Location: Heaven's Arena & Southern District

  Timeline: February 1988

  Age: 12

  Elian dropped his gym bag by the door of Room 1014, shaking off the afternoon rain. "Done. I paid a proxy at the 180th-floor desk. He's going to monitor the match boards for the rest of the night and page my room phone immediately if my number gets called."

  "Perfect," I said, grabbing my jacket. "Let's go see how these underground auctions look."

  The address the antique shop owner had given me wasn't hidden in a grimy alley. It was in the Southern District, occupying the entire penthouse level of a private, highly secure skyscraper.

  When the elevator doors opened, we stepped into a sprawling, vaulted ballroom. Waiters carried champagne through crowds of sharply dressed tycoons, international collectors, and local syndicate bosses. The wealth in the room was suffocating.

  I let my eyes sweep over the crowd, automatically scanning for people with Nen. Given the nature of a black-market auction, I expected heavy security, but true aura was exceptionally rare. Out of the hundreds of dangerous, wealthy people mingling in the room, I spotted exactly two.

  One was a lone, unassuming man sitting quietly near the back exits, his aura tightly contained in a perfect state of Ten. The second was a heavily scarred bodyguard standing directly behind a prominent, well-dressed mafia boss in the front row.

  We took our seats in a private viewing booth just as the auction began.

  A set of jewelry once worn by the queen of an extinct civilization opened at fifty million Jenny and quickly sold for over two hundred million. A few lots later, an ornate, blood-stained sword went for eighty million.

  Elian stared at the digital auction board, his jaw slightly slack. "I didn't expect that even millions wouldn't be enough."

  "But we just need to observe today," I agreed calmly.

  I sat back and watched the flow of the auction. Most of the crowd was focused on acquiring beautiful things they could flaunt or rare items to hold as long-term investments.

  Mid-way through the night, a small lot was brought out. It was a mass-produced compass-like artifact from a famous civilization, one of many copies used by treasure hunters because it reacted in a specific way to certain minerals. Bidding was slow. I raised my paddle and won the lot unchallenged for a fraction of what the jewelry was selling for. It was a minor acquisition, but I figured it might be helpful for a ruin hunt down the line, if the opportunity ever came up.

  As the night neared its end, the lights dimmed, and armed guards brought out the final piece in a reinforced glass case.

  "Our final piece," the auctioneer's voice echoed through the speakers. "An ancient artifact once used by the famous King Oros. It heavily influences the spirit, giving whoever is near it an intense, unnatural high, similar to being heavily intoxicated."

  I focused Gyo into my eyes. The artifact seemed to be laced with lingering Nen, and its mind-altering properties were being driven by a visible loop of Divine Scripts carved into its base.

  "Opening bid is one hundred million Jenny."

  The room erupted. Within sixty seconds, the price had blown past five hundred million. I watched the bidding war without blinking, keeping my posture relaxed.

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  The paddle that finally won the relic for eight hundred million Jenny belonged to the mafia boss sitting in the front row—the one with the Nen-using bodyguard.

  "Eight hundred million," Elian muttered, letting out a long breath. "Well, we definitely can't afford that."

  "Not exactly," I said, keeping my eyes locked on the syndicate boss and his security detail.

  I sat quietly, observing the group as they prepared to move. Elian looked over at me. "Are we done here? Should we head back?"

  "You go back," I told him, not breaking my focus from the guards. "I have some work to do tonight." Elian followed my line of sight, his eyes widening slightly as he connected the dots. "Are you... are you going to steal it?"

  "I'll explain everything when I get back to the room," I said calmly.

  After parting ways with Elian outside the skyscraper, I swapped my jacket for something nondescript and pulled up my collar. I tracked the syndicate's transport convoy, sneaking after them through the city by calculating their blind spots and maintaining a safe distance. Eventually, the cars pulled into a fortified private estate on the edge of the Southern District.

  Slipping past their exterior security meant dropping entirely into Zetsu and carefully avoiding the security cameras. I scaled the side of the main house without making a sound and perched quietly on the balcony outside the boss's private suite.

  Peering discreetly through the glass, I watched the scene unfold. The mafia boss was sitting in a plush armchair, looking eager. His scarred bodyguard stood by the table, channeling a small, deliberate pulse of his own aura into the artifact to activate it.

  Almost immediately, the relic hummed. The boss slumped back in his chair, his eyes rolling up as the intense, intoxicating high hit his system. Within a minute, he was completely knocked out, snoring heavily.

  I slid the balcony door open and stepped inside.

  The bodyguard spun around, his aura instantly flaring thick and hostile. He didn't waste time asking questions. He lunged, throwing a heavy, aura-coated right hook aimed straight at my jaw.

  I didn't bother dodging. Surging my aura into Ken, I raised my forearm and blocked the fist dead in its tracks. The impact cracked the floorboards beneath my feet, but I held my ground. Before he could retract his arm, I drove a brutal punch into his gut, tearing straight through his layer of Ten.

  As he folded forward, gasping for air, I struck the nerve cluster at the base of his neck with a clean chop. He crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

  With the room secured, I approached the table. First, I focused Gyo on the artifact's base, permanently committing the exact curvature, spacing, and geometric flow of the Divine Scripts to memory. Once the visual data was cataloged, I spent the next hour running a series of quiet experiments, observing how the artifact's aura interacted with the unconscious men's nodes and studying its frequency.

  Once I had noted everything I needed, I slipped back out the balcony door and vanished into the night.

  When I returned to Room 1014, Elian was still awake, pacing the floor. I explained that I had only gone to study the Divine Scripts on the artifact, assuring him that I hadn't stolen the physical object and didn't kill either of the men.

  Don Corsi's POV (Mafia Boss)

  The next morning, Don Corsi woke up in his armchair with a pounding headache and a dry mouth. He blinked, the fog clearing from his mind, and immediately froze.

  His elite bodyguard was unconscious on the floor. Corsi stood up and delivered a hard kick to the man's ribs, jolting him awake with a sharp groan.

  "What happened?!" Corsi yelled, frantically scanning the room. He rushed to the table. The strange artifact was still sitting exactly where they had placed it. He checked his private safe. Nothing had been touched.

  "Someone broke in, Boss," the bodyguard rasped, clutching his neck and pulling himself up.

  Corsi stared at him, bewildered. "Broke in? Then why is nothing missing? Who was it?"

  "I don't know," the bodyguard said, his voice tight with unease. "He was disguised... but his strength wasn't normal. He just took my full-force punch like it was nothing, gutted me through my Ten, and knocked me out. He could have killed us both."

  Corsi's face went pale. A highly skilled, untraceable Nen user had bypassed his entire estate's security, effortlessly humbled his best fighter, stood in his room while he was unconscious... and left without taking a single thing.

  That wasn't a thief. That was a message.

  "We're being targeted," Corsi whispered, terrified of the invisible crosshairs now resting on his back. "A pro Hunter... or an assassin toying with our defenses."

  He looked at the newly acquired relic, then back at the safe. Since the artifact and the money were completely untouched, he had no idea what the intruder was actually after. "Double the exterior patrols and hire more Nen users immediately. I want this estate locked down. We need to figure out who is targeting me."