"Yeah. We can't use any of this. Ever."

"Why not."

"It's just twelve hours of bone-breaking, muscle tearing, body workouts. This is borderline gore! What's with the old guy yelling and hitting you? Why do both of you have to be shirtless?"

"Yeah, it's a workout day. You should see martial training day."

"No, thank you. Maybe if it was slightly less horrific with clever editing, we could pump something out, but no. The only thing we have going here is the cameraman and your looks. I can get into the quality of the angles, but I digress."

I give master Wang and Rob a thumbs down and a shake of my head before responding.

"Then what should we do?"

"First, you should make an account. You don't have a smartphone, but we might be able to get a phone producer to give you a kitted-out one for free. Second, we will fake a few things or, at the very least, tone them down to the level of humans. Are any of your beasts conventionally cute? Everything will be simpler if so."

I think of all of my beasts. My rock, my skeleton, my snake, my sharks, and my ooze. I'll even throw in my antlion.

"Yeah, we're all good on that front."

~

The assistant managed to contact a famous phone company called Evo. It's a company that produces literally anything that uses a processor. It's not a bad phone. It has a twenty-year warranty, solar charging, and a shit ton of security. It even has a durability enchantment on the case. I bought it instead of being sponsored by them. I won't let my first social media interaction be a brand deal.

I made an account, but since I technically haven't graduated from my institute, I don't have a government-issued ranking. Graduating isn't the only way to get a rank, but it's the most convenient. Otherwise, getting a designation would force me to undergo tedious tests. The system is weird since levels are both taken into account and disregarded.

Ranks are based on the power you have at your current level and the potential you show. It doesn't matter if you have no skills and shitty attributes. A great fire affinity doesn't do anything alone but can allow you to become a powerful mage with proper training. It typically aligns with your class level, but I don't think I'm considered a rank-C human by the government's standards.

But since levels don't gatekeep ranks, a rank-B human could destroy a rank-S human if they have a level advantage. There is a hierarchy of power, with the first being the best and the weakest being the last. Rankable has a handy option of looking at a graphic that depicts the top rankers in numerical order that I didn't touch.

I haven't done anything yet, and I'm already on the front page. Its clips other people's posts of the attack, my conference, and my rescuing of those injured people. Looks like my job is done already. I sent my login credentials to the assistant and did some sleuthing. I need to know more about the attack.

~

I found that blogger's blog again, and it's been constantly updated since the last time I checked. His username is [TheCorrectOnion], and he has an email linked on his profile for sending "hot scoops" to him. I did the same thing I did to the gentlemancer. I cyber-sleuthed. It took a while, but I found his first name and the street he lives on. He isn't from the capital, so I need to dig deeper. He posted about going on a trip and staying at a cheap hotel. He also complained about it being too close to the slums. I looked up how many hotels are near the slums without being inside of it, and the results were more than what I was expecting, but I managed to narrow it down.

Some of the hotels' bar patrons if their levels are too high or low. In this specific case, since he was around level fifty, only three hotels in that area would've excepted him. All of them are equally likely to be where he was holding up. I'll need to be stealthy for this. I put on my mask and wait until nightfall. I can only take Rob with me since the others are not inconspicuous enough for this mission.

The first place seemed quite like a quality place. They don't let anyone below level 50 or above 100 stay here. I had to distract the receptionist from their computer long enough for Rob to sneak in some shadows and look if the blogger took a room here. He found a match, and I snuck away long enough from the receptionist to make my way upstairs. I knock on room 202. and some guy answers in his sleeping attire.

"Bonnie?"

"Yes?"

"Nevermind."

I walk away, leaving the guy confused. We went to the second location.

The second place was also a bust, leaving the final location I'm willing to look at tonight. The hotel was like a rundown motel more than anything else. It's a two-story building, and the room doors are all connected from the outside. It didn't skip my mind that the blogger could've used a different name or had the room under the name of whoever is behind this, but I might as well try. This place doesn't allow anyone level 100 or higher. There wasn't even a receptionist, just a bell. Only a few keys are missing, and the logs aren't digital. After flipping through a few pages, I see the name Bonnie again. He checked in a few days ago and has not checked out.

Under this cover of darkness, we approached room 107. There don't seem to be any cameras here. I knocked, and there wasn't a response. I motion to Rob, and he creates a set of boney lockpicks and starts working on the door. At least that training didn't go to waste. After relocking the door, I investigate the room. Inside was trash from fast food deliveries and takeout, a closed suitcase, and a laptop. I found a pair of pants in the sink, and sitting next to it was a wallet with a cartoon character on it. Since paper currency went out of style, wallets are only used for cards.

Inside was an identity card with the face of the blogger on it with the name Bonnie Himan. Rob shoves the laptop into his bag as I rummage through the rest of the room. I kicked the suitcase into my mansion after briefly summoning it.

