Episode-232

Words : 1559 Updated : Sep 29th, 2025

Chapter : 463 He had seen enough. He had seen the squalor. He had seen the danger. He had seen the pathetic, ugly heart of the Gilded Hand. He melted back from the grate, a silent, unseen ghost, his course of action now absolute. He would not just dismantle this operation. He would not just ruin the men behind it. He would obliterate it. He would salt the very earth upon which it stood, ensuring that this poison, and the greed that created it, could never take root again. The time for observation was over. The time for cleansing had begun. Lloyd moved from the ventilation grate, a silent wraith melting back into the deeper shadows of the stinking alley. He had seen the heart of the operation, the squalid, dangerous reality of the counterfeit factory. Now, he needed to find its black, beating heart: the brothers Croft. Ken's report had been meticulous. Joseph and Jacob Croft, the self-proclaimed masters of the Gilded Hand, did not toil in the foul, steaming cellars with their slowly dying workers. Of course, they didn't. They maintained a small, private office in a slightly less squalid, but no less grim, section of the basement, a room separated from the main production floor by a heavy, iron-banded door. It was from here that they oversaw their pathetic little empire of filth, counting their ill-gotten coin, insulated from the worst of the toxic fumes. Lloyd found the entrance easily—a narrow, rickety wooden staircase leading down from the back of the derelict tannery, its steps slick with a foul, unidentifiable slime. The air grew thicker, more choked with the stench of rancid fish oil and slaked lime, as he descended. He moved with a dancer’s impossible silence, his soft-soled boots making no sound on the creaking wood. He was a ghost, descending into the underworld. At the bottom of the stairs, a short, damp corridor led to two doors. One, a large, rough-hewn plank door, from behind which came the muffled sounds of the factory floor—the sluggish bubbling of the vats, the hacking coughs of the workers. The other, the iron-banded door from Ken’s report. It was from behind this door that he heard voices. Loud. Arrogant. Arguing. He pressed himself flat against the cold, damp stone wall beside the door, his senses on high alert. He didn't need to press his ear to the wood; his enhanced hearing, a gift from his bond with Fang Fairy, allowed him to pick up the conversation within as if he were standing in the room. “...told you we needed more Froth-tongue, you idiot!” one voice snarled. It was a brutish, gravelly sound, filled with impatient aggression. “The last batch was too thin! It barely foamed! Master Corbin sent it back, said it was like washing with colored water! He refused to pay!” “And I told you, brother, that the price of Froth-tongue has tripled this week!” a second voice replied, this one higher-pitched, wheedling, laced with a kind of cunning avarice. “The sewer-scrapers know we need it! They’re bleeding us dry! We need to find a cheaper alternative! Maybe ground-up river kelp?” “River kelp?!” the first voice roared. “It’ll smell like a dead fish’s armpit, Jacob! We’re already pushing our luck with the fish oil base! We need the perfume to mask the stink!” “The perfume costs money, Joseph! Everything costs money!” Jacob whined back. “The vendors are demanding a higher cut, now that the city guard is sniffing around the market more. And that last shipment of slaked lime was full of impurities, it ruined half a batch...” Lloyd listened, a faint, contemptuous smile touching his lips beneath the white mask. The brothers Croft. Joseph, the muscle, the brawler. And Jacob, the weaker, more cunning one, the one with the flicker of crude alchemical knowledge. Arguing over the profit margins of their poison. It was perfect. He had heard enough. He had confirmed their presence, their roles, their pathetic, greedy motivations. The time for stealth was over. The time for confrontation had arrived. He didn't knock. He didn't try the handle. He simply focused his will for a fraction of a second, channeling a single, sharp, contained pulse of his Steel Blood Void power into the heavy iron lock mechanism of the door. There was a sharp, metallic CRACK, like a snapping bone. The lock shattered internally. Lloyd placed a single, calm hand on the door and pushed. The heavy door swung inward with a low, groaning protest of stressed hinges, revealing the scene within. Chapter : 464 The office was a small, cramped, squalid room. A single, sputtering oil lamp cast a greasy, yellow light over a rickety