The morning sun broke gently through the thin white curtains of my bedroom, casting long stripes of bright gold across the wooden floorboards.

Outside, birds were chirping in the garden trees, and the faint, rhythmically steady thwack-thwack of Leo swinging his wooden sword echoed from the backyard.

I swung my legs over the side of the mattress and walked over to my desk.

Sitting on the shelf, right next to my iron dagger, was the small silver memory drive Manager Vane had given us. In the morning light, the cold metal surface looked sleek and dangerous. It held the key to the Black Faction’s inner operations—and more importantly, the movement logs for Senior Enforcer Black, who I am supposed to work under.

I pulled out my laptop, booted it up, and plugged the silver drive into the side USB port.

A dark prompt window popped up on the screen, requesting an encryption key. I typed in the freelancer code Vane had assigned to my badge: GHOST-772.

CLICK-BUZZ.

The screen flashed blue, and a long list of classified files expanded across the monitor.

The drive was packed with high-level intelligence. There were maps of unregistered gray zones, lists of illegal mana-stone trade routes, and detailed profiles on various high-tier enforcers working across the eastern district.

I scrolled quickly past the general mercenary listings until my eyes caught a folder tagged with a blood-red icon: PROJECT OBSIDIAN - ENFORCER BLACK.

My finger clicked the trackpad.

The file expanded, showing a high-resolution satellite map of an isolated mountain range fifty miles north of the city. Red tactical markers pointed toward a hidden valley surrounded by jagged black cliffs.

"Sector C-9," I muttered to myself, reading the bold text on the screen. "An unranked gate rift..."

According to the report, Black hadn’t just been running underground arena bets in the city hub. For the past three months, he had been quietly routing stolen high-tier mana cores into an abandoned research facility built deep inside Sector C-9.

The facility was originally constructed by a defunct mercenary group ten years ago, but Black had repurposed it. He was using the harvested cores to power a massive, illegal spatial anchor.

’A spatial anchor,’ I thought, my jaw tightening as I read through the technical logs. ’He’s trying to forcibly open a stabilized portal into a high-grade monster realm... without reporting it to the Hunter Association.’

If an unregistered high-grade gate opened in Sector C-9 without proper containment barriers, the resulting mana surge would wipe out the surrounding perimeter towns in less than an hour. Millions of lives would be in immediate danger.

"Woo Jin?"

A soft voice called out from the open doorway.

I looked up from my laptop screen toward the opened door. Carmilla was standing in the hall, wearing a comfortable white t-shirt and grey sweatpants. Her dark hair was loose over her shoulders, and she was holding two steaming mugs of black coffee.

"Morning," I smiled, leaning back in my desk chair. "Come in."

Carmilla walked inside, stepping quietly across the wooden floorboards. She handed me one of the mugs and set hers down on the edge of the desk. Her red eyes drifted down to the glowing laptop screen, taking in the red tactical markers and technical blueprints.

"Is that Vane’s file?" Carmilla asked softly, her posture instantly shifting into a sharp, focused stance.

"Yeah," I nodded, turning the laptop slightly so she could see better. "Vane didn’t lie. This drive gives us a full breakdown of Black’s current operation. He isn’t just hiding in the city. He’s operating out of an old facility in Sector C-9."

Carmilla leaned closer, her long, slender fingers resting against the wooden desk as her eyes scanned the text line by line.

"Sector C-9 is a rocky, mountainous region," Carmilla noted, her voice turning serious. "The terrain provides heavy natural cover, but the narrow passes make it easy for defenders to bottleneck an attacking force. What is he building there?"

"A spatial anchor," I explained, pointing to the schematic diagram on the right side of the screen. "He’s feeding high-grade mana cores into an artificial core frame. He wants to tear open a permanent rift into a higher-tier realm."

Carmilla’s eyebrows furrowed under her bangs. "An artificial rift? That is extremely dangerous. Without royal sealing runes to balance the spatial pressure, the realm overflow will shatter the local mana field."

