Judul: "DEATH MORTGAGE: The Hunter's Liquidation"

Chapter 8: The Cornered Rats

CRASH!

A bottle of imported whiskey worth tens of millions shattered against the marble wall of the luxurious penthouse. The amber liquid, reeking of strong alcohol, splashed everywhere, staining the white Persian rug beneath it.

Bagas stood in the middle of the room, his chest heaving violently. He was breathing like a mad bull. His golden silk shirt was badly wrinkled, its collar torn from his own frantic pulling.

In the corner of the room, Siska cowered on the sofa, hugging her trembling knees. Her mascara was running, mixing with her tears and ruining her beautiful face.

"Babe… stop…" Siska whimpered hoarsely. "Our careers… what are we going to do? The hashtags on social media are all attacking us. If the ethics committee tomorrow—"

"SHUT UP, YOU WHORE!" Bagas roared, turning to point a trembling finger at Siska's face. His eyes were red and wild, filled with stress-induced veins that looked ready to pop. "If you hadn't been so busy whining about your dirty fake nails in the dungeon, and had focused on buffing Reza, we wouldn't have run like dogs! And that bastard porter… he should have been eaten by the monster! HE SHOULD BE DEAD!"

Bagas bit his own thumb aggressively. He bit so hard it broke the skin. Fresh blood seeped from his thumbnail, but he didn't care. Absolute panic was chewing away at his sanity. The TV hero worshipped by millions was now nothing more than a cornered sewer rat, trapped in his own scheme.

The penthouse door suddenly opened with a pin code.

A bald, middle-aged man in a black suit walked in. He glanced at the broken bottle on the carpet without expression, then tossed a tablet onto the glass table in front of Bagas. He was Riko, the crisis manager for the White Tiger Guild.

"Stop breaking things, Gas. It's not going to save your license," Riko said coldly, walking to the mini-bar and pouring himself a glass of water.

Bagas looked at Riko with a disgusting, pleading expression. "Bro Rik… you've handled the media, right? You paid the trolls to turn public opinion back? Just say Jihan was the one who sabotaged our team!"

Riko drank his water slowly, then put the glass down. "Public opinion is the easy part. I can set up a fake press conference tomorrow. That's not the main problem, Gas."

Riko pointed at the tablet on the table. "I just got intel from my source inside the Association. Your case… it's been pulled from the regular Ethics Department. The one handling it now is Luna."

Bagas's body went rigid. Siska, who was crying in the corner, immediately covered her mouth with both hands, stifling a scream.

"L-Luna? That ice-hearted auditor?" Bagas's voice trembled. "Why is she involved?! I just left one broke-ass porter behind, damn it! This isn't a Core corruption case!"

"Because that broke-ass porter brought back an S-Class Core, you idiot," Riko hissed sharply. "Luna doesn't care about your rotten morals. She cares about where that power anomaly came from. And if Luna manages to make Jihan talk officially in an Association interrogation room tomorrow morning… Luna will know the details of where you were when Jihan pushed back that boss. She'll send investigators to check your magic traces on that iron gate. The moment they find out you intentionally lured the monster with Jihan's communicator…"

Riko leaned in, his gaze as cold as ice. "You won't just be fired. You'll be thrown into the Tartarus Dimensional Prison on charges of premeditated murder of a state asset."

Bagas stumbled back two steps until his back hit the wall. His legs felt weak. Tartarus Prison wasn't a place for humans. There, corrupt Hunters were tortured daily by miasma radiation until they went insane.

"No… I don't want to go there…" Bagas clutched his hair with both hands, pulling until several strands came out. "Bro Rik, help me… I'm the Guild's cash cow! You can't let me be destroyed!"

"I'm here to save the Guild's stock price, not your life," Riko cut in cynically. "The only way Luna won't have a key witness… is if that key witness can never speak again."

Bagas looked up. The fear in his eyes was replaced by a methodical, bloodthirsty glint. His cruel survival instinct took over.

"Yeah… you're right. Dead men can't testify," Bagas muttered quickly. He ran to the table, snatched Riko's tablet, and opened an encrypted communication app from the Deep Web. "Help me connect to the Underground. I want to hire an executor tonight."

Riko lit a cigarette, blowing smoke toward the ceiling. "Jihan is being treated in the Association's VVIP wing. Security is tight. You need someone who can work clean, without leaving any magic traces."

"I'll hire Viper," Bagas answered without hesitation, typing a string of access codes with his still-bleeding finger.

The tablet screen turned black, then displayed the silhouette of a man in a half-mask with a voice disguised by a digital frequency modulator.

"Viper here. Is there a target tonight?" The mechanical voice echoed in the room.

"VVIP Room 402, Association Central Hospital," Bagas said quickly, his voice filled with dark determination. "The target is Han Jihan. The Porter who was in the news this evening."

A static chuckle came from the other end of the call. "The Association Hospital? Are you insane? The mana radars there can detect a single hair from an unauthorized Hunter. Not to mention the target is a national hero who just went viral. The risk is too high."

"Five billion," Bagas cut in. "I'll transfer three billion tonight, the rest after the kid's heart stops beating."

There was a moment of silence on the other end. That price was enough to buy a small island in the safe zone.

"...Deal," Viper replied. "What's the target's condition? We need details. My team needs to prepare."

Bagas smirked slyly. He opened a new tab on the tablet, entering a secret Guild code that gave him access to the hospital's public firewall. In a few taps, the screen split in two, displaying a live feed from the CCTV camera in the VVIP fourth-floor corridor.

