CHAPTER 1.

THIN MAN

*

 The Lumination Group. A multinational conglomerate group, and held a massive 28% global market share. Their names could be found in every household, and whenever a person buy a product, there’s a 40% probability that it was made by them.

That number, of course, includes firearms and drugs as well. As their field of business implies, they deal in everything. Electronics, cars, ships, real estates, weapons and illegal substances,... they do it all. In fact, everything aside from the last two are but a front, not in order to deceive the government, but to influence them, and if necessary, buy them out.

And such tactics, as well as their greed for wealth, has brought them unfathomable riches. The front end’s annual revenue averages about 70 billions dollars, while the back end yields twenty times as much, which is about the same amount a certain developed nation spends every year on military.

Today, the Group’s founder has scheduled a party to celebrate the group’s fifth record breaking year in sales at 7pm. Naturally, the party is the usual masquerade for a meeting with his “buyers''. The boss of a major drug cartel; the representative of an infamous mafia group, the former leader of a nation in civil war who was dethroned by its people because of his corruption, and wants to retake his position through force,... all sorts of them, will all be there to greet their “benefactor”. 

Usually, it was the job of his company’s representative to receive them, but today it requires his presence, since the other parties are all important, and rich, people. If they were to meet and deals were to be made, there’s no questioning how terrible the consequences would be.

6:20pm, a series of limousines were driving toward the group’s headquarter - where the party would be held, and the founder was expected to be in one of them. The escort was only meant to transport him, yet because of his paranoia, he had planned for nine limousines splitted into three groups, each going on a different route, in order to dissuade any attempt on his life. It was justifiable, as one is sure to make many enemies when one does what he does.

However, he was not on any of the limousines, but instead was driving a relatively inexpensive car (according to him), disguised as a guest at his own party. The display on his dashboard showed a map, with custom routes planned by his trustworthy head of security - whom he doesn’t see much nowadays, but has been his friend from a young age. 

Putting his heart in the map, he drove far from the main roads, and into some obscure alley. At this point, he got a little worried, since the alley was dark and empty, but decided to believe in his friend and drove on. Until he heard a “Poof!” and his car swiveled out of control.

One if his tires blew. The car, as a result, wobbled and he almost crashed into a wall. Luckily, he wasn’t driving very fast, and was able to stop in time. As he exited the car to assess the damage, he saw a shadow move in the corner of his eyes.

“Who’s there?!” He shouted. No one answered. Thinking it was just the streetlights flickering, which is usually the case for desolated alleys like this, he shook his head and went to open the trunk of his car for tools and an extra tire. As he looked at the tire inside and wondered how the hell he could bring it out with his way-past-his-prime’s strength, he saw his shadow cast on the trunk moved. From it, another shadow emerged, faint, but big, and slowly overlapped his. Before he could turn around, he felt an electric shock running through his back, and his world went dark.

The shadow went to the trunk, removed the spare tire and the tools, and began working on replacing the car’s tire. Meanwhile, both the silently working man and the unconscious man behind him, illuminated by the dim, orange street light made for quite a surreal scene. Finally, once he was done, the man picked the unconscious man up, put him in the trunk, which surprisingly fitted, got into the car and drove to a place only he knew.

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[Player: Silver_wolf.

Time: 21 Minutes 36 Seconds.

Bonus objectives completed:

Silent takedown

Non-lethal

Non-target harmed: 0

Hidden route found: #3

Times discovered: 0

Score: 32500. World Ranking: 1st.]

“Phew…” He sighed as he closed the stream. It had taken him a full week of trials and errors searching for the game’s hidden route, which was behind some stupid convoluted tasks. He had to investigate the target’s closed aide, figure out their plans, then infiltrated his workplace, hacked into his PC and put a virus in there. Once he did, he could alter the content of the security head’s emails (sent on a private network) that detailed the route and car choice for the target to his needs, making them dance in his palm. 

The whole process was overly complex and required him to scout the whole damn level, eavesdropping in god knows how many conversations (because there was no objective marker - it was a hidden route for a reason) and throughout his numerous trial and error attempts, completely flooded the local leaderboard with his playername.

But the effort was worth it. His stream that day had amassed over 50.000 concurrent viewers worldwide, and yielded him more than 20.000 dollars in donations and subscriptions, all within a two-hour session. Sure, the numbers weren’t at the top, but for a male streamer that didn’t even talk or used facecam during his stream, that was an incredible amount of money. It was not because he was socially awkward, just that he didn’t really think there was a need to. 

What’s there to talk about? – He thought, failing to understand how some people can spend literally hours after hours on stream just rambling about their daily life, while doing absolutely nothing else. Why would I want to tell people about my private life, what I had for breakfast, how cute my dog was, or the fact that my underwear’s color was somehow related to my luck that day? 

When he first started his channel, he did try to imitate other streamers and racked his brain out to come up with something interesting to talk about. But after immediately exhausting every remotely gossip-worthy event in his memory in just his first stream, and realizing that his life was incredibly boring, he scrapped that and began to focus on diversifying his gameplays instead. Speedruns, challenges, exploitations, hidden routes,… and that was when things began to pick up. Because, as a matter of fact, he was extremely good at what he did. He was constantly beating world records after world records, challenges after challenges – even the most impossible sounding ones suggested by his viewers. 

Furthermore, no glitches and bugs were safe from him, and secrets, no matter how well hidden, were swiftly found within a couple of days of a game’s release. Every game was like a gold mine to him, and he was an excellent miner.

All of that combined made for a surprisingly fun to watch format. He never did playthroughs, not when every streamer and their dog had already been doing that. Instead, he did what people actually want to watch and engrossed in. Thus, though he barely said a word or ever showed his face at all, the name “silver wolf” - which he gave to his channel in a sudden burst of chuunibyou, had somehow become one of the most recognized names in the streaming community.

And the man, the myth, the legend of the speedrun world… was currently half dead, leaning lifelessly against his chair. Beating a world record wasn’t something that can be done in a day, even for him. In order to prepare for the big day, he had to spend days after days excavating the game’s level, digging for shortcuts and secrets. Practices must be done to shorten the time, and hundreds of attempts were committed, which threw his sanity into the trash can. Many sleepless nights and failures later, his face looked like it was just put through a grinder – one of the many reasons why he didn’t use a facecam. Scientists say the human body is composed of 60 percent water, but for him, it was something along the lines of 60 percent coffee and redbull.

After spending a solid 10 minutes contemplating whether to die or to have breakfast, he slowly slouched toward the bathroom, having made up his mind. He did his business, washed his hands, cringed at the abomination of a face reflected in the mirror, squished cream on his toothbrush, brought it to his mouth, made a few sloppy strokes, and promptly dropped dead on the bathroom floor.

*