Diablo PoV
The assignment should have taken me mere hours.
It had already taken two days.
An embarrassing, deeply distressing delay.
To serve a ruler of such profound caliber, a temporary bottleneck like this crude humanized vessel is highly frustrating, but it is no excuse for my inefficiency.
My Master entrusted me with a beautifully simple directive—to establish an off-the-books asset framework and map the leverage points of the Sterling Global board.
Yet, here I stand in the damp, disgusting twilight of Hell’s Kitchen, still sorting through the fragmented, chaotic mess of the local mortal infrastructure.
It is deeply displeasing to my soul.
These blind mortals always confuse physical youth with capability.
The fools on the executive committee consider my Master a mere child, a fragile heir easily buried in litigation and forced to surrender his birthright.
It is a common, pathetic mistake.
I have witnessed beings capable of reshaping entire worlds across the vast multi-dimensional stream.
My Master possesses the exact same terrifying quality those absolute entities shared.
Vision.
The sheer audacity to wager his soul on a coin toss in the void and demand a system that can manufacture godhood from absolute scratch.
To serve a fraction less than his perfection is completely unthinkable to me.
Before pulling open the rusted iron door of the Tracksuit Syndicate’s hideout, I spent forty-eight hours systematically breaking down their digital and physical footprints.
A lesser servant would have simply walked inside and asked questions; such an approach lacks elegance.
I began by intercepting the localized cellular towers within a three-block radius of Hell’s Kitchen, sifting through thousands of encrypted text messages using the primitive Linux terminal protocols cloned from Mark Sterling’s old MacBook.
It took me precisely twelve minutes to isolate the syndicate’s primary communication threads.
From there, the patterns of their internal rot became beautifully clear.
By cross-referencing the bank accounts of Borzoff’s primary enforcers with a series of untraceable shell deposits, I discovered the exact sequence of Yuri’s systematic theft.
The fool was dropping five percent of every high-end electronics shipment into a credit union registry under his sister’s maiden name.
Alexei’s treason was even simpler to unearth.
I intercepted a digital audio file routed to an unlisted NYPD precinct number—a frantic, snitching whisper detailing the arrival date of a narcotics container at the Brooklyn pier, executed solely to commute his brother’s grand larceny charge.
Finally, I spent an hour sitting in a miserable, rain-soaked sedan down the street, listening to the directional microphone frequencies tapping the warehouse’s rear breakroom.
The three guards stationed at the exit were remarkably loud.
Their conversation consisted entirely of calculating how many kilograms of pure inventory were currently sitting in the vault, and whether the boss’s heavy gold chain could be liquidated at a pawn shop on 42nd Street.
I adjust my cuffs, stepping lightly over the grimy puddles of this unmarked alleyway.
The air smells of rotten cabbage and cheap grease—the baseline stench of New York’s breeding grounds.
The corporate suits trying to corner my Master require an information network to systematically dismantle, and the fastest way for me to build one is to quietly acquire an existing pipeline.
Instantly, a dozen men pause.
They are members of the Tracksuit Syndicate, a localized group of smugglers who handle high-end transit theft and enforcement for corporate actors who prefer to keep their own hands clean.
Mismatched assault rifles and shotguns swing toward my chest.
Twelve criminals.
A thoroughly disappointing number.
My Master deserves a vastly superior network, but one must build the foundation with whatever stones are available.
At the far end of the room, a large man behind a scarred wooden desk reaches for a pistol.
“You lost, pal? Walk into my house dressed like an undertaker?”
I keep my hands folded behind my back, allowing my posture to remain entirely relaxed.
I do not look at their pathetic weapons.
I do not need to.
Over the last forty-eight hours, I haven’t just been waiting; I have been analyzing their chaotic little lives.
“Mr. Borzoff,” I say, keeping my voice a calm, smooth baritone.
“To your immediate left stands Yuri. For the past six months, he has been quietly skimming five percent off your high-end electronics shipments to fund a private exit strategy in New Jersey. To your right is Alexei, who has been operating as a low-level informant for a secondary precinct captain in the NYPD to keep his brother out of prison. And the three men guarding the rear entrance are currently debating whether to shoot you in your sleep to split the current narcotics inventory.”
