UH CH 19 (Patreon)

The moment we turned the corner and came face-to-face with three men in black suits aiming their guns at us, I acted on instinct. 

I hurled the money bag straight at them.

“Cain! Wait–!”

Iron Fist’s voice barely reached me before I was already sprinting.

Whack!

The first guy took the full weight of the bag right in the face and crumpled like wet paper. I didn’t waste the moment. I pushed forward, closing the distance on the second target before they could react.

My body moved on its own—years of training kicked in. I wasn’t fast enough to dodge bullets, not really, but I didn’t need to be. The confusion gave me all the opening I needed.

My fist crashed into the second guy’s jaw.

Crack.

His eyes rolled back. Legs folded. He dropped before he could even gasp.

I caught him by the collar mid-fall, twisted, and brought his body up like a meat shield. My eyes locked onto the last gunman—his hands trembling, face pale, but his fingers…

They twitched.

He was going to pull the trigger.

I could already see it in the muscle tension, the way his shoulder angled—split-second tells. Maybe I could dodge. Maybe. But "maybe" gets you killed.

I wasn’t going to risk it.

“Freeze.”

[Pause activated.]

The world stopped.

The hourglass manifested in the corner of my vision. Sand suspended mid-flow, and time stopped. My right eye flared with pain, but not overwhelmingly like last time, but rather just enough to remind me that this wasn’t a skill I could use without a price. Thankfully, I could bear it for now.

I stepped forward. One step. Then another. My boots echoed softly across still air until I stood less than a breath away from him.

I raised my hand.

Mana surged through my circuits, flowing down my arm in glowing veins. A small dagger shimmered into existence, humming softly in the frozen world.

It worked. I could still do things in [Pause]. I wasn’t just some ghost watching from the sidelines.

This changed many things and gave me more nasty ideas about the way I could use this. 

For now, though, it was necessary to focus on Mister Trigger Happy.

I couldn’t take the gun. Couldn’t move his fingers.

But I could move myself.

So I did.

Carefully, I stepped into his blind spot. Just behind his dominant hand, right shoulder level. One foot braced behind his leg, the other angled for balance. My left hand hovered an inch from the weapon’s safety. My right hand readied to slam the muzzle upward if needed.

Everything set.

I let out a slow breath. Focused.

[Pause deactivated.]

The world surged back.

[Focus skill activated.]

The guard’s body lurched forward, finger finishing the squeeze. But he never fired.

I snapped the safety on before the trigger clicked. At the same time, I slammed the barrel up and away, using his own momentum to throw him off-balance. He staggered forward, dazed, and by the time he turned his head—

The dagger was already at his throat.

“How the fu–!”

He froze, confused by how I was already in front of him despite the earlier distance separating us.

“You should’ve pulled the trigger earlier,” I murmured, voice low. “Now it’s too late.” I was doing my best to regulate my breathing and appear confident. This was the second time I used [Pause] today. 

The first time, I did not move. But this time, the few steps I took while time was stopped were already weighing somewhat on me. Thankfully, it was still manageable.

‘This felt incredible.’ I thought while breathing in and out. I have always been a good fighter, and the ones I took down were not even hunters. Still, subduing three armed guards without even giving them the time to start an alert or fire a gun was a whole new level.

I had clearly underestimated how useful Time Stop could be in actual combats, where one second could make all the difference.

Footsteps echoed behind us.

Iron Fist stepped into view, arms crossed, gaze flat. He looked down at the man pinned in my grasp, then at the dagger just grazing his jugular. I could nearly feel the gears turning in his head. All the questions he might have. After all, from his perspective, I would have looked like I completely teleported or moved incredibly fast.

In the end, he raised no question. 

“Release him and come here.” 

I simply shrugged as I took a few steps back before walking over the unconscious guard and going back to Iron Fist.

Now that the adrenaline was down, I realized I might have acted a little irrationally. But how could I stay calm with guns pointed at us? I wasn’t bulletproof yet.

Once I was far enough, Iron Fist simply exhaled a heavy breath and walked past me, hands up, no weapons in sight. 

“Call your boss.” He said.

The gatekeeper’s voice wavered. “W-who the hell are you?! You think you can just assault us and walk away!?” 

‘Man. This feels like some lines thrown by a third-rate villain.’ I cringed a little, and clearly, I wasn’t the only one.

Iron Fist's expression went cold.

