The minivan lurched to a halt beneath a flickering streetlamp. Even as Midnight neared, the district remained drowned in artificial light.
This neon pulse usually throbbed until two in the morning before the streets finally went cold.
Putato leaned against the window, tilting his head to stare at the severed human head dangling from the lamp post. Its eyes, wide with a final, frozen terror, stared down at the asphalt, yet the passing crowds acted as if it were invisible.
The Carige Gang had left it there as a jagged warning.
"If it wasn't for Khaji, would I be hanging up there too?"
While he brooded, a low-level subordinate approached the van with his hands buried in his pockets.
"Hey, big brothers, how was the score today? Tired of the wheel and looking for a swap?"
"Get in the car."
"Heh, I'm supposed to be watching this trophy. Leaving my post is a bad look, especially with you in there alone."
The moment the man leaned in, Putato seized his ear and hauled him violently into the cabin. He hit the passenger seat with a thud, his soul rattled.
"Are you insane?!"
"Where is the Carige Gang stronghold?"
"Bastard, you're here to start a War, aren't you?"
Losing all patience, Putato drove his Honesuki blade into the man's right ear. The subordinate curled into a ball, trembling like a trapped bird as blood soaked into the upholstery.
These Carige Gang filth had long since traded their humanity for greed!
"We... we have dozens of holes. The boss sleeps wherever he parks the engine. I'll take you there tomorrow, okay?"
"If I don't see your boss tonight, you won't live to see the sun."
"The buses! It's two buses!"
"To dodge a revenge hit, the boss stays on a bus that never stops moving. The second one holds the goods waiting for auction—Enkephalin is cheap and keeps the cargo quiet."
"Give me the route."
Putato ignited the engine, his rage a volatile pressure. Given how fast these vultures worked, the victim count had likely climbed into the hundreds.
But Lesti was taken only hours ago; there was no time for her to be sold off yet. He had to find her now!
Putato buried the pedal. With the Hematic Pump surging, he piloted the minivan like a getaway sled. The violent turbulence sent the guide's head slamming repeatedly against the interior panels.
"Residential sector up ahead. The buses circle this block like sharks. Bringing a van into another Syndicate's turf is a suicide move."
Outside, rows of cramped houses with tiny yards blurred past. In the shadows, groups gathered around grills, while others drank under strings of colored lights.
A mob was blocking the road. Even as Putato blared the horn, the crowd didn't budge, making his brow furrow behind his mask.
"I'm with Carige! Kill this brat for me! There's a Bounty on his head!"
The guide took advantage of the slow-down, diving through the open window and shrieking to the crowd. He rolled across the pavement before scrambling to his feet, gasping.
Damn it!
Putato felt the cold stares of the surrounding mob. Rage burned away his hesitation. He grabbed a gray helmet from the dash and snapped it over his head.
He hadn't stepped into Syndicate territory blind. He was armored in elite gear stripped from Death Squad, armed only with a short blade. To keep his presence a ghost, he had forced Katae to dye the suit a neutral, grayish-white.
For this hunt, Putato wouldn't use the name Fixer Vanda, nor would he ride under the Stray Dogs colors.
"What are you looking at? Do something!"
The subordinate, clutching the raw wound on his head, screamed at the locals, expecting the Syndicate name to carry weight. Instead, they stood like statues, watching the drama unfold.
The man turned in a panic, only to see a grayish-white gauntlet lunging for his throat. Before he could scream, an agonizing pain exploded through his very bones.
BOOM!
Putato's arm vibrated as he hoisted the man. The suit's exoskeleton technology made the lethal movement feel weightless. His blade found the man's eye socket with a sickening crunch, ending the shriek instantly.
The gray mist curled back into Putato's frame.
Fighting through the phantom stabs of pain clawing at his nerves, Putato ground his teeth and turned to the crowd. The onlookers recoiled in unison.
"Where is the Carige Gang boss? Speak, or die."
His voice, warped into a metallic rasp by the helmet's modulator, filled the street. The more fragile residents bolted for their front doors.
