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Shadow ninjas moved like living ink, slipping bundles of cash into a swirling void at Sylas's feet a Shadow Dominion gateway he'd learned to use as storage even without full traversal unlocked.
It was a loophole he'd discovered: he couldn't travel through the Dominion yet, but he could open a localized portal to stash things and briefly step in and out from the same spot.
From a chair, Sylas watched the operation like a foreman on a night shift, idly flicking open the System store.
"One-oh-five Sin Points," he murmured. "Let's scale up."
With a thought, he activated 100 additional shadow ninjas.
Inky silhouettes rose out of his shadow, one after another, the summon radius capped at five meters, and entry points bound to darkness.
Space was tight, so he stopped at twenty; any more would turn the room into a traffic jam.
Footsteps thundered beyond the door.
Sylas rolled his wrists, dropping his voice into that unsettling, doubled register the Dominion sometimes lent him. "Alright. Collection time."
The door burst inward. Armed men poured into the room, only to freeze at the sight: black-clad phantoms calmly feeding stacks of cash into a bottomless shadow.
"Don't move!" the floor boss barked, pale but trying to sound tough. "You so much as twitch and I put holes in your mask."
Sylas tilted his head. "See me moving?"
Trr~
A spider-sense spike screamed behind his eyes.
He pivoted a sniper round, punched through the window, and buried it in the wall where his head had been.
Gunfire erupted from the doorway. Sylas dropped straight down into the Dominion aperture, vanishing in a fold of black silk.
The remaining ninjas returned fire with throwing spikes, dropping several gunmen at the threshold.
"Where'd he go?!" the boss snarled, slamming a fist into the doorframe hard enough to split skin. "Find him! I want that freak's head on a—"
He didn't finish.
Sylas blossomed out of the floor shadow behind him and kicked upward like a piston. The man lifted off his feet and collapsed, out cold.
Sylas exhaled, steadying his stomach. "Note to self: don't overdo it."
The room outside descended into chaos. With the supposed boss down and the vault not yet empty, greed consumed what discipline remained.
"Grab the cash!"
"That's mine!"
"Back off!"
Shots cracked. Shouting turned to screams. When the smoke thinned, only four or five were left standing and they still couldn't help fighting over the leftover pile, easily millions.
Sylas slipped through them like a ghost. "Pardon me."
In the main hall, the bar was eerily empty bodies sprawled where panicked runners had fallen earlier. He picked up one of the enforcers' throwing spikes, tested its edge with a tap against a metal pillar. "Sharp enough."
He flicked it toward a distant open window. A half-beat later, a dull thud answered from the dark outside.
"That's for the sniper," he said softly.
Something long and wooden caught his eye a locked case against the wall.
He lifted it, tried the latch, then simply cracked the cheap lock with a twist of his wrist.
Inside lay a blade, maybe eighty centimeters, mirror-bright and perfectly balanced. He gave it a few easy cuts through the air, whump, whump, and sheathed it with a grin.
"Keeper."
With the vault nearly cleaned out, he had the ninjas sweep scattered contraband into the portal as well. Diamonds, he decided, he'd keep as reserves rather than liquidate moving cash via crime was faster than fencing gemstones.
Satisfied he hadn't left traceable evidence, Sylas stepped back into the bar and found the final welcoming committee waiting: a dozen hardcases who hadn't bolted.
"Looks like we've got one more guest," someone sneered.
Sylas glanced at the bodies on the floor, at the clock on the wall, and sighed. "On a timer. Let's make it quick."
He surged forward. A blur. A shoulder check into a wall. A sweep, a palm to the sternum, an elbow to the jaw. Men hit the ground, some of them hanging by torn light fixtures before they even knew where he'd gone.
Two minutes later, the room was quiet.
"Two minutes?" he muttered, checking the clock again. "Could be tighter."
From a fallen enforcer, he lifted a phone, unlocked it with a thumb, toggled location services, and dialed.
"Hi, yeah," he said calmly. "Underground weapons and cash trafficking at Eagleridge Bar's back rooms. You'll want a lot of units." He dropped the phone to the floor.
A System ping chimed:
[Reported Black-Market Operation — Justice Points +100]
"Neat." He stepped into the alley and melted into the night as sirens began to converge from far away, the Shadow Dominion swallowing the last of the stolen money behind him.
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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