The road through the forest was not particularly busy.

But it didn’t have zero utilization either.

So, all of our preparations were done secretly but not fully implemented.

Just as the preparation was done in secret, so was the implementation afterward.

To start fully, our target had to be revealed, no other vehicle had to get here before them.

And the perfect time had come.

First of all, Alex and I set off. Then we turned on all the devices and automatic systems we had hidden on the sides.

The road, which had been a relatively clean, quiet place until now, suddenly started to change.

There was a blue light, albeit very faint, and then… a total of nine SUVs that probably cost the prince a small fortune appeared.

Each one was a fairly up-to-date model. But, on top of that… they were all armored and designed as if they were carrying important people.

The first thing we did was to spread these SUVs around.

Knocking a few of them over, making them almost unrecognizable. Blowing them up, even… not caring if there were small fires in the jungle.

After the SUVs, the other change happened.

There was a blue glow again.

Soon after, a lifeless body appeared, thrown to the side of the road.

He was wearing a black suit, and on his jacket was a crest with two swords crossed over a flame that was completely red in color. It was the body of a middle-aged, ordinary-looking man.

He was lifeless, but there was not a single scar on his body.

And he was not the only one.

Immediately after him, many more bodies appeared.

All dressed in suits just like the first one, all of different ages.

Some of them had a different crest. It was a bullet depicted as if it was scattering particles of light around it.

The number of these two types of bodies was not small.

Not just ten or twenty.

There were more than seventy bodies.

Nothing was a hologram, an illusion.

On the contrary… it was all real.

Each one of them was preserved in the best possible way up to this moment, especially dressed and without any scars.

We placed each one with care.

As if they had taken cover behind the SUVs. As if they had clashed with each other. As if they had died in various ways, suddenly or painfully.

Making sure that their blood was carefully scattered.

With swords, spears, guns in their hands and around them.

In short, we turned this road into a fake ‘combat’ scene.

A perfect post-conflict scene where no one seems to have survived.

It only took about forty-five minutes for everything to be over.

But, in the end… the job of making the scene as convincing as possible was done.

Now it was time for the two of us.

First, we put on suits, just like the corpses we had placed around, and then came the most important part.

“Are you ready?”

Alex nodded approvingly without saying anything.

Then… we both pressed the tiny device we were holding in our hands.

Nothing happened at first, except that the blue light blinking on it simply turned green.

But then the device began its real work.

It began to melt in our palms and spread over our skin.

It went to our fingertips, it spread all over our body under our clothes… as if it was multiplying endlessly, without ever decreasing in volume; on the contrary, increasing.

“Ugh…”

I heard Alex’s voice during all this. He sounded quite… disgusted.

It wasn’t like I didn’t understand him.

It was one of the most disgusting moments I will ever remember.

The feeling of another skin forming on my own, the sensation of the liquidy substance covering my face and every part of my body…

And this went on for almost two minutes.

But the main thing was that there should be no trouble.

And, in the end… there wasn’t.

The device did perfectly what it was supposed to do for both of us.

It changed our bodies, our faces… even the color of our eyes.

It turned us into people other than who we were.

“That was… much stranger than I thought.”

Alex raised his hands and gently stretched his skin with his fingers.

There was not a trace of fake skin, not even a strange feeling that it was forged, as if it belonged to someone much older than he normally was.

His dark green hair had turned a natural brown and his originally brown eyes were now black. He looked a little more built than he normally was, but even that was still thin compared to normal people. He looked like a man in his thirties.

“This is pretty much the best technology on the whole planet. We have nothing to complain about. Besides… we’re going to do this one more time. So you better not be grossed out right away.”

I sighed lightly, then tore my eyes away from him and turned them to my own hands. I turned on the camera on my watch and checked how I looked.

My black hair had kept its color. My gray eyes meanwhile had turned green. I hadn’t ‘aged’ as much as Alex. I was still a young man, almost twenty-four years old.

“Perfect. Now…”

Alex and I stared at each other.

Not a word came out of our mouths.

But then… long, blue particles of light appeared in our hands.

And right after that… two swords.

“Let’s start, we don’t have much time.”

We turned around, going in opposite directions.

And… we began to leave scars on the corpğses, which we spread around in turn.

On all of them, one by one.

In different ways to make sure they were convincing. Wounds we had memorized in ways we had simulated many times before.

