The fluorescent lights of "Ravi & Son General Provisions" hummed with a sickly, rhythmic buzz, casting a jaundiced light over the rows of canned goods and bags of basmati rice. Harish, draped in a staff vest that was two sizes too small and smelled faintly of floor wax, was currently engaged in a soul-crushing battle with a display of condensed milk. His eyes, which had once gazed upon the birth of stars in the Seventh Dimension, were currently watery and irritated because he had accidentally rubbed them after handling a crate of dry red chilies.
"Harish! If I see one more dented can, I am deducting the cost from your weekend allowance! Do you think we are running a charity for clumsy boys?"
Ravi's voice boomed from the back office. The old man was currently wrestling with a barcode scanner that he insisted was "possessed by a demon," oblivious to the fact that his son was, in fact, the very being the world's secret organizations feared most. To the neighborhood, Harish was the "Prodigal Sales Boy"—a tragic Returnee who had come back from a rift with no powers, no skills, and a remarkable talent for stacking shelves incorrectly.
"I'm trying, Pa! The cans are just... ergonomically challenging!" Harish shouted back, his voice cracking with the pitch of a panicked teenager.
The bell above the door chimed. Aris Thorne, known to the shop as the no-nonsense senior clerk "Priya," walked in. She looked like she had just crawled out of a battlefield, though her "Priya" disguise—a worn hoodie and baggy jeans—hid the fact that she was an SS-rank Guardian who spent her nights hunting Abyss-class monsters. She stopped, her eyes narrowing as she saw Harish.
"You again," Aris sighed, dropping her bag with a heavy thud. "I've worked here for four years, Harish. This shop is a sanctuary for your father. Don't ruin it by being a lazy Returnee who thinks the world owes him a living. And stop eating the 'Nebula Nut-Clusters' in Aisle 2. I saw the wrappers in the bin."
Harish turned, his face turning a shade of red that matched the label on the tomato cans. "Oh... Priya. Hi. I didn't... I mean, the packaging was compromised. I was performing a quality control taste test."
Aris snorted, stepping close enough that Harish could smell the faint scent of ozone and gunpowder that always clung to her despite her disguise. She looked at him—really looked at him. Her "Eye of the Hawk" skill was active, but it slid right off him. All she saw was a "Level 5 Commoner" with zero mana circulation.
"You're a walking disaster, Harish," she whispered, shaking her head. "Go clean the spill in the dairy section. And if I see you near the chocolate aisle, I'm telling Ravi-uncle to double your shift."
Harish nodded submissively, but internally, his mind was a hyper-processor of divine calculation. He could feel Aris watching him, her suspicion like a cold needle in the back of his neck. But more importantly, he felt the four cold, sharp needles of killing intent currently perched on the rusted rooftops across the street.
As the clock struck 9:30 PM, the shop's shutters hissed down. Ravi and Harish walked out into the cool, mana-tainted night air of Sector 3. Behind them, tucked into the pitch-black alcove of a brick building, Aris Thorne followed. She was convinced Harish was hiding something—not power, but perhaps a secret addiction or a connection to a local gang. She wanted to protect Ravi, but she also wanted to solve the mystery of the "Boy with the 5-Mana Score."
Harish sensed her. He also sensed the four daggers of the Death Gate—professional cleaners sent by a high-paying, anonymous client to "wipe the slate clean." The commission was absolute: Kill Ravi, kill his family, and erase anyone who has ever shared a meal with them.
'She won't leave,' Harish thought, his eyes tracking a flicker of blue mana from Aris's position. 'And those four... they're already drawing their blades.'
He closed his eyes for a microsecond. Inside his soul, he partitioned a sliver of his Origin Power. [Skill: Sovereign's Mirror Image]
A perfect replica of Harish, down to the ink smudge on his thumb and the tired slump of his shoulders, continued walking beside Ravi. The real Harish slipped into the shadow of a dumpster, his movement so fast it bypassed the very concept of time.
Aris, watching from the roof, didn't notice the swap. Her "Eye of the Hawk" saw the clone-Harish laughing at one of Ravi's jokes. "He's just a boy," she muttered to herself, feeling a twinge of guilt. "A normal, boring boy."
Meanwhile, the real Harish appeared on the rooftop, standing directly behind the lead assassin of the Death Gate.
"The moon is quite beautiful tonight, isn't it?" Harish asked quietly.
The four assassins spun around with the mechanical precision of killing machines. They were masters of Qi-Reinforcement, their bodies vibrating with lethal frequency. The lead assassin, the "Specter of the Seven Hells," didn't hesitate. He launched a black-steel needle aimed at Harish's throat.
Harish didn't move. He didn't even raise his hand.
As the needle reached within an inch of his skin, Harish tilted his head by exactly three millimeters. The needle hissed past, but Harish reached out and caught the air behind the needle. Using a microscopic pulse of Origin Gravity, he froze the kinetic energy of the weapon, plucked it out of the sky, and crushed it into fine metallic dust between his thumb and forefinger.
The Specter gasped, his Qi flickering. "Who are you?"