Putato wondered if he looked monstrous enough, but then the whispers started.
"They went to the district to celebrate. They usually park near the club when they get back."
"I heard the buses are idling at the Peak Club."
"I have the flyer for the place right here. Three streets over, the route is marked."
A neon flyer was tossed from the crowd, fluttering to his feet.
They stole glances at him as they spoke, but the leaden-gray visor of his helmet gave them no answers.
BOOM!
Putato revved the van. Clutching the map, he pushed the engine to its limit. The need to align with the Molar Office was becoming a desperate itch.
Without those veteran Fixers, hunting the Myn Church alone would be a suicide mission.
...
Down a road choked with neon and decay.
Two rusted buses sat idly to the right of the club. A few guards, left behind while their betters partied, were nursing bottles of cheap wine.
"On a night like this, why are we stuck outside?"
"You go in, then! Who's going to watch the cage?"
"Who's stupid enough to mess with us? We're just the new meat, that's why we're out here."
Leaning against the grill, a thug stared hungrily at the club's glowing lobby, barely noticing the lack of a reply.
Putato, lungs burning, walked up beside him. The guard finally looked at him with a confused scowl.
These vermin made it far too easy to find them.
SNAP!
Putato reached out and broke the man's neck like a dry twig. He struggled to rip off his safety helmet, then grabbed the pneumatic syringe, clicking it empty three times.
Hiss, hiss.
Putato checked the gauge on the cylinder; the reservoirs were dry. The capacity of this gear was pathetic.
Re-securing his helmet, Putato shattered the bus windshield with a single punch and vaulted inside. His eyes locked onto thirteen hostages slumped in the seats, their limbs bound tight.
In the driver's seat sat a crate of Enkephalin, the reason the cabin was so hauntingly quiet.
Putato quickly drew the drug into two empty syringes. He scanned the rows until he found Lesti in the back. She was wearing a yellow dress, looking every bit like a fragile, porcelain doll.
"Hey, are you fully sober?"
"Who are you?"
Even with her weak tone, Putato confirmed Lesti still had her reason, though she was heavily under the influence of injected Enkephalin.
Putato cut everyone's bonds. But they were all too sluggish to run, clearly paralyzed by the drug's effects.
Putato slapped Lesti until her face swelled, forcing her back to sobriety. Only then did he step out of the car, his mind somewhat at ease.
The sound of the buses fleeing alerted the Carige Gang members inside the club. Three of them rushed out to investigate, only to find the figure in the gray visor guarding the main entrance.
"Damn it! Someone else is trying to steal the Carige Gang business! You think you can handle us?"
"If this stock is wasted, the boss will strangle us!"
"I just picked out my order! This is so frustrating."
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The next moment, three piercing screams ripped through the club. Even the workers in the hall were startled into a jolt.
Putato, enduring agonizing pain, dropped to one knee, desperately concentrating to pull back his death aura. Only then could he barely manage to move.
A fat man, rich and furious, shoved open the main door while still clutching bloody pliers.
He stood at the peak of the third floor, looking down at Putato, but he didn't even bother to ask who the intruder was. Instead, he turned and offered an apology, treating Putato like an afterthought.
"Sorry for disturbing your artistic endeavors."
Putato looked up and saw the man next to the obese boss was wearing a white robe. The pure white beret made him look elegant and serene, like a refined artist—a total contradiction to the rigid killers Putato usually saw.
However, the massive bloodstains on his white shirt signaled his true nature.
When Putato saw the triple layer of coiled rings on the man's fingers, his heart jumped. Every trait indicated the man was a member of The Ring.
They, like The Thumb, belonged to the Five Fingers. Their rank was lethally dangerous—a Star of the City!
"It's fine. Let the guests appreciate your homework too."
"We're holding an Auction here tomorrow anyway. It won't hurt to use the remaining materials. Just don't let the experts around here judge it too harshly."
The dozens of gang members had already put Putato under pressure, but he hadn't expected high-level masters to be lurking above.
