Main Character’s POV:

‘Inhale… exhale…’ The warm vapours from my cig had my nerves burning with vengeance, yet I was sucking on this cancer stick for the opposite effect.

“Fucking useless.” I tossed the finished cig on the ground and rubbed it out with the sole of my boot. Just a few inches away from where I dropped the cig, a pool of blood was flowing towards my feet coming from the corpse of a thug I just killed.

I asked this punk very nicely to let me into the Red Ants Secret base but of course, he had to give me hard time. I wasn’t in the mode for idle chatter.

Himeko’s death had me unnerved. After I buried her in the park, I went back to the morgue and erased all records of my existence by burning the place to the ground. It took me a lot of fucking effort to accomplish that so when I finally locate the Red Ants hideout, I was in no mode to be delayed my vengeance. Therefore, I kicked this difficult guard dog in his groin and used my bare hands to open a hole in his chest.

Surprise, surprise, there was a Rubik’s Cube inside already waiting for me to pluck it out. It was a 4 by 4 cube with crown faces. Before it opened, I had an idea of what it might be. The Value Metre ability that I previously purchased from the Rubik’s Store could show me the total sum of wealth a person had to their name. If I keep the metre steady on the accumulate wealth bar it would manifest a special Rubik’s Cube that had all of that person’s wealth stored within.

This dirty thug that I killed only had a wealth valuing 23,000 Crowns. Poor sucker, his life didn’t even earn me much dough. No wonder he was stationed as the guard dog, they weren’t paying much to climb up the ladder in the gang. I knew numerous strippers who earned this bastard's entire life savings in one night just by twerking their asses.

These Red Ants needed a proper change in management and I decided to be their new self-appointed business manager. I pocketed the 23,000 Crowns in the ridiculous shorts Himeko gave me.

“I’ll use that money to purchase some proper clothes later. For now, this half-naked getup is what I will be sporting to carry out my vengeance.” It suited the occasion because it would save me the trouble of having to get rid of all the blood.

I knelt down and searched the corpse for something specific. The gang’s signature was on his neck, so I was sure of it. “This is the right place. Time to go smash some heads in.”

Confirming that I was indeed in the Red Ants Gang headquarters, I plucked a cig from behind my ear, placed it in my mouth and it ignited by itself. This was the special Sunflower Cigarette that I bought from the system. It was supposed to boost certain aspects of my stats. I didn’t bother to check the specifics for I was too focused on the multiple chest plates I was about to open.

“Hm?” As I was venturing down the tunnel, I came across another thug who became suspicious of my obtrusive nakedness and the blood on my feet.

“Hey, who are you. How did you get inside this place?”

“…” I didn’t answer his questions. I continued to close the distance between us casually.

“Hold it right there! I asked you a question.” The man withdrew his gun from his waist and aimed it at me intending to fire. “This is the last time I’m going to ask, who the fuck are you?”

I raised my hands pretending to surrender and told him, “Since you want to know who I am so bad, I shall tell you.” I paused my speech to allow a dramatic sense of suspense to increase before I revealed, “I am Smoke Pac.”

“No fucking way! The gang was just talking about you.” He looked so frightened as if he was staring at a ghost from out of a nightmare series. “Rodent wasn’t insane after all.”

“Rodent?” Hearing this word spitting out of the gangster's mouth pulled a nerve of hatred in my head. “So that traitor is here?” I became fucking ecstatic to receive definite confirmation that my number one target was where I expected him to be.

“Big Red has just been added to my list of traitors.”

“What was that?” I could hear the terror in the thug’s voice. His shaking hands were a secondary source of proof. “Hey, get back or I’ll shoot! I’m not afraid to dust you out!” He tried to threaten me with his pistol. If I was the old Smoke Pac then I would have feared getting shot at, but now I was the revamped Smoke Pac. The fucking raw biology of vengeance!

“With this cube in my chest, I’m fucking invincible!” I look him dead centre in the eyes, showed him a pair of middle fingers and begged him to pull the trigger. “Take your best shot motherfucker.”

“You asked for this. Die!” He pulled the trigger and shot me twice.

‘Bam! Bam!’

The first bullet penetrated my left shoulder; it went right through and the second bullet lodged into my forehead.

“What the fuck???”

The thug expected me to go down after he shot me twice, but he received the shock of his life when he saw what happened next.

The bullet that was stuck in my forehead squirted out of the round aperture with trails of blood slowing behind it. I caught the bullet and decided to try something stupid. I brutally opened my chest, revealing the pulsating octahedron Rubik’s Cube to my enemy and then stuffed the bullet into my heart.

“How is this possible?” The gangster was disbelieving of his very sight. His hand became so shaky that the gun fell out of his grasp.

I was hoping to replicate what was done to me in the morgue and awakened a new ability. But something else occurred beyond my expectation.

“Arh!” While this process was occurring, it wasn’t without its fair share of pain. I stumbled to my knees while trying to steady the rampant pulsing of my evolved heart. It turned out his assimilation was more painful than the first time with the cigarette and the second time with the scalpel. The agony experienced reminded of the time when I was deprived of smoking a cig for a years due to the nuns’ strict confinement back at the orphanage I was raised.

Finally the pain had subsided. Following the above message many others popped up.

“Level 2? I wonder what effects it now has.” I was eager to try out the new skill upgrade. After my chest cavity closed itself, I stood up straight and gave my sinister attention back to the trembling thug who had been a good dog and remained loyal to my display of evolvement.

I gestured to the gun beside the thug’s foot and told him, “Why don’t you try shooting me again, maybe you will find my weakness this time.” I gave him chance to reach for his weapon.

“Fucking monster!” Instead of picking up the gun as I told him to, this scared fucker turned tail and started running down the tunnel while screaming for mercy.

“Tsk, playing hard to get.” I wasn’t going to let my pry slipped out from beneath me.

My appearance became blurred as I transitioned into a smoking tyrant that dashed ahead and caught up with the thug in an instant.

“Come here you little pussy!” I tackled him to the ground, spun him over on his back and did what I do best. I began opening this fucker’s chest with my bare hands while saying to him, “You better have something good for me.”

“Oh, God no! WAAH!” He hollered in terrifying burst of pain as I continued to pry his rib cage asunder.

To my surprise, there wasn’t a Rubik’s Cube anywhere inside. “Could this be because he is still alive?” Testing my theory, I removed my hands from his chest, grasped his head and twist his neck fiercely until I heard triple snaps of his cervical vertebra.

Now that the thug was dead, I got to witness the magnificent manifestation of a Rubik’s Blood Cube occurring in his heart. It became swollen with a brilliant red glow that almost sear the retina of eyes.

“So this is what happened to Himeko?” I’ve learned how exactly Himeko died when the System fucked up and chose her as its intended target. This was eye opening. The more people I killed the more I learn about the Rubik’s System.

I ripped out the Rubik’s Blood Cube from the thug’s chest and used it to replenish my depleted Blood Bank. “This will serve me well when I’m crushing the other Red Ants.”