The silence that settles over the warehouse is instantaneous, heavy, and thick with sudden, unadulterated panic.
Yuri’s eyes widen, his rifle barrel dipping slightly as he instinctively looks toward his boss.
Alexei goes entirely pale.
The three men at the back shift their weight, their hands tightening on their weapons.
The warehouse structure begins collapsing internally before I even take a step.
“Boss, he’s lying!” Yuri screams, his voice cracking as he takes a frantic step backward, his weapon wandering away from me and pointing directly toward Borzoff’s chest.
“I swear to God, I never touched the shipments! He’s trying to set me up!”
“Shut up, Yuri!” Borzoff roars, his face turning an unholy shade of purple as his massive hand slams against the desk, the pistol finally clearing his holster.
“I knew the numbers were light last month! You miserable piece of trash!”
“Alexei is the one snitching!” another enforcer shouts, spinning around to point a shotgun at Alexei’s face.
“I saw him talking to a cop car behind the diner on Tuesday! He’s a dirty rat!”
“No! No, wait!” Alexei panics, dropping his weapon entirely, his hands flying into the air as tears mix with the sweat on his face.
“They promised they’d drop the charges against my brother! I didn’t tell them about the main vault, I swear!”
The enforcers at the back don’t even bother arguing.
The entire criminal syndicate is tearing itself apart in a spectacular display of absolute mortal fragility.
They are so remarkably easy to shatter.
“I am merely demonstrating the absolute irrelevance of your security,” I murmur, taking a step forward.
“Your organization is a collection of minor fractures held together by mutual greed. You lack both ambition and imagination. Dead men could not run data terminals, so I will permit you to live, but the desk must be cleared immediately so we may begin sorting the real ledgers.”
“Shoot them all!” Borzoff roars, entirely losing his mind as he fires a round directly into Yuri’s chest.
The chaos that follows is not a fight; it is a clinical extraction of resistance.
Borzoff’s shot sparks a frantic, blind crossfire, but I am simply no longer standing there.
I move with a heavy hydraulic whip of velocity, forcing this humanized vessel to operate at the absolute peak of biological capability.
My white-gloved hand catches an enforcer’s throat, lifting the two-hundred-pound man off the floor and throwing him effortlessly into Alexei.
The impact sounds like a car hitting a brick wall.
I do not use magic, nor do I unleash a single spell.
I simply walk through the storm of lead with a fluid grace, my reflexes mapping the trajectory of their weapons before their fingers can even twitch against the triggers.
An enforcer tries to swing a shotgun barrel toward my head.
I catch the metal tube, twisting it seamlessly until the iron crumples like wet paper, then use the momentum to drive the stock into the man’s chest.
Ribs shatter with a dry, splintering crack.
The remaining men at the rear turn to run toward the exit, but I close the distance in a fraction of a second.
I do not run; I appear.
A swift, open-handed strike to the side of the first man’s neck sends him crashing down into a stack of wooden crates.
The second and third are dropped with two precise, weightless kicks that break their knees backward.
Within forty seconds, the warehouse goes dead quiet, save for the ragged, agonizing groans of twelve men recovering on the concrete floor.
I walk to the desk, stopping before the trembling syndicate boss.
His hand shakes so violently he cannot even lift his gun, the weapon clattering uselessly against the wood.
I look down at him, my face perfectly serene.
The dim light catches my irises, and for a single, fleeting second, I let the human illusion waver.
My black sclera and the brilliant gold gleaming within reveal the true scale of the monster standing in the room.
I grant him a gaze that carries the cold, suffocating weight of the void, a silent horror that makes his mortal heart skip a beat in pure, primal terror.
“Now then,” I say, my voice dropping into a quiet, pleasant whisper.
“Bring me your digital records, your wire taps, and your contacts within the city infrastructure. We have an empire to map.”
**Author’s Note** Thanks for reading!
As always, comments, reviews, and ratings are greatly appreciated.