Star City 5.
Mortal Realm.
Lorc and Kesiba had been "born" almost at the same time.
Though not in the same place.
In the Eternal Cycle Star Nation, the concept of "birth" was vastly different from what mortals might imagine. There were no hospitals, no delivery rooms. Here, giving birth meant a couple reached an agreement to raise a child—then submitted a request online.
After registering, they would book an appointment—and wait.
Eventually, they'd receive a precise delivery time.
When the moment arrived, they had a choice: either have the child delivered to their doorstep or pick it up in person at a specialized distribution agency.
That was the entirety of the "childbirth" process in the Eternal Cycle Star Nation.
These distribution centers were scattered across Star City, usually appearing every five blocks—dedicated facilities designed to mass-produce "children."
Lorc saw his parents.
And in that moment, he felt compelled to apologize to them.
Because he wasn't truly their child. He was still Lorc—conscious, intact—not a blank slate.
He hadn't been reborn. He had merely slipped into a new life.
To investigate that incident, Lorc and Kesiba had agreed: they absolutely had to enter the mortal realm.
But crossing over—either from the underworld or from within Star City—was no simple feat. Even communication was difficult, let alone physical entry.
Everything was monitored by the main server. The moment they stepped into the mortal realm, it would detect them—not through external surveillance, but by locking onto their biological signatures, effectively freezing them in place.
So, how could they do it?
As expected from a former official, Kesiba was adept at exploiting system loopholes—often more so than Lorc.
One such loophole lay in the way the main server handled familial data.
It would ignore identification codes belonging to a registered wife and daughter.
So why not assume the identities of the original Lorc's wife and daughter?
Child-distribution machines were controlled partially by humans and partially by the main server.
The ID codes themselves were managed solely by the main server.
However, Kesiba knew a trick: these "children" could be assigned an additional, special designation.
Such designations were initially intended to flag individuals for observation.
Typically, they were used on subjects who had displayed erratic behavior in the underworld—cases where the individual's consciousness was suspected to be partially corrupted, requiring closer monitoring.
Special designations came in colored tags—simple prefixes like red, yellow, or blue.
Blue signified Level 1 observation.
Red meant Level 3—high attention.
But the system allowed far more than just color codes.
These tags could be customized with numbers and special characters, effectively creating an entirely different ID code.
Once this code was injected into the system, there was a chance the main server would overlook it.
And since the server was also responsible for memory cleansing, being ignored meant they might bypass the memory wipe entirely.
Lorc now remembered himself—clearly. That, in itself, was their greatest victory.
His "parents" were stunned when they first picked him up, and they gave him a name:
Fendiko.
A gender-neutral name, chosen with care.
It was supposed to be a joyful day.
But by the second day, their joy turned to panic—because the child had vanished.
They reported it to the authorities, scoured every database, contacted anyone who might help.
But there was no trace of him.
By then, Lorc had already reunited with Kesiba.
The two stood facing each other—and promptly burst into laughter.
"Your face—ha!" one of them wheezed.
They both looked like toddlers—infant bodies with adult minds, staring at one another like caricatures of humanity.
It was absurd. Hilarious.
After the laughter, their expressions turned serious. It was time to get to work.
"To find the truth," Kesiba said, "we need to start by identifying the one who broadcast that audio file."
"The main server and local law enforcement have already abandoned the investigation in Alangelu Commercial City. Which means... that person is still out there. Still unpunished."
"And what you saw," he added, "was probably not the first time… and definitely not the last."
Kesiba had made up his mind. Since he had chosen to help Lorc investigate, he would see it through to the bitter end.
"He must've left traces," he said. "We just need to use our current 'status' to trace them."
"People in the mortal realm are far easier to deceive than those in the underworld."
"We're going back to Chg3—Alangelu Commercial City."
And Lorc agreed. Starting with that individual was their best lead.
It was entirely possible that the culprit wasn't a single person—but many.
