‘A woman?’

    An ordinary-looking woman was coming down the alley, looking around.

    Contrary to my expectations, Ras’s colleague was a woman. When I saw the name Lloyd, I thought it was a man, but I was wrong.

    ‘Well, there’s no law saying women can’t go to establishments.’

    Judging by her appearance, she doesn’t look like she could pull a flower from the ground, but you never know what happens at those places. She might be ripping out people’s spines.

    I stood up and waved at her.

    “Over here.”

    “Why on earth did you want to meet in a place like this?”

    “It’s not something we can discuss openly.”

    “I guess you’re right. But…”

    Lloyd approached me. She had been smiling until just now, but then tilted her head curiously.

    “I thought you retired, why are you still dressed like that?”

    “Huh?”

    “Isn’t that your work uniform?”

    She pointed at my body as she spoke.

    Since the mimicry organ’s pheromones don’t work on me, I don’t know how I appear to others.

    ‘In the game, when using the mimicry organ, you appear as the target did before death…’

    When I devoured Ras, he hadn’t changed clothes. He had collapsed drunk while still wearing his work uniform.

    From what Lloyd is saying, it seems that in reality, just like in the game, the mimicry copies the target’s appearance before death.

    ‘The mimicry organ copies clothes too.’

    While it’s true that the mimicry organ acquires genetic information and creates hallucinatory pheromones based on it, it doesn’t rely solely on genetic data. It also incorporates information from auxiliary organs and other senses like vision to create much more precise hallucinations.

    It collects visual information about clothes, shoes, buttons, wrinkles, and sends it to the mimicry organ, which then overlays this on the body constructed from genetic information. That’s why it’s impossible to reflect different clothing in the hallucination—only the outfit the consumed target was wearing can be applied.

    ‘That’s an unexpected problem. If the clothes don’t match the situation, it might seem suspicious.’

    In the game, there’s no concept of inappropriate clothing for a situation. Not many players change out of their combat gear when entering a city.

    So while some people might notice the hallucinatory effect of the mimicry organ due to the uncanny valley effect, no one ever noticed because the equipment looked suspicious.

    ‘This is reality, so things are different. I need to be careful from now on.’

    If Lloyd hadn’t pointed it out, I might have been in trouble.

    I made up an excuse for her.

    “I just didn’t have anything else to wear.”

    “Tsk, dress properly. You’ve even retired and still… huh?”

    She clicked her tongue and was about to continue when she closed her mouth. Then she frowned deeply.

    “I’ve been smelling something strange…”

    “Never mind that. You know a lot about brokers, right?”

    “Are we really talking about this here?”

    “There are too many people listening in bars.”

    “Well, I guess it’s not something to broadcast around.”

    She nodded and took a USB from her pocket.

    “All the information about brokers and transactions is in here. The files will become inaccessible after a day, so keep that in mind.”

    “That’s complicated.”

    “Well, it’s that kind of business. I’ll send you the broker’s contact through my communicator.”

    She took out her communicator. The narrow, dark alley was illuminated by the light of the small device.

    She entered the contact information and pressed send, making the communicator in my hand vibrate.

    ‘S?’

    Ras’s communicator had received a message with the broker’s initial and phone number. It seemed they deliberately used initials to refer to each other in case one of them got arrested.

    “That’s it. Let’s go get a drink now.”

    “Sure.”

    While I was looking at the communicator screen, she playfully hit my arm.

    “Since when do you want to drink… huh?”

    She startled at the touch, which felt nothing like a human body.

    The mimicry organ can deceive visually, but it can’t fool the sense of touch. When someone touches me, they can feel my actual body. She probably realized something was wrong when she hit me and felt that alien texture.

    That the person waiting for her in the alley wasn’t Ras.

    “Y-you, wh-what are you?!”

    Lloyd stammered and backed away.

    I’ve already received the broker information and contact, so she’s no longer useful.

    I wrapped my long tail around her as she tried to escape.

    “Help… mmph!”

    I covered her mouth with my combat arm before she could scream.

    She seemed confused that something invisible was holding her.

    She knows the person she sees isn’t Ras, but the pheromone effect is still working. Her sense of touch tells her that multiple arms and a tail are restraining her, but visually she still perceives me as Ras. She must feel like invisible arms are grabbing her.

    “Mmm, mmmmm…”

    Lloyd gave me a look begging for her life. Her once ordinary face was now streaked with tears and mucus.

    It’s a pitiful sight, but my decision remains unchanged.

    I applied pressure with my tail, crushing her waist. The life disappeared from her eyes, and her head slumped.

    ‘I’ll dispose of the body here.’

    I ate Lloyd’s corpse on the spot.

    Lloyd’s taste was utterly ordinary. Not bad enough to call it unpleasant, not good enough to call it delicious—just ambiguous. Honestly, it was only slightly better than the sandwich from Ras’s neighbor.

    ‘Now I can transform into Lloyd. Next…’

    I need to contact the broker. I should check the USB at home and decide whether to meet them.

    After licking up every last drop of blood from the ground, I returned to the secret passage.

    “Food smell.”

    [Zzzzz zzz (Just had dinner)]

    “Where’s mine?”

    ‘Ah.’

    Next time I should leave some food for No. 26.

    Sander, who worked in the Harbor District’s Material Storage Team, had a side job.

    He provided exotic creatures to satisfy the refined tastes of high-ranking Megacorp officials.

    Simply put, it was smuggling—a crime—but Sander didn’t think he was doing anything wrong.

    ‘Not using your abilities is practically a sin.’

    With this quintessentially Megacorp mindset, he chose a job where he could make good use of his position.

