Instead of fleeing with my tail between my legs, I decided to teach them a lesson New York would never forget.

  Using my [Stealth] to the max, I infiltrated the factory. Not to negotiate, but to plant. I placed C4 explosives on the load-bearing pillars, under the catwalks, and along the escape routes.

  I had acquired the explosives on the black market using dollars. With my System Gold reserves in a critical state (barely 40 coins), I couldn't afford spending in the Store, but fortunately, for C4 and bullets, earthly money was more than enough.

  When the agreed time came, the two "negotiators" were in the center of the room, checking their watches impatiently, acting as if they were alone.

  I appeared out of nowhere, but not in front of them. I landed softly on the sill of a broken window on the second floor, well out of their reach.

  "You're late, Ghost," shouted the mobster, smiling falsely. "Come down, we have the money."

  "And you have a lot of company," I replied with my distorted voice.

  I raised my hand. Showing a detonator.

  When the two men saw the device in my hand, their smiles froze. The color drained from their faces as they realized the hunter was actually the prey.

  "IT'S A TRAP! KILL HIM!" screamed the mobster, losing his composure.

  Dozens of men emerged from their hiding spots aiming at the window, but it was already too late.

  I pressed the button. Click.

  Hell broke loose. The bombs exploded in a perfect sequence, demolishing the support beams and turning the floor into a crater of fire and rubble.

  I leaped backward, dropping behind a wall as the shockwave shook the factory. I landed with a perfect roll and stood up, watching the great chaos of fire and smoke rising into the night sky.

  I looked at my right hand. It was trembling slightly. It was adrenaline and a hollow feeling in my stomach, but it was no longer as violent as my first real kill. There was no bile, only cold reasoning.

  "They're just criminals," I told myself, hardening my mind. "Live by the sword, die by the sword."

  I moved away from the chaos, staying on a building rooftop, watching as firefighters pulled survivors from the smoking rubble. The police didn't take long to arrive, and upon finding the merchandise scattered by the explosion, most of the mobsters went straight from the ambulance to a cell.

  But my revenge didn't end there.

  I saw an opportunity. Not just to raise my reputation, but to finish breaking my own humanity. I needed to lose the disgust for killing these rats.

  I had to stop seeing them as people and start seeing them as what they really were to me: simple background characters in a comic book; forgettable extras in my movie, cannon fodder for my rise.

  Using my new connections and my own means, I dedicated myself to hunting down that criminal family. I dismantled their operations one by one, wiping them off the map until nothing remained.

  However, this bloody mission taught me two vital lessons.

  The first was a technical discovery about my System: dimensional kidnapping wasn't free.

  I discovered that sending people into my Inventory against their will had a price. I felt a constant drain of mental and physical energy, a pressure in my skull that increased drastically depending on the resistance, general strength, or "importance" of the target. The stronger the prey, the harder it was to keep the cage closed.

  A cold shiver ran down my spine as I realized my luck. I could only thank my paranoia for never having tried to lock up Wilson Fisk. If I had done so at my current level, his brute strength and iron will would have drained me to collapse in seconds, or worse, he would have managed to break the containment from the inside.

  The second lesson was political: everything had been a test.

  Connecting the dots, the truth came to light. Wilson Fisk and the other crime bosses had used that Italian mafia as bait, sacrificing them just to measure how dangerous I was. They wanted to see if the "Ghost" had a real bite or if he was all bark.

  Understanding the game, I stopped my slaughter immediately. Continuing would only bring total chaos that could prematurely attract S.H.I.E.L.D.'s gaze, and realistically, I wasn't ready yet for a direct confrontation with the Kingpin.

  From the ashes of that mafia, I only rescued one useful thing: their chief accountant. A man brilliant with numbers whom I "saved" from jail and death, thus ensuring the loyalty of the man who would launder the money of my own organization.

  But the accountant wasn't my only gain. As I walked away, the familiar sound of the system stopped me, drawing a smile under my mask.

  Ding! [Feat Completed: Cleaning Up the Competition] You have eliminated a rival criminal faction (Italian Mafia) and established dominance in the territory. Reward: +750 Gold. Additional Loot: $450,000 dollars (recovered from their safes).

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  With logistics and finances secured, I turned my attention to the next objective.

  There was a second gang in Queens that interested me as a pillar for my empire. They were a strange group, sprung from nowhere, specialized in poisons and discreet distribution. They were ruled by a young, intelligent, and lethal girl.

  I infiltrated their hideout without making a sound. The girl was sitting on a worn velvet sofa that dominated the room as if it were a throne, surrounded by her lieutenants.

  Without warning, I appeared sitting next to her, as casual as if I had been there all night. The first one who saw me reacted with panic, triggering a chain of sudden movements. In a second, the whole group was aiming at me with automatic weapons.

  The leader spun around sharply, trying to draw her own pistol, but she was slow. My hands were already on her: one wielded a tactical knife against her ribs and the other pressed the barrel of my pistol against her temple.

  "Damn it..." she whispered, gritting her teeth. "What does the famous 'Ghost' want with my gang?"

  Her voice betrayed anger, but my enhanced senses caught the imperceptible tremor in her hands: the shadow of fear.

  "First, tell your dogs to lower their weapons," I said calmly, my distorted voice filling the tense silence. "I'm not here to hurt you. If I wanted to kill you, you'd already be under the rubble like the Italian mafia."

