
Wiiiiizzz!
A supersonic slice of air, followed by a burning flash on the side of my head.
I lost balance and fell hard, rolling into a puddle of mud and black water.
I pressed my hand to the right side of my head. My coat was torn, the mask badly scratched, and warm blood began pouring from a deep wound on my scalp, mixing with the rain.
A sniper round!
I looked up into the dark sky. Amid the heavy rain and low clouds a blinding searchlight snapped into being.
A black assault helicopter, virtually soundless, hovered above — an FBI chopper. Its magical engines muffled most noise.
On the chopper's side I glimpsed the glint of a sniper rifle barrel calibrated with red Eitra.
"Aerial sniper?" My breaths came ragged. The head wound blurred my vision; the world spun.
I tried to get up. Staying exposed meant death.
But before I could steady my knees…
Wiiiiizzz… Boom!
The second sniper shot didn't miss.
This time it didn't aim for my head.
It hit center mass.
I felt a spear of molten fire tear through my belly. The Eitra-charged round lifted me off the ground and flung me two meters backward.
I landed on my back, muddy water splashing around me.
I looked down. A fist-sized hole gaped in my tactical coat, below my stomach. Blood pulsed from it, turning the puddle beneath me a deep, shocking red.
The pain didn't hit all at once; it crawled like a slow, poisonous gnaw, then detonated into pure agony along every nerve in my body.
"Argh!" I screamed behind the mask, my mechanical voice blending with a shattered human moan.
The black-haired woman stood over me in the street under the helicopter's searchlight.
Rain plastered her flawless hair to her face. She looked down at me with coldness.
"This is the end, Joker," she said, lifting her right hand. A sharp blade of concentrated blue Eitra began forming in her palm, ready to sever my head.
My mind was drowning in darkness. Bleeding was lethal. Would I die here? In this filthy street? After I had seen how the world would end? After the System granted me an SSS skill? Would I finish as a rat in the FBI's trap?
"No… impossible…"
I clenched the Glock that had never left my hand.
The little black Eitra left in me — the Eitra of life and death — surged from my heart, ignoring the wounds, transcending pain.
"I will not die here!"
The moment her hand dropped to cut my head, I didn't try to dodge. Instead I moved the pistol faster than I'd ever known I could.
Bam!
The bullet didn't aim for her Eitra-hardened body. It aimed at something faster.
In the instant the shot fired, the woman sensed danger.
She tried to retract her face.
But she was a fraction of a millisecond too late. The black Eitra-infused bullet skimmed the side of her face.
Shssk!
A sliver of Eitra emitted from the projectile tore across her left cheek.
A deep, long wound opened; crimson blood splattered across her flawless white skin.
Her eyes widened in indescribable shock.
For the first time, her mask of ice cracked.
She screamed in pain and surprise and took a step back, smearing her hand across the bloodied cheek.
She had never expected a dying insect to scratch her.
I exploited that single second of distraction.
This is the cunning they always scorned.
I aimed my gun — not at her now, but at the helicopter hovering low above.
I didn't target the sniper. I targeted the exposed Etral power converter on the chopper's tail, glowing faintly blue beneath the rain.
Bam! Bam!
Two rounds hammered the converter.
A violent magical electric explosion roared into the sky. The helicopter lost balance instantly and began to spin like a mad thing.
The searchlight died. The street plunged into chaos: dark, alarms, and the pilot's screams.
The staggered chopper came down hard, its massive rotors nearly gouging the street.
The black-haired woman looked up in horror and had to retreat fast to avoid being crushed beneath the crashing airframe. The chopper slammed into the storefront's façade and erupted into a wall of fire and wreckage, separating me from her with a ring of flame and debris.
Amid the roaring chaos, black smoke, rain, and customers' screams… I rose.
I don't know how I stood. My muscles were tearing, my intestines bled into my shoes, my head pulsed like a war drum. I was a walking corpse.
I grabbed the torn cloth bag — but it was empty! The sniper round had shredded the bottom of the bag as well.
All the diamonds, cores, and gold had spilled into the street.
But I didn't leave empty-handed.
I reached with my shaking hand into the bloodstained muck and picked up one thing.
A single monster core, glowing a dark, purple hue, had lodged in the lining. I gripped it so hard my hand bled.
"This… will do," I whispered weakly.
I turned and dragged my broken body into the dark alley.
The rain still fell, washing the blood I left at each step, but it didn't wash away the pain.
I hobbled, leaning on dirty brick walls; each step felt like a thousand stabs.
I looked at my bloodstained palm and the ruined remains of the mask at my feet.
"What a cosmic joke…" I laughed softly and coughed black blood.
"The Black Joker… nearly dies for one stone. But I… survived. I survived the FBI and an A-rank monster."
I walked into the darkness, mortally wounded, unsure whether I'd make it home or die on the way.
But one thing was certain: my view of the world changed on that cursed night.
"I'll harvest my kin…" I muttered, the red System prompt flashing at the back of my mind.
"I will kill them all before that entity kills me… I swear it."
Elysium's shadows swallowed me, the rain weeping over my sins that had not yet begun.