After taking everything from Jorge, Muzan decided that if he wanted to leave quickly, he needed to take care of this organisation quickly.
And that led him here.
He stood on a rooftop of a 5-story building, one hand in his pocket, watching.
The industrial district stretched out below in the particular palette of urban neglect — rust and concrete and the specific grey-brown of structures that people had stopped caring about sometime in the previous decade.
His coat fluttered from an invisible wind as he gazed out into the distance.
The building where the "Noob Terrorists" were located had been chosen by someone who understood the concept of hiding, but didn't actually have any experience in it.
The building sat at the dead end of a road.
No traffic, no pedestrians in sight.
That was the first thing Muzan noticed.
'A good hiding spot, although a bit clichéd.'
The building itself was also unremarkable. Boarded windows, a padlocked gate with a chain whose links had accumulated years of convincing grime.
'However,' his gaze moved up and down the building as he sighed softly.
The ventilation unit on the roof was new.
The loading dock on the eastern side had been swept recently, like a path people walked every day had been prepared.
And the boards on the second-floor windows had thin lines of light bleeding from their edges, the kind that came from interior lighting.
'Jorge's memory was at least accurate about the location.'
He'd spent the last thirty minutes cross-referencing what he'd pulled from Jorge's mind against the physical reality in front of him.
The entrance, the exits. There were three people on patrol.
On that note, he'd recently developed a feel for Prana. He could already sense two signatures moving behind the eastern face, and one directly on the opposite side.
There were supposed to be nine members here.
Five Orga Lux carriers among them.
The leader, of course, should be at the deepest level, somewhere at the building's core, and the two strongest members — also Orga Lux carriers — should be stationed just outside the leader's room, or maybe inside.
'How should I go about this?' he thought to himself.
This was an interesting dilemma.
There was an incredibly large number of options available to him, many creative ideas he wanted to try and a great many overwhelming ones as well.
For example, he could just use his vector arrows to collapse the whole structure, and then pick them off one by one like popping balloons in a carnival game.
Or he could use his biology manipulation to invade the whole structure from underground, using vine-like tentacles, and then, when they weren't looking,
Snap!
Choking them. Or popping out sharp, knife-like spikes. (Creative idea.)
'Sigh, so many options, so little time~'
He thought, feeling that his situation was that of a tiger being forced to hunt rats. He could overpower them too easily, but he wanted to play the cat and hunt the mouse.
'Well, I guess I'll just go creative mode then.'
With that thought, he stepped off the roof.
A door opened beneath him mid-fall and closed behind him as soon as he passed, vanishing from the air.
Before gravity even had time to start pulling him down, the door opened again and deposited him without sound into the eastern corridor of the building.
Barely a few meters of space between him and the first guard.
The guard was broad. Dense through the shoulders, Prana humming in that passive, settled way that came from someone strong enough to stop thinking about it consciously.
Obviously, even if this was a terrorist startup, it was still a terrorist startup.
They wouldn't just take in inexperienced or weak members to drag themselves down.
Well, at least as long as they were serious about their goals and not complete fools.
The man was facing the wall to his left, arms crossed, the posture of someone enduring a shift rather than performing one.
Muzan didn't move immediately. He just stood there, right behind the guy.
He'd made a plan before coming in, a crude one sure, but still a plan.
'Let's see what you know first.'
A blood bead formed in his hand without sound. Not a killing move, just enough to subdue without much harm.
The bead's shape shifted into that of a pin, and then, like an arrow released from a bow, it struck the man's neck from behind and quickly travelled inside.
The man didn't even have time to feel the tiny prick of pain. The blood flowed upward through tiny vessels near the spinal cord and the base of the brain.
His knees folded inward, falling forward, but Muzan crossed the distance quickly and caught him before he fell completely.
His blood had concentrated around the man's neural pathways, disrupting them just enough to prevent the brain from maintaining wakefulness.
He pressed two fingers to the man's temple.
