Chapter 6: The Night Market and the First Purchase
The hospital room was a tomb of sterile white light and artificial silence, but to Kaelen, it had become a tactical map. With his **Intelligence** boosted, his brain was no longer just a spectator to his survival; it was an architect. He wasn't just looking at a room; he was looking at a series of structural vulnerabilities. He could hear the micro-fluctuations in the hum of the electronic lock on the door, the specific resonance of the ventilation shafts, and the rhythmic, heavy-footed patrol of the security guards three hallways over.
He wasn't going to walk out the front door. Not yet. He needed to be a ghost, and a ghost needed the right equipment.
"System," Kaelen whispered, his voice a mere vibration in his throat. "Open the Shop."
**[System Shop Initializing...]**
**[User: Kaelen Thorne (Level 5)]**
**[Available Balance: 1,000 Credits]**
A transparent, azure menu expanded in his field of vision, hovering over the bedsheets. Unlike the cluttered, overpriced catalogs of the government-run Aether-stores, this interface was cold and efficient, categorized into **Survival**, **Combat**, and **Utility**. He scrolled through the lists, his eyes darting past legendary "Soul-Slayer" blades that cost millions of credits and focusing on what he needed for this specific moment: invisibility.
* **Item: Ghost-Thread Cloak (Temporary)** – *150 Credits.* (Reduces physical and magical presence by 85% for 30 minutes. Becomes rags after use.)
* **Item: Rank-F Identity Scrambler** – *500 Credits.* (Bypasses basic biometric scanners and generates a 'Citizen Null' signal.)
* **Item: Low-Grade Vitality Pill** – *100 Credits.* (Instantly seals minor external wounds and numbs nerve endings for 1 hour.)
Kaelen tapped the screen with a focused intent.
**[Purchase Confirmed: Ghost-Thread Cloak & Identity Scrambler.]**
**[Remaining Balance: 350 Credits.]**
A shimmer of black fabric, as thin as a spider's web and colder than ice, materialized directly onto his lap. It felt liquid, almost like holding a handful of shadows. Beside it was a small, silver disc—the scrambler. He pressed the disc against his Rank-I bracelet; it hissed, and the glowing "I" flickered into a dull, unreadable grey.
He threw the cloak over his hospital gown. As the fabric touched his skin, he watched his hands turn translucent. He wasn't truly invisible—to a keen eye, he looked like a smudge in the air, a slight distortion in the heat—but to the thermal cameras and Aether-sensors lining the hospital walls, he was now a "non-entity."
He moved toward the ventilation grate high on the wall. With 15 points in **Strength**, the reinforced screws were no obstacle. He didn't use a tool; he placed his fingertips into the slits of the metal cover and pulled with a sharp, controlled jerk. The screws groaned and snapped with a muffled *ping* that he caught in his palm to prevent it from hitting the floor.
He slid into the duct. It was cramped, smelling of stale dust and the metallic tang of recycled air, but Kaelen moved with the fluid, unnatural grace of a predator. His 25 points in **Agility** allowed him to navigate the 90-degree turns and sharp edges without a single scrape. He followed the flow of the air, mapping the building's blueprint in his mind until he reached the exterior exhaust fan on the fourth floor.
He reached through the blades, jammed the mechanism with a piece of his shredded gown, and kicked the entire fan housing loose. He watched it drop into a massive industrial dumpster far below before stepping out onto the ledge.
The city of **Aegis Prime** stretched out before him, a neon-soaked sprawl of glass, steel, and despair. High above, the floating islands of the S-Rank Sovereigns—the "Upper Heavens"—cast long, suffocating shadows over the "Slums" of the Iron Ranks.
"Time to see how the other half lives," Kaelen muttered, looking down at the thousand-foot drop.
He leaped.
A normal human would have plummeted to a gruesome end. An F-Ranker would have shattered every bone in their lower body. But Kaelen hit a fire escape ten feet down with a soft *thud*, his knees absorbing the kinetic energy perfectly. He didn't stop. He vaulted over the railing, catching a flagpole, swinging through the air into a dark alleyway, and hitting the pavement in a silent, tactical roll.
He was out. He was a dead man walking in a city that had already forgotten him.