“You moron. You seriously pulled a gun on a customer, and now you're talking smack? Did Zhou Mei teach you that?”

The name seemed to hit them like a hammer.

The guard’s stance faltered. He glanced between me and Iron Fist, visibly sweating now. “You know the boss’ name!?… Are you one of her clients?”

“You do not need to know.” Iron Fist replied, “Go call Zhou Mei. I do not like repeating myself.”

“But… you can’t just see her without an appointment—”

Smack!

Iron Fist stepped forward and slapped him across the face with his normal hand. Hard.

‘Ouch!’ 

I winced inwardly. It looked like it must have hurt. Still, the man should count himself lucky. 

The guy stumbled back, clutching his cheek, too stunned to speak.

“I’ll forgive the insult. Once. Don’t make me regret it.”

Silence.

“Now, for the last time, go tell Zhou Mei that Iron Fist has arrived through the back door. Got it?”

The gatekeeper nodded stiffly and scrambled for his phone. A call connected, immediately followed by muffled shouting and colorful curses on the other end. He looked like he might pass out from stress.

When the line went dead, he turned back to us, pale as a sheet.

“Z-Zhou Mei said she’ll meet you herself.”

“Where?”

“At her office. I-I can escort you there—”

“No need,” Iron Fist cut in, already turning away. “I know the way. You just deal with your friends here.”

He threw a final glance at the unconscious bodies and then looked me up and down..

“You can still walk?” Clearly, he was able to see through my bluff, and whatever skill I may have used from his perspective was not something I could simply spam.

“Yeah, no worry. Let’s meet that so-called Zhou Mei.” Her name seemed slightly familiar. But I could not pinpoint why.  

“Let’s go. Follow me.”

I slung the money bag back over my shoulder, nodded to the guard without a word, and followed Iron Fist into the deeper veins of the Black Market.

The tunnel past the gate was narrow and smelled like old oil and wet concrete. Pipes ran overhead. Some leaked. The floor was uneven, patched with rusted plates and mana-burnt stone.

Magic and tech meshed here. Badly.

We passed a flickering sign, neon letters stuttering between "AUTHORIZED" and "NOT."

The deeper we went, the louder a hum became. It made me think of the heartbeat of a sleeping beast.

Then the space opened up, and I could finally observe the mysterious black market. 

The Black Market wasn’t one big room. It was a network of old tunnels turned into tight alleys and makeshift stalls. It looked like someone had taken a dungeon, a scrapyard, and a war zone and mashed them together under a broken ceiling.

People shouted in low voices, selling things they weren’t supposed to own.

“Here, an android with its AI reset and all reproductive organs functioning for just 130000 dollars. It’s cheap!”  

The first thing I noticed was a shop selling sex dolls of all genders and forms. There was even one in the form of an Orc. People truly had interesting tastes, to say the least. 

Many vendors focused on more mundane everyday stuff at first, or exotic stuff like the orc sex doll. But soon, the products became more Hunter-focused.

One vendor had a table full of half-broken dungeon gears, shattered cores, half-functional teleport tokens, and rusted mana grenades with missing pins. Another was carving runes into a batch of fake identification chips, his hands moving fast, eyes bloodshot.

I silently marked down that one in case I came to visit again. Fake ID could always be useful.

I passed a guy selling potion bottles filled with swirling green liquid. The label said “Primal Boost – Grade C+.” The smell told me it was probably repackaged sewer water mixed with expired stimulant.

In the first place, Black Market or not, there was no way in hell a C rank potion or even a D rank one could be so sold on the open like this. 

Across from him, a bald woman was selling monster parts. Real ones. A wyvern claw, fresh and still twitching. A troll’s heart wrapped in mana-soaked gauze. Something that looked like a goblin fetus sealed in a glass orb.

A stall down the way advertised implants—cybernetic and arcane. A half-mechanical arm with built-in spell channels hung on display, still covered in blood. The way those were obtained was pretty clear.

I even recognized some poisonous slime cores getting sold on the way. This made me chuckle a bit, drawing an irate glance from the seller. But one look at Iron Fist seemed to dissuade him from anything he might have planned.

Iron Fist didn’t slow down once.

I kept close.

The deeper we went, the thicker the tension got. Some people watched us. Most ignored us. Everyone here had a reason to keep to themselves.

“Ignore them. Only the riff raff or Hyena and the like stay here to sell. Our target is further inside.”