The dream opened shallow and immediate. He didn't want the man's history or his politics or the name of whoever had hurt him badly enough to land him here.
He wanted the last twelve hours. The interior layout, where the men with the Orga Lux were, and whether there were any changes from the information he'd gotten from Jorge.
Twenty seconds later, he withdrew and, after a moment, threw the man carelessly to the side.
A Japanese-style door swallowed the falling man.
'Leader is deeper in, the two strongest are together in the innermost room, one Orga Lux carrier is around the other side, one near the generator room, and the last two are with the two in the innermost room.'
Once he confirmed the information, he moved toward the closest man coming around the corner.
---
After dealing with the two people outside who didn't have Orga Luxes, he moved toward the generator room.
This one was alone in a side room, eating something from a container.
He looked up when Muzan appeared in the doorway.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
"...Who are you?" the man asked, his spoon still raised.
"New recruit," Muzan replied pleasantly.
The spoon lowered very slowly.
"That's a lie. The leader would have informed us."
"Good observation." Muzan tilted his head, still smiling pleasantly. "But it doesn't change anything."
The man lunged sideways for his weapon, but three vector arrows hit him before his hand reached it.
He got folded like laundry and fell to the floor with a thud, no longer breathing.
Muzan looked at the container of food.
Fried rice. How nice.
---
The next two were together in the main corridor, mid-argument. Their voices reached him before they came into sight.
"—said an hour ago that you'd handle it—"
"I told you I would handle it after the shift change, not before—"
"Those are the same thing if you understood how the schedule—"
They rounded the corner and stopped.
Muzan stood in the middle of the corridor with his hands in his pockets, just staring at them.
Both were Orga Lux users, so he didn't take any chances.
Just as the taller one's hand went to his Orga Lux and the other took a step back and let his Prana flare,
an uncontrollable drowsiness that could not simply be explained as exhaustion settled over them.
'Now these two are genuinely good. Under different circumstances, say, if the main character faced them, they might have been recurring enemy grunts.'
'The ones that have names.'
'But alas, they weren't fated to make it.'
The two Genestella didn't even understand how it happened. One second they were preparing to fight, and the next they had fallen into a deep sleep.
He crouched over them both and pressed two fingers to each temple in turn, quick passes, mining the surface — the leader's location, any other resources, stored weapons or secondary Orga Lux.
'Nope, nothing.'
He added both the weapons and the men to his growing collection.
'Two Orga Lux including Jorge's.'
He looked at the two weapons for a moment.
Two Orga Lux, both different, both carrying that same probing quality against his palm that the first one had — not rejection exactly. Something more like a question.
He'd revisit that later.
---
Passing the generator room, he arrived at another room with another person.
It was a woman, probably in her early thirties, blonde hair, and a long bright weapon in her hand.
She'd heard him before he reached the door — probably because of the small commotion with the previous two.
The woman had already charged her Orga Lux when he stepped through, a javelin of condensed Prana aimed directly at his center mass.
She threw it with great accuracy, and the instant the weapon left her hand, she launched herself forward following the javelin's trail, boots cracking the stone beneath her.
Whether he dodged or got skewered was irrelevant. The moment the javelin missed, she'd recover it and continue the assault.
Shame. She was bound to be disappointed.
Space rippled as a tatami door appeared between the arriving javelin and him, opening to swallow the thrown weapon.
'...What?'
The woman's brain struggled to process what she'd just witnessed.
Space manipulation? Inventory storage?
It didn't matter what it was. Her weapon was gone, and to make the situation worse, she had already committed to charging at him.
As her momentum carried her forward, she realised her mistake.
She'd built her entire approach around the assumption that her opponent would be occupied dealing with the javelin.
The woman hadn't expected to lose her weapon in the first second of the confrontation, and she was already moving to her secondary position by the time the javelin had reached him.
To reach him fast, retrieve her weapon, and engage in a fierce battle.
'Fine. Hand to hand it is,' the woman thought as she realised she didn't have another choice.