The Ring apprentice and the Carige Gang boss stepped aside. A woman with a single ponytail pushed out a food cart.
Inside a transparent glass counter on the cart, the food was on display. The woman reached out to present her 'artwork' to Putato.
The triple rings on her fingers glittered, filling Putato with pure despair. That symbolized the identity of a Ring Maestro!
Even if she called herself an artist, only a Grade 1 Fixer could hope to deal with that level of madness.
He had intended to use the death aura to wipe out these Syndicate merchants in one go. The death aura was perfect for seizing control of a scene through raw force.
This power, which granted his desires as long as he endured the pain, tempted Putato.
As long as he screamed, everything would be resolved. What could be better than that?!
It was an unstoppable force, just like a pneumatic syringe, making Putato more unrestrained.
But he never expected to barge into a Ring lair.
"My student's work is still a bit immature, but very creative."
The artwork was a tree.
A mass of severed hands gripped each other to form twisted branches. Fresh, nauseating blood covered the limbs like bark, and at the ends, fruit shaped like human heads hung low.
The heads, held tight by the hands, were still alive—emitting a choked, inexplicable sound like a manifestation of Hell.
Even the Carige Gang members below turned pale at the horror. They averted their eyes, while the apprentice proudly spread her arms.
"What do you think? It's not quite natural yet, but it has surpassed my own standards."
"This is Art!"
The Carige Gang boss waved his pliers and cheered, his fat jiggling with every movement.
But a rough voice from below cut through them both, leaving them stunned.
"Trash."
Boiling rage made Putato's entire body tremble. His voice was weak, but his nerves were stretched taut, beyond his control.
These monsters didn't kidnap people for food, nor were they just shaking down guests; they were using living humans to create this tasteless trash!
"What is your opinion?"
The Ring apprentice didn't seem to notice Putato's fury, asking with genuine interest. He turned his head, frowning as he re-evaluated his own work.
Immediately, he shook his head.
"It could still be made perfect. Tell me, do you want to become a flawless piece of my artwork?"
Everyone in the club immediately drew their weapons. The crowded Carige Gang members on the third floor leaned over the railings, their eyes fixed on Putato with pure malice. To them, he was nothing more than an ant waiting to be crushed.
No one believed an unknown nobody could escape this room, especially with a distinguished guest from the Ring watching.
Suddenly, a heavy gray mist bled from Putato's body. It was a strange, crawling vapor, thicker than smoke, slithering across the floor like a living thing.
"Scream," Putato rasped. "You'll do it right here, until you die."
The enemy was powerful and held the advantage of numbers, but Putato was possessed by a single, focused will to kill.
Putato reached out and gripped the Sword of Deathly Thorns. The moment his fingers closed around it, a surge of power told him that nothing could stop his advance. The only price would be his own agony.
"Oh? Is this your artwork? A patch of fog?"
"AAAAAAH!!!"
Putato instantly collapsed, clutching his helmet. He let out a terrifying, panicked shriek that sounded like a foreign language to the stunned crowd.
But in the next heartbeat, the screaming became an infection.
"OWAAAH A A A!"
"PAIN, PAIN, PAIN!!"
The suffering of the dying submerged the three men standing in front of Putato like a tidal wave, before violently exploding outward.
The first floor of the club transformed into a choir of agony. Even the gang members upstairs froze, their blood turning to ice. Even the Ring Apprentice stood dumbfounded as the air turned toxic.
Escape was a fantasy. It was already too late.
Putato crawled through the mess, driven by his own pain. The small knife in his right hand—the one wrapped in dirty tape—began to rhythmically stab into the eyes of his enemies. Every thrust was fueled by his own suffering.
The suffering of the newly dead compounded the existing chorus of screams. The entire Peak Club erupted into a frantic, frenzied howl.
"GENIUS!!!"
The Ring Maestro gripped the railing, her body trembling with a sick excitement. She had lost all composure, her mind consumed by her pursuit of art.
In an instant, the suffering of death forced everyone to forget their humanity. They writhed in the dirt, seeking any way to dull the intense pain searing through their souls.
