Finnian headed out, paused after a few steps, doubled back with hesitation, then squatted gravely and gripped Ithaqua’s shoulders. “If an enemy ever pulls that on you? No mercy. Gut him.”
Hotel venue. Countdown: 1:30.
Hastur, deep in his bad-example demo, kept fumbling the tale. “Then crises hit, and we… got physical… Uh?”
He scanned the crowd again—eyes aglow with scandalized glee (who knew the backstory was this steamy?). “Why do you all wear the same ring?”
“Oh, this?” Diego Vincent flashed his signet with a booming laugh. “Symbol of our club—for Babylon Company’s inner circle.”
He tapped the carving. “Hanging Gardens—recognize it? Stands for Babylon. Tell you what: if Lancer’s game, I’d love to nominate him as family elder…”
Hastur had tuned out the pitch.
The instant Diego Vincent name-dropped the club, the system pinged. The Task Window updated: tacked onto the end of [Revealed Factions] was “Babylon High-End Membership Club.”
Hastur: “…?”
Why yank this Babylon sub-club out as its own faction? Diego’s loyalties clashing with Old Hank’s?
Whatever. Pointless to dwell. One faction left unrevealed… the missile trigger-puller?
Countdown: 1:14.
Hastur felt a nuzzle at his nape. G8273 angled over, warm lips grazing cool skin, mumbling through the intimate camouflage:
“Planted some bait near the hotel—faked a Connacht jammer glitch. Fingers crossed the enemy bites first… saves me legwork.”
Hastur barely registered G8273’s lips working his neck or Diego’s nonstop sales pitch. His eyes bored into the Task Window details.
[…Revealed Factions: Company, Wings of Michael Medical Company, Caesar Gang, G8273, Orphanage, Babylon Company Core Executives, Total Police Station, Casey, Babylon High-End Membership Club…]
Sandwiched amid the powerhouses, one “faction” looked pitifully thin—utterly unremarkable, no reason to call out. Yet there it sat, glaringly conspicuous.
Insight flashed through Hastur’s mind. He clasped G8273’s hand splayed across his midriff and nodded politely to Diego and the fawning entourage.
“Lancer doesn’t seem to be feeling well. He’s not usually this clingy. I’ll take him back to the room and check on him.”
The countdown hit one full minute.
Hastur dragged G8273 into an empty private room on the first floor, slammed the door shut, and asked, “Do you remember that little girl the Caesar Gang kidnapped? You accessed her computer. How were her hacking skills?”
Dustin’s voice instantly sharpened with alarm through the earpiece. “What? What little girl?? Hold on—if I heard that right, you’re just letting a young girl stay in the clutches of a black gang without doing a damn thing… Hey!! Is someone even listening to me?”
Hastur casually relayed their location to Dustin, then continued at breakneck speed, “What makes her special? The Caesar Gang is big enough to go toe-to-toe with the Dismer Gang. Why kidnap an underage girl whose skills aren’t even top-tier to help them? The Black Market’s full of more experienced hackers.”
Adolf was the first to catch on. “To take the fall.”
“When planning an operation, the careful types sometimes bring along a mediocre accomplice on purpose. It’s not charity—it’s so they can throw that person under the bus as a scapegoat or sacrificial lamb whenever needed.”
G8273 leaned against the door without a word, but his eyes flickered green once more.
Hastur pieced his thoughts together aloud. “That narrows it down a lot—after all, only two groups knew the Caesar Gang hired Casey and could influence that decision.”
One was the Police Station, but the Chief Commissioner just wanted to use the Caesar Gang to stop the missile transfer. He wouldn’t risk getting himself blown up.
The other… was the Caesar Gang itself.
The answer was obvious.
Just as the Nirvana Gang split into left and right factions, or how Babylon Company spawned its little cliques, the Caesar Gang wasn’t a monolith either.
If some members were assigned to crash the banquet, others had been left behind to hold the fort. Clearly, among those stay-behinds, someone wanted their rival stuck at the High Pei Street Hotel forever. But who exactly—
G8273’s right eye projected an image of a man. “Colin Newman. Caesar Gang Cleaner. I traced him through Casey’s Brain Core—he left marks from his intrusion. Wait.”
“?” G8273’s voice came out sharp and urgent, drawing a sidelong glance from Hastur. “What’s wrong?”
G8273 instantly projected a flood of video feeds, pulling in surveillance footage from various angles that caught a fleeting black shadow streaking across the sky.
“Half a month ago, he paid a dying old soldier to be his final trump card. Right now, that soldier’s piloting a military fighter jet from seventy years ago—no smart systems installed—straight toward the hotel.”
A transaction contract overlaid the video. “He also bought three Hydrogen Bombs. I have to assume they’re loaded on that fighter jet right now.”
“What???” Dustin’s shrill voice nearly shattered the earpiece. “Is this idiot binge-watching popcorn blockbusters?! There are so many people here—and the Company and syndicates too!!”
