Nylon leaves grazed his cheek, plastic branches snapping back against his armor’s plating. The warped shrubs, far from natural, and the vivid lime-green artificial turf crunched underfoot. Crawling through the foliage, Danan opened a manhole leading to the sewers.

  Diving underground so many times in a day stirred old memories. A time when he gutted corpses for organs, stripped parts from cyborgs and mechanized humans to sell—a scavenger’s life. His current self, a relic hunter scraping by, and his past as a filthy thief were one and the same. If there was one difference, it was the presence of a name.

  The name “Danan,” given by an old man, was his alone, second only to his life in value. A name was just a linguistic serial code, a tag to distinguish one mass-produced human from another. Even without a name, a person could live, just as livestock or crops needed no labels. As long as you didn’t die, you kept living. Danan called himself by that name because it was a gift from a benefactor, the old man now gone—a ritual, a way to honor his memory.

  Thus, Danan declared his name as neither more nor less. It was a personal symbol, a serial code for identification. In the undercity, where privacy was a faded concept and everyone saw others as tools for selfish desires, instinct bowed to survival of the fittest. Reason was reduced to calculating profit and loss or fleeting hypocrisy based on circumstance. Killing to protect oneself, degrading and devouring others for gain—the name’s meaning in the undercity was merely a marker.

  Perhaps that’s why so few shared their names here. Not everyone had one, and those who did instinctively knew it could lead to their death. Danan rarely knew the names of those he killed, and those he did were few. He judged people by gender, analyzed their gear to gauge their role, and weighed whether they could be killed—whether they’d bring profit or loss. A brutal, inhuman act, the heart of a demon. If he didn’t kill or corner his prey, he’d be the one to die. To survive, he devoured others. He knew he couldn’t live without embracing that ruthless shame.

  Stepping into a sewer passage leading to the pleasure district, Danan leaned against a wall, spotting a skeleton collapsed in death. Scattered red hair lay on the ground, clothes riddled with holes from rats and insects. He knew he should hurry, escape the district, and reach Eve. Yet, approaching the corpse, he sighed deeply.

  “…What did you think about all this?” he muttered.

  Opening a locket from his pocket, he compared the family photo inside to the corpse.

  “In the end, I forgot about you. Until I looked at this locket, I didn’t remember a thing…”

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  The gunsmith’s daughter… a nameless echo from his past. As a boy, returning from relic hunts, Danan always restocked ammo at her shop. Her bright smile and vivid red hair, her unguarded nature, left an impression.

  They’d exchange a word or two. On days off, they’d sip synthetic drinks in front of her shop, passing time. Rare for Danan, she was someone he let his guard down with. Staring at the steel-plated sky, the streets drenched in digital seas—a fleeting, fragile moment of peace. Unlike Danan’s grim sips, she laughed and talked endlessly, he recalled.

  Why could she smile? Why so much to say? he’d asked. She didn’t know, she said, but smiling always brought something good. And what good came of it? Sold to pay her family’s debts, meeting her end in the vile pleasure district? Dying alone in a sewer—was that her “good”? …What a joke.

  Death was commonplace in the undercity. Look left, a corpse shot through the head. Look right, someone tortured for sport. Bloated evil consumed healthy cells like cancer, swollen sins defiling the innocent, staining them with depravity. Even a child knew this rule, the undercity’s only law. Danan lived by it, never questioning. But the smoldering rage in his chest, fueled by past memories, reignited. His surging hatred turned into half-vindictive revenge.

  That girl… she was good. In an undercity reeking of despair and death, she never stopped smiling, celebrating Danan’s safe returns from relic hunts, even if it was just business. It saved a piece of his heart. Knowing only this world, never the tower’s upper levels, Danan couldn’t help but think her death was wrong.

  The beast within roared. Slaughter the Crucible, it demanded, baring blood-soaked fangs. Destroy the pleasure district that killed her. Find a way to kill Aeshma, take vengeance. This revenge was selfish, unlikely to please the dead. He wouldn’t realize until a bullet from the future pierced him—revenge begets revenge, and those who sow death aren’t forgiven until they balance it with life. Peace would never come.

  “…I’ll kill Aeshma. Damocles too. If they take, I’ll take back. That’s the undercity… You were too kind. If you’d been cold enough to abandon your family, you could’ve survived. Don’t you think?” he said.

  A friend… if he could even call her that. Stroking the skeleton’s dry skull, Danan, brimming with murderous intent and passion, pressed through the sewer. His boots echoed in the dark passage, underscoring his solitude. The creak of his mechanical arm, the metallic clank of his armor… Relying on his goggles’ minimap, he spotted a manhole leading to the pleasure district. Clutching the terminal, he climbed the iron ladder, nudging the cover open to check outside.

  As expected—or rather, a twisted miracle of desire-driven madness—the pleasure district, ravaged by Damocles, had rebuilt over half its ruins at astonishing speed. Prostitutes lined the streets as always, dancing nearly naked under neon glow. Mid-city folk, chasing illegal drugs banned above, descended to snort and buy children barely in single digits. The district of debauchery and desire thrived, heedless of destruction and death, treating people as commodities.

  “…”

  Slipping from the manhole, Danan locked eyes with a vagrant, aiming his assault rifle. The vagrant, with unfocused, grinning eyes, pulled a drug ampule from their pocket, filling a filthy, overused syringe.

  A single bullet through the forehead. Killing the vagrant, Danan, reeking of sewer filth, slipped into an alley.