As Putato sliced the throat of another man, the surrounding area hit a breaking point. No one could ignore the piercing screams echoing in the darkness.
"YOU ARE THE ONE! AAAAH! YOU ARE THE ONE!!!"
An agonizingly long minute passed. Even the Ring Maestro was on the verge of a total breakdown, her ears desperate to catch every note of this perfect chorus, even as her mind was robbed by the pain.
Finally, someone reached their limit and committed suicide. Three separate streams of death aura burst from the corpses, causing the crawling Putato to completely buckle.
CRAP!!
Putato, clinging to a shred of reason, realized something was catastrophically wrong. Through bloodshot eyes, he tried to pull the death aura back into himself, but every time he concentrated, a new wave of agony caused him to panic. The mist spread further.
"AAAAAAH!!!"
The room was a soup of pure terror.
The Carige Gang boss, clutching a pair of heavy pliers, slammed them into his own skull before hurling himself off the third-floor balcony.
The moment he hit the death aura, all of Putato's efforts to contain it vanished. His consciousness blurred as he hugged his helmet, his remaining reason evaporating into the fog.
The Ring Maestro laughed like a lunatic while she began to torment the corpse of her own apprentice. She turned her dissection tools on her own flesh, carving an extremely twisted 'A' into the floorboards.
"HAHAHAHA!!"
The last living soul in the club threw herself down the stairs, clutching the exhibition case containing her apprentice's dying artwork.
BANG!
The Tree—and the apprentice's final agony—was suddenly unleashed by the death aura.
Putato's pupils dilated instantly. At this moment, both his anger and his reason were dead.
The death aura erupted again, no longer answering to any master.
Gray mist choked out the neon lights.
To Putato's fractured mind, it felt like an eternity had passed, yet perhaps it was only a few seconds.
An unimaginable numbness settled over him, stopping even his ability to think.
It was the phantom pain that finally dragged him back. Putato suddenly remembered he was apparently still alive.
"Uh… uh…"
The death aura had dissipated, but the intense phantom pain made a rusty, rattling sound escape his hoarse throat.
"Pinnacle of The City."
The auditory hallucination forced Putato to try and crawl.
The club was silent now, save for the corpses that seemed ready to transform at any second.
After lying frozen on the floor for ten more minutes, Putato managed to drag himself up. The streets outside were littered with the clothes of Sweepers and a strange, sticky fluid that almost flooded the roads.
As he crawled, Putato became coated in the unknown slime, but he was incapable of processing what had happened.
Not until he saw the corpses of those who had tried to flee.
Every door he passed was swung open. The entire sector was eerily silent.
Putato looked at the endless carpet of corpses that radiated outward from the club, the epicenter of the slaughter. He couldn't comprehend the scale of the annihilation, so he just kept crawling.
Eventually, he stumbled upon a corpse in a tuxedo, its throat slashed open. Putato felt a strange twitch in his heart—a sensation that wasn't accompanied by pain.
A multi-colored ring tattoo was etched onto his heart, slowly allowing Putato to reclaim his rationality.
The moment his thoughts cleared, Putato began to crawl with a desperate, frantic terror.
He didn't dare look up. He didn't dare look at the corpses surrounding him.
The reality of what he had done was too terrifying to face.
It wasn't until Putato reached a place where he could hear human voices that he finally buried his head like a bug in the dirt.
"Go home. I just want to go home."
He tried to outrun the phantom pain and the crushing guilt. His fingers, worn smooth from the pavement, moved faster and faster. All he wanted was the safety of his four walls.
But the phantom pain struck again, leaving him writhing on the sidewalk.
His cold, hard rationality exposed his guilt like a raw nerve.
The weight of it made him lose his composure once more. When he finally looked up, he realized he was already there. He was home.
Thank heavens, it was still early.
"Brother, I've been waiting for you forever. Why didn't you come back before the deep winter?"
"Those three Prosthetic people all went out to find you. They're probably at a hotel by now."