Adolf’s voice sounded especially icy by comparison. “Most Caesar Gang members are heavily modded lunatics. You gonna logic with crazy?”
New feeds joined G8273’s projection—live from the hotel’s banquet hall surveillance.
The Chief Commissioner seemed to have gotten the alert about an unauthorized craft in the airspace. “An AB-7 Fighter Jet?? Crashing into the High Pei Street Hotel in two minutes?? What are you waiting for? Intercept it!”
A subordinate’s tense, halting voice came through the line. “We can’t, sir. It’s carrying Hydrogen Bombs. Air-to-air missiles would make it worse. The best shot is docking, hacking in, and seizing control—”
“Control! The AB-7 was phased out seventy years ago! Where the hell am I supposed to find someone who can fly it in two minutes—damn it! Damn it! Why are Hydrogen Bombs floating around the market like little cupcakes?!”
Amid the Chief Commissioner’s frustrated growl, the guests who’d been lingering in the banquet hall—hoping to snag some Connacht—finally paled and bolted for the exits.
Hastur heard the System’s urgent task countdown ticking, along with Dustin’s breakdown over the earpiece. “God!! I thought this was just babysitting some rich playboy! First it’s Connacht blowing up the planet, now three Hydrogen Bombs—**! And I still haven’t found that poor little girl!!”
Hastur clapped a hand over G8273’s eyes, manually cutting the feed from the banquet hall that would only ramp up the tension. He didn’t mention his failed attempt to trigger the Time Stop Bug via the game interface, not wanting to pile on the panic.
“Calm down. We’ve got two minutes. Dustin, keep searching. Even if we fail this round, I’ll reset time for the fourth loop. No need to panic.”
Heavy breathing crackled through the earpiece, steadying in under two seconds. “…Thanks.”
Down in the underground level of the office building, Dustin charged down the long corridor, slamming his body into locked doors one after another.
He’d always been the sentimental type. The flashlight beam occasionally caught the glint of tears in his eyes.
The same phone call, the same flustered complaints—if he were talking to a colleague, his boss, or even his long-dead parents, he’d probably get an earful of scolding.
“Are you brain-dead, Dustin? More important stuff right in front of you, and you’re ignoring it for some petty bullshit? Is it worth it?!”
“You’re too indecisive, Dustin. Always bending over backward for nothing. Sometimes you have to make the hard choice at the fork in the road—sacrifice a few to save the many.”
“It’s just one little girl! Is she the president’s daughter or something? Worth dropping everything critical to save her? Can’t you look past this small fry and focus on the big, urgent stuff that actually needs you?”
Years on the job, and those words had worn him down to a dull pebble. After countless failures and successes, self-doubts and reflections, this was the first time someone told him:
Keep going. Even if it doesn’t work this time, I’ve got your back. Do what you want to do.
Dustin had a soft heart but a tough-guy streak. He hid his choked-up moment well—neither Hastur nor G8273 caught it.
Crash countdown: one minute, fifteen seconds.
Hastur reached up and removed his and G8273’s earpieces, briefly cutting comms. “I can’t trigger time stop. First time that’s happened. Honestly, I don’t even know if I can reset this time… Can you hack that old soldier’s Brain Core?”
G8273’s eyes were flashing rapidly—he’d clearly been trying already. “No. The soldier’s on death’s door because his body rejects implants outright. No Cybernetic Body swap for his failing organs, no Brain Core at all.”
“But I can try rewriting reality remotely—shift the Hydrogen Bombs’ impact to the southern Desert Wasteland. Though there’s a twenty percent chance it clips part of Lowend District.”
G8273 put it delicately. “If it hits Lowend, I’ll steer it to just the lavender fields. Those three bombs aren’t huge—limited yield. As long as they don’t drop in a dense spot like High Pei Street… Hmm?”
G8273 paused abruptly, nudging Hastur’s hand away from his right eye. “Did you see that? The craft chasing the crashing fighter?”
“Holy shit!!” A scream erupted from the banquet hall feed. “Merlin!! My Merlin! Who stole my Merlin?! Do you know how expensive that thing is?!”
Unlike the antique fighter, a modern Merlin shuttle was easy pickings. G8273 sliced into its onboard view. “—Adolf?”
Hastur: “??”
What? When did Adolf steal a shuttle? When did he even take off? The guy never said a word before acting—what the hell was he planning??
Crash countdown: forty-nine seconds.
Adolf sat at the controls, frowning as he fiddled unenthusiastically with the autopilot settings. Finally, under Hastur and G8273’s death stares, he activated his earpiece.
“Dean, that… whoever of yours,” Adolf fumbled, unclear on the deal between the Dean and G8273, “can they take over the shuttle? Match speed with the fighter and close in?”
“Like docking with a space station?” G8273 seamlessly seized control mid-breath, without probing about the Total Police Station’s “dock-hack-seize” plan or how Adolf knew how to fly a seventy-year-old relic.