A good strategy, which failed. A follow-up emergency strategy,
which was bound to fail as well.
Another door opened directly a meter in front of her, and the same javelin she had thrown, her own weapon, was now flying back at her.
The woman's eyes shrank to pinpricks and she threw herself to the ground, barely dodging the passing weapon even as a few strands of her blonde hair were caught.
But again, it didn't matter whether she dodged the javelin or not. She was already trapped.
A gigantic door opened directly below her, and she fell down into a vast, dark palace.
The place was inspired by Japanese style, and there were thousands of tatami doors in her vision.
But she couldn't focus on the scenery.
For half a second she did.
Then another door opened below her, and she fell into that one.
She shot out of it and was immediately plunged into another.
And soon the world became chaos.
She fell through door after door after door, gravity yanking her in a dozen directions.
Sky. Down. From side to side and through parabolic arcs in the air.
Every time she thought she'd hit something, another doorway swallowed her.
Her stomach lurched.
Her balance vanished.
The horizon spun like a wheel.
Ten, twenty, thirty.
A full minute.
But it didn't stop. She continued falling.
Finally, when Muzan felt satisfied, the cycle ended, and she crashed onto solid ground and rolled several meters.
For her, the battlefield wouldn't stop spinning. The world had become a dizzy rollercoaster she had never asked for.
"Ngh..." She planted a hand against the floor.
Clenching her teeth, she tried to force herself upright.
'No. No way I'm losing like this.'
"NO WAY!!!"
With a shout, she charged again.
Faster this time, or maybe just desperate.
Muzan, on the other hand, smiled and walked calmly through a door that had appeared beside him.
The woman skidded to a stop.
She looked around.
'He's not gone. He's looking for an opening to finish me off.'
A flanking attack — obviously that was her thought. She wouldn't believe this man would leave after just making her suffer.
'But then why didn't he use the javelin again? Or capture and restrain me first?'
'Is his ability exhausting him? Can he not use it continuously?'
Her thoughts spun, but she forced herself to calm down and focus.
The moment he disappeared, she pivoted, preparing for an ambush.
She kept her footing and prepared to jump away in case a door opened beneath her again.
She still hadn't realised how futile it was.
Then a door opened behind her.
'There!'
Without hesitation, she spun around, her hand flying in a wide arc.
Every ounce of strength she possessed poured into a single punch.
The strongest strike she could throw.
Her fist crossed the threshold and disappeared into the door.
And then it emerged from a second door, directly in front of her face.
The realisation arrived one fraction of a second too late.
"Oh."
WHAM.
Her own punch connected perfectly with her jaw.
A devastating hook delivered with her full strength.
To herself.
The impact snapped her head sideways.
Her vision exploded into white. She didn't even have time to process the pain.
Her legs abandoned the negotiation first as the battlefield tilted and fell backwards.
Then her vision went black as she collapsed flat on her back.
Unconscious.
For several seconds, nothing moved.
Then a door opened nearby, and Muzan stepped out of it.
He looked down at her.
This woman who had given him the first proper fight of this world — not counting Kirin, because that was only a spar.
This woman who perhaps had quite the battle experience, who had perhaps survived impossible odds in her life.
And she was here, knocked out because she had knocked herself out with her own, desperate final attack.
For a moment, he simply stared.
"Pfft—"
Then his shoulders began to shake, and a chuckle escaped him.
And then, when he realised controlling it wasn't doing anything, somehow the situation became even funnier and he laughed outright.
"Hahahahahaha!" Taking a breath, he continued. "Hahahahahahaha!"
A long, loud, and unrestrained laugh.
The kind that belonged to someone who knew exactly how ridiculous the situation was.
"You know..."
He wiped a tear from his eye, talking to the fallen woman.
"I honestly thought you'd notice the second door."
His grin widened.
"But no."
He looked at the unconscious woman, then at the doorway still floating beside her.
Then back at her.
And started laughing all over again.
