Chapter 3

The warehouse was quiet.

Rotting wood. Corrugated steel. No cameras. No windows. Perfect.

Vekom had just offloaded another shipment six pistols, three pump-action shotguns, one Uzi, and enough ammo to hold off a military squad for ten minutes.

The buyers had come in twitchy and left grinning. They didn't ask questions. That was the new rule. Everyone in the slums of Medellín knew about the ghost-seller now a nameless armsman who appeared from nowhere, always armed, always calm. No threats. No mess. Just business.

And business was booming.

The System confirmed it with a soft chime in his mind.

"Cumulative earnings: ₱32,600.""Client spread: 18.""Tier One completion: 73%.""Special unlock available — System Tool: Humanoid Clone (50 SC)."

Vekom froze.

"Expand."

A glowing panel unfolded in his mind's eye. Sleek, digital blue.

HUMANOID CLONE UNIT (v1.0)

Cost: 50 System Credits

Description: Deployable synthetic agent with programmable identity. Capable of surveillance, data collection, and low-level infiltration.

Limit: 1 clone per 50 credits invested

Current Available: 1

A slow grin crept across his face.

"Buy."

The System buzzed, then crackled. Light shimmered in the corner of the warehouse. A figure emerged—nude, featureless at first. Then, skin formed. Hair. Clothes. A blank, clean version of a Medellín street kid in his early twenties, with dark eyes and a neutral expression.

"Initialize identity," the System prompted.

"Call him Nico. Give him local dialects. Make him smart but quiet. Track gangs, drug corridors, and arms movement. Feed everything to me in real time."

"Parameters accepted. Clone Nico online."

Vekom handed Nico a clean jacket and a wad of pesos.

"Blend in," he said. "Don't get dead."

Nico blinked once, nodded, and walked into the night like he'd always been part of it.

The information came fast.

Within days, Nico had wormed into two separate street crews. The System streamed tagged images into Vekom's vision safehouses, lieutenants, hideouts, weapon drop zones. Vekom began to map Medellín like a living thing. Its arteries pumped drugs. Its veins moved guns. And at the heart of it all were cells waiting to be controlled.

He didn't just sell weapons anymore.

He moved them strategically — selling to enemies who didn't know they were enemies until the shooting started. Creating balance. Creating chaos. Keeping demand high, keeping attention away from himself.

With every sale, the System grew.

"New catalog unlocked: 1970s-era firearms.""MP5. FN FAL. M16A1.""Unlock progress: 89% to Tier Two."

He started choosing weapons based on personalities.

For reckless buyers, he sold fast-firing garbage — cheap MAC-10s, noisy TEC-9s. Guns that jammed when fired too fast or too long.

For professionals? Clean, solid pieces. The kind that didn't need to be flashy to kill clean.

Reputation spread faster than bullets.

People started whispering a name: El Fantasma — The Ghost. He left no trace. His weapons worked. His price was high. His terms were law.

A drug lieutenant tried to underpay him once. Tried to flex with muscle — five armed men, all staring him down in a nightclub parking lot.

Vekom shot the lieutenant in the knee, took his cash, and offered the bleeding man's crew a bulk discount.

They took it.

He used that money to order his second clone.

"Clone 'Mara' deployed."

This one was female — pretty, quiet, with eyes that looked down but noticed everything. He placed her in a high-end brothel used by cartel middlemen. Within a week, she'd traced three major weapons routes and six rotating lieutenants between rival cartels.

Vekom never had to follow them himself. He watched them through Mara's eyes, tracked their meetings, memorized their rituals.

The System updated again.

"Total Control Nodes established: 2/10.""Network Tracking unlocked.""Gang movement heat map enabled.""Drugs-to-weapons funneling detected: Barrio Cuatro."

He leaned back on a stolen couch in his new safehouse and exhaled slow.

This wasn't just about money anymore.

This was about leverage.

Information was better than power. It was the shape of power. And now, when someone fired a weapon in Medellín, there was a chance it had passed through his hands.

And he knew exactly where it went after.

He invested in crates of suppressors, armor-piercing rounds, and rare revolvers from the 1940s. He sold custom kits to snipers. Concealed automatics for prostitutes doubling as cartel assassins. Shotguns with sawed-off barrels to enforcers guarding shipment convoys through the jungle.

He never met the same crew twice.

He never stayed in one place more than a night.

Each day, more clients reached out through whispers, through friends of friends, through bar owners and back-alley doctors who owed him favors. No phone. No face. Just a drop zone, a price, and a time.

The System kept growing.

And so did the legend.

One night, Nico returned, blood on his collar.

"There's a new player," he said. "Not cartel. Not local. Military roots. Ex-mercs maybe. They're asking about the arms. They want to know who's feeding the slums."

Vekom's jaw tightened.

"What do they know?"

"Not much," Nico replied. "But they're asking smart questions. And they're not afraid."

Vekom stepped outside, lit a cigarette, and stared into the dark.

It was coming.

Attention.

Real attention.

He didn't fear it.

He welcomed it.

He crushed the cigarette under his heel and muttered, "Let them come."

He had the System.He had the guns.He had eyes everywhere.

Let the world burn.

He was ready to sell it the match.