table piled high with loose coins, stained parchments, and half-empty bottles of cheap wine. The air was thick with the foul stench of the factory, overlaid with the sour smell of stale wine and unwashed bodies. Two men sat at the table, frozen in mid-argument. The first, Joseph, was a bull of a man, his massive, leather-clad shoulders hunched, a brutish, angry expression on his face. He was the source of the gravelly, aggressive voice. The second, Jacob, was his opposite—thin, weaselly, with shifty, intelligent eyes and long, ink-stained fingers. They both stared at the door, at the silent, white-masked figure that had just, impossibly, breached their private sanctum. For a long moment, there was only stunned silence. The brothers stared, their minds struggling to process the intrusion. Who was this? A rival guild? The City Guard? A disgruntled customer? The white, featureless mask offered no clues, only a chilling, inhuman blankness. It was Joseph, the man of action, the brawler, who recovered first. His initial shock was instantly replaced by a surge of pure, territorial fury. “Who the hell are you?!” he roared, shoving his chair back and lumbering to his feet, his hand grabbing for the heavy, iron-studded club that leaned against his chair. He was a creature of simple, direct solutions, and this stranger was a problem that clearly needed to be solved by blunt force trauma. “You got a death wish, breaking into our office?” Jacob, the more cunning of the two, remained seated, his shifty eyes darting from Lloyd’s masked face to the shattered lock on the door, his mind racing. This was not a common thug. The silence, the confidence, the way he had breached a heavy iron lock without a sound... this was something else. Something dangerous. “Brother, wait,” Jacob hissed, holding up a hand to restrain his more impulsive sibling. He squinted at Lloyd, a flicker of something—recognition? fear?—in his eyes. “The white mask... the silent approach... I’ve heard whispers. In the taverns. A new ghost in the city’s shadows. A vigilante, they say. One who deals in... consequences.” Joseph just snorted, hefting his club. “Vigilante? Ghost? He’s just a man in a silly mask! And he’s about to learn what the Gilded Hand does to men who stick their noses where they don’t belong!” He charged. A clumsy, roaring bull of a man, his club raised high, aiming to smash Lloyd’s masked face into a bloody pulp. Lloyd watched the charge with a calm, almost bored, detachment. He didn't move. He didn't summon his chains. He simply stood there, a silent, white-masked statue, waiting. Just as Joseph’s club was about to descend, just as his triumphant, furious roar filled the small, stinking office, Jacob screamed. “Joseph, NO! Look!” Joseph’s eyes, in the last fraction of a second of his life, flickered from his target to the space beside him. And his world ended. With a silent, terrifying ripple in the very fabric of the air, she had appeared. Fang Fairy. She had not been summoned with a flash of light. She had simply... stepped from the shadows behind Lloyd, a Transcended spirit moving between worlds with an ease that was as terrifying as it was absolute. One moment she wasn't there, the next, she was. A goddess of storms and moonlight, her silver hair a flowing river of light, her golden eyes burning with a cold, divine fire. And she was wreathed in her Lightning Cloak. A brilliant, crackling, and utterly, comprehensively, terrifying aura of pure, azure, high-voltage energy, humming with a low, menacing thrum that made the very air in the room vibrate. The greasy yellow light of the oil lamp was completely overwhelmed, the room plunged into the stark, flickering, blue-and-white strobe of a contained thunderstorm. The two brothers froze, their earlier arrogance, their fury, their very thoughts, vaporizing in the face of this impossible, supernatural apparition. Their minds, accustomed to the grimy, practical realities of the slum, could not process what they were seeing. They were not facing a vigilante. They were not facing a rival guild. They were facing... a god. A beautiful, terrible, and very, very angry, god of the thunderstorm. And standing beside her, untouched, unmoved, was the silent, white-masked figure who was, undoubtedly, her master. Joseph’s charge faltered, his club slipping from his nerveless fingers to clatter, unheard, on the stone floor. Jacob let out a high-pitched, keening whimper, scrambling backwards, his chair toppling over as he fell to the floor in a heap of pure, abject terror.

Episode-232

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