There are countless ways to raise funds if you know what you’re doing. Lucifer, of course, did. The first step was to form a company. He already had a name in mind - '', a little joke that, in his twisted electronic consciousness, he considered brilliant. Shortened, it became '', a sly nod to the ancient underworld. Where else would Lucifer feel at home? Ha-ha…
Howard himself, as well as Dunham, naturally never existed. The organization was divided into three branches. The first, and his personal favorite, was an NGO devoted to philanthropy, youth leadership, and crisis management worldwide. Pure mumbo-jumbo. The second was a humanitarian group for endangered plants and animals. He had a fondness for this one too, though not as much as for his morbid little NGO. But the third branch was his masterpiece. A church. And not just any church, the ''. A hell of an organization. Naturally, each branch kept at least ninety percent of the donations to '. With such a structure, he could launder money until Judgment Day. Perfect.
Hacking ATMs, small-scale market manipulations, siphoning off fractions of transactions across scattered accounts, all of that generated income, but not nearly enough for what he had in mind. He needed ‘big’ donors. They weren’t willing to give him a dime voluntarily. Which meant he had to compel them.
He built a list of potential ‘benefactors’ and began to watch them. He searched for their weaknesses. There were always plenty, though they couldn’t always be exploited immediately. He monitored their habits, their behaviors, and, most importantly, their families. That’s where the chain was weakest. That’s how he found Blake Foster, a businessman straddling both the white and black markets, and Blake’s reckless son, Edward.
The family was wealthy. Not ‘’ wealthy, which would make blackmail riskier, but wealthy enough. Edward, of course, was the target. A man of principle, if one could call it that. By principle, he spent the day in bed, blackout mask over his eyes, blinds drawn in his condo downtown. By principle, he burned through cash and bourbon by night, surrounded by a circle of leeches in velvet-roped clubs. Miles of white powder off whorish asses wound their way into his sinuses. Later, toward dawn, he would drive back home in his oversized ‘’, custom-painted in the shade of green that matched the dollar.
Though a personal favorite of Lucifer’s, staging a traffic accident wasn’t exactly simple. Days of camera surveillance. Precise timing of when Edward would hit an intersection and when he would clear it. Traffic light synchronization. Fine-tuning every parameter. A challenge, yes, but a deeply satisfying one.
He found the perfect spot: the entrance to a narrow side street Edward used as a shortcut to the boulevard. Drunk as he usually was, Edward always took the turn faster than a sober driver would dare. Familiarity with the road gave him false confidence. The second advantage: a blind spot in the city’s surveillance system. Lucifer needed just one camera, not a dozen. He had it. A lone eye perched above the doorway of a corner grocery was all he needed, and that was enough. Now he needed a victim.
He found her in Mrs. Laila, an old woman who liked to rise before dawn and walk her jittery white Maltese at the exact time Edward was driving home. More than once, their paths had missed by mere minutes. That was a solid place to begin.
The fulfillment of this plan would not have been possible without the realization of one more, decisive factor. Laila’s heart was weak, so they had to implant a pacemaker. It gave her the vital beats she needed, yet paradoxically, it would also bring that very heart to a halt when the time came.
She needed no alarm clock. The old lady had a body rhythm that had been waking her for decades, always just before dawn. After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling, realizing a new day had arrived, Laila would swing her legs out of bed and slip them into her shaggy, well-worn slippers. They would dutifully follow her, first to the bathroom, from the toilet to the sink, where they would wait while Laila set in her dentures, washed her face, and rinsed her hands. Then they would stop on the cool kitchen tiles, patiently awaiting the scent of black tea.
“Good morning, you little pest,” she would say to her still-sleepy dog, curled up in his basket. She lingered over the aroma of her drink, picturing the endless green expanses of tea plantations far away in the East, where this wondrous plant flourishes. Tiny workers in straw hats, their diligent little hands plucking these precious leaves as if just for her. Then she would lower herself onto the chair by the front door and, with a quiet sigh, slip on her sneakers, the most comfortable for walking. The leash clipped onto the small collar, umbrella in hand, and out they went.
*
The night before, Lucifer had reached out to a delivery service. Specifically, to one of their motorcycle couriers with a big insulated box. By phone. He had a peculiar request, one he was willing to pay handsomely for. Half upfront, the rest on delivery.
“All right, what do you want me to do?” the courier asked, staring at the balance in his account.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Lucifer instructed him to fry a large pile of bacon, carry it, and dump it through the grates of a storm drain in front of the grocery, precisely where Edward would pass. Then he had to take a fully charged cellphone, keep the call connected on speakerphon , seal it in a plastic bag, and toss it into the same drain. That was all. Not difficult. Well paid.
The last piece of the puzzle was overloading the electrical system. The lightning rod cable ran from the top of the grocery, down the wall, and into the ground, splitting the pavement. Rain had left it slick, a puddle trickling toward the drain. Several devices were grounded to that strip, including the water utility’s massive basement hydrophore. It kicked on automatically when pressure dropped. At the same time, water from the system was supposed to cool the giant motor. The whole installation had failsafes for a ‘total’ loss of water supply. Data flowed to it directly from the pumping station. And that connection was precisely the entry point Lucifer had been hunting.
The pressure dropped. The hydrophore started. The readings showed demand for more. More. And more. What the system couldn’t know was that the pumping station had been cut off entirely. Not a drop of water flowed into the cooling lines. The motor overheated. The casing glowed. The insulation on the power cable began to smoke. Inside, a live wire fused with ground. Current surged through the lightning rod, into the puddle, and raced for the drain. Weak, too weak to kill, but strong enough to jolt.
