"...The true master..."
Ryuk's hoarse whisper echoed through the cramped room, carrying an inhuman, almost shuddering resonance. His scarlet eyes no longer held any mockery. They stared fixedly at me, as though I had just pried open the cage of some sleeping behemoth that even he deeply feared.
The deepest reaches of the nest.
I leaned back in my chair. The throbbing in my temples slowly subsided, replaced by a cold sharpness that cut through my exhaustion. The tremendous drain on my mental energy was real, but the feedback it brought... was unprecedented, too. The boundaries of the Death Note were more... blurred than I had imagined, and more dangerous.
The true master.
Not "Mentor," not the remnants of "SRO-7." Something older, something hidden even farther behind the scenes, something for which even "Mentor" might be only one pawn among many... an entity.
Ryuk's warning was not groundless. He came from that world. What he could sense went far beyond my understanding.
The surveillance interface on the screen was deathly still. Those points of light marking the nodes that had flared and died were like stones thrown into a deep pool. Once the ripples faded, they left behind a deeper, more unsettling silence. It was not the silence of an ending, but the oppressive feeling before a storm, when the air suddenly tightened.
How would they react? That "true master"?
Direct retaliation? A more covert investigation? Or... some warning that transcended the physical realm?
My fingers tapped unconsciously against the cold desktop. I could not wait. Waiting meant giving them time to regroup and adjust their strategy. I had to act again within the brief window when that rule-defying haymaker still had them reeling.
But the targets could no longer be those obvious "nodes." That sweeping judgment against protocol signatures had been a gamble, and a brazen provocation. They would undoubtedly be on high alert now. Every similar vulnerability would be patched immediately.
I needed a new angle. One they would never anticipate and could not easily guard against.
A... "sin" intimately bound to the very "order" they sought to uphold, yet one they systematically ignored, or even tolerated.
My gaze returned to the chaotic streams of information. I was no longer tracing encrypted signals, but examining the festering sores beneath the polished surface of this world, secretly "maintained" by organizations like "SRO-7."
Structural fraud in the financial system? Institutional protection for judicial injustice? Information bubbles and cognitive manipulation?
Too broad. I needed something more specific, something that would... strike a nerve.
Suddenly, a snapshot of a swiftly deleted social media post caught my attention. An anonymous account had posted a blurry, distant photograph of a highly secretive party on a tycoon's private island. The photograph itself was unremarkable, but a comment beneath it, deleted within seconds, pierced my field of vision like a needle:
"[Username deleted]: Another batch of 'fresh goods' made it to the island. Looks like some are especially 'tender' this time. Bets on how long they can 'play' with them?"
"Fresh goods." "Tender." "Play."
Together, those few words gave off the nauseating stench of evil taken for granted.
Human trafficking. An elite underground supply chain catering exclusively to certain privileged circles, protected by an airtight network. This shadow of "order" often had countless tacit ties to the very forces that upheld that "order." It was a cancer, but to some extent, it was also a tool certain people used for control, transactions, and the gratification of private desires.
Destroying it would mean tearing away society's mask of hypocrisy while driving a blade deep into the beneficiaries hidden behind "order."
A perfect target.
But not any specific person. The target was the route to the island itself. The intermediary hub responsible for selecting, transporting, and delivering the "goods" there.
Find it.
My gaze became a scalpel, peeling away layer after layer of online camouflage. Freight orders on the dark web, encrypted shipping logs, the backgrounds of seemingly ordinary international trading companies, sudden abnormal flows of money linked to certain charitable foundations, such as "Morning Star"...
The fragments slowly came together.
A name surfaced: the "Eye of Odin" logistics company. On paper, it transported high-end artwork and valuables, maintained exceptionally strict security standards and confidentiality agreements, and served only the rich and powerful. But the stops along several of its regular routes, its shipping cycles, and certain inexplicable "special warehousing fees" all closely matched the information about "island deliveries" in the anonymous intelligence.
That was it.
Its director, a man named Victor Crane with a background as spotless as a blank sheet of paper, was the critical node.
His death should be... the "goods" striking back.
I opened the notebook. My mental energy had not fully recovered, and a faint ache and weakness lingered in my fingertips. But my resolve was cold as iron.
The pen touched down.
[Victor Crane]
Cause of death: cargo hold failure. Time: early tomorrow morning, when his company's most advanced large private transport aircraft, the "Ghost Ship," is flying ten thousand meters above the Pacific on a "special freight" mission. Cause of death: during his routine "status inspection" of the cargo holds over an encrypted satellite connection, all cargo doors will be forcibly unlocked using his highest-level authorization, instantly destabilizing the pressure inside. Before his death, his command terminal will receive the original identities of all the "goods," footage of their abductions, and the final buyer list, and will be forced to play them until the terminal is torn apart by the incoming gale. The aircraft will crash into the sea.
Location: ten thousand meters above the ground. Cause of death: system "malfunction." Penance: a bombardment of the victims' information. Outcome: destruction in the ocean.
Let those lives treated as "goods" become, in their final moments, the shells that destroyed this filthy machine. Let the ocean swallow every piece of evidence, and swallow this route as well.
The pen left the page.
The familiar draining sensation struck again, slightly weaker than before, but still unmistakable. A faint wave of dizziness passed through my head.
In the corner, Ryuk gave an inscrutable gurgle. He offered no further comment; his scarlet eyes merely flickered.
The judgment had been written.
Now, I would await its execution.
And,
await...
the deep nest's response.
The next day, before dawn.
Somewhere over the Pacific, outside the public air routes.
The "Ghost Ship" transport aircraft cruised steadily on autopilot. Along with the crew, it carried dozens of sedated "special goods," imprisoned inside specially designed shipping containers.
In his ground command center, Victor Crane faced an encrypted screen, preparing to conduct his routine inspection.
He entered the command.
The screen lit up, but it did not show the expected surveillance feed from the cargo holds.
Instead, countless terrified young faces appeared, interspersed with chaotic footage of abductions, along with line after shocking line of names and price quotes!
"What?! The system's been-" His cry cut off abruptly!
Every image on the screen froze. Then scarlet words appeared: [Final inspection complete]!
Almost simultaneously!
High above the ocean, every cargo door on the "Ghost Ship" sprang open! The horrific decompression instantly unleashed a gale that swept through the cabin!
Shrill alarms drowned beneath the howling storm and the thunder of tearing structures!
The signal vanished completely from ground radar.
In my room, the screen displayed an urgent news bulletin about a private transport aircraft that had mysteriously gone missing over the Pacific.
There was no celebration, no satisfaction. Only cold calm.
I closed the news page.
I prepared to erase the traces of my activity.
Just as my fingers were about to touch the keyboard-
The computer screen suddenly lit up on its own!
Not the news, not the surveillance interface.
But a pure, unbroken expanse of-
deep red.
Like congealed blood, it covered the entire screen.
Then, against that heart-stopping crimson background, a line of white letters slowly emerged, their ornate, archaic script looking as though it had been written with a quill dipped in ink:
**
Thou shalt not...
**
(You shall not...)
The writing stopped abruptly there.
As though forcibly cut off.
The deep-red screen flickered violently, as if the signal were wildly unstable.
Then it went completely dark.
The room sank back into gloom.
Only my heartbeat, in the sudden, suffocating silence,
pounded heavily against my eardrums.
The deep nest,
at last...
had opened its eyes.
Before you continue