The ten seconds Kaelen had allotted stretched into an eternity within the opulent confines of Viktor's office. The air itself seemed to hold its breath, thick with the weight of Viktor's decision. The loan shark, a man accustomed to being the apex predator in his concrete jungle, was sweating. It wasn't the heat of the room, but the cold, absolute pressure emanating from the slender young man before him. It was a pressure that went beyond physical intimidation; it was a fundamental assertion of hierarchy, a master looking at a servant and waiting for the correct answer.
Viktor's shrewd mind, a finely honed instrument of risk and reward, cycled through a thousand possibilities. His pride, the very foundation of his identity, screamed at him to refuse, to order his guards to tear this arrogant boy apart. But his survival instinct, the deeper, more primal part of his brain that had kept him alive and on top for twenty years, was screaming even louder. It told him that the young man was not bluffing. It told him that the pill that had miraculously healed Leo's hand was just the tip of a colossal iceberg. He was being offered a seat at a table where the stakes were higher than he had ever imagined, and the price of admission was his pride.
He looked at the impassive guards, at the terrified but awed face of Leo, and finally back at Kaelen's calm, bottomless eyes. He saw no room for negotiation, no hint of compromise. There was only the offer, cold and absolute.
Nine seconds had passed.
With a deep, shuddering sigh that seemed to drain all the fight out of him, Viktor gave a short, sharp nod. "I accept," he said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.
Kaelen's expression did not change. There was no triumph, no satisfaction. It was the simple acknowledgment of an expected outcome. "A wise decision," he said. His sovereign aura, which had been pressing down on the room, receded instantly, and the air grew light again.
He turned to leave. "My debt is settled. That is my initial investment in our... enterprise. I will require a secure location to work, untraceable and private. And a list of certain rare herbs and minerals. I will provide you with the specifics tomorrow. For now, sell the two remaining pills you have. Use the profits to establish our foundation. Do not fail me."
He walked towards the door, his authority so absolute that Viktor, the master of this domain, felt an instinctive urge to bow. "Wait," Viktor said, his voice now holding a note of genuine respect. "How will I contact you?"
Kaelen paused at the door. "You will not," he said without turning around. "I will contact you."
He opened the door and stepped out, leaving behind a silent office and a group of men whose understanding of the world had been irrevocably shattered. The two guards in the hallway, who had been standing frozen since he entered, flinched as he passed, their eyes wide with fear.
Kaelen walked through the darkened, empty Crimson Lounge, his footsteps the only sound besides the distant, muffled thud of his own new, stronger heart. He was a ghost moving through a world that was just beginning to wake up to his presence. He pushed open the heavy main doors and stepped out into the grey afternoon light of the city.
The air felt different now. His enhanced senses, a gift from his first refinement, were still a novelty. He could feel the subtle flow of wind currents around the tall buildings, smell the exhaust from a bus a block away mixed with the scent of rain on hot pavement from a brief shower that had just passed. He could feel the faint, chaotic hum of a million mortal lives, a cacophony of weak, flickering soul-auras that was both irritating and invigorating.
He began to walk, with no particular destination in mind, letting his feet carry him away from the garish lights of the entertainment district. He needed to think. He had secured a mortal subordinate, a tool to gather resources and generate wealth. This solved his most immediate, mundane problems. The ten-thousand-dollar debt was no longer a threat hanging over his head. The quest from the System was effectively complete, even if he hadn't received the formal notification yet.
His thoughts turned to the more significant threat: Dante Valerius and his cultivator attendant, Elias. He knew, with absolute certainty, that they would not let the matter of the inkstone rest. He had publicly humiliated a proud young master and defied a cultivator. Retaliation was not a possibility; it was an inevitability.
He considered his options. He could hide, using his superior intellect to disappear into the city's anonymous depths. But that was the path of a coward, a tactic for prey, not for a sovereign. He could try to leave the city, but he had no resources and no knowledge of the world beyond its borders.
No, the only path forward was to confront the threat head-on. To meet their aggression with his own, to establish his dominance so completely and brutally that they would never dare to trouble him again. To do that, he needed more power. The single wisp of Chaos Energy he could generate from ambient miasma was not enough. The inkstone was depleted. He needed a steady supply of spiritual energy or the materials to create more potent alchemical pills. The arrangement with Viktor was the key to that.
He walked for what felt like an hour, his mind processing strategies and plans, his path taking him from the bustling commercial streets to quieter, more industrial areas of the city. He eventually found himself in a network of narrow back alleys and service corridors that ran behind a row of old warehouses. The air here was cool and damp, smelling of rust and decay. The towering brick walls blocked out the sun, plunging the alley into a perpetual state of twilight. It was a deserted, forgotten part of the city.
He felt the shift in the atmosphere before he saw anything. A subtle change in the air pressure. A sudden, unnatural silence as the distant city noise seemed to fade away. It was the clumsy, unmistakable sign of a low-level cultivator trying to isolate a space.
Kaelen stopped walking. He stood in the center of the grimy alley, his hands in his pockets, his expression calm. He had been followed.
From the shadows at the far end of the alley, a figure emerged. It was the old man, Elias. His face, which had been pale with fear at the market, was now a mask of grim determination. He had swapped his simple attendant's clothes for a more practical, dark martial arts uniform.