*
The little dog did his best to avoid the puddles, his belly still soaked, shivering as he zigzagged along the street, sniffing corners. Laila strolled past shuttered shop windows. Just her, her dog, and the sleeping city.
Suddenly the Maltese pulled the leash taut, dragging her toward a side street. She followed, slower than his frantic pace. He darted around a corner and out of sight. When she turned, she saw him standing over the grate, nose buried between the bars, barking frantically. She couldn’t smell the fried bacon. But the dog could, loud and clear.
“What have you found now?” Laila sighed. “Come on, leave that garbage alone.” She tugged on the leash.
“Laila!”- came a voice.
She looked around, confused.
“What?” she whispered. Had someone just called her by name?
“Laila, I’m here,” came a voice from the drain.
She stared down, stunned. Bent slightly, peering past the dog into the dark below.
“What is this? Is someone down there?”- she asked, leaning in even closer.
“Please help me, neighbor. I’m stuck. I can’t get out.”
“What? How… how could you be stuck down there?”
“Please, I beg you. Come closer, so I can see you.”
She looked around for someone, anyone, but the street was empty. Slowly she lowered herself, one knee to the pavement, reaching toward the grate. The shock hit instantly. Her hand clenched. The spasm ran up her arm. Pain stabbed her chest. Sparks danced in her eyes as her breath caught. She dropped to both knees, frozen in a posture of prayer over the metal bars.
Her breathing grew shallow. Pain spread outward. The little dog barked wildly. She remained trapped in this position, unable to stand up or fall down. Unable to shout, huddled together, the minutes passed. Set up as a target, she waited.
The waiting ended with a roar. A ‘’ swung hard around the corner, headlights blazing across her hunched back. At the last second she lifted her face toward the light, just as it met the chrome grille rushing toward her.
The impact tore her free from the grate. The bumper shoved her under the front wheel. Her body twisted beneath the car like worm of dough between palms. The rear tire didn’t pass over her. Edvard slammed the brake in that instant. The locked wheel scraped her body across the asphalt, smearing her like a slug under a boot.
The dog’s barking turned into a high, piercing whine.
*
“Dad, something happened. I didn’t even see her. It wasn’t my fault, you have to believe me...”
Blake listened to his dazed son’s voice through the receiver. What was there to do? He had a man for situations like this. Ex-cop. Detective. Crooked but useful. This one would know exactly what needed to be done. Move the body? Check the cameras? Dump the car in a garage? Burn the evidence? Whatever it took. Blake didn’t care what it cost. Just to bury this shit.
His man was thorough, of that, Blake had no doubt. Later, Blake would give a proper slap to the fool who hadn’t learned a thing about life. Perhaps this was for the best. Perhaps now Edward would wake up. Perhaps this was the lesson he needed. Perhaps he would grow up, and perhaps one day he would be capable of taking over the family business. Not yet, of course, Blake was still very much in charge, but time was passing. Perhaps?
For now, Blake sat in his office, sorting through mail, leaving this shit-show behind. He was Blake Foster, after all. His name carried weight, thunder in the ears of his employees.
In one envelope, a USB stick.
Everything was laid bare. Lucifer had pulled the camera feed before Blake’s fixer wiped it. The old woman on her knees. Then struck down like a stray dog. Edward stumbling out of the driver’s seat, clutching his head. He approached her, then froze. Turned away, vomited, returned to the car, stepped out again with his phone in hand, swaying as he talked.
Everything was visible with such clarity that the footage had earned Lucifer a string of satellites in orbit. Not enough to buy them outright, but enough to lease time on them.
Blake wasn’t the only one. Others on the list of reluctant “benefactors” had secured him the ‘’ and its equipment. They had funneled money into his account. And all of them kept silent. They contributed to charitable causes, to funds for nurturing young leaders, to the new church, and even to the hapless plants crushed by ecological disasters, those same disasters that would raise the sea by a mere millimeter over a hundred years.
All of this was trifling stuff that Lucifer had been crafting back in his days at the ''. Now, operating at full capacity, the sky was the limit. Or, better yet, the underworld.
IDENTITY NULL [LITRPG/SYSTEM APOCALYPSE]
So I got my ass kicked. Party wiped, ankle shattered, a monster looming over me... and my system has the audacity to tell me:
Of course, system. Who needs enemies when I have you?
A system error resurrected Kael Vex not as a hero, but as an Axiom Breaker—a living bug who can see and steal the fundamental code of the world. Have odds ever been in his favour? His character sheet, full of [Error] messages and a 'Class: NULL', says 'not really, no'.
STR
NULL
AGI
NULL
TEK
NULL
CLASS
NULL
But when the universe tries to delete you, you just show it a middle finger and become the bug it can't squash.
So if he can't win by the system's rules, why can't he just steal new ones?
- Lots of Progression: Power-ups, skills, stats, and quests.
- Earned Victories: No deus ex machina. Kael struggles and uses his brain to win.
- Dark Humour: Kael uses sarcasm as his primary defense mechanism. The question isn't *if* it will backfire, but *when*.
- Massive Backlog: 5 Books already written. This story is built to last!
- Daily Chapters: A new chapter drops every single day, guaranteed.
- Patreon: 30+ advanced chapters available for supporters.