Star City 5 was colossal—hundreds of millions of streets, each packed with tens of millions of inhabitants.
Any given incident, no matter how brutal, usually only left behind a few dozen, maybe a few hundred dead. And with the main server filtering what the public saw, barely anyone even noticed.
"Yes," Kesiba nodded, "but there's a catch—our identities are completely blank in the system. That means no access to official transportation."
In this age, lacking a valid ID was the same as being invisible.
And forging one? Out of the question. Not with the main server managing every authentication node down to the atomic layer.
"No need to make it complicated," Kesiba said casually. "Just hitch a ride on a sky-car."
Without waiting, he flagged down a passing vehicle. In the sweetest, most innocent voice he could muster, he chirped,
"Uncle, can you take us home? We live in Chg3... we got separated from our mommy."
Lorc froze.
He hadn't realized just how shameless Kesiba could be until now.
The driver glanced at the two wide-eyed "children" standing alone by the roadside. His expression softened. "Of course. No problem."
Luckily, Chg3 Street wasn't that far away—just six astronomical units.
Roughly 900 million kilometers.
Given that city sky-cars maxed out at 4,000 km/s, they'd reach their destination in just over two days.
They had already burned some time reuniting earlier, but still, the schedule wasn't bad.
Kesiba, apparently, had used this exact tactic before—back when he first met Lorc.
Lorc, being slightly more reserved, had opted for stealth instead. He had sneaked onto a public train, relying on his small frame to avoid detection. Whether by luck or some gap in the system, no alarms were triggered.
No one even noticed him.
Now, both of them were sitting comfortably inside the stranger's vehicle, cruising straight toward Chg3.
Eventually, the man said, "Alright, we're here. I have other matters to tend to, so I can't stay and help you look for your parents."
"Shall I drop you off at the police station?"
At that moment, Kesiba peered out the window, pointed dramatically, and exclaimed,
"There! I see it! That's our home!"
The man hesitated. "You're sure?"
Lorc chimed in, his tone steady, "Yes. Niphra Fanghold."
The man checked the map. Sure enough, that location existed—Niphra as the name, Fanghold as the identifier.
The place earned its title for a reason: its architecture resembled a vertical crescent-shaped canine tooth. All the structures were built along the curve—like veins along a fang.
"Alright then," the man said, easing the vehicle to a stop.
Kesiba, still in full performance mode, pointed at some random building. "That one's ours. Thank you, uncle!"
He was practically glowing with excitement, nearly bouncing in place.
His acting was… disturbingly convincing.
The man looked like he wanted to follow them to the door, just to be sure, but they quickly assured him they knew the way.
With perfectly synchronized gratitude, both boys turned and bowed.
"Thank you, Uncle!"
The man drove off, feeling unexpectedly uplifted—his good deed for the day done.
He had no idea he'd just been played by two sly operatives in toddler bodies.
Once alone, the two immediately set off—toward Alangelu Commercial City.
Although it was still millions of kilometers away, their personal flight speed clocked in at 5 km/s.
At that pace, the trip would take just a day.
Returning to Alangelu, Lorc felt like he'd lived several lifetimes since the last time he was here.
He looked around warily.
"By now, the data might've been wiped."
"If I were the one behind it," he continued, "I'd come back after the authorities had dropped the case—just to clean up the trail."
Kesiba's gaze turned sharp.
"This isn't some random tragedy we're dealing with," he said.
"The target can kill using sound alone—so effectively that even the main server couldn't pinpoint the exact locations of the deceased."
Kesiba's tone was calm, but beneath it lay something colder: calculation.
"With a power like that, it's likely he's grown arrogant. Too arrogant to bother covering his tracks in such a crude way."
Lorc nodded. It made sense.
But it was still safer to have alternatives.
They entered the Alangelu Commercial City observation room.
Technically, it was a surveillance control hub—but the people stationed there weren't there to watch everything live. Their job was to flag and correct anomalies in the feeds before higher authorities noticed.