He navigated the backstreets of Sector 4, keeping the **Ghost-Thread Cloak** tight around his shoulders. He was heading for **Lower Sector 9**, also known as the "Night Market." It was a lawless, subterranean zone where the government's GPS signals were jammed by high-frequency scrap-towers and illegal mana-radiators. It was the only place in the world where a "dead" man could buy a weapon without triggering a government alert.
The Night Market was a sensory overload—a riot of neon, noise, and the smell of ozone. Steam rose from street-food stalls selling charred, mutated skewers; hooded figures traded cracked mana-crystals in the wet shadows; and the air hummed with the sound of illegal cybernetics being tested.
Kaelen walked through the crowd, his **Sense** stat tingling at the base of his skull. He wasn't looking for a fancy sword. He was looking for a specific frequency of black-market tech. He eventually stopped in front of a shop that looked like a stack of rusted shipping containers welded together into a jagged tower. A flickering sign hung over the door: *"Hax's Hardware – No Questions, No Refunds."*
He pushed inside. The interior was a labyrinth of junk, smelling of burnt solder and old grease. Behind a counter made from the hull of a decommissioned tank sat a man with a whirring cybernetic eye and a prosthetic arm that looked like it had been salvaged from a mining drone.
"We're closed, kid," the man, Hax, grunted without looking up from a glowing circuit board. "Go back to the orphanage before the Enforcers catch you out past curfew."
Kaelen walked up to the counter and slammed his hand down. He didn't hide his power this time; he let a surge of his **Strength** flow into his palm. The thick metal of the tank-hull groaned and dented under his fingers.
"I need a Soul-Anchor location," Kaelen said, his voice as cold as the hospital morgue.
Hax paused. His cybernetic eye whirred and clicked, zooming in on Kaelen's hand, then tracking up to his face. He slowly looked up, his gaze lingering on Kaelen's dull, scrambled bracelet and then moving to his eyes—where the gold rings were pulsing with a faint, predatory light.
"Soul-Anchors are for Tier-2 Gates, kid. Those are B-Rank territory. An Iron-Ranker like you walks in there, he doesn't just die; he becomes a caloric supplement for the Boss."
"I have 350 credits and a very short window of time," Kaelen replied. "Tell me which 'private' gate is currently unguarded."
Hax chuckled, a dry, wheezing sound that sounded like sandpaper. "I like you. You've got that 'I've already been to hell and didn't like the service' look in your eyes. Fine. There's an illegal Tier-2 gate in the old water treatment plant under this sector. A group of Black-Market harvesters opened it three days ago, but the 'Shadow-Stalker' inside wiped them out before they could harvest a single crystal. The Association hasn't found it yet because the sewage fumes are masking the Aether-leak."
Hax leaned in closer, his mechanical eye spinning rapidly. "But that Boss... it's a mental-type. It doesn't fight with teeth and claws. It fights with your own regrets. It eats your mind before it touches your meat. You sure you want to go in there with a scrap-iron bracelet?"
Kaelen didn't answer. He turned to leave, but his eyes caught a rack of discarded weapons near the exit. He reached out and picked up a blackened, serrated short-sword. It was heavy, chipped, and had no magical enchantments, but the balance was perfect. It was a tool for killing, nothing more.
"How much for the scrap?"
"Keep it," Hax said, returning to his circuit board. "I don't charge dead men. Consider it a gift for your funeral."
Kaelen stepped back out into the neon rain of the Night Market. He gripped the hilt of the sword, the rough leather of the grip feeling solid against his palm. He had the location. He had the weapon. And he had a hunger that stats alone couldn't satisfy.
**[New Quest: "The Hunger of the Abyss"]**
**[Objective: Enter the Illegal Gate and consume the Soul-Anchor.]**
**[Reward: Rank-E Evolution Completion, +1 Mystery Skill, +10 Free Stat Points.]**
Kaelen checked his **False Mask**. It was holding, but he could feel the system straining to keep his power suppressed. He was growing too fast for the old world to contain him.
"Vance thinks he's safe because he has a Gold medal," Kaelen whispered, looking toward the dark entrance of the sewer system. "He doesn't realize that in the deep dark, everyone is just Rank-F."
He disappeared into the shadows of the alley, the Ghost-Thread Cloak flickering one last time before he vanished into the subterranean depths of the city, heading toward a gate that would either make him a god or erase him forever.