Deep inside the mansion, in a narrow room filled with cleaning supplies, Luther stood before a full-length mirror covered in stains and frayed edges. The deep blue janitor uniform he wore was slightly bulky, the fabric coarse, and the cuffs bore faint yellow stains that refused to wash away. However, when he raised his face to look into the mirror, those eyes belonging to a King-level Beyonder were piercingly sharp in the gloom, looking entirely out of place.
At his feet, a man clad only in his underwear lay unconscious on the floor, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.
“What a nuisance,” Luther muttered under his breath. His gaze moved rapidly between his own face in the mirror and the face of the man on the ground.
In the next second, a change occurred.
It was as if an invisible, wet film had quietly covered the contours of his face. Muscles and bones underwent subtle, rapid squirming and reorganization beneath the skin. The image in the mirror rippled and blurred like a reflection in water before reconsolidating in an instant.
When the fluctuations ceased, the man reflected in the mirror was the exact image of the unconscious man on the floor. It was perfect, right down to one tiny old scar on the left cheek. Only deep within those eyes did Luther’s true spirit remain.
“At least my mission isn’t too complicated,” he said to his new face in the mirror, his mouth twitching into a smirk that looked somewhat strange on the unfamiliar features. “Protecting people. Simple, direct.”
Only a few hours ago, Rex had finally laid all his cards on the table in that heavy-atmosphered conference room. The role assigned to Luther was to be the hidden sentry of this grand play — ensuring that the youngest members of the Special Operations Group, who were being cast as bait in this dangerous auction, could escape unscathed before everything spiraled out of control.
“No wonder everyone was called out…” Luther lowered the brim of his cap, the shadow concealing eyes that did not currently belong to him. He whispered to himself, “Even pushing the fresh blood of the Special Operations Group out as bait… these Traveling Merchants are truly insane enough.”
His gaze seemed to pierce through the walls, looking toward the noisy, flamboyant direction of the mansion. The Wishing Machine… the ultimate masterpiece in alchemical legend, bordering on a miracle. It had another older, more forbidden, and more significant name — the Philosopher’s Stone.
Touching the rules, twisting causality, and granting wishes… these words sounded as beautiful as a fairy tale, but they often meant an equal measure of insane costs and uncontrollable disasters.
‘Can this thing… really be created?’ Luther was skeptical. He had always held a conservative attitude toward things that exceeded the limits of human cognition. In his heart, the probability of this thing actually existing was about the same as him bumping into the Lord Protector and the reclusive Empress of the Holy Moon at the same time tonight.
But Rex wouldn’t gamble his entire elite squad for no reason.
‘Forget it,’ he shook his head, tossing aside his useless doubts as his professional instincts took over again. ‘Why think so much? Just do the job.’
He did one last check of his disguise in the mirror, confirming there were no flaws. Then he bent down and efficiently dragged the unconscious, real janitor behind a pile of old fabric in the corner, ensuring his breathing was unobstructed and that he wouldn’t wake up for a while.
Having finished this, he straightened his back. His face now wore the expression of a tired, numb janitor. He pushed the cleaning cart, which was loaded with buckets, mops, and rags, toward the door.
He pulled the door open and merged into the dimly lit servants’ passage, which was filled with the smell of cooking oil and a faint, ambient noise.
—
Inside the office of the Director of the Order Bureau, Rex was not sitting behind his large desk. Instead, he stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to the cool light of the room, his figure resembling a frozen statue.
He wasn’t holding a pen or a cup of coffee. He was simply gripping a document with slightly curled edges and paper that had faded to an ivory yellow. It was a photocopy of the original annex of the Opus Coexistence Treaty regarding the Lower City. It was covered in dense, handwritten annotations, traces of revisions after arguments, and the final signatures of compromise.
The light cast his profile onto the smooth floor. His gaze fell upon the document as if he could see the smoke outside the venue when the treaty was signed, the weighing of options under the negotiating table, and the increasingly heavy shadows that had accumulated in the Lower City over the following 100 years.
After a long time, he let out a sigh.
“Your Majesty…” he spoke in a low voice. “Please forgive my… concealment.”
The words were difficult to say. To hold back from the monarch to whom he had once sworn his loyalty — one who still carried his complex respect — was always a heavy burden of betrayal to him.
But his gaze fell back down to the treaty in his hand, a symbol of compromise and division. His eyes gradually grew hard, like tempered steel.
“But the future of the Lower City… should not be imprisoned within this helpless choice from 100 years ago.”
His voice remained very soft, yet it was infused with an unshakeable conviction.
“Those people who walk through the smog, who are worn down on assembly lines, and who still try to look up at the sky despite wearing masks… their lives should not be permanently defined as just the way things are.”
He stopped speaking and gently placed the heavy document on the windowsill.
Outside the window, man-made stars continued to twinkle.
Inside the window, a soldier who had once followed a legend — now a guardian of order — bore his own choices in silence. He faced a predicament that had begun 100 years ago but had to find a way out in the present.
Concealment might be disloyalty.
But some changes required someone to push them forward.
“Even if it costs me my life, I will not hesitate,” he murmured.