The moment they stepped in, Kesiba switched personas.
"Uncle," he piped up in a childlike voice, "I can't find my mommy. Can you help me look for her?"
The operator glanced down at the tiny, wide-eyed boy and melted on the spot.
"Of course, of course. Can you tell me what your mommy looks like?"
"Mhm!" Kesiba nodded enthusiastically—and proceeded to ramble an incomprehensible string of half-facts and nonsense.
The operator smiled indulgently. "I'll call the broadcast room. We'll get her to come find you."
He made the call and then led Kesiba away.
Meanwhile, Lorc slipped into the core surveillance room and began rewinding footage.
Storage capacity in this era was practically infinite. And the incident hadn't occurred too long ago. He quickly located the relevant timestamp.
But when he played it back—all screens were black.
"Erased," Lorc muttered. "Just as I suspected."
"Damn it... aren't these guys supposed to be security?"
He cursed under his breath.
Then again, if the place were truly that tight on protocols, they wouldn't have been able to walk in at all.
He left the room just as Kesiba returned—evidently having slipped away from his temporary caretaker with practiced ease.
The two of them exited the facility, moving far from Alangelu before speaking again.
"That guy is very careful," Lorc said. "This complicates things."
Tracking someone like that wouldn't be easy.
Their biggest obstacle? Their current physical forms.
Child bodies weren't just smaller—they were slower, clumsier, and more limited in range and capability.
"I remember some of his traits," Lorc continued. "Even if he erased the mall's surveillance, there's no way he scrubbed all surrounding cameras."
"We'll have to sweep them, one by one."
It was a brute-force method—but their only option.
They split up to cover more ground.
But things didn't go as smoothly as hoped.
Many surrounding surveillance feeds had also been tampered with—not fully wiped, but during key time windows, the footage glitched or blacked out for a few seconds.
Seconds that, coincidentally, lined up with the timeline of the attack.
Whoever this was, they weren't just skilled.
They were methodical. Paranoid. A veteran.
Lorc and Kesiba hit a wall.
But then—fortune intervened.
As it turned out, not everyone relied solely on the city's omnipresent surveillance system.
Some individuals still used personal cameras—not for policing, but for self-archiving, personal logs, or security.
Lorc found one.
A compact surveillance unit mounted on top of a residential building.
Without hesitation, he slipped into the owner's home and extracted the footage.
Security systems in this era were undeniably advanced—but not foolproof.
Why?
Because making anti-theft systems stronger than people was exponentially more expensive.
In a megastructure like Star City 5, upgrading everything would've cost several times the current planetary GDP.
So the dominant deterrent wasn't prevention—it was punishment. The main server ensured someone would eventually be caught… but not that the crime couldn't happen.
"Got something," Kesiba radioed. His voice carried the air of someone disturbingly familiar with illegal acquisition.
Lorc wasn't sure—was this guy really a former official?
Or had he always been a thief?
Maybe both. Everyone needed hobbies.
Kesiba transferred a portion of the data to Lorc.
And there—buried in a corner of the footage—they saw him.
Or rather, a figure.
In truth, most people appeared as mist-like clusters in camera feeds—diffuse, ever-shifting outlines.
But just like no two clouds were the same, these clusters each had subtle, defining characteristics.
A way of walking. A taper in the edges. A posture, a rhythm.
Lorc zeroed in. He couldn't be 100% sure, but… 90? Easily.
Two individuals with such a similar mist-cluster in the exact same location and timeframe?
Highly unlikely.
But Kesiba wasn't convinced.
"What if he's faking it?" he said sharply. "Mimicking someone else's form?"
He wasn't trying to argue. He was trying to keep Lorc grounded.
The other party was someone extremely cautious—paranoid, even.
Lorc listened quietly, then began combing through the surveillance footage again and again.
Eventually, he noticed a discrepancy.
