The door unlocked. Sebastian slipped inside and pulled it shut behind him, plunging himself into the dark dusty confines of a ventilation shaft.

The heavy thumping of the orchestral music was instantly muffled. The smell of expensive perfume was replaced by the comforting scent of rust and stale air.

Sebastian didn’t waste a second!

He unclasped the heavy grey and blue chest plate of his Vanguard armor.

CLATTER.

He dropped it onto the metal grating. He stripped off the bulky shoulder pads, the restrictive greaves, and the standard-issue combat boots. He tossed the kinetic rifle onto the pile of discarded gear.

He opened his bottomless inventory.

"Manifest," he commanded softly.

The air shimmered. He pulled out the sleek featureless tactical suit he had stolen from the surplus depot. He pulled it on. The polymer immediately compressed against his skin, locking in his body heat and completely erasing his physical profile. He felt impossibly light.

He reached into his inventory one more time and pulled out the helmet. It was a smooth completely blank dome of impact-resistant black glass. No eye-slits. No breathing vents.

Just a terrifying void.

He slid it over his head. The internal HUD remained entirely dark.

Trent the Gunner was gone. The loyal pudgy soldier had ceased to exist.

The Blank had returned!

Sebastian rolled his neck. The joints popped with a dense heavy sound. He reached down to his thigh and drew the Rusty Iron Dagger.

The pathetic weapon looked absolutely ridiculous against the high-tech assassin gear, but it hummed with the apocalyptic promise of the [God-Slayer’s Edge].

He crawled through the ventilation shaft, moving with the terrifying frictionless grace of a predator that had just slipped its cage. He navigated the metallic maze until he found a vent overlooking the private upper balconies of the grand ballroom.

He peered through the rusted slats.

Directly below him, sitting in a plush velvet chair in a secluded VIP booth, was Inquisitor Vance. The psychic interrogator had his silver visor pushed up, sipping a glass of glowing wine and laughing at a joke told by one of his aides.

Sebastian didn’t feel anger. He didn’t feel a rush of heroic justice. He just felt the cold unyielding necessity of taking out the trash.

He pressed his black-gloved hands against the vent cover. He didn’t kick it. He simply applied his raw Demigod-tier physical strength and bent the iron screws until they snapped silently.

He pulled the grate inward, setting it gently down inside the shaft.

Sebastian looked down at the Inquisitor. The party raged on below, entirely oblivious to the nightmare hovering right above their heads.

"Let’s kill the music," Sebastian whispered into the dark. He dropped from the ceiling.

Sebastian fell silently through the air. The polymer of his black suit absorbed the wind resistance, making him little more than a falling shadow.

He landed directly behind Inquisitor Vance’s plush velvet chair. His heavy boots touched the polished obsidian floor with the absolute terrifying silence of a ghost.

Vance didn’t notice. The Level 70 psychic was too busy swirling his pink wine and watching the aristocratic couples dancing on the floor below. The loud noise of the swelling orchestra and the clinking of crystal glasses filled the VIP booth.

Sebastian needed to keep it that way. He couldn’t let Vance scream! He couldn’t let the death trigger an audio alert on the Vanguard network. He needed a silencer.

He didn’t reach for a high-tier spell. He opened his green Admin UI and dug into the pathetic low-level utility skills he had hoarded.

He found a basic sound-muffling hex used by low-level rogues to quiet their footsteps.

He crushed the concept in his mind and forcefully injected it with his 10,000x Nexus Glitch.

[Action Registered: Compile Basic Muffle.]

[Nexus Glitch Activated: Proficiency x10,000.]

[Basic Muffle leveled up to 10/10!]

[Evolution Requirement Met. Evolves to Tier 3: Acoustic Void!]

[WARNING: Concept Threshold Breached. Sound Wave Law Unlocked.]

[Acoustic Void evolves to Conceptual Law: Spatial Distortion.]

A wave of freezing mathematical clarity washed over his brain. He understood how to grab the physical concept of sound waves and crush them into absolute nothingness!