And not only with swords.

Pistols.

Spears.

Rifles.

Traces of spells and skills.

Even explosives.

The air was heavy with the smell of blood and gunpowder. The familiar smell of the Holar War filled my nose.

I couldn’t help sighing slightly.

Because… it was nothing.

The air I inhaled in that war was much heavier than this.

So, I continued whatever I was doing without even trying to hold my breath.

And, ten minutes later… in the middle of the road, Alex and I were looking at our masterpiece.

“How much time do we have?”

Alex didn’t even lift his watch to check my question.

“Five minutes max.”

That’s great.

Because we have one last thing to do.

“Good. Do it then.”

Alex closed his eyes for a moment. He had a gun in his hand now.

“All right…”

His eyes opened.

No matter how much his appearance had changed, his gaze was the same.

His eyes were filled with the same calmness.

And, just like that, he raised the pistol.

He pointed at my leg.

And then…

~baam!

The bullet hit my right leg, the crippled one.

It pierced the flesh, even touching the bone.

Blood poured out of the wound and soaked my pants.

It… hurt, yes.

But I didn’t move a muscle.

~baam!

This time, it was on my shoulder. Again, on the right side.

Ah, it’s been a while since I’ve felt pain like this…

When was the last time I got a wound on my body?

It was months ago, wasn’t it?

Now, after a long time, the sensation of warm blood running down my hand under my jacket is strangely…

Comforting.

I squinted my eyes, sighed a little.

How nice… it also had been a while since I had felt like a monster.

Fortunately, that was the end of the bullets.

Because something else was next, to cover me in the blood of others.

Which took a pretty short time.

Followed by a few burns and traces of wind magic on my body.

Oh, and… detonating an explosive right next to me.

At the end of it all, I was someone who belonged in this combat scene.

Severely wounded, even.

Alex was not much different from me. He, too, had left scars and covered himself in blood.

His expression had changed many times, though it was clear that he was in pain.

Nevertheless, he had gritted his teeth and was still doing it.

“Let’s take our places. We don’t have much time.”

I placed my cane and all the artifacts I had on me in a hidden dimensional inventory. The ring on my finger no longer contained my belongings, but entirely different things.

Alex did the same.

So… everything was truly ready.

All we had to do was wait for a minute or two.

And… that’s exactly what we did.

We got behind one of the SUVs that was lying on its side in such a way that we didn’t particularly show ourselves on the road as if we were ‘hiding’.

After a short while, two beams of light appeared on the other side of the road.

They were the headlights of a car coming at full speed toward our position.

Immediately after that came another.

And another one.

And more…

In the middle of it all was a high-tech bus that looked bigger than a truck.

Each of them stopped as they approached the combat scene.

For a few seconds, they stood still and nothing happened.

But then, one by one, people started getting out of the cars.

All in suits, just like the people we used to create this scene.

I stepped back, not looking at them on purpose.

On the contrary, I put Sith in charge of telling me what was going on.

‘They’re looking at each other, I think they’re talking about something.’

They are assessing the situation.

‘The man who seems to be their leader has started walking with three others behind him.’

Now, they’re checking.

‘They’re looking around, I think they’re checking the identities of the bodies.’

Good. Even if the bodies are random, the crest on their jackets is enough to identify them. It’s not like anyone in the mafia keeps their identity particularly obvious.

‘Ah, the one at the front paused. He’s looking… over here.’

We may be behind a car, but the technology is advanced and they can sense our mana… even if they’re fake.

‘He’s coming, get ready.’

The time has come.

Alex moved quickly thanks to Must, who informed him in her invisible form, just like Sith. He stepped in front of me, between me and where the man was coming from. He grabbed a pistol, which looked quite ordinary but had much more firepower than it looked, and took cover, pointing it at the exact spot where the man would appear.

While Sith was telling me how close the man was, Alex waited for Must’s signal.

And when the signal came…

~baam!

He was gonna pull the trigger.

Just at the moment when the man was in a position where he could see us.

As soon as we can see part of his clothes, even part of his face.

But…

The man he shot did not collapse, nor was there any blood splattered on us.

On the contrary, his head was slightly tilted to the side.

The bullet had grazed the tip of his carefully combed black hair.

His brown eyes, slightly visible through the side of his sunglasses, were on us.

He squinted slightly.

“What have we got here…?”

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