"I'm the guy who's late for dinner," Harish said.
The other three assassins lunged simultaneously. One came from below with a sweeping kick designed to shatter shins; two came from above with twin crescent blades.
Harish's response was a symphony of violence. He didn't use a weapon. He used the concept of Space-Folding.
As the first assassin's kick approached, Harish stepped into the strike. Instead of his shin being hit, he occupied the space behind the assassin's knee before the leg could even fully extend. He tapped the back of the assassin's head with a single finger. [Impact: Void Pulse]. The man didn't fly back; his brain simply received a signal that the world had ended. He collapsed instantly, his nervous system rebooted into a permanent coma.
The two assassins from above were mid-air when Harish looked up. He didn't move his body; he moved the atmosphere. He exhaled a sharp, focused breath. The air molecules, energized by a fraction of a percent of his power, turned into solid glass-like barriers. The crescent blades shattered against the invisible air.
Harish reached up, grabbing both assassins by their collars. He didn't throw them. He slammed them into each other with a force that generated a localized sonic boom, which he immediately muffled by folding the sound waves into a pocket dimension. The two men crumpled, their ribcages turning into splinters, their internal Qi snuffed out like candles in a hurricane.
The Specter, the last one standing, realized he wasn't facing a human. He tried to flee, using a "Shadow-Step" technique to meld into the darkness.
"I am the darkness," Harish whispered.
He appeared in front of the Specter, his hand already gripping the man's throat. Harish lifted him high off the roof. "Who posted the commission to wipe out my family?"
"The... the Gate... is secret..." the assassin wheezed, his eyes bulging.
Harish sighed. He didn't have time for a interrogation. He placed his palm on the man's forehead. [Skill: Soul Archive - Extraction].
In Harish's mind, a flood of memories erupted. He saw a subterranean fortress hidden beneath the industrial ruins of New Delhi. He saw a digital terminal where a "High-Tier" administrator had accepted a massive payment—untraceable credits from a hidden overseas account. The mission was clear: Total Annihilation of the Ravi Bloodline.
"My mother's name was on that list," Harish said, his voice dropping to a frequency that caused the roof beneath them to crack. "My sister's name. My friends."
He didn't kill the Specter. Instead, he reached into the man's dantian and physically ripped the Qi core out of his soul. The assassin screamed—a silent, soul-deep agony—as he was reduced to a Commoner. Harish dropped him like a piece of trash.
Below, the clone-Harish was still walking with Ravi.
"Pa, I think I dropped my earpod back there! Go on ahead, I'll catch up!" the clone said, perfectly mimicking Harish's sheepish tone.
"Always losing things! You'd forget your head if it wasn't attached!" Ravi grumbled, walking toward their apartment building.
Aris Thorne followed the clone, her suspicion piqued. 'Why go back now?' she wondered. The real Harish, standing on the roof, watched Aris follow his shadow into an alleyway. 'That should keep her busy for an hour. Plenty of time to pay a visit to the head office.'
He vanished.
There was no sound, no flash of light. He simply ceased to exist in Sector 3 and reappeared forty miles away, in front of a nondescript, windowless warehouse in the industrial sector of New Delhi. Beneath this rusted exterior lay the Death Gate Headquarters.
He walked toward the main entrance. Two guards, B-rank martial artists with cybernetic eye-enhancements, stepped forward, their hands on the hilts of their vibration-swords. "This is private property, kid. Get lost."
Harish didn't stop. "I'm here to speak with the Administrator about a faulty commission."
"What? You're a customer?" One guard laughed. "You look like you can't even afford a bus ticket."
Harish didn't respond with words. He simply took a step.
The ground beneath the guards' feet didn't crack; it turned into a liquid state for a fraction of a second, causing them to sink up to their knees before the pavement re-solidified around them like instant-setting concrete.
"Stay there," Harish said.
He raised a hand toward the massive, six-inch-thick reinforced steel doors. He didn't push them. He didn't blast them. He reached out and gripped the concept of the door's structural integrity.
SCREECH.
The metal groaned as it was compressed into a sphere the size of a marble. Harish tossed the metallic ball aside and walked into the darkness.
Inside, the Death Gate was a hive of lethality. Dozens of assassins in various stages of training stopped and stared. On the far balcony, a man in charcoal robes—the Head Elder—narrowed his eyes. "Intruder! Who dared to lead a child here?"
"The child is here to collect a debt," Harish said.
"Kill him!" the Elder screamed.
Thirty assassins descended. It was a beautiful, terrifying display of Murim skill. Chains, needles, poisoned darts, and heavy broadswords filled the air in a coordinated "Net of Death."
Harish began to move. To the assassins, he looked like he was walking in slow motion, yet none of their weapons could touch him.
The first assassin lunged with a chain-whip. Harish caught the chain with his left hand, and without looking, he yanked it. The assassin was pulled forward with the force of a high-speed train, colliding with a second attacker. Harish didn't let go of the chain; he swung it in a wide arc. The heavy iron links, infused with a drop of Origin Force, hummed with a frequency that shattered every blade it touched.