“You’re clear to infiltrate.”
In the banquet hall, the crowd gaped at the Chief Commissioner’s real-time monitoring projection. Craft from two eras flew nearly bumper-to-bumper.
The old fighter pulled vicious dives and brutal rolls, but the Merlin’s pilot countered with such precision that it turned into an elegant, mesmerizing waltz.
They didn’t even have a chance to catch a glimpse of how the pilot of the Merlin had transferred to the old fighter jet. The Merlin’s pilot seemed to deliberately evade notice on that point—and as a result, everyone missed how Adolf navigated the wildly spinning, constantly inverting aircraft as effortlessly as if he were strolling on flat ground.
He gripped the handrail tightly with one hand to steady himself, while his other arm deftly controlled an infrared cutter he’d jury-rigged together in under half a minute.
A makeshift docking port was carved into the adjacent sections of the two flying craft. Adolf tossed the now-useless cutter aside, coiled his body like a panther, and leaped across the yawning gap thousands of meters above the ground, pouncing straight into the vintage fighter!
Crash countdown: 5 seconds.
The people remaining in the banquet hall were those who knew full well they couldn’t outrun the explosion’s blast radius—or who had no means of escape at all.
Their hearts pounded wildly, their bodies slick with cold sweat. Dizzy with tension, they stared fixedly at the anti-air monitors, watching the old fighter jet draw ever closer. It loomed so large now that they could simply crane their necks and see it without the screens. Then, in one breathless instant… they all snapped their heads upward!
“—Success!! They did it!! He succeeded!!”
The banquet hall erupted into a sea of cheers. Yet some of the sharper minds regained their composure faster than the rest, zeroing in on more pressing matters:
“Who the hell stole that Merlin? They handle it like an extension of their own body… They can even fly a fighter jet from seventy years ago! Find out who it is—can we hire them?”
—They stood no chance, of course. The two protagonists in question were already a contracted employee of the orphanage and someone who would never accept a commission from anyone.
Hastur, basking in the favors of his multiple lovers, let out a sigh of relief before glancing down at the task window that popped up below.
【Hidden prerequisite task completed: [Rescue Casey]】
—Thank goodness! Thank goodness he’d encouraged his employees to take initiative!
Had he not backed them, or had Dustin not gone to save Casey, this hidden prerequisite might have remained undiscovered forever—perhaps even until the day he himself was laid to rest (though, well, he probably wouldn’t end up in a grave anyway).
Hastur drew a deep breath. He held off on checking the rewards and first investigated why the 9+1 alert was still blaring.
【Unrevealed factions: 1】
Hastur: “…?”
Strange. Hadn’t that final remaining faction been exposed just a few minutes ago? Colin Newman?
He double-checked the task description several more times.
No issues?
Casey had been flagged separately by the system as a faction due to her rift with the Caesar Gang. The Babylon Company High-end Member Club—a splinter group that maintained a facade of unity with Old Vincent while harboring deep divisions—had likewise been singled out as another faction.
So why wasn’t Colin Newman the last unrevealed one?
Had he misunderstood the criteria entirely?
But if it wasn’t Colin Newman, then who?
Hastur’s eyes darted erratically as his mind raced. In that moment, he spotted Adolf easing the fighter jet into the wasteland quicksand before clambering back inside the Merlin.
As the man scaled the craft with agile speed, a blue badge flashed briefly on his wrist.
Hastur: “…!”
Why had the task been named “Very 9+1” instead of something straightforward like “Ten Vicious Factions”? That “+1” carried a cheeky, throw-in-extra vibe all its own.
Hastur immediately lodged a report with the Deputy Chief. “There’s a black-market organ trafficker holed up in the hotel. If you hustle back in time, you might squeeze in one more bust for your record.”
The system chimed merrily.
【Prerequisite task: [Very 9+1] completed!】
【Rewards for both prerequisite tasks combined: Order Value +10%; Bloodstained Car Key x1 (automatically added to inventory)】
Hastur: “…………”
At least some Order Value??
Added to the gains he’d fleeced from G8273 earlier, he’d now amassed a grand total of 33% Order Value. The Light Orb seemed to beam at him in approval, nodding as if to say that this path of peace and sustainable development was the way to go.
G8273 was piloting the Merlin smoothly when Hastur suddenly seized his right hand.
As G8273 turned toward him with a quizzical expression, Hastur arched a brow. Still gripping his wrist, Hastur guided G8273’s palm down along his body until it rested against the side of those perfectly proportioned thighs, snugly sheathed in crisp suit pants.
Even through the fabric, the muscles beneath his palm felt solid and springy.
G8273 could recall all too vividly the sight of those legs bare: the way the muscles rippled and flexed with every motion, and how his own fingers sank into them with the slightest pressure.
He lifted his gaze to meet a pair of yellow eyes that gleamed with temptation, greed, and danger. “Back in the elevator… weren’t you dying to touch me here?”
