Seraphina pulls up the intel fast, tapping through data like she’s already slotted into the secretary role like she was born for it.
"Sector 1," she says, frowning at the readout. "Rich district. Skyline towers, luxury zoning, the works. Execution’s scheduled to happen in one of their public arenas — guild wants witnesses, wants the spectacle." She glances up at me. "Problem is, Sector 1’s locked down tight. Visa-controlled border, private security on every checkpoint. We can’t just walk in."
I sit back for a second, turning it over.
"How?" Seraphina asks, watching me think it through. "Even with everything you’ve got, you can’t buy your way past military-grade border control overnight."
I almost smile at that.
"Can’t I?"
I pull up the wealth interface in my vision, balance already sitting fat from everything Frostine’s rescue and the guild debt payoff fed into it, and I start feeding it back into the multiplier, letting the 2.5x rate do the work now instead of the old flat double.
$40,960 → $102,400 → $256,000...
Seraphina’s eyes widen slightly, watching the numbers cycle in whatever readout she’s tapped into through the contract bond.
$640,000 → $1,600,000...
I stop it there, more than enough sitting in the account now to make problems disappear the expensive way instead of the difficult way.
"Private military-grade chopper," I say, already pulling up listings through the system’s asset network. "Bypasses the ground checkpoints entirely. Money like this, there’s always somebody willing to sell discretion along with the hardware."
Seraphina just stares at me a second, something between disbelief and reluctant respect settling on her face. "...You’re insane."
"I’m resourceful," I say. "There’s a difference."
Viperess’s tail flicks, amused. Frostine just watches, quiet approval in her cool blue eyes.
"Get me contact for a seller," I tell Seraphina. "We’re flying into Sector 1."
Seraphina works fast — makes a few calls, cross-references some old guild contact list, and within a couple hours she’s got a name and a number that actually picks up.
"He’s ex-military," she tells me, scrolling through the guy’s background on her tablet. "Runs private transport for people who need to not exist on any manifest. Expensive, but he doesn’t ask questions."
The transaction goes through clean, my balance barely flinching against the amount now sitting comfortable in the multiplier’s shadow, and a few hours later we’re loaded into a sleek black chopper, the pilot himself at the controls, expression carefully neutral like he’s seen weirder cargo than a tamer and three maidens before.
I lean back into the seat, Viperess settled calm beside me, Frostine across from us with her tail curled elegant around her ankles, both of them watching the city lights shrink and scatter below as we lift off toward Sector 1’s glittering skyline.
Seraphina’s not relaxing though — tablet out, brow furrowed, muttering to herself.
"Do you have any idea what this is going to do to our tax filings," she says, not even looking up. "A private military chopper, a border-jump payment, three—" she catches herself, glances at Viperess and Frostine, "—three personnel acquisitions in under twelve hours. I’m going to have to invent an entire shell structure just to make this look legitimate."
"You’re overthinking it," I say.
"I am secretarying," she snaps back, still not looking up from the tablet. "Someone has to, since you’re apparently allergic to consequences."
Frostine’s mouth twitches, the closest thing to a laugh she allows herself. Viperess just watches the city lights pass by the window, perfectly content.
"Relax," I tell Seraphina. "We’re rich. We can afford consequences."
She finally looks up at that, giving me a flat, unimpressed stare. "That’s exactly the kind of thing rich, reckless men say right before they lose everything, Jake."
"Good thing I’m not most men, then."
She rolls her eyes, but there’s the faintest curve at her mouth before she goes back to her tablet, muttering about deductions.
Below us, Sector 1’s towers glitter closer, execution site somewhere in the middle of all that luxury, a demon’s life sitting on the clock.
The chopper banks lower, city lights sprawling out gold and silver beneath us, and Viperess straightens in her seat, eyes narrowing toward the window.
"We are close, Master," she says. "I can sense her — fear, and something burning beneath it. She knows what’s coming."
Frostine’s already composed, tail wrapped tight, posture shifting into something readier, more alert.
Seraphina looks between the two of them, then back at me, expression serious now, all the earlier tax complaints dropped completely.
"Before we land — you need to know who’s running this execution." She pulls up a profile on her tablet, turns it toward me. "Vince. Guild-ranked S-tier hunter. One of the strongest independent operators in this whole sector."
"How strong," I ask.
"S-rank on his own merit," she says, "but the real problem is his weapon. He carries an SSS-rank spear — artifact-tier, one of maybe a handful in existence. It’s not just strength, Jake, it’s a completely different bracket of power. People don’t survive fights against that spear. They survive fights against him without it."
I take it in, nod once, but honestly it doesn’t sit as heavy as she probably wants it to. Maybe it should. Maybe a smarter version of me stops here and comes up with some careful plan.
But I’ve got a shadow assassin who dropped an S-rank guild leader without breaking a sweat, an ice dragon who nearly took out two specialists before I even showed up, and a system that just keeps handing me power every time I refuse to back down.
"Noted," I say, mostly just to make Seraphina feel heard.
She stares at me a second, like she can already tell I’m not actually taking it as seriously as I should. "Jake—"
"We’ll be fine," I say, watching the execution platform come into view below, torches and guild banners lit up around some kind of raised stage. "Let’s go get her."