"You are a difficult man to track," Elias said, his voice a low rasp. "You have tricks. But my young master is not one to be denied."
Kaelen gave a small, almost imperceptible sigh. He had hoped for a day or two of peace to consolidate his plans. It seemed even that was a luxury.
"I assume you are not here to apologize for your master's poor manners," Kaelen replied, his voice echoing slightly between the brick walls.
"I am here for the stone," Elias said, his stance shifting. He spread his feet, sinking into a low, animalistic fighting posture. It was a crude, inefficient stance, full of openings that a true master would never commit to, but it was the best he knew. "Give it to me, and I will be merciful. I will only break your limbs. Resist, and I will be forced to turn your organs into pulp."
The threat was so pathetic, so utterly without weight, that Kaelen almost laughed. He had faced down cosmic horrors whose very gaze could unmake reality. And now, he was being threatened by an old man in a back alley whose entire understanding of power was based on which bones to break first.
"You have chosen your path," Kaelen said softly, a note of finality in his tone. "So be it."
Elias took this as a refusal. With a guttural roar, he lunged.
To a mortal, his speed would have been impressive. He crossed the ten meters between them in a blur, his hand, gnarled and powerful, chopping through the air like an axe, aimed directly at Kaelen's neck. He was channeling the entirety of his weak Qi Sensing power into this single strike, intending to end the fight before it even began.
To Kaelen, the attack was a joke. It was happening in excruciatingly slow motion. He saw everything. He saw the flawed footwork that left Elias off-balance. He saw the telegraphed shoulder movement that broadcasted the attack's trajectory. He saw the inefficient way the spiritual energy was gathered in the man's hand, wasting most of its potential on a flashy but ultimately weak display.
Kaelen didn't even bother to use his Chaos Energy. He didn't need it.
As Elias's hand was just inches from his neck, Kaelen moved. It was not a grand or flashy movement. He simply took a single, effortless step to the side. The chopping hand, filled with all of Elias's power, whiffed past him, its momentum carrying the old man forward.
At the same time, Kaelen's own hand moved, not in a strike, but with a calm, almost gentle precision. He did not punch. He did not chop. He simply extended two fingers and, with the perfect application of leverage and an understanding of mortal anatomy that was divine in its completeness, he tapped Elias on the side of his knee joint.
There was a sickening, wet pop.
Elias screamed, a high, thin sound of pure agony. His lunge turned into a stumbling, uncontrolled fall as his knee joint, now completely dislocated, refused to support his weight. He crashed to the grimy pavement, clutching his leg, his face a mask of shock and excruciating pain.
The fight, such as it was, was over. It had lasted less than two seconds.
Kaelen stood over the groaning, pathetic figure on the ground, his shadow falling across him. He looked down, his expression one of utter indifference.
"Your master is impatient," he said conversationally, his voice as calm as if he were discussing the weather. "And you... you are weak. A poor combination."
He knelt beside the writhing old man, ignoring his pained curses. He reached out and, with a speed Elias could not follow, his fingers darted out, pressing on a series of nerve clusters in the man's neck and shoulders. Elias's body went limp, the pain momentarily vanishing, replaced by a terrifying, complete paralysis. He could still see and hear, but he could not move a muscle.
"Now," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a low whisper. "You will tell me about the Valerius family. You will tell me everything you know. Their strength. Their connections. Their place in this city's hidden world. And you will not lie. Because I will know if you are lying." He leaned in closer, the golden light beginning to swirl in his eyes once more. "And I assure you, the pain of a dislocated knee is nothing compared to the pain of a dissected soul."
The interrogation began. It was not long. Faced with Kaelen's terrifying, soul-reading gaze, Elias's will crumbled completely. He spoke in a panicked, babbling torrent, revealing everything. The Valerius family was indeed a minor local power, a martial arts clan that had carved out a niche for itself by supplying security and "special services" to the city's mortal elite. They had a few cultivators, all in the Qi Sensing realm like himself. Their true power came from their wealth and their connections, and from their subservience to a much more powerful "Main House" of the Valerius Clan, located in another city, a detail Elias only knew through rumors.
When he was finished, when every last drop of information had been squeezed from him, Elias looked up at Kaelen, his eyes filled with a desperate, pleading hope. "I've told you everything... Please... let me go..."
Kaelen stood up, brushing a piece of dust from his trousers. He looked down at the paralyzed man on the ground.
"Your master sent you here to cripple me," he said, his voice flat. "It is only right that I return the message."
He raised his foot and, with a calm, deliberate, and utterly dispassionate movement, he brought his heel down hard on Elias's good knee.
The sound of bone cracking, sharp and loud, echoed through the silent alleyway.
Elias's scream was a raw, animal sound of pure agony, a sound that was quickly choked off as the pain overwhelmed his senses and he mercifully passed out.
Kaelen looked down at the unconscious, broken man for a moment longer, his expression unreadable. Then, he turned and walked away, disappearing back into the twilight shadows of the city, leaving behind a clear and brutal message for Dante Valerius.
The game had changed. And he was no longer the prey.