---
Muzan walked toward the last room, still thinking about the spectacle.
She went down fighting, if you could call it that.
Honestly, the Infinity Castle was becoming one of his favourite abilities far too quickly.
Not because it was overwhelmingly powerful, but because it was absurdly versatile.
He had made the right choice selecting this over the other abilities that had been available.
Most abilities had a preferred solution, a best use.
A sword cuts things.
Ice freezes things.
Strength hits things.
The Infinity Castle, on the other hand, seemed to look at the concept of fair play and politely throw it out the window.
Transportation, inventory, ambushes, escapes, battlefield control, and more.
And if you were creative enough, psychological warfare could be added to the list as well.
It excelled at all of them.
The woman from earlier was a perfect example.
He could have simply knocked her unconscious using vector arrows or the instant sleep technique. Instead, he'd turned the entire fight into a practical joke.
The best part wasn't even the victory. It was watching her desperately attempt to understand what was happening.
Space-type abilities were uniquely cruel in that regard.
A sword can be blocked or dodged. Ice can be countered. Strength — well, he didn't lack that either.
Space manipulation often couldn't even be understood properly.
The victim never knew where danger would come from.
Up, down, behind, beneath their feet, through a wall, through their own attack.
The battlefield became untrustworthy. Every direction became a threat. Every movement became a gamble.
It created a special kind of helplessness.
The sort that slowly turned confusion into panic, and that panic into despair.
Which, admittedly, was very entertaining to watch.
As for the javelin, it had lasted longer in his palm before the pulse came. A different quality to the rejection. Less like *no* and more like *not yet.*
He kept it separate from the others, for reasons he'd see to later.
---
The corridor leading to the innermost room was quieter than the rest of the building.
Better maintained too.
The overhead light was a different fixture from those lining the other hallways — warmer, newer, the kind of small upgrade that happened when someone cared about a specific space.
The leader's preference, probably.
He couldn't complain. He himself had inherited the original Muzan's preference for warm lighting.
He approached the heavy metal door at the end and stood in front of it.
Even if his fights had barely been fights, the sounds should have reached here.
Which meant the two behind this door were most probably preparing an ambush.
"Heh." He chuckled slightly and pushed the door open without any hesitation.
The first thing he noticed was the sound.
The sound coming from inside. It was the sound of exertion, like someone working out in a gym.
And then, when the door opened fully without the characteristic creak of old metal hinges,
He stood very still.
The sound continued, but the scene had shifted.
He withdrew his hand from the door and stood there for a moment, his palm still raised slightly, his expression doing something complicated and private in the empty corridor.
'Ah.'
He processed this.
'Ah,' he thought again, because the first one hadn't covered it adequately.
These were the two strongest members of the organisation. Both Orga Lux carriers. Both were present in the room and hadn't noticed him yet.
And both were very, very thoroughly working out. Together.
He closed the door. It closed without any sound. Then he took a few steps back.
He stood in the corridor with his back against the wall, his gaze fixed on the concrete opposite him with the focus of a man trying to locate something stable to look at.
'Jorge.' The thought arrived with the calm of deep, personal grievance. 'Jorge, you absolute—'
He stopped and took a deep breath.
Looked at the ceiling instead.
The ceiling was also concrete. Reliable. Asking nothing of him.
Behind the door, the two strongest members of the self-declared revolutionary organisation continued to be absolutely unaware of how close to certain death they were.
They just continued their extracurricular activities.
One thing was good though. The leader wasn't there.
Which meant the leader was elsewhere.
Which meant he had more building to cover, which was fine, which was completely fine. He just needed a moment first.
He pushed off the wall.
'One minute,' Muzan decided, walking back down the corridor.
'I'm giving them exactly one minute, and then I'm going back in there,'
'and I'm going to peel their skin down to their waist, very slowly, like wet paper, and then I will pour vinegar into the open muscles.'
He found a crate near the generator room, sat down on it, and looked at the wall.