Schedule Update
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From now on, the release schedule here will be daily.
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The Dao Guild's front entrance was a set of wide glass doors flanked by two guards in dark uniform. Both of them straightened the moment the car pulled up. By the time Lu Changcheng stepped out they were already at full salute.
"Greetings, Guildmaster."
Lu Changcheng nodded and kept walking. Ren fell into step beside him.
Both guards looked at Ren.
Ren looked back. The mask smiled at them.
The guards flinched. One of them actually took a half step back.
What the, the first guard thought. Can a mask do that? Can a mask smile? That is not how masks work. That is not how anything works.
"Hello," Ren said pleasantly. "I'm Ghost. B-rank hunter, no affiliation."
"Hello, sir," both guards said, rallying to professionalism. B-rank was higher than their own C-rank, so they straightened accordingly.
Lu Changcheng stopped. He turned and looked at Ren for a moment, then at the guards.
"Actually," he said, "his name is not Ghost and he is not B-rank."
Everyone looked at him, including Ren.
"This man's original class was assassin," Lu Changcheng said, in the tone of someone who had prepared this explanation in advance, which he clearly had, because it came out very smoothly. "He fell into a dungeon's secret room and his abilities underwent a complete transformation. He gained the power of an ancient medicine king. He is currently A-rank. His field is medicine."
He paused.
"From today, his name in this guild is Doctor."
Ren's eyebrow moved behind the mask.
Brother Lu, he thought, thirty minutes ago in the car you were calling me Ghost without a single hesitation. You did not flinch. You did not pause. You did not at any point suggest you had a better idea. He reviewed the timeline carefully. You absolutely made this up just now.
"We greet the Doctor," both guards said.
"Good," Lu Changcheng said. "Let's go, Doctor."
He walked through the doors.
Ren followed, because what else was there to do.
"You made that up on the spot," Ren said quietly as they crossed the lobby.
"I put considerable thought into it."
"You called me Ghost in the car fifteen minutes ago."
"The car was a different context."
"The car was fifteen minutes ago."
"Context changes quickly." Lu Changcheng pressed the lift button. "Doctor is a better alias for what you'll be doing here. Ghost implies someone trying not to be noticed. You will be working in this building. People will see you."
Ren could not argue with the logic, which was annoying.
"Also," Lu Changcheng added, "Ghost is a terrible name for a doctor."
"A lot of doctors have nicknames."
"Ghost specifically implies the patient does not survive."
Ren paused. "That is a fair point."
"I thought so."
"You still made it up on the spot."
"I made it up on the spot and it was correct," Lu Changcheng said. "Those are not mutually exclusive."
The lift opened.
.
.
.
"Your space will be on the floor below mine," Lu Changcheng said, as the numbers climbed.
Ren looked at him. "I thought the clinic was going in the medical wing."
"The medical wing has thirty-two staff members, open patient access, and standard documentation requirements. You were planning to use what, exactly, in your procedures?"
Ren said nothing.
"Your Horror Gospel of the Dissected Sublime, the Grotesque Gospel of Grafted Evolution, the Eldritch Apostle of Surgical Catastrophe, the Ruin Doctor's Blasphemous Mending Rite," Lu Changcheng said, running through the list with no change in expression, "and whatever the other four abilities are that you haven't told me about yet." He glanced at Ren. "Did you plan to do that in the medical wing."
"Those aren't the real names."
"I know. I made them up. But based on what you've described to me, how far off am I."
Ren said nothing.
"That's what I thought." Lu Changcheng faced forward again. "A standard patient would have a heart attack reading the consent form alone."
"If they have a heart, I can fix it."
Lu Changcheng stopped walking. He turned and looked at Ren directly. "Is that even human language."
"It's practical."
"It is not practical. It is something a horror entity says when it has been a doctor for too long and forgotten what normal people experience." He faced forward again. "You will work on the forty-fourth floor. High ceiling, sealed access, staff I have personally cleared. Before any patient enters, they will sign a non-disclosure agreement and I will have reviewed their record myself. Trustworthy people only."
"You're doing a lot of work for my clinic."
"I'm doing a lot of work to prevent my guild members from dying of fright in a medical procedure." The lift opened. "Come."
.
.
.
The forty-fourth floor was not what Ren had expected.
It was not an office. It had a ceiling that ran the full height of two standard floors, open and vaulted, with windows looking north over the capital. The space was fitted out with furniture that cost more than some buildings Ren had operated in, a long couch, a proper desk, bookshelves along one wall, and through a door at the far end, an actual bedroom.
"This is a penthouse," Ren said.
"It is an executive floor."
"It has a bedroom."
"You live here now. It seemed impractical to have you commuting."
"I have a hotel two blocks away."
"You have two orphaned children in a hotel two blocks away," Lu Changcheng said. "Bring them here. There is room."
Ren looked around properly for the first time. The floor was large. At the far end, past a glass partition, two separate office spaces were visible. One had Lucy's desk setup in it, organized to a degree that suggested military precision. The other was clearly the Vice Guildmaster's, judging by the rank insignia mounted on the wall.
"This floor has other people on it," Ren said.
"Lucy's office and the Vice Guildmaster's office are on this floor, yes. Your space is the section with the high ceiling. The bedroom and the main workspace are yours." Lu Changcheng glanced at him. "Is that a problem."
"Does Lucy know I'm moving in next to her office."
"She will know when you arrive with your things."
Ren looked at the glass partition. "She's going to have questions."
"She already has questions. She has had questions since this morning." Lu Changcheng said this without any particular concern. "That is Lucy's natural state."
Ren looked at the space, then at Lu Changcheng, then back at the space.
"You spare no expense, Master Lu."
"This is a Legendary-rank guild," Lu Changcheng said, with the faint satisfaction of someone who had been waiting to say exactly that. "We do not cut corners."
"The furniture alone probably costs more than my old clinic."
"Your old clinic was in a two-story building in the Azareth Empire that you rented under a false name."
"It had good bones."
"It had a red door that gave off a horror movie atmosphere and scared military officers."
"The door was functional."
"The door was terrifying."
"Those are not mutually exclusive," Ren said, which was Lu Changcheng's own line from twenty minutes ago, and Lu Changcheng acknowledged this with a look and said nothing.
Ren walked to the window and looked out at the capital below, the boulevard, the Dao Guild's own courtyard below, the city spreading in every direction.
"Speaking of no corners cut," Ren said, turning back, "I can't believe the muscle-obsessed first hunter became a Legendary-rank hunter today."
The kick connected before he finished the sentence.
It was not hard, not from Lu Changcheng, but it was sharp and immediate and landed with the specific energy of a man who had been waiting for this exact comment and reacted entirely on reflex. Ren went sideways, caught himself, and felt three tentacles shoot out from his coat automatically and anchor to the floor, stabilizing him before he hit anything.
He straightened up.
Lu Changcheng was staring at the tentacles.
"Since when," he said.
"Hm?"
"The tentacles. They deployed on their own. And they're larger than I remember."
Ren looked down at them. Three blood-red tentacles, each one thicker than they used to be, the tips already retracting back into his coat now that the situation was resolved.
"I've been evolving," Ren said.
"How many do you have now."
"Twenty. They're a bit bigger than they used to be."
"A bit."
"Proportionally."
"I'm a hentai monster now"
Lu Changcheng looked at him for a moment. "You said you were a hentai monster before. I did not know what that meant."
"You still don't."
"Should I?"
"No," Ren said. "Master Lu, you are too innocent."