"He's no threat. An hour ago, I got a report from a nurse our Guild bribed. Jihan was completely paralyzed and vomiting blood on the floor. The nurse cleaned his room at six this evening and put him back in bed," Bagas explained, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the CCTV feed showing the door to room 402. "The kid was given a sedative dose fit for an elephant. He's completely paralyzed. He won't even be able to open his eyes when your knife goes through his neck."

"Good work. Make it look like a complication from dungeon poison. We'll use pure nerve toxin extracted from a Manticore's tail, not magic," Viper instructed. "My team goes in at 23:00, right during the fourth-floor security shift change. Make sure you loop the corridor CCTV from your end."

"The camera is handled. Just do your job cleanly. No noise," Bagas pressed.

"My team never fails."

The connection was cut.

Bagas tossed the tablet back onto the table. He wiped the sweat from his face, then let out a soft laugh. The laugh grew louder and louder, echoing off the penthouse walls. Siska stared at him in horror.

"You hear that, Jihan?" Bagas whispered to the empty air, his smirk widening to show his teeth. "A crippled hero like you has no business challenging the elite. Tonight… you'll die in your sleep, and tomorrow morning, I'll show up at your funeral with the biggest flower arrangement."

11:00 PM. Association Central Hospital.

A thunderstorm raged over the capital. Lightning split the dark sky, followed by a clap of thunder that drowned out the highway noise. Raindrops hammered against the glass windows of the VVIP fourth-floor corridor.

The red-carpeted corridor was silent. The fluorescent lights were dimmed to night mode. The night shift nurse was busy filing paperwork at the reception desk, fifty yards from the 400-block rooms.

From the emergency staircase door, three figures in male nurse uniforms stepped out without making a single sound. Their tactical boots were padded with military-grade sound dampeners. They were Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, elite assassins from Viper.

Alpha, a man with a burn scar on his neck, led the way. He held up two fingers, giving a tactical signal to his team. Bravo immediately moved to the electrical panel on the wall, attaching a small chip that disabled the motion sensors along the corridor.

They moved quickly, precisely, and lethally. They passed room after room like shadows melting into the darkness. There was no killing intent leaking from their aura, just the pure technique of professional assassins trained not to awaken a Hunter's instincts.

They stopped right in front of the oak door numbered 402.

Charlie pressed a button on his smartwatch, checking the one-way communication. "Corridor camera is looped from the outside. We have three minutes before the next nurse's round," his voice was almost inaudible, a mere whisper carried on the air-conditioned breeze.

Bravo nodded. He pulled out a cylindrical magnetic hacking device and attached it to the card scanner on the doorknob.

Click.

The indicator light, which had been red, turned green. The multi-million-rupiah electronic lock was hacked in just four seconds.

Alpha pushed the door open slowly, so slowly that the hinges didn't even creak. The three of them slipped into the pitch-black VVIP room.

The only sources of light in the room were the flashes of lightning outside the giant glass window and the small indicator light on the heart rate monitor beside the bed. The air inside was freezing. The air conditioner seemed to be set to its lowest temperature. There was a strong smell of antiseptic mixed with the faint odor of floor bleach, proof that someone had aggressively mopped up blood from the marble a few hours ago.

Alpha gave a hand signal. Spread out.

The three assassins drew curved, matte-black knives from under their nurse uniforms. The tips of the knives dripped with a clear Manticore poison. A single small scratch was enough to stop a heart in seconds, and a human medical autopsy would only detect it as a natural heart attack.

They approached the orthopedic bed in the center of the room.

On the bed, a thick white comforter was puffed up, covering a body from head to neck. The target's breathing was inaudible over the roar of the rain outside, but the mound seemed static, as if the person beneath was in a deep sleep from a high dose of sedatives.

"Target is paralyzed. Silent execution," Alpha whispered through his earpiece.

Bravo and Charlie took positions on the right and left sides of the bed, holding the comforter-covered mound tightly so the target wouldn't struggle when stabbed. Alpha stood at the head of the bed, raising his knife high with the cold eyes of a butcher used to slaughtering livestock.

"One…" Alpha whispered, steadying his stance.

"Two…" Bravo and Charlie pressed down on the comforter.

"Three."

STAB!

Alpha plunged the poisoned knife directly toward the target's chest under the comforter. His swing was powerful, designed to break through the ribs and stab straight into the heart.

However, the sensation in Alpha's hand was completely wrong.

There was no sound of tearing flesh. No bone breaking. The black knife passed through the comforter with ease, then hit the mattress beneath, piercing right through it.

Bravo, who was holding the arm section, suddenly yanked the comforter back violently.

SWOOSH!

A flash of lightning from the window illuminated what was under the comforter.

Empty.

There was no Han Jihan. There was only a pile of pillows arranged to resemble a human figure, covered by a thick blanket.

Alpha's eyes widened. His heart hammered with adrenaline. His professional instincts screamed that something was wrong. "He's gone, damn it! Fall back!" he yelled, breaking the silence and ignoring the protocol.

But before the three assassins could even turn around, a heavy, metallic scraping sound cut through the air from above them.

Directly from the top of a tall, teak wardrobe in the dark corner of the room.

SWOOOSH!

The shadow of a man leaped down through the darkness. He wasn't carrying a sword of light. He wasn't chanting a magic spell.

The only sound that accompanied his fall was the sound of air being split as a thirty-pound steel oxygen tank was swung from above with pure, desperate force and absolute killing intent.

CRAAACK!