How to Get Girls, Get Rich, and Rule the World (Even If You're Ugly)-Chapter 55: How to Decode a Hoard of Forbidden Things (5)

I kept watching her shoulders. The tilt of her head. The way she seemed to absorb the world around her not with her eyes, but with her very existence. She wasn’t defending herself. She wasn’t guarding. She wasn’t reacting.

Because she didn’t need to.

She wasn’t there to stop anything.

She was there to warn.

And any misstep near someone — or something — with that kind of function meant the punishment would come from elsewhere. Higher. Deeper. Older.

Maybe she didn’t even know. Maybe she was a piece of a play that doesn’t understand the play. A puppet that screams when the wind blows.

And yet, the scream would be real.

That was the thought that made me speak.

"Maybe she is. But not in the traditional sense. It could be magic. Could be mind control. Could be she doesn’t even know what she is. But whatever’s in there... is a living bell. A ritual alarm."

And if it was an alarm, then someone — or something — was listening.

Thalia took a deep breath, her gaze drifting through the cracks in the alley. She seemed to see only walls.

But I saw bars.

Bars from a system larger than ours.

And the most unsettling part?

Not even my own system knew which cell we were in.

"We need to see what’s behind," she murmured. "Without her noticing."

I nodded.

But deep down, I was no longer sure that not being noticed was still our choice.

Maybe perception here was one-sided.

Like being watched by a mirror that only reflects when it wants to.

And what if she was the mirror?

The plan started to take shape. Fast, simple, with a narrow margin for error.

She would draw the woman’s attention for a few seconds — nothing suspicious, just approach slowly, as if trying to observe more closely. Meanwhile, I’d skirt around the alley, examining the surrounding structures. Looking for something — a crack, a breath of wind, a misplaced step.

Thalia adjusted her coat, tied her hair, rehearsed a casual walk. As she took the first few steps toward the figure, I slipped along the side, close to the wall, eyes sweeping every detail of the damp concrete.

That’s when I saw it: between two stone slabs, there was a narrow gap with a draft. Invisible from the front. But here, with the right touch, the slime peeled away like badly glued paper.

There was a door. Not a normal door. An entrance embedded in the architecture of the alley, shaped by moisture, filth, and the habit of no one looking twice at what seems too old to matter.

I ran my fingers along the edges. Stretched leather inside. The smell of hot dust. Wood beneath the stone. The kind of construction that serves a single purpose: to make someone disappear.

I pushed gently. The leather gave with a damp snap, and the structure revealed itself not as an ordinary door, but as a membrane built to look like part of the city — and that, if someone pushed from the other side, would close itself again. Thalia was still distracting the sentinel. I had seconds, maybe minutes. I slipped inside.

The corridor was narrow, slightly curved, without windows and lined with old boards stained with soot. The floor was packed dirt, but walked on for so long it felt smooth. There were no torches, only small windows of magical light embedded in amber-glass boxes, vibrating slightly — as if breathing.

And the smell...

It wasn’t just dust or mold.

It was grease, leather, dried blood, cheap chemical product.

A smell I knew well.

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I advanced in silence.

The narrow hallway opened like a slow-breathing organism, revealing a larger chamber hidden beneath the rotting foundations of Antoril. Here, the world stopped being city and became system. Everything around me seemed operated by a subterranean logic, where every nailed board and hanging chain served an invisible flow — and yet, undeniably organized.

It felt like being inside the stomach of a creature that should never have existed.

From the top of an improvised walkway made of old slats and repurposed iron bars, I could see everything.

The space was the size of a small court. Low ceiling, crisscrossed beams supporting the irregular roof, and low-intensity magical lights embedded between rusted copper plates. Every corner served a purpose.

To the left — crates. Many. Stacked in columns of three or four, with faded labels — some bore familiar crests, like those of noble families from the capital, carefully scraped off. Others were marked with cargo runes, but crudely drawn, as if copied from old books by people who only understood half the theory.