Although the figure he had initially identified matched the one in his memory to a high degree, there were still subtle differences. Slight enough to miss on the first pass, but present nonetheless.
For example, this individual had a square-shaped protrusion in their mist-cluster form—barely perceptible unless viewed from a certain angle. It formed a squared-off edge on one side of the body.
Why did these differences exist?
Because of habit.
With their bodies composed of mist, individuals could manipulate any part of themselves to interact with their surroundings. A square projection like that often appeared when one used that section of their body—typically the hand—to grab or handle something.
These features, formed through frequent movement or interaction, served as distinguishing characteristics.
And in this case, the square protrusion on the figure differed from what Lorc remembered.
So he kept watching—scanning everyone captured in the footage until he finally noticed someone standing by the roadside. Their silhouette aligned far more closely with what he remembered.
The figure was standing still, seemingly focused on something in a virtual interface—possibly immersed in another world.
It was such a small detail, easily overlooked.
After all, the default assumption was that someone guilty would flee the scene or at least stay on the move. Even if they did return, they'd likely try to blend in, observe discreetly, maybe wander.
But this person didn't move at all.
Completely composed, showing no concern for their surroundings—utterly absorbed in their own digital space.
"That's the guy," Lorc said, with certainty. "It has to be him."
They tracked the figure's movements.
After remaining there for quite some time, he finally turned and left.
But instead of going far, he entered a building just a short distance away.
"He lives nearby," Lorc murmured, both surprised and impressed.
At first, the two found it hard to believe. But on second thought—it made sense.
If he lived too far away, how could he possibly erase all the surrounding surveillance footage so efficiently?
You couldn't wipe those records remotely through the network. The network was monitored by the main server—it would definitely leave a trace.
The only way to maintain that kind of control over the area was to be physically close.
"Target confirmed. Next step: capture."
Lorc and Kesiba kept watching, carefully analyzing the surrounding footage before and after the incident, trying to map out the man's routine.
They found his lifestyle… shockingly simple.
Almost reclusive.
He barely interacted with anyone.
"A simple real life doesn't mean a simple virtual one," Kesiba commented. "He might spend most of his time in the digital world."
It wasn't uncommon.
In the Mortal Realm, with its highly advanced tech, plenty of people lived fully immersed in virtual space. Whether someone worked hard all their life or simply coasted along—there wasn't much difference anymore.
"But that makes him even harder to track," Lorc replied. "The virtual domain belongs to the main server. Even if we slip past its notice, there's no way we're breaching its firewalls."
The main server represented the pinnacle of tech.
Trying to break into it as an individual? That was fantasy.
Lorc had spent his previous life inside the net. He knew better than anyone: the virtual world seemed free because its rules were broad, flexible—but they were still rules. It only felt like freedom because reality was far more restrictive.
But in the end, the entire digital landscape was a cage—one enormous, interconnected network.
Trying to find someone in it was like trying to pluck a specific grain of sand from the bottom of the sea.
So they had no choice but to keep searching in reality. Unfortunately, their information was still far too limited.
"…Maybe we can flush him out," Kesiba suggested.
He began explaining his idea to Lorc.
"Right now, he's in the open. We're the ones hiding in the dark."
"We need to pull him into our arena. Rattle him. Make him nervous."
"If he realizes someone's on his trail—he'll panic. That kind of chaos can last long enough for us to act."
A person who believed he was untouchable—once he realized that illusion had been shattered, he'd feel pressure. That panic would surface. And when it did, they could force him to expose himself.
Lorc hesitated. "He's clearly a veteran. I doubt he'll panic just because someone's watching him."
Kesiba frowned, thinking it over.
The guy's defense was like a towering wall.
And they didn't have the strength—or the time—to just sit around waiting for a crack to appear.
This plan might be risky, but it was all they had.
Otherwise, they'd be forced to wait for him to act again.
And no one knew when—or if—that would happen.
The question now was how best to "stir up the grass to scare the snake."
"Do you think… he's the only one doing this?" Kesiba asked suddenly.
Lorc froze for a second, caught off guard.
Then he replied—
"Of course not. There's clearly a larger purpose behind this. And if there's a purpose, then there's an organization."
"He couldn't have built all of this on his own."
Kesiba felt as if he had just glimpsed the master plan.
"Then we find the second one."
"If we only 'stir up the grass to scare the snake' with one person, the odds of failure are way too high."
"But if we flush out two—maybe even more—we might finally see the whole scope of this operation."
He didn't think it would be too hard. After all, places like Chg3 Alangelu Commercial City were everywhere. Maybe the culprits could hide from the central authorities, but they'd still leave traces on the web.
The main server in Star City isn't all-powerful.
It only administered certain sectors—unlike, say, a ship's main server that oversaw everything holistically. Nor was it like Boundary God, who wielded far greater authority than any server, acting as the absolute ruler within its assigned zone.
The main server is just that—a server.
A support system.
It might manage the network, but it wasn't the network itself. There was a fundamental difference.
With the plan finalized, Lorc and Kesiba split up to begin their search. Lorc scoured the digital space for residual footprints, while Kesiba investigated physical sites.
Just as they had suspected, the group they were tracking was paranoid and meticulous—most of the evidence had already been scrubbed clean. But after extensive digging, some behavioral patterns began to surface.
These people weren't operating chaotically.
In fact, they avoided random death. Every incident was calculated.
That suggested coordination.
And if they were coordinating, then somewhere—perhaps buried in a forgotten corner of the web—was a line of communication.
Maybe they couldn't outright control the main server, but they could obscure themselves from it.
After all, if Lorc and Kesiba had found ways to move between the underworld and the mortal realm without detection, then so could whoever had built all this.
There were other patterns too. For example, they tended to choose densely populated areas. The more victims, the better.
And as long as local authorities didn't realize the dead were truly dead—permanently removed from both body and soul—they wouldn't continue the investigation.
Even if they did, the culprits had erased everything so thoroughly, there was nothing left to track.
Police are still just people, not gods.
Without data, even the best investigator couldn't see the truth.
Lorc and Kesiba searched for seven years.
In the end, they didn't discover the second person through analysis—it happened by chance.
Kesiba had entered a commercial building when the next incident struck.
But thanks to Lorc's warning, he was prepared.
He stayed off the ground. He didn't allow any sound to reach him—not even via body conduction. In this place, silence wasn't defined by the absence of noise, but by the lack of vibration within your own body.
Kesiba maintained a vacuum shell around himself at all times, communicating only through secure signal relays.
Because of that, he survived.
And what he saw was exactly what Lorc had described.
He watched life collapse in real time.
People falling mid-step, bewildered, screaming in confusion. No one knew what was happening.
Kesiba wanted to scream, to help them—but he couldn't risk exposing himself.
From all his previous research, he knew this much: each killer had their own method. Some vanished right after triggering the sound, while others lingered to observe their handiwork.
He feigned confusion, blending into the stampede of survivors fleeing the mall.
Sound-based killing wasn't 100% efficient. Survivors were to be expected.
But Kesiba kept watching.
Among the crowd, he noticed someone who didn't belong.
This man's panic was artificial—an act. The fear didn't reach his eyes. His face was unnaturally calm, betraying the occasional half-hearted scream.
To the untrained eye, he blended in.
But Kesiba was absolutely certain:
"The second one. Found."
He transmitted the message to Lorc.
And with that, the operation to "stir up the grass and scare the snake" officially began.
Lorc returned to Chg3 Alangelu Commercial City and issued an anonymous online commission.
A painting was installed in the corridor the suspect used as an entrance and exit. It looked like nothing more than a large decorative poster.
But its design was unmistakable:
A red background.
A jet-black musical note, shaped like a blade, cutting through a crowd.
At the bottom, gritty sand-like remains—the shattered remnants of once-living bodies.