    Because his work frequently brought him into contact with the Smuggled Animal Management Team, Sander proposed a mutually beneficial arrangement to their team leader, who gladly accepted.

    The Smuggled Animal Management Team would pass information about confiscated creatures to Sander, who would then falsify documents in the storage facility to ship them to other planets.

    This corrupt collaboration between two public institutions had continued for over a year. Sander had become such an influential broker that he even had connections with the police.

    If not for the board meeting, he would have earned enough credits by now to relocate to another planet.

    ‘Damn. It’s that cursed board meeting that’s keeping opportunities away.’

    As of yesterday, there were 30 days left until the board meeting. As a result, security levels across the city had been drastically increased, making it extremely difficult to transport creatures secretly.

    ‘Bastards. After all the money I’ve paid them, they still can’t get me through?’

    The order had come directly from the Harbor District Director, so even officials couldn’t do anything about it—but Sander had no way of knowing that.

    “Hey, Sander. Aren’t you going home?”

    “I’ll leave later.”

    “Alright, take care.”

    After confirming that the other employee had left, Sander took out his personal laptop from his bag. When he entered the password, a list of creatures to be smuggled appeared on the screen.

    ‘This is all money.’

    Everything on the list was marked as “scheduled.” Originally, he had planned to load them onto a ship departing for another planet this morning, but with such strict surveillance, there was no opportunity for him to intervene.

    The increased monitoring of the Harbor District meant that even outgoing shipments were under scrutiny, affecting brokers like him.

    As a result, creatures that should have been shipped out long ago were still sleeping soundly in containers in the Harbor District. Sander clicked his tongue at the enormous losses after just one day.

    Just then, Sander’s communicator rang. The screen displayed the letter L.

    “Tsk. I told them the atmosphere isn’t good right now.”

    L’s message was brief. It was a request to trade an Outspacer.

    ‘Someone wants to buy this?’

    Sander tilted his head at the unexpected request. As far as he knew, Outspacers were extremely dangerous creatures, so very few people traded them.

    Of course, smuggling did happen. After all, the Outspacer in cold storage at the Harbor District was a creature confiscated by the Smuggled Animal Management Team.

    However, until now, no one had ever asked Sander to trade an Outspacer.

    While he was pondering this, another message arrived.

    “Hmm. A Cult from the Administrative District wants to buy it.”

    Usually Sander mediated the trades, but this time it seemed the other party had found a customer.

    ‘The Smuggled Animal Management Team leader must have made the connection.’

    He had thought the team leader was competent, but networking with Cults in the Administrative District? Sander was quietly impressed.

    If it was a Cult, the reason for wanting an Outspacer made sense. Cults loved collecting rare animals and strange artifacts.

    ‘The Administrative District? That’s fortunate. No need to ship it off-planet.’

    He was about to refuse if it involved sending it to another planet, but moving it within the district wouldn’t be a big problem.

    Sander wrote down the meeting place, time, and requested credit amount, and sent it to L.

    As always, the location was by the crane at the container loading dock in the Harbor District. The time was also set to 10 PM as usual.

    This wasn’t his first rodeo, and he trusted the other party to handle the rest. He was about to lose interest when another reply came.

    “…They want to change the time to dawn?”

    Sander’s brow furrowed. He had always set the time, and the other party had never requested a change before. Since nothing could proceed without him, he had always been in the position of power.

    ‘But why?’

    A trade request during a period of heightened surveillance, and now a sudden time change? It looked suspicious.

    After thinking for a moment, Sander pressed the call button.

    The communicator rang, and then there was a click followed by the other person’s voice.

    “Hello.”

    “Hey, what are you thinking?”

    “Pardon?”

    “Changing the time—we’ve never done that before.”

    “Ah, that. I have to work overtime…”

    “Overtime?”

    Sander was about to ask what overtime had to do with anything when he suddenly paused. He remembered a colleague mentioning that some idiot had been caught trying to smuggle a baby Mountain Crawler recently.

    “Is it because of the Mountain Crawler?”

    “Yes. Everyone’s in a frenzy because of that.”

    “Tsk, tough work. Should we move it to another day entirely?”

    “They said they want to receive it as soon as possible.”

    “Is that so? Anyway, I understand. You said 1 AM, right? See you then.”

    Having understood the situation, Sander ended the call.

    To secretly remove the Outspacer, he needed to falsify both storage and transfer documents, so he turned on his work PC.

    While working on the forgery, he suddenly felt something was off.

    ‘Even for a Cult, trading at dawn?’

    Once doubt creeps in, it tends to linger. There was nothing particularly strange about the request, but Sander couldn’t shake his ominous feeling.

    ‘I need insurance.’

    After some internal conflict, he picked up his communicator again and dialed a number.

    “Hey, it’s me. I need you to come with me. Yeah. Yeah. You know the place? Come by 1 AM.”

    The person he contacted was the leader of his personally hired security guards.

    Given the illegal nature of Sander’s business, he occasionally encountered dangerous individuals. In such cases, he always brought his security team to meetings.

    ‘I don’t know what you’re planning, but try anything funny and you’re dead.’

    Sander’s security team consisted of former military and police personnel, all with exceptional combat skills. He had spared no expense on their equipment, outfitting the entire team with lower-grade enhancement suits and laser weapons. There had been no shortage of threatening customers in the past, but whenever he showed them his hired human weapons, they backed down.

    And what about someone who just cleans up after smuggled animals all day? They’d be lucky not to wet themselves at the sight of his security team.

    Everything was under his control. Reassured, Sander returned to his work.


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