Clang! Shatter! Thud!
In three seconds, ten assassins were on the ground, their weapons in pieces.
Five more leaped from the ceiling, their fingers glowing with "Soul-Piercing Qi." Harish didn't dodge. He stood his ground and clapped his hands together.
BOOM.
A shockwave of pure, white-hot pressure erupted from the center of the room. It wasn't a blast of fire or wind; it was a wave of Existential Erasure. The assassins weren't blown back—they were simply neutralized. Their momentum was stolen, their Qi was drained into the floor, and they fell like puppets whose strings had been cut.
Harish walked through the sea of fallen men, his eyes locked on the Head Elder.
"You accepted a commission to kill a shopkeeper and his family," Harish said, his voice now echoing with the weight of a Sovereign. "Did you even check who they were? Or is money the only thing that matters in this rotten gate?"
The Head Elder drew a massive, black-mana claymore. "In this world, power is the only thing that matters! If you want to protect them, you must be stronger than the Gate!"
The Elder lunged. He was an A-rank martial artist, his strength enough to cleave a tank in half. The claymore descended in a vertical arc, glowing with a dark, hungry energy.
Harish didn't move his feet. He raised his right hand, catching the edge of the massive blade between his thumb and index finger.
The impact sent a shockwave that blew out every window in the warehouse. The floor beneath Harish's feet disintegrated into dust, but Harish himself didn't move an inch. The Elder's eyes widened in horror. He poured every drop of his life-essence into the blade, but it was like trying to push a mountain with a toothpick.
"You speak of power," Harish said, his voice cold as the space between galaxies. "Let me show you the difference between power and Authority."
Harish's fingers tightened. The black-mana claymore—a weapon that had tasted the blood of kings—shattered into a thousand fragments. Harish then stepped forward, his palm moving in a slow, hypnotic arc.
[Sovereign Art: Palm of the Final Sunset]
The strike landed on the Elder's chest. It didn't break his ribs. It didn't stop his heart. It did something much worse. It traveled through his body and into the headquarters' main server room behind him. It traveled into the encrypted scrolls in the basement. It traveled through the Qi-network that connected every assassin in the building.
A blinding light erupted from the Elder's chest. Across the entire facility, the digital screens flickered and died. The obsidian terminals began to melt. Every piece of data—the client lists, the bank accounts, the records of every murder committed by the Death Gate—was being incinerated by Harish's power.
"No!" the Elder screamed, feeling his own cultivation base evaporate. "The Gate... our legacy...!"
"The Gate is closed," Harish said.
He turned and walked toward the exit. Behind him, the warehouse began to fold in on itself. Not a collapse into rubble, but a conceptual implosion. Within seconds, the building, the assassins, and the Elder were gone—displaced into a pocket dimension where time stood still. To the rest of the world, there was now just an empty, grassy lot where a warehouse used to be.
Twenty minutes later, the real Harish reappeared in the alleyway near Ravi's apartment. He absorbed his clone, receiving the memory of Aris Thorne searching the area for him, looking increasingly frustrated.
He stepped out of the shadows just as Aris came stomping around the corner, her face red with anger.
"There you are!" she shouted, pointing a finger at his chest. "I have been searching this entire district for twenty minutes! You said you dropped your earpod, but you weren't in the shop! Where were you?"
Harish rubbed the back of his neck, looking perfectly confused. He even managed to make his lower lip tremble slightly. "Oh... Priya. I'm sorry. I thought I saw a dog. A little one with a floppy ear. I followed it into the next block, but then I got lost. I don't have a map on this phone, and everything looks so different at night..."
Aris stared at him, her "Eye of the Hawk" searching for any sign of deception. She saw the dust on his vest. She saw the ink smudge on his thumb. She saw a boy who looked like he was about to cry because he got lost following a puppy.
"A dog? You lost me for a dog?" she groaned, throwing her hands up in the air. "Harish, you really are a 5. You're a walking disaster. You're lucky you have a father to look after you, because the world would eat you alive."
"I know," Harish smiled sheepishly. "I'm lucky. Shall we go home? My mom is making spicy chicken, and if we're late, she'll make us do the dishes."
Aris sighed, her suspicion momentarily buried under a mountain of annoyance. "Fine. Let's go. But tomorrow, you're cleaning the entire dairy section. Every single shelf. No excuses."
As they walked toward the apartment, Harish felt a faint vibration from his pocket. A message from an unknown sender—likely the Pupil—appeared on his screen.
"The Death Gate has been delisted from the global registry. The client's funds have been diverted to a local orphanage. A clean sweep, Sovereign. But be warned: the Verma Clan doesn't like losing their 'cleaners.'"
Harish deleted the message and looked up at the moon. 'The Verma Clan? If they try to touch my Pa, I'll show them why I'm the only cleaner this world needs.'
He stepped into the warmth of his home, the smell of spices and the sound of his mother's laughter erasing the coldness of the void he had just unleashed. For tonight, he wasn't a Sovereign. He was just a boy who liked spicy chicken.