Chapter 47: Building a Ghost

Chapter 47: Chapter 47: Building a Ghost

The payout notification came through two days later.

[Gate Clearance Payment: 8,000 pounds]

Jason stared at the number for a long moment.

’Eight thousand.’

Something in his chest settled, flat and final.

’That’s it. That’s the last one of these I do without a plan.’

---

He found Novaria in the kitchen that evening and told her everything he’d planned out.

The persona, the name, the mask, the sword.

All of it, no details left out.

She listened without interrupting, turning her fork over slowly once he’d finished.

"You plan to reach C rank dungeons with this strategy?"

"Eventually. Starting with D-Rank."

"And nobody can know it’s you."

"Not unless I want my family coming after me"

She studied him for a long moment, something sharp and considering behind her eyes.

"Then you can’t buy any of it online," she said. "Everything that can be traced.

Payment records, delivery addresses, even cash transfers through an app.

If you want this clean, you have to buy everything in person, with cash, from different places. Nothing connected."

He blinked. "...That’s really smart."

"I’m aware."

"I may or may not have planned to just order it all from one site."

"I know. That’s why I said something."

He huffed something close to a laugh.

"Remind me to consult you before every bad decision from now on."

"I intend to."

---

He spent the better part of the next day crossing the city on foot, visiting a different shop for every piece.

He’d gotten the cloak first, it was a heavy, dark thing from a secondhand stall three districts over, bulky enough to swallow his frame and disguise the shape of his shoulders.

"Cold out, is it?" the vendor asked, folding it into a bag.

"Something like that."

The mask took longer to find.

He finally settled on a small, cluttered shop tucked down a side street, shelves crowded with costume pieces nobody seemed to actually buy.

The owner, an old man with ink-stained fingers, watched him turn one option over in his hands.

"That one," the man said, nodding at it. "It’s a good choice, folks always tell me it unsettles people.

Can’t quite say why, until you’ve worn it a while."

Jason studied it.

Smooth, pale, featureless except for two narrow slits where the eyes went, and a faint, deliberate asymmetry to the jaw that made the whole thing look subtly wrong.

’It’s perfect.’

"How much?"

"For that? It’s cheap.

Nobody wants it. Too creepy for parties."

"I’ll take it."

"Good man." The old vendor wrapped it without further questions, the particular kind of incurious courtesy Jason was quickly learning to appreciate. "Whatever you’re planning with that thing , good luck."

"Thanks."

He paid the cash and left.

---

The last stop, before heading home, was the market.

He wandered the stalls with the same unhurried pace he’d used at the mask shop, picking out root vegetables, a fresh cut of meat for dinner, a handful of herbs he’d been meaning to restock, the familiar rhythm of grocery shopping settling.

The vendor at the produce stall didn’t so much as blink at the heavy folded cloak tucked under his arm, which Jason appreciated more than he expected to.

By the time he started the walk home, both arms were full, both with groceries, and with the makings of a second life.

---

Back home, he laid everything out across the bedroom floor and studied the pieces one at a time.

The cloak.

The mask.

A plain sheath he’d picked up from a market stall, worn enough not to draw attention, built to carry a blade no wider than Kane’s.

He pulled Kane’s sword free from his inventory last, turning it over in his hands.

The hilt was distinctive, worn smooth in a particular pattern from years of the same grip, a design he suspected someone who’d crossed blades with Kane before might recognize.

’Can’t have that.’

He found a strip of dark cloth and wound it carefully around the hilt, layer over layer, until the original shape disappeared, turning into something plainer, something that could have belonged to any D-Rank sword in any market stall in the city.

He tested the new grip, flexing his fingers around it.

’Good. Nobody’s placing this as his anymore.’

He tried the whole arrangement on in front of the mirror, mask settled over his face, cloak drawn up around his shoulders, re-wrapped sword hanging from the plain sheath at his hip, and practiced standing differently, shoulders rolled slightly forward instead of back, weight shifted onto his heels instead of his toes.

He practiced speaking less. Shorter sentences. Flatter tone.

By the time he’d run through it a dozen times, the man in the mirror didn’t move like Jason Veryon anymore.

’Now the hard part.’

-----------------------------

He was midway through unpacking the groceries, the first vegetables already laid out on the cutting board for lunch, when he heard it.

A sharp, strangled breath from the other room.

He dropped the knife and was at Novaria’s side before the second breath finished, her body already beginning to seize, muscles spasming out of control.

"I’m here," he said, steady despite the spike of fear in his chest, already reaching for the drawer. "I’ve got you."

The injector found its mark cleanly, the same practiced motion as every time before, and within moments her breathing began to even out, the worst of the convulsion faded.

He held her through the last of it, murmuring something low and wordless, more for himself than for her, until her body finally went slack with exhaustion rather than seizure.

He carried her to bed as carefully as he could, settling the blanket over her shoulders, and sat with her a few minutes longer than strictly necessary before finally making his way back to the kitchen.

---

He finished prepping lunch in silence, knife moving through vegetables with mechanical precision while his mind worked through everything else entirely.

’Whatever’s broken in her meridians, it’s not going to get better on its own.

The medication’s only a patch, not a fix.’

’One more reason to get stronger.’

He turned his plan over again as he cooked, checking it from every angle he could think of.

’An alias, a different weapon, a different face, a different voice, different posture, and even a sword that belonged to a dead man.’

’What am I missing.’

He couldn’t find any holes yet, which worried him almost as much as finding one would have.

’I’ll find one eventually.’

He plated the food, set hers aside to keep warm for whenever she woke, and ate the rest of his own meal.

Not being able to do anything else, he just sat down cross legged and continued refining ambient mana into his core.

Steadily raising his cultuvation towards the intermediate stage of the second level.