Midnight. Hero City’s Tower – Level 57, Private Sector V. Unregistered Airspace.
The city didn’t sleep.
It watched.
From the penthouse’s razor-glass windows, the skyline looked like a symphony of knives—jagged silhouettes slicing through low-hanging fog, neon pulsing like blood through veins.
Inside, the room was still. Velvet silence, broken only by the soft hiss of steam rising from a glass of untouched whiskey.
A half-buttoned shirt hung loose over a chiseled chest, muscles taut with the quiet promise of violence. Veins like cords. Skin like forged tal.
Ryken adjusted the cuff of his suit—black as murder and twice as silent.
The air shimred.
A hologram blood in front of him, casting the room in a cold, digital blue glow.
She appeared.
Remi Valso.
Not the ek number-runner people expected.
She was built like sin in heels.
Hourglass hips squeezed tight inside a black pencil skirt, every curve poured into it like molten glass molded by lust. Her white blouse stretched across full, heavy breasts, buttons barely holding the fabric hostage.
A hint of red lace peeked from the collar, tauntingly unprofessional. Her legs—long, smooth, crossed with power—were clad in sheer stockings, heels sharp enough to kill.
A pair of thick, glossy black glasses frad her face, highlighting smoky eyes that knew too much.
Remi looked like she could bankrupt a man with a whisper and bury him with a smile.
"Transaction complete, Mr. Ryken," she said impassively.
Her voice dripped confidence—cool, honeyed, and just a little bored. Like she’d rather be doing anything else. Or anyone else.
A professional aura for an agent known to connect heroes and villains with powerful elites as per the demands of work... mostly unethical and sothing hidden from the eyes of the hero association.
"Ten million Global Credits," she continued. "Untraceable. Washed. Wired. You’re clear to proceed, Mr. Ryken."
Ryken’s lip curled. Not a smile. Sothing colder. Arrogant. Almost... disappointed.
"Ten million," he said aloud, his voice low, weighty—like iron dragged across wet stone.
"For a butler. What did the old bastard do? Piss in soone’s wine?"
He walked across the marble floor—never hurried, never needing to be—and stood before a drawer. It slid open. Then a second drawer slid out from within.
Inside: a suit.
Gold.
A cape folded beside it.
A bold R marked the chest.
’Should’ve asked for more’, he thought. ’If they’re scared of a butler, they’re hiding sothing. And secrets an leverage. Leverage ans power. And power... is the only currency that never loses value.’
As he pulled on the suit, a silent weight settled over his shoulders—not from the cape, but from the na on the target list.
The mission he’d accepted wasn’t simple.
He wasn’t just going after a rogue scientist or a failed experint.
This ti... it was the Blac Corporation.
Their valuation alone could crush small nations. If they chose to retaliate, he could be erased overnight.
But the target wasn’t a family mber. It was their butler.
And for so reason, that servant carried a ten million GC price tag.
Enough money to buy a new life.
Enough to remove his bio-identity chip, vanish with help from the supervillains, and walk the world as a ghost.
That’s why he took it.
Because it wasn’t a family mber. It was just a butler.
And because ten million GC wasn’t sothing you ignored.
In this era, heroes earned by the kill—the remains of monsters brought coin.
But with fewer beasts appearing, and more heroes flooding the scene, competition had turned brutal.
PR, private contracts, and corporate bidding wars decided who got to fight.
Whenever a monster erged, the Hero Association didn’t send help. Not imdiately.
Instead, a five-minute silent auction was triggered. Corporations bid in secret.
Whoever won gained exclusive rights to send in their own heroes—and reap the spoils.
The defeated beast? The corpse? All belonged to the winner.
But the cost was steep—bidding rights, collateral fines for city damage, mandatory taxes.
By the ti the corpse was sold back to the Association, heroes barely walked away with a few thousand GC.
Useless bread crumbs.
And Ryken wasn’t a rat.
He turned to the other direction, where the entire wall resembled a gate rather than a re tallic design.
The floor creaked.
With a smooth chanical hiss, the wall slid open before him.
"Co on, my puppy," Ryken said.
His voice coiled through the silence—low, commanding, soaked in lazy arrogance. Not a shout, not a whisper. Just enough to make the room submit.
KHHRHRHHKKKKK!!
As if the wall had been soundproof, the sound that followed was too sharp, too nacing—sothing belonging to a monster.
He stepped forward—each stride deliberate, spine straight, radiating a stillness that betrayed the thick tension in the air. Just ahead, within arm’s reach, a beast had been forcibly cramd into the chamber revealed behind the wall.
A centipede-like abomination, its chitinous body pulsing with latent energy, yellow compound eyes tracking movent with insectile precision. Its legs clawed at its own flesh in impatient fury, twisted by confinent.
"Beco my source of inco, my little investnt," Ryken said, stretching out his hand.
KHRRKRHHHHH!
The monster shrieked—writhing—but Ryken seized it by the upper thorax, veins bulging in his arm. With a grunt of exertion, he hurled the creature through the building.
The massive glass window shattered. The surrounding walls cracked from the force of the throw.
CRASH.
The entire wall of reinforced razor-glass erupted outward, shards scattering like diamond dust in the night wind. Alarms scread red. Air surged in, carrying the hum of a city far too jaded to care.
KHRHH...KKKHH...!
The beast spiraled through the open sky, its scream trailing behind like a cot’s tail.
Ryken stood within the ruined fra of the tower, golden cape whipping violently in the wind, his suit gleaming under the pulsing light.
"Let’s go to Spain, my football."
And with that—he leapt, landing another punch into the monster’s body. It wasn’t sharp, but it was forceful—launched with such pressure that the creature’s hard, shell-like fra made it the perfect football to carry the ga forward.
-----
From the sky, they descended like a teor—Ryken and the writhing beast in tow, the heavens tearing open in their wake.
Beneath them sprawled a lavish estate nestled among the rocky peaks of Montserrat. The sprawling mansion shimred under moonlight, unaware of the storm about to fall from above.
Ryken hovered midair, one hand gripping the twenty-ton monster with a single finger, his other hand casually flicking through a holographic map projected from his watch.
"Let’s see... kitchen? Garden? Ah—servants’ quarters. Perfect."
With a half-lidded smirk, he angled his body, tightened his grip—
—and punched.
The beast rocketed downward like a divine punishnt, crashing through the designated wing of the mansion. Walls splintered. Glass vaporized. The ground trembled.
But Ryken wasn’t done.
He lunged after it.
Both fists forward, he struck just as the creature hit the foundation—an impact that split the earth. The entire section of the building caved in under the force, stone and steel collapsing like a house of cards.
BOOOOM.
Dust exploded outward in a choking wave. Screams and panicked cries tore through the air. The mountain groaned.
For a mont, it felt like the whole of Spain had shuddered.
And then—silence.
A figure erged from the rubble.
Cape torn, gold suit smudged with ash, but still gleaming beneath it all.
Ryken brushed a bit of debris off his shoulder, stepped over a smoldering timber, and glanced at the crater he’d made.
He raised a hand, offered a sheepish shrug.
"Sorry, I guess?"
But his body flinched as he heard a sharp, chilling casual voice.
"SORRY? Of course you would be... aFTeR TRAMPLING on a gRAve you didn’t even KNOW BELONGED TO YOU, Pfft."
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