I leaned in closer, keeping my body hidden in the shadows of the walkway. Most of the crates were sealed with green wax, which meant they hadn’t been "activated" yet. Dormant ritual contraband.

In the opposite corner, a rudimentary system of wooden and rope conveyors was operated by two boys far too skinny to be professional handlers. Each one moved the crates with excessive care, as if afraid they might trigger something by accident.

I noted mentally: two workers. Unarmed. Tense. Trained.

In the central area, on a long slab of dark stone, were dismantling tools. Files, curved knives, enchanted tweezers, small manual presses. Spread across the workbench were pieces of what looked like runic implants — fragments of armor, glass eyes, finger joints forged in dirty silver.

And vials.

Thick vials, made of amber glass, containing fluids of dense consistency. Some foamed. Others vibrated slightly. One pulsed in intervals, as if... mimicking a heartbeat.

Behind the bench, short shelves. And on them — the horror.

Memories.

Cylindrical containers, labeled with sealing runes. Each one a different color — pale blue, opaque amber, viscous green. I knew what it meant: each color defined the type of memory extracted. Blue for childhood. Amber for trauma. Green for memories acquired by third parties.

This was identity trafficking.

This wasn’t just illegal. It was a violation of the soul itself. Every vial represented someone reduced to a sample. Someone who maybe didn’t even know what had been taken.

I noted: twenty-four visible vials. Three shelves. Mixed category. No security seals. They were ready for transport. Or for sale.

Near the shelves, more men. Five total. None looked nervous. None spoke loudly. All knew exactly what to do — carry, check, clean, move. Nothing here was improvised. It was routine.

I tilted my gaze toward the opposite entrance, where the two hooded men who had spoken to the woman were now talking to a third. A man in a reinforced vest, arms crossed, hands wide as shovels, face hidden beneath a thick hood.

He didn’t speak. He just listened.

And approved.

Like a shift manager satisfied with the night’s output.

I noted: three armed men. One leader. Nine operators. At least one route of entry besides ours. No unnecessary sounds.

This chamber wasn’t just a storage site. It was a living organism.

Silent. Ancient. And built to keep functioning even if some parts were torn off.

I stayed there a while longer, absorbing every smell — tanned leather, dried blood, magical resin — every muffled sound, every step mapped in a pattern. Everything told me this place had existed long before the hooded figures in the alley.

No one here looked like a villain. But everyone acted like part of a plan that had started before we arrived.

And Thalia, out there, still thought the mystery was the woman sitting in the alley.

But no.

The mystery was here.

This was the basement of the world.

Where the past was bottled.

And the future, forged.

I had seen many places dressed in secrecy, but none with such surgical intent. Every surface whispered compliance. Every crate, every tool, every vial told a story I didn’t want to hear.

But the system didn’t care about my reluctance. It translated what it saw. Not as a location. But as a functioning entity. A factory with no smoke. A forge without flame.

And what it showed me next made my blood go cold.

| ENTITY PROFILE: THE MEMORY BONEWORKS |

| Type: Subterranean Facility / Identity-Extraction Forge

| Classification: Ritual Smuggling Hub / Bio-Arcane Processing Center

| ATTRIBUTES |

| Architecture: Organic-industrial fusion. All construction is retrofitted from forgotten basements and structural scars in Antoril’s foundation.

| Security: Passive-surveillance based. No alarms — only operatives trained to move without disrupting flow.

| Atmosphere: Blood-seeped humidity. Enchanted humidity control. Arcane insulation prevents external detection spells.

| Age: Unknown. Likely predates current regime. Reappropriated by smuggling networks.

| Operators: 12–14 present. Mixture of handlers, extractors, and unseen contractors.

| WEAKNESSES |→ Weak lighting system. Overloads under large mana surges.→ No contingency protocols for explosive confrontation. Operatives trained for silence, not battle.→ Memory shelves unsealed: volatile if disrupted by conflicting emotions or anti-sympathetic resonance.

And now... I knew the way back.