He didn’t cast it over the whole room. That would immediately spike his [Admin Suspicion] meter. He kept it agonizingly tight, wrapping the invisible hyper-compressed hex strictly around the immediate three-foot radius of the Inquisitor’s chair.

Vance suddenly frowned. The psychic raised a hand to his ear. The orchestral music hadn’t stopped, but to Vance, the world had just instantly plunged into the terrifying dead silence of a vacuum.

"What the" Vance started to say.

But the sound never left his throat! The words died in the air, instantly deleted by the localized Spatial Distortion.

Sebastian moved.

He didn’t draw the heavy Earth Sword. He didn’t want to break the chair. He reached out with his left hand, grabbing Vance entirely by the jaw from behind. His black leather glove clamped over the Inquisitor’s mouth with the unbreakable unyielding force of an industrial vice.

Vance’s eyes snapped wide open in absolute horror. He tried to thrash. He tried to channel a psychic blast to fry the intruder’s brain.

But Sebastian was too fast, and his physical synchronization was too dense.

With his right hand, Sebastian drove a sleek six-inch ceramic combat blade directly upward. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

SHLUCK.

The blade was entirely mundane, but backed by the terrifying physical strength of a Demigod, it didn’t matter. The ceramic knife pierced the soft flesh under Vance’s chin, punched cleanly through the roof of his mouth, and buried itself hilt-deep directly into the psychic’s frontal lobe.

Vance’s body instantly went rigid. His hands clawed weakly at Sebastian’s unmoving arm for a fraction of a second before falling limp.

The health bar hovering above his head violently deleted itself.

There was no scream. There was no gurgle of blood. The [Spatial Distortion] swallowed every single horrible sound of the execution.

Sebastian didn’t let the body slump forward.

He held the dead weight with effortless ease.

He smoothly withdrew the ceramic blade, a thick stream of dark blood following the knife.

He grabbed Vance by the shoulders and carefully pulled the corpse backward until it was resting comfortably against the back of the velvet chair. He tilted Vance’s head slightly downward, making it look as though the Inquisitor had simply dozed off.

Sebastian reached over and grabbed the stem of the crystal wine glass before it could slip from Vance’s dead fingers. He placed it squarely on the small table next to the chair.

He wiped the ceramic blade on the inside of Vance’s purple leather coat, sheathed it, and took a step back.

He looked at his work. From the ballroom floor below, it just looked like a tired executive taking a nap in the VIP section.

"One down," Sebastian whispered, his voice completely muted by his own spell. "Three to go."

He dissolved the Spatial Distortion and immediately melted back into the shadows of the balcony. He moved like Wraith, bypassing the oblivious Vanguard guards stationed at the stairwells.

His next target was General Kael. The man who ran the Harvest Dens.

Sebastian found him two balconies over. Kael was a massive heavily armored man, laughing loudly as he leaned against the railing, pointing down at the dancers. He was flanked by two elite bodyguards.

Taking out three men silently required a different kind of geometry.

Sebastian crept along the ornate ceiling beams, positioning himself perfectly above the group. He activated his [Spatial Distortion], dropping the invisible cone of silence over all three men simultaneously.

The laughter abruptly died. The guards looked around in sudden confusion, tapping their helmets.

Sebastian dropped.

He landed directly between the two guards.

Before they could even raise their rifles, Sebastian shot his arms out to the sides. He grabbed both of their armored heads and violently slammed them together.

CRACK!

The sound of the heavy helmets caving inward was completely erased by the hex.

The guards dropped like stones, their brains instantly pulverized by the sheer kinetic force of Sebastian’s physical stats.

General Kael spun around, his eyes wide with sheer panic as his bodyguards collapsed silently to the floor. He opened his mouth to scream for help. He reached for the heavy plasma sword at his hip.

Sebastian didn’t give him the chance!

He stepped directly into Kael’s personal space. He didn’t use a knife. He just grabbed the General by the thick armored collar of his uniform. He twisted his hips and hurled the massive man backward.

Kael flew through the air in absolute silence.

He slammed into the heavy stone wall of the balcony alcove.

Sebastian was there before Kael could even slide to the floor. He drove his heavy black boot directly into the center of the General’s chest plate.

CRUNCH.