Jayden crouched down, pressing the tip of his claws right between the man’s eyes, drawing a single bead of blood. "How do I know you’re not lying to me?"

"I’m not! I swear on my life! He hangs out at the club every Saturday night with his lackeys." the man blubbered, tears mixing with the dirt on his face. "Please, don’t kill me!"

Jayden leaned back, the white eyes of his mask narrowing. "If you are lying... I know where to find you."

Then he delivered a heavy punch to the leader’s jaw. The man’s eyes rolled back as he passed out.

Jayden stood up, retracted his claws, and walked out of the warehouse into the cool night air. As he stepped into the shadowed alleyway, he tapped the side of his mask. The nanite material smoothly retracted, peeling back layer by layer to reveal his face.

He pulled his holotab from his inventory and quickly typed out an encrypted message to Fred.

[I have Duke’s location. A club in Ruby City. I’m going in three days from now.]

Fred’s reply came almost instantly.

[Good. Will you need backup?]

[No] Jayden typed back. [I’ve got this.]

[Okay. Be careful, kid. And whatever you do... don’t die. For both our sakes.]

The conversation ended there.

Jayden stored the holotab, tapped his jaw, and the Anansi mask surged back over his head. He bent his knees and leapt, using his telekinesis to add a controlled, powerful burst to his jump. He soared high above the alleyway, landing silently on the next roof. Then immediately leapt onto the next and the next, bounding silently across the quiet Emerald City skyline.

When Jayden finally arrived home, he slipped through his window into his room. He took off his jacket, and with a mental command, used the System’s auto-equip feature. His tactical suit and mask vanished directly into his inventory, leaving him in a comfortable vest and shorts.

He collapsed onto his bed, letting out a deep, exhausted sigh.

It had been exactly one week since he had accepted the massive quest to take down the Black Cobra syndicate. He had spent the first few days consumed by research, trying to study everything there was to know about them. But the internet only showed the chaos they caused, not their actual organizational structure.

So, he had contacted Fred.

Fred thought he was insane, but he still agreed to help Jayden, providing him with all the classified intel the EVA had on Black Cobra.

Reading through those files, Jayden had a stark realization: the only reason the syndicate was so feared and formidable was because of their Pioneers. They were the absolute backbone of the organization. There were ten in total, and each one was above Level 60, possessing terrifying feats and abilities. Furthermore, they were all seasoned mercenaries and assassins, who had presumably killed hundreds.

This sheer number and quality of their elite fighters made everyone terrified of Black Cobra. Because most organizations and factions only had two to five Pioneers. Even the mighty EVA only had four, though theirs were all SS-Rank.

And the reason the Syndicate Pioneers weren’t publicly ranked was simple: they were ghosts. Nobody knew who they really were. If they did, the EVA would have just mobilized the military police to arrest them directly. They were high-level criminals, which made identifying and hunting them incredibly difficult. The EVA had spent years and sacrificed heavily just to get the names and basic profiles of the ten.

But with Scorched dead by Jayden’s own hands, there were only nine left. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

This information narrowed Jayden’s goal perfectly. To destroy the syndicate, he didn’t need to fight an army of thousands. He just needed to sever the head. In other words:

Kill all the Pioneers.

Without them, the syndicate would have no leverage, no elite protection, nothing. They would collapse.

So he began targeting them one by one.

His first mark was Duke, a Level 63 Pioneer with a notoriously formidable ability. He was said to have been seen operating in Alpha for a few months now.

Jayden had originally reached out to Big T for the pioneers exact whereabouts, but the underground boss claimed he didn’t have it—though Jayden knew the man just wanted him to fight in the cage for the information. Jayden wasn’t in the mood to become a street brawler for someone’s amusement, so he decided to get the intel himself.

Following Fred’s advice to strictly conceal his identity whenever moving against the syndicate, Jayden had purchased the Anansi mask. And since it matched his combat suit perfectly, Jayden decided to always wear both together. It would have been ridiculous to wear a high-tech mask with a hoodie and jeans.

With his newly equipped outfit, he spent the last four nights systematically dismantling Black Cobra smuggling operations, and beating lower-level thugs for Duke’s whereabouts. Most didn’t know anything, but Jayden hadn’t given up. And tonight, he had finally gotten it. Duke’s location.

His first target was locked in. And he was ready to hunt.

But until Saturday came, he had to shift his focus. He hadn’t had time to hunt beasts or even do his daily quests for a week, completely consumed by finding Duke.

Tomorrow, he planned to resume his leveling. He had a very specific goal in mind: complete his Seasonal Quest of integrating three beast genes. The deadline for this quest was this Sunday, and he was almost out of time.

Staring up at his ceiling, he fell asleep, the weight of his increasingly complicated life pressing down on him.

.......

The next morning,

Jayden was up before the sun. He slipped out of the house in the cool, early hours, heading straight for the local park to knock out his daily quest.

The park was quiet at this hour — a few early runners, a man walking a dog along the far path, the distant sound of a child being coaxed out of bed through an open window somewhere above the street. He found his usual corner of the open green, ran through his daily quests efficiently, and didn’t linger. Then he cut over to the gym, worked through his session with the focused economy of someone who had places to be, and was back out on the street within the hour.