"Exactly," I said, taking a sip of the warm coffee. "If that anchor fully charges, the shockwave will hit the nearby residential zones. We can’t let him finish it."

Carmilla looked down at me, her red eyes steady and resolute. "When do we move?"

"Not blindly," I replied, clicking on another sub-folder inside the drive. "Black has at least twenty heavily armed enforcers guarding the perimeter, along with automated mana turrets along the ridge. If we just walk up the main trail, we’ll get pinned down in an crossfire. We need a clean entry point."

I unplugged the silver drive, grabbed my laptop, and followed Carmilla down the hallway.

The villa was filled with the bright, cheerful sounds of morning. In the living room, Mia was sitting on the rug, carefully drawing pictures with colored pencils, while Leo was taking a quick break from his yard practice, drinking a huge glass of cold milk at the kitchen island.

"You two are up early," Viora remarked without turning around, her keen ears picking up our footsteps immediately. "And you have that sharp energy again. Did the memory drive yield results?"

"More than we expected," I said, placing the laptop flat on the kitchen island right beside Leo’s milk glass. "Take a look at this, Viora."

Leo leaned over curiously, trying to peek at the screen while taking a big gulp of milk. "Is that a secret map? Are you going on another mission?"

"Finish your milk first, shorty," Carmilla chuckled, lightly patting the back of his head as she pulled out a barstool and sat down.

Viora walked over to the island, leaning over the screen.

She stayed quiet for nearly two minutes, processing the layout of Sector C-9, the guard rotation schedules, and the power grid schematics for the artificial spatial anchor.

"This facility is built inside an old limestone cavern system," Viora analyzed in her cool, deadpan voice. "The main entrance is heavily fortified with steel blast doors and dual-barreled mana cannons. A direct frontal assault would require an entire strike squad of A-rank hunters."

"And what about the secondary access points?" I asked, zooming in on the topographical survey of the mountain.

Viora raised her slender finger, pointing straight at a tiny blue line running along the northern face of the cliffside, nearly eight hundred feet above the valley floor.

"Here," Viora stated cleanly. "This is an old drainage ventilation shaft used by the original miners ten years ago. It leads directly into the lower power sub-station beneath the main lab. Because the shaft is narrow and steep, Black’s engineers must have only installed basic motion sensors along the upper grate."

I looked at the blue line, a grin slowly spreading across my face. "A vertical entry. We bypass the main gate, cut the power sub-station, and disable the spatial anchor before they even realize we’re inside."

"The climb will be dangerous," Carmilla pointed out, looking at the elevation numbers on the screen. "Eight hundred feet of sheer wet rock in high wind. Normal mercenaries couldn’t scale that without heavy gear."

"Normal mercenaries don’t have blood-mana footwork," I chuckled, looking at her. "Or a shadow blade user."

Carmilla let out a small, amused huff, her red eyes sparking with quiet confidence. "Fair point."

"If you disable the power sub-station first," Viora added, resting her hand on the counter, "the automated turret grid along the ridge will shut down completely. That will leave Black and his core guards isolated inside the main cavern without heavy artillery support."

"That’s our window," I said, closing the laptop screen halfway. "We hit the sub-station, destroy the anchor core, and secure the facility records before Black can wipe his server drives."

Leo put down his empty milk glass with a loud CLACK, his eyes wide with excitement. "Can I come this time? I can use my shoe-throwing technique on the guards!"

Mia looked up from her drawing pad in the living room, holding up a purple crayon. "I want to throw shoes too!"

Carmilla laughed softly, reaching out to ruffle Leo’s hair with genuine affection. "Nice try, little warrior. But this is a quiet shadow mission. You two need to stay here and guard the villa with Viora."

"Aw man," Leo groaned, slumping back against his barstool. "Guard duty again?"

"Guard duty is the most important role in any order," Viora corrected him smoothly, picking up his empty glass and setting it in the sink. "If the base falls, the forward squad has nowhere to return to. You are protecting our home, Leo."

Leo puffed out his chest proudly, his disappointment vanishing instantly. "Right! Nobody gets past the front porch!"

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