  The girl hesitated a second, evaluating the threat. Then, she gave a slight signal with her hand. Her men lowered their weapons, though they didn't holster them. Many were breaking out in a cold sweat; the rumor of what I did to the Italians was already spreading through the streets like wildfire.

  At that instant, a blue window floated in front of my eyes.

  Ding! [Successful Contact: Key Character] Name: Ophelia Sarkissian. Alias: Madame Hydra (Future).

  Reading the name, everything made sense. An invisible smile formed under my mask. I wasn't an idiot; I knew exactly what this meant.

  This gang hadn't appeared in Queens by chance. Hydra was trying to infiltrate, and surely they wanted to get to me. I was the anomaly, the new player with strange technology, and I had become an interesting target in their eyes.

  I glanced sideways at the mask covering the right half of the girl's face. Now I understood why she wore it. It wasn't just aesthetics; it was insecurity. Surely it hid the scars from the accident that deformed her face in her childhood.

  It was already known in the underworld that the "Ghost" was recruiting in Queens. It was obvious that Hydra wanted a piece of the pie.

  I had found other potential spies during my recruitment but ignored them, because on my Map they appeared as hostile. But here, nobody had those threat colors.

  'Fine,' I thought. 'I can play this game.'

  I looked at my Map. The dot representing Ophelia, who appeared to be about 15 years old, remained Blue (Neutral). I decided to play along. I would keep her close, as a potential ally. But the moment that Blue dot turned Red, I would kill her without hesitation.

  "Let's talk business," I said, moving the pistol away from her head.

  For now, I was interested in knowing what Hydra wanted from me while feigning ignorance of their actions. But, more importantly, I needed to discover if someone else was pulling the strings from the shadows.

  Someone apart from the annoying Batman, whose Dark Red dot I occasionally saw moving on my Map, forcing me to change the schedule and location of meetings several times.

  What was worrying was that the dot disappeared and appeared, as if my Map couldn't track his stealth at a certain distance if I wasn't paying close attention to it on the interface.

  The Dark Knight was still watching. And I had to be smarter than both of them.

  I stared at the future Madame Hydra. With a thought, I stored the knife and pistol back into my Inventory, leaving myself unarmed to show trust.

  I stepped back a few paces and extended both hands. In my left hand, I materialized a compact stack of hundred-dollar bill bundles. In the right, a sealed block of high-purity drugs appeared.

  "It's simple," I said with a broad smile that distorted my mask. "I desire that you, Ophelia, be one of the ruling heads of my new organization in Queens."

  Her subordinates' eyes widened, shining with a mixture of surprise and absolute greed at the demonstration of instant wealth and power.

  Ophelia seemed momentarily stunned, but she recovered her leader's composure in a split second. She looked at the merchandise, evaluated the offer, and then locked her eyes on mine.

  "How high will my position be?" she asked, sitting up straight on her sofa and crossing her legs with lethal elegance.

  I shrugged, downplaying the formality but giving weight to the words.

  "You will be, along with two other people, one of the Three Pillars of my organization."

  I raised my index finger. "I already have the Muscle: a sadistic, impulsive, and bloody man who keeps the competition at bay with pure violence."

  I raised my second finger. "I have the Wallet: a brilliant accountant I rescued, capable of laundering money faster than we can count it, but without the malice necessary for the streets."

  I raised my third finger, pointing directly at her. "And there you come in. The Strategist. Intelligent, capable, tough, and sensible."

  I lowered my hand and stared at her. "You three will be my hands and my heads. New or contradictory ideas are always needed to find the best path to the top."

  "So the three of us have equal power, only below you," the girl concluded, and an ambitious and predatory smile crossed her face.

  I just nodded.

  "Good," she said, standing up and performing an elegant, almost theatrical bow. "It will be a pleasure working for you, Ghost."

  Her acceptance was accompanied by shouts of euphoria from her group. They knew they had just ascended to the big leagues.

  I smiled slightly under the mask and tossed her an old burner phone I took out of the Inventory. "I'll be in touch for the first meeting of the Pillars."

  With that said, I activated my Stealth and disappeared from the spot before they could blink, leaving behind the legend of the Ghost.

  And so, my path to building a criminal empire in Queens truly began.

  However, the night wasn't over. While jumping across rooftops back to my lab, a flicker in my peripheral vision stopped me dead.

  The floating Mini Map showed an alert signal. I opened it fast, expanding the radar. There it was. The Dark Red Dot that was giving me so much trouble, moving through my territory.

  Confirmed: Batman had returned to my city.

  "Don't you ever give up?" I thought aloud, kicking a gargoyle in frustration. "Is handling Gotham so easy for him that he has free time to come bother people here? I guess his iconic villains, like the Joker, haven't appeared yet to keep him busy."

  This was unsustainable. If Batman kept investigating, sooner or later he would find my base or dismantle my budding operations. I couldn't face him directly alone without risking everything I had built.

  But then I remembered something important: Batman wasn't just my problem. He was a problem for business. And in New York, business has a general manager.

  I took out my encrypted cell phone and dialed a number I had obtained thanks to my logistics jobs.

  The tone rang twice before a deep, gravelly voice answered on the other end.

  "Hello, Wilson," I said, my distorted voice breaking the silence of the rooftop.