I don't find anything else except a gun hidden in his closet. It's a shotgun, and it's loaded. I contemplated taking it with me, but I decided to take a single shell instead. I already have a gun, and I don't want something that could be identified. I'd either use it or sell it. Either way, it isn't wise. I want to experiment with my prosthetic firearm using non Rain made bullets, so I'm taking a shell. I see a fading mark on it. I look at the gun and don't notice any emblem, nor do I see the same symbol anywhere else in the room.

On the shell was a fading shield surrounded by a ring of flames. Inside the shield's center is a sword crossed with a staff, with a shining star at the hilt. I have never seen this emblem before. So why does it seem familiar? Rob perks up like a hunting dog, and I hear the sound of a car door being shut. I can see the silhouettes of two people heading toward the room from the window. It's suspicious that they are coming here without checking in at the office first. I duck down and enter the bathroom as Rob disappears into the darkness. There are no other means of leaving this room unless I try to break down the walls.

The door unlocks, and two men in casual clothes and duffel bags stroll into the room. One is tall and skinny, and the other is short and buff. They immediately looked at where the laptop was before looking at each other. The skinny one reaches into their pocket as the other conjures a rifle out of nowhere and starts sweeping the room. He started with the closet and pulled out the shotgun. I watch on from the tiny crack in the bathroom door. [Scientific Insight+]

[??? ???] [??? ???]

The skinny guy must have finally found what he was digging for since he pulled out his phone and started typing away at the screen. Shorty was about the check the bathroom when skinny spoke up, momentarily taking his attention away.

"Tracker is offline, but the laptop should still be in this room. Careful, someone was here before us."

"Got it. Set up the stuff. The laptop is probably in the bathroom."

"No, the scanner says it's right in that corner... Oh shit! Contact"

Rob has the laptop in his dimensional bag, but they were able to find it anyway. As soon as he said "contact," I kicked the bathroom door down. The door doesn't open that way, so it breaks off its hinges and knocks into the short guy. I shoot my firearm through the door twice, hitting the guy on the other side twice. The skinny guy turns to look at me but gets a sharpened shovel to the neck instead.

A chunk of this guy's neck gets ripped out. Not a single drop of blood drips. The buff guy has two baseball-sized wounds indenting his flesh, but he also doesn't bleed. They seemed hurt and startled, but that didn't stop them from counter-attacking. The tall guy activated a skill before Rob or I could stop him. The door locks and the walls have a sheen that dissipates after a second. I [Bolster Resistance] as a flurry of bullets fire at me, striking every part of my body. Not a single one broke my skin, but the impact still hurts. With my 1000 resistance to piercing, I think I'll be alright. The bullets that missed harmlessly hit the wall and fell to the floor. I think I know what that skill does, but I use [Scientific Insight+] anyways.

[Lockdown B

Lockdown a room until dissipated or until mana runs out. The wards are equal to the skill's rank.]

I fire some shots and advance on the short guy, but he keeps his distance as we dance around the small room. The skinny guy kicked out and knocked Rob's head off. He tried using a different ability, but Rob reassembled and smacked him in the back of the head, doing another chunk of damage. He angrily turns around but gets met with ten fingers breaking and ten [Bone Shots] in his chest. The buff guy is annoyingly nimble. His damage doesn't do much to me, but I can't hit him. He won't even shoot me anymore since it hurt him every time he did. When he took the time to toss the shotgun to the skinny guy, I activated [Battered Bones] and [Dash] to jump off the wall and open palm smack on the ear with [Donkey Punch]. I also fire a shot from my palm at the point of impact.

-680

Critical Hit!

-2000!

Fire enters one side of his head and heaves the other. Brain and skull get blasted out like a confetti cannon against one of the walls. He drops dead, and as soon as he does, red liquid bleeds from his body. The room is quickly saturated with the smell of his blood. I don't think he was above level 200. Concealing levels?

The skinny guy caught the gun right after hearing the gunshot. He looks over at me, and I peer back. He locked eyes with my mask and pointed the shotgun at one of the duffle bags. He pulls the trigger, but nothing happens. I took out the chambered round. Rob sticks his boney fingers into this guy's neck wound and pulls out his c-4 vertebrae. It's in perfect condition, and the guy almost doesn't notice. That quickly changed when the weight of his unsupported skull crushed the nerves in his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the neck down.

The fortifications of this room immediately end, and I can hear sirens approaching. I managed to toss Rob, the paralyzed guy, and one of the duffle bags into my mansion before jumping out the window. Glass shatters and spreads across the parking lot as I book it into the darkness. Seconds after I left, the enforcers arrived in droves.

After getting a distance away, I walked up the side of a building and went on the roof. I used the access door to enter my mansion. The guy isn't there, but the two bags are. I head down to my dungeon on a hunch and see Rob standing on the paralyzed guy. Rob can't or won't put bones back into the people he takes them from, so I will have to finagle my healing to allow him to speak. But for now, I'm going to let him rot.

I scan my [Lexicon] for where I've seen this emblem. I frown as I make my way up to the armory.