Hyena, another name for Cleaners. Despite having such a team under his command, I could feel a certain disdain in Iron Fist's tone when he spoke about those Hyenas. 

This reminded me of how Jana told me that none of them became Hyena by choice, and after just one day of working with them, I could understand her words. 

Still, I did not bother contradicting Iron Fist for now. These kinds of opinions could never be simply changed after a few words, and the only team of cleaners I knew was not enough sample for me to give an informed opinion.

Soon, I realized what Iron Fist meant when he said the prior stalls were of no importance.

From the open market, we started seeing more and more closed shops. The odor and decoration in this place alone were on another level. 

This place wasn’t for casual buyers.

It was for hunters, smugglers, mercs, and criminals with more money than time and fewer morals. 

We turned left at a stack of crates full of corrupted mana cores. Some of them were cracked and leaking purple light. Probably unstable. No one seemed to care.

Then, finally, we reached a solid metal door marked with three layered seals. Not some weak runes like the ones on the mask we were wearing. But rather, real security-grade arrays. Strong enough that I doubted I could put a dent in the wall even if I exploded myself like I did during the first fight against the necromancer. 

As if it wasn’t enough, ten muscular men, all wearing combat armor and holding submachine guns, were standing in formation, guarding the perimeter. 

This seemed a little overkill unless you were expecting trouble or trying to send a clear message to all those who could see them.

Most likely both. 

Iron Fist placed his hand on the seal plate. The guards around him ignored him, but I could feel them tighten the grip they had on their weapons. 

I tensed, ready to use [Pause] at a moment's notice. 

Thankfully, nothing bad happened. 

The locks disengaged with a low thump-thump-thump, and the door opened inward.

The chaos behind us vanished as we entered, and everything closed once again.

There were no decorations here. Cool air. A clean, round room. Bare walls. One desk. Two chairs. And the woman I summarized to be Zhou Mei was waiting inside.

Crimson hair, a plague doctor mask on the face, and a white coat that didn’t match the long pipe stuck diagonally in the long beak. 

The only thing giving away her possible gender was her impressive curves, which were barely hidden behind her black robe. 

At the sight of Iron Fist, the woman stood up, a grating but happy voice flowing out. 

“Old man! It has been a long time since you came through the back door.”

She took no time to reach us, spread her arms wide, and shared a reunion hug with Iron Fist. 

“Zhou Mei. You have become even more beautiful than I remembered. Have you been well?”

My eyes twitched as I looked at the black bird mask and decided that this might perhaps be some kind of secret code between them. That or Iron Fist had very interesting tastes as well. 

"Don’t even talk about it. An incident happened in Russia, and weapons can no longer be smuggled into the country. At this rate, I won’t even be able to feed my men.” She laughed out loud despite seeming pretty distressed. “My, look at me being a bad host. Sit down, the two of you. Coffe? Tea? Or just plain water?”

“No need to try to sell some of your new drugs.” Iron Fist waved away. 

I did not know what the correlation was between Coffee, tea, water, and drugs. But I decided the wisest choice would be to simply shut up and listen.   

“Is he your new ward, Old Man? Still taking in strays?” Her eyes flicked to me. “He looks weak, though.”

“Obviously, everyone looks weak to you. As for your question. No, he is not exactly a ward. He is a customer.”

“Customer?” Her gaze shifted to me. “A customer brought in by Iron Fist himself…Hum. What’s he here to buy?”

I answered before Iron Fist could. “Weapons.”

Zhou Mei gave a laugh full of confidence. 

“You’ve come to the right place. I’m Zhou Mei. Though people here call me the Sleeping Dragon. Both because of my magic and because of all the stuff I hoard.”

I could feel the pride in her voice.

“I sell everything from stolen military gear to relics ripped out of dungeon boss corpses. Guns, cursed blades, enchanted rounds, mana disruptors—you name it. So, what exactly do you want?”

“Bomb. Mana bomb. D rank at least. But I will be satisfied with even an E rank.” My answer was instant, and the silence that followed as well.

“...”

“...”

“...”

“Well…” She looked at Iron Fist for a moment, then cleared her throat. “You're starting strong, I see.”

This time, though, her voice seemed definitely less confident. 

“So…Let’s say, for discussion's sake, that I do have what you are asking for. What do you wish to do with those bombs?”

“Hunting down a Necromancer,” 

I said without hiding anything. Bluntness was my second name and from her reaction, I wished I had a X ray vision skill to see what her expression looked like at my answer.