Chapter 281: The Store That Closed Early
Martin watched the red line inside his visitor token turn toward the paneled wall.
Rias moved closer to the darkened storefront and opened their private channel without looking back.
"Keep the link active," she said. "If I call, follow the direction line through the same wall. Until then, make sure everyone remembers you and no one notices I left."
"How am I supposed to do that?"
Rias glanced at a display filled with matching flask charms, commemorative cups, and other couple-branded souvenirs. "You’ll think of something humiliating."
The attendant with the black case was already crossing the threshold. As the wall panel began to slide shut behind him, Rias stepped into the shadow of the nearest display.
Darkness gathered around her boots as she crossed the open floor unnoticed and caught the strip of shadow behind the moving panel. The wall sealed a breath after she slipped through.
Martin’s token continued to point through the wall as its distance reading climbed from four meters to five, then six.
He forced himself to turn away.
Martin trusted Rias when he could see the choices she was making on a battlefield. Once she disappeared behind the wall, he could only keep the staff looking at him until she called.
A clerk near the dark storefront had begun watching the wall. Martin walked directly into her line of sight and picked up two brass flask charms joined by a thin chain.
"Excuse me," he said. "My girlfriend and I are looking for something to remember our first alchemy circuit by. Do you have these in black?"
The question hurt to ask, which probably made it more convincing.
The clerk focused on him instead. "The paired flasks only come in red, gold, and rose crystal. We have black mountain-stone cups, but those are sold separately."
"Buying them separately defeats the point." Martin held the charms side by side and studied them with the concentration he normally saved for combat gear. "What about engraving? She likes practical things, so if I buy useless jewelry, it should at least have our names on it."
The clerk began explaining three engraving packages. Another attendant joined her when Martin asked whether the chain could survive a combat zone, and a third unlocked a case of reinforced versions meant for active players.
Within a minute, everyone near the closed storefront knew exactly where Emperoar was.
Nobody asked where Flash Fang had gone.
—
The staff corridor smelled nothing like the public quarter.
Beyond the wall, the sweet herbal scents gave way to heated stone, metal dust, cleansing alcohol, and the coppery smell of fresh blood. Pipes ran along the low ceiling and carried heat toward the stores. Narrow inspection lamps left long stretches of darkness between their pools of white light.
Rias rotated the brass token until its face rested against the inside of her wrist, then pulled her coat cuff over the red glow. The link remained active, allowing Martin to track her direction and distance without the token giving her away.
Ahead of her, the attendant carried the black case deeper into the corridor.
She waited until he passed beneath the first inspection lamp before equipping the Shadow Nimbus Set in the darkness behind him. Black mist tightened around her body, replacing her coat with fitted assassin gear. A living shadow covered the lower half of her face, and the set’s loose clouds settled around her arms, waist, and legs. When her coat cuff disappeared, one wisp settled over the inward-facing token.
Her face was hidden, but her outline remained visible. Anyone who studied the darkness for more than a passing glance would see a masked woman crouched against the wall.
Rias made sure no one looked.
She crossed each pool of light only when the machinery drowned out her steps. A freight lift groaned somewhere beyond the left wall as she slipped past the first doorway, and a burst of hammering covered her steps through the next. The attendant kept both hands beneath the sealed case and never looked back.
Several storage bays stood open along the route. Most held ordinary alchemy supplies with proper labels. Rias passed stacked crates of dried monster organs, preserved venom sacs, and iron-banded barrels marked with the same Endless Rain shipment code she had copied earlier.
[Sea Dragon Monster Blood]
[Input Classification: Approved Monster Material]
[Inspection Status: Logged]
The barrels sat openly beneath the inspection lamps, with their permits displayed beside them. The permitted Sea Dragon blood explained none of the secrecy surrounding the black case.
The attendant kept going.
At the end of the corridor, two workers emerged from a side room and headed toward him. Rias stepped into the shadow beneath an empty freight rack, but the workers spread apart as they approached and blocked every route past them.
Rias planted one boot on the rack’s lower brace and jumped. Her hand closed around one of the black clouds drifting above her shoulder, and Cloudhook anchored it long enough for her to swing over the upper frame. Her free hand caught the support beam, and she pulled herself flat along it before the anchor released.
The two workers passed beneath her while discussing a clogged cooling line. Neither wore Just Die’s crest, and one grumbled that the unexplained recall would keep him past the end of his shift. Nothing in their conversation suggested they knew what was happening below.
Rias waited for their footsteps to fade before dropping silently behind the rack.
By then, the black case was farther ahead. Her token showed Martin nearly twenty meters away, still in the public quarter.
At a waist-high transfer plinth, the attendant set the case beside what looked like a shelf of empty bottles. When the case’s seal touched the stone, the shelf split down the middle and slid apart, revealing stairs that descended into the mountain.
A larger manifest opened above the case.
He confirmed the recalled CC-L17 stock first and worked down the manifest until he reached the coded source. That entry unfolded into a restricted record.
[LBS-4 / Live-Bond Source]
[Material Type: Blood]
[Source Classification: Active Bonded Beast]
[Monster-Material Permit: Not Applicable]
[Research Use: Prohibited]
Rias pulled a recording crystal the size of her thumb from her inventory and activated it before the final line settled. A red spark lit at its center, then faded to show that the recording had begun. She pressed it into a narrow belt slot on her Shadow Nimbus Set with the lens facing outward.
The code covered blood from an intelligent beast whose bond to a player remained active. The recalled CC-L17 stock was on the same manifest, but that did not prove it contained the forbidden source